A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (3 page)

     
Hadn't Albert mentioned something else? A kid's coloring book? She found it pinned to the inside vest of the child's pink sweater; it was made of cheap, well-worn vinyl, blue background patterned with black-and-white Snoopy dogs, and it was small enough to rest in Sylvia's palm.

     
Inside, a very childish hand had practiced the alphabet and numbers—on the first page, painstakingly printed capital letters wandered across the page, followed by a line of numbers including a backward 3. The printing was made even more illegible by overlapping colored images: rainbows, suns, flowers . . . drawings made by a little girl. On succeeding pages, the drawings became more adept, demonstrating practice and budding creativity.

     
Tucked back along the seam of the chair, Sylvia found a necklace—a small silver medallion with an unusual design face; it looked Indian, perhaps Mayan . . . a jaguar?

     
When she turned, the child was staring directly at her with an intensity so acute it was shocking. Her eyes were tiny dark vortexes alive with fear, intelligence, and fierce longing.

     
Slowly, Sylvia walked to the edge of the bed. She curved toward the child, and her gaze softened. "Are you going to let me touch you without a one-two punch?"

     
But she didn't get the chance.

     
Instead, the child reached out her scraped and battered hand and stroked Sylvia's cheek. Just once. Then she closed her eyes and curled her body up like a leaf.

W
ITH ONE CLEAN
slice, Renzo Santos brought his knife across the pale crest of eggshell. He was rewarded by the sight of gelatinous orange yolk nestled in rubbery egg white. Flecks of yolk spattered the hotel's linen tablecloth, and Renzo's mouth pursed in distaste. Without looking at the waiter, he said, "I asked for a three-minute egg."

     
"I'm sorry, sir. I'll have the kitchen make you another one—"

     
Renzo shook his head. "Have them broil me a steak, rare. And I want a large orange juice, fresh-squeezed." He wondered if the waiter was staring at the pock scars on his face. Automatically, he dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin, narrowing his attention to the front page of
The Wall Street Journal
.

     
He would not let a hotel kitchen in Santa Fe disturb his morning. He'd completed a grueling ninety-minute workout in the facility's gym; he'd allowed himself fifteen minutes in a very hot Jacuzzi while his muscles loosened up like butter. The salon had managed a decent manicure; when he tipped the girl, she'd told him he looked like Antonio Banderas, only taller and thinner and much more interesting.

     
Perhaps he'd fuck the manicurist tonight. If he felt like it, he would have her. And then he would finish his last errand in
el norte
. He would track down the Honda, tear it wide open, find the package.

     
The waiter arrived with a pot of steaming coffee and a tall orange juice. While the man was attending to cups and glasses, Renzo slid
The Wall Street Journal
off the table. A second newspaper, the local daily, was exposed, and a headline caught his eye:
CHILD DRIVER SURVIVES CRASH WITH LAMY TRAIN.

R
ENZO
S
ANTOS PRESSED
the telephone receiver to his ear and waited. Two hours earlier, he had returned to his casita at La Posada hotel—a casita registered to a quiet and respectable Arizona businessman named Eric Sandoval. There he had begun his research, a series of phone calls that eventually led him to an office at Child Protective Services.

     
Now a C.P.S. secretary had him on hold; thirty seconds passed, then forty. Renzo had a working rule: he never remained on hold for a full minute. Perhaps, in the particular circumstances, his rule bordered on paranoia. He had placed all the morning's calls from his cell phone, a unit equipped with a built-in scanner/EIN decoder. With each new call, the unit was programmed to search out and clone an active number that was not currently in use. The unit made him virtually untraceable. It was all part of his uniform: three passports under three different names (two of which were hidden in a panel of his Vuitton luggage), matching credit cards, and cash. In his business, there was always too much cash.

     
He glanced at his Rolex—the sixty-second rule still stood—and prepared to hang up. He resolved to try again later, just as a woman came on the line.

     
"This is Mrs. Delgado. May I help you?"

