Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2) (14 page)

     
"Let's make a baby."

     
Sylvia pushed him away and sat up abruptly. "Shit."

     
"What?" He propped himself on one elbow.

     
She stared at him, her eyes compressed into dark slits. "Forget it." Her skin was flushed, she was breathing hard.

     
He watched her grab her robe and stalk out of the room. He heard the refrigerator door open, then slam shut. The soft hum of the answering machine's message playback went on for a long time. A jet streaked overhead, and its rumbling vibrations could be felt inside the adobe. Matt sighed and lay back on the bed. The words had popped out of his mouth; worse, they'd come out of nowhere.

     
"So, you want a baby?" Sylvia had appeared in the doorway.

     
He folded his arms over his bare chest. "You're overreacting."

     
Sylvia started to protest—her anger flared again, then died away. She held back tears and shook her head. Her emotions were shifting so quickly, she couldn't keep up. But she knew this reaction was connected to her own internal struggle. A part of her wanted a child, a family. Another part of her was committed to her career. And she was torn in an even deeper way—she was estranged from her mother, and her father had disappeared years earlier pursued by twin demons: alcohol and depression. Sylvia knew her biggest issue around having a child: she feared that she would prove unfit as a mother.

     
All this raced through her mind, but she couldn't share her thoughts with Matt. She realized she still felt the distance between them. A distance she didn't know how to bridge.

     
She shook her head. "I don't know what's wrong with us."

     
Matt said nothing, just stared at countless dust particles visible in a shaft of daylight until Sylvia turned and left. When she was out of view, he sat up in bed. Suddenly, he felt weary and exhausted. It was going to be one of those full-moon days when the bars filled up with howlers, gang-bangers partied, and lovers did bad things to each other with kitchen knives, baseball bats, or just plain words. He and Sylvia were off to a great start.

     
For the first time that morning, he remembered that Jesse Montoya was missing. Dan Chaney was missing, too. Matt had left three cryptic messages on the federal agent's voice mail. Now,
he
was getting paranoid. He'd made sure his words didn't betray Dan's possible whereabouts. What he wanted was a meeting—somewhere neutral, like Tommy's Bar during off-work hours. Face-to-face, he could assess Chaney's mental state. Maybe figure out if his old friend really had something solid on an F.B.I. cover-up. So far, no response.

     
Matt groaned when he stood. His back ached and his right shoulder was tight. As soon as he got his clothes on, he'd pop a couple of Advils. Painkillers and coffee, the breakfast of champions.

     
He found Sylvia seated at the kitchen table sipping coffee, tearing chunks off a fat frosted cinnamon rolL While she ate, she studied the front page of the
Albuquerque Journal North
. Matt could see where she had doodled a series of eerie masklike faces in the paper's margins.

     
Without glancing at him, she said, "There's a story on Jesse Montoya's disappearance." She pulled the newspaper off the table, away from Matt's over-the-shoulder view, and read: " 'A spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety revealed that a local psychologist has received messages from a possible perpetrator.' " She looked up and shook her head sharply. "When are you going to talk to Dan? You should see the videotape—"

     
"I'll see it when I track Chaney down." Matt was dressed in the same jeans and rumpled khaki shirt he'd worn the night before. His Luccheses needed a shine. His hair stood out from his head in weedy clumps.

     
Self-conscious, he straightened his collar with unusual care. "Before, in bed, I don't think I said anything wrong."

     
"Oh. Then you do want to have a child?"

     
His finger discovered a belt loop and tugged nervously. "It was a figure of speech."

     
For an instant, sadness clouded Sylvia's features. Then it was gone, replaced by cool efficiency. She said, "There was a message for you on the machine. From Erin Tulley, about her lawsuit. She sounded upset." Sylvia raised an eyebrow.

     
Matt almost looked nervous. "She still wants me to testify at her hearing."

     
"And you're going to?"

     
"I haven't made up my mind."

     
Sylvia frowned and shook her head.

     
He said, "About you and me living together—"

     
"Let's talk about it later."

     
Matt took his car keys from his shirt pocket. He'd been dismissed, and that angered him more than a nowin argument. He started to say good-bye, but Sylvia turned her back as he walked out the door.

O
N
S
ANTA
F
E'S EAST
side, the high-pitched hum of cicadas electrified the hazy summer air. Matt stood on the veranda of Judge Nathaniel Howzer's Upper Canyon Road home. An hour earlier, he'd stopped by D.P.S. headquarters to smooth-talk Captain Elizer Rocha. Politically, N.M. State Police was a hypersensitive organization. Any investigation involving a district judge usually included the "big guns." Now he watched as the red glow of a new forest fire near the Tsankawi ruins warmed the sky over the Jemez Mountains thirty miles to the northwest. The distant mountain range included the vast caldera of a volcano that had erupted and collapsed roughly a million years past. Now, the sky between mountain and city was hazed with ash and smoke.

     
Matt took a last look at the view and reluctantly returned to the subject that had brought him here. "You told Jesse Montoya's grandfather that the flames of judgment were on their way. Why would you say that?"

     
"Did I?"

     
"That's what Augustine Montoya remembers."

     
"I remember a little differently. At the trial, Augustine seemed very distressed by his grandson's crime. I reminded him that justice has a way of catching up with each of us." Howzer smiled ruefully. He was almost six feet tall and heavy. Thick white fingers clutched a glass. He took regular sips of what looked like tomato juice but Matt guessed was a Bloody Mary.

     
Howzer continued, "You and I both know Montoya's release wasn't popular in the community. He's a registered sex offender."

     
"He's also a missing person," Matt said quietly.

     
Howzer used his free hand to shelter his eyes from the sun. "How do you like my view, Matt?"

     
Matt finished his coffee, set the cup on the rail, and said, "The fire's changing course." And the judge was changing subjects.

     
"Is it?"

     
He didn't answer, but he thought about the fact that the judge had lived in the city for ten years. Funny how some people could stay so unaware of their surroundings. Unaware even of the prevailing summer winds. They almost always blew up from the Pacific Ocean and swept across Mexico, southern California, and the Arizona desert. This time of year, they usually brought rain. But the rains were long overdue, and the sluggish winds had shifted.

     
The judge was still staring out at the distant fire as if a keen eye could steer the conversation away from Jesse Montoya. Matt took the opportunity to study the older man. Strong features—high forehead, aquiline nose, full mouth—were undermined by a weak chin and blurred by a weariness that went deeper than physical fatigue. He looked pale, and he seemed restive. Matt wondered exactly what was going on with Nathan Howzer.

     
"Shall we go inside? I need to freshen my drink."

     
Matt followed the judge through French doors. Although he had known Howzer casually for years, he'd never been to his home. His first impression had been that the living room was humble for a house of such grandiose scale. But the judge explained that the room was simply his library. Bookshelves lined with legal volumes bound in blue, red, and black stretched the entire length of three walls. Later, Matt had seen the actual living room; it boasted eight times the square footage of the library, and it was as large as a Spanish Colonial church.

     
Somewhere along the way, the man had accumulated
beaucoup
bucks. This house wasn't built on the salary of a district judge.

     
Every wall in the pueblo-style mansion—interior and exterior—was constructed of double-brick adobe. The central ceiling was supported by thirty-foot-long vigas that were as thick as a fat man. Many of the mansion's rooms seemed to exist only to contain daunting ornamental displays—pots, kachina dolls, masks, pipes, and other ceremonial objects all much too small and too simple not to be expensive.

     
"Matt. . . ?" The judge held a crystal decanter in the air, but Matt shook his head. Howzer returned the decanter to its tray and took a sip of his Bloody Mary. "Do
you
believe Montoya is the second victim of some . . . vigilante killer?"

     
"Yeah, I do."

     
Howzer said, "I was a lawyer for twenty years in California and New Mexico. I've held a judgeship for more than a decade. Imagine having the audacity to think one could actually dole out justice." He kept a straight face and waved a fleshy arm toward one of a set of matching armchairs.

     
Matt sat and faced Howzer across a Persian rug. He knew the judge had a dry sense of humor as well as a reputation around chambers for being secretive, enigmatic. He'd testified in Howzer's courtroom, and so had Sylvia. He pushed away the memory of her. . . of their morning argument

     
The judge spoke quietly. "Adobe lost his nerve a while back." At his feet, a timeworn black-and-brown Doberman had come to rest, legs crossed, chin on paws. Howzer patted the dog absently and said, "He's a pitiful coward—but we become very attached to our family, don't we?"

     
"I've got a cat." Matt shrugged.

     
"I worry about what will happen to them after I'm gone." The judge closed his eyes, gathered his thoughts. "Just look at my docket; within three years, Beck, Martinez, Tafoya, Dolan. . . those are just the trials that became media circuses. Then, there were the plea bargains, suspended sentences, dismissals. And, of course, both Jesse Montoya and Anthony Randall passed through my courtroom."

     
Matt studied the judge. The man spoke with a certain bravado, but beneath the veneer, the intangible something might be fear or dread. . . or resignation.

     
" 'To me belongeth vengeance and recompense.' " Judge Howzer's voice was barely a whisper.

     
"Deuteronomy."

     
"You're a religious man?"

     
"I was raised on a well-thumbed copy of the King James, but my Bible's rusty these days."

     
"Vengeance seems to be what the public wants."

     
"Do you blame them?"

     
Howzer shook his head slowly, then he swallowed a third of his drink. "But personal vengeance is very impractical." An odd smile flashed across his mouth.

     
Matt thought it was a false smile—asymmetrical, involving only the lower portion of the face, dropping away abruptly like a mask.

     
Howzer continued. "And who really knows what makes the guilty suffer most cruelly?"

     
Matt leaned back in the leather chair and tried to get a bead on the judge's state of mind. He said, "You passed judgment on Randall and Montoya."

     
"Montoya, yes. Randall got away. But only for a few hours." There was a sudden twinkle in his eye. "You don't think I'm a secret vigilante, do you, Matt?"

     
Matt was surprised by something warm and wet that rubbed against his hand. He looked down and saw a long-haired dachshund gazing shyly at him.

     
Matt patted the dog, stood, and faced Nathan Howzer. He said, "Have you heard of a man called Dupont White?"

     
The judge swallowed, then frowned, as if he were thinking back through the years. After a long moment he said, "Of course. The blowout at Las Cruces. . . He was the arms dealer who died. Why do you ask?"

     
Matt shrugged. "Just following up a loose thread. By the way, I spoke with your secretary this morning. Ellie tells me you've received several threatening letters in the last two weeks."

     
"Ellie has too much imagination." Howzer summoned the dachshund to his side. Very gently, he stroked the animal's silky ears.

     
Matt moved to the door, then stopped. "I don't know why, Judge, but you're lying to me."

     
Judge Howzer looked up from his dog, and his expression was ironic. "You and I should find new careers, Matt. Life is too short."

     
"Is someone after you?"

     
The judge threw back his head and laughed. He was still chuckling when Matt let himself out.

T
HE PENITENTIARY'S MAIN
hospital was a mind-numbing institutional infrastructure, outmoded and sullied by the ghost of a 1980 riot Built as part of the original pen structure, its thick walls had absorbed the accumulated misery of forty years of incarceration. Scuff trails had been worn along its dull linoleum floors. Fluorescent lights illuminated loose tiles and peeling plaster. Exposed wires crawled across the beveled ceiling.