No Immunity (25 page)

Not a car in sight. No light coming from a window. Maybe he had been wrong about the fight, maybe the rubber-burner was the night cook at the end of shift, or some local who had dumped trash and fled, or—

He almost missed the six-inch opening in the doorway of the last unit.

It was none of his business, and he had a pressing case that needed to be solved.

Or maybe