     
She was mature, insecure, and felt her position of limited power within the state bureaucracy was beneath her capabilities—Renzo heard that much in her voice. Further information had come from his research: Mrs. Delgado was recently married; she was a fan of the new boss at the state's Department of Children, Youth, and Family; she had been guest speaker at a New Mexico Bar Association child-advocacy dinner just last week.

     
Renzo set his notes and the clipping from Thursday's
New Mexican
on the hotel's rust-and-cream-colored bedspread.

     
He lied smoothly, with a trace of a northern New Mexican accent: "This is Roberto Martinez from the I.N.S. legal department. We've had a query about that female minor who wrecked the vehicle out on Two eighty-five." His manicured fingernails skimmed the text of the newspaper article: ". . . unidentified minor was transported to St. Vincent's Hospital . . ."

     
"Yes?" The woman didn't hide her impatience.

     
Renzo pictured her in his imagination: dyed hair cut to the earlobe, sparse makeup except for lipstick, which would be too red. Clip-on earrings. Wedding ring, faux gold chain and locket. She was seated behind a large metal state-issue desk, and the stack of papers by her elbow seemed to pulse before her eyes. It was ten minutes to twelve, and undoubtedly she had a luncheon meeting with an anal-retentive supervisor.

     
He slowed down. "Chris Palmer, one of our case agents, was at the Bernalillo Detention Center this morning, and he talked to an undocumented woman who claims her daughter ran away three days ago. Says the girl's ten years old—"

     
"Is the child mute?"

     
"Mute?" Renzo's body stiffened slightly, and an almost imperceptible flutter of excitement spurred his muscles. It was possible that Paco had told the truth before he died; he'd begged for the girl's life, swearing she couldn't reveal any secrets.

     
"This one isn't talking." There was a sharp sound as the woman snapped the cover on a tube of lipstick. "But maybe it's worth checking out."

     
"You never know." Renzo glanced down at the telephone book on the floor. Three of his earlier calls had been made to the offices of Immigration and Naturalization Services; he'd followed a trail of appropriate federal employees. Then it had been just a matter of waiting until it was time for state workers to go to lunch.

     
He said, "She's on a forty-eight-hour hold. And her court hearing is scheduled for . . ." He rustled papers. "Monday?"

     
"Tomorrow at ten." She was crisp.

     
"We've got Roybal listed as the temp foster family."

     
"As far as I know she's not assigned to a family yet." Suspicion slowed her speech. "And you know I couldn't give you that information—"

     
"Maybe Chris Palmer should deal with this." Renzo allowed just a hint of intimacy to enter the space between his words. "By the way, I really enjoyed your speech at the bar fund-raiser last week."

     
"Oh. Thanks. Did we . . . ?"

     
"I wish we'd had a few more minutes to talk; you were the most intelligent speaker on the roster." Renzo glanced at his watch. "Hey, it's almost noon. I should let you go."

     
"By
my
clock it's one minute after twelve." There was a pause while the woman softened up. "Why don't you tell your caseworker to call . . ." She faded away, came back, and recited the name and the phone number of a C.P.S. social worker. Renzo wrote the information neatly on the margin of the newspaper clipping about the girl.

     
". . . authorities are seeking information from anyone who has knowledge . . ."

     
He thanked Mrs. Delgado and hung up softly. He had knowledge of the child—he knew her name, her age, and he knew she possessed the power to destroy his world.

     
He lay back on the hotel bed, resting his head on the pillow. Dancing his fingers across his high cheekbones, he felt the slight indentation of acne scars that were never totally erased, even with repeated injections of collagen. The scars spoiled a face that was otherwise perfect for the camera. He'd been told by more than one woman that he resembled a matinee idol. Bitterly, he blamed his acne-ravaged skin on childhood malnutrition and deprivation.

     
He let his fingers skim down to his mouth, which was unremarkable except for the small scar that indented the center of his lower lip. The stubble on his chin bothered him. Schedule permitting, he would shave a second time that day. His very straight nose, narrow, then flaring slightly at the nostrils, was a genetic marker of the
puta
's Nahuatl origins—origins that Renzo considered his pure identity. But he could never quite forgive his Aztec forebears: they had relinquished their birthright, their gods and goddesses, when the brutal Spanish conquerors invaded their lands, stole their riches, and burned their temples.

     
The Aztecs had given up
his
birthright.

     
He knew that his face was impassive; calm was his imprint. He was unaware that the impression of composure he gave was intensified by his pitch-black eyes—eyes that rarely blinked.

     
It was a face no woman had ever loved. Not even his whoring mother-the-
puta
.

     
Renzo stood, stretched his lithe muscles, and walked past the television, which was muted and tuned to CNN. Inside the small bathroom he opened his alligator shaving bag and selected a small velvet case from which he plucked a tiny gold cross. It belonged to a young woman. He knew her features by heart: the proud tilt of her chin, the bright, wide-set eyes, the sensual mouth. And he knew things that were not part of anyone else's memory. Things a man knew about his woman.
Elena
.

     
He pictured her as she had looked on her fifteenth birthday. In Renzo's mind, she was never any other age. Her skin was flawless, the color of coffee rich with cream, the blush of rose on her cheeks and a darker crimson on her lips.

     
The daughter was pale heir to her mother's Indio-Spanish purity.

     
Renzo would have to murder Elena's child.
Again
.

     
With reverence, he returned the cross to its velvet case. He knew he must be patient even though time was running out. It was the careful hunter who caught his prey.

     
Renzo's eyes focused on the contents of his bag. In addition to aspirin, codeine, and penicillin, a half dozen pill containers filled small sleeves. Scissors, tweezers, file, and small surgical knife were enclosed in separate plastic cases. Several brushes and a comb made of tortoiseshell rested in the bottom of the bag.

     
Renzo rolled back the left sleeve of his Armani shirt. Impassively, he noted the myriad white scars that decorated his wrist and forearm. They were set at measured intervals, which could be halved again with new incisions. The scars were paper-thin and perfectly aligned along the median cubital vein.

     
He lifted out the fine brushes and felt for the smooth leather of a second kit, which fit neatly in the bottom of the case. Unzipped, it held disposable U-100 syringes, alcohol swabs, cotton balls, a specially made silver spoon, and several brown vials that contained very pure heroin, chunked and powdered.

     
The drug was pure enough to snort, but tonight he needed the intravenous rush. He rarely used his arms or hands to shoot up anymore, but he had already broken several of his rules during the last few days and he didn't want to wait until he had his pants, socks, and shoes off.

     
He cleaned the spoon with alcohol, then placed a chunk of heroin in its center, adding a measure of water from the syringe. He heated the spoon with his lighter. Cotton, dropped into the mixture, expanded like a tiny sponge. Renzo placed the needle in the center of the cotton, pulled up on the plunger, and guided the milky liquid into the syringe. Expertly he tapped the vein between first and second fingers, then nosed the needle under his skin.

     
The substance he was about to inject into his body had been born in the fields of Panama where poppies were picked by hand and transported to an underground processing operation in Colombia. From Colombia, the powdered heroin had been loaded onto one of a fleet of 737s owned by Colombia's most powerful drug cartel. The jet had landed at night on a private airstrip in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. A herd of human mules had been waiting at the airstrip; they were under the protection of federal judicial police who had ensured a safe trip to a stash house in Juárez. Renzo's personal supply came from that same border town. But his was the highest grade possible, not street shit. The rest of the shipment had already been smuggled across the Mexican-U.S. border for consumption by
norteamericanos
.

     
Renzo had learned to control his body's hunger. Always he rode the tension between craving and fulfillment. But now it wasn't just the drug he craved; there was this new hunger.

     
His own blood swirled up into the cloudy fluid in the hypo, his eyes remaining open and glazed. As he anticipated the first rush, he realized that his hunger for the child was even greater than his hunger for the drug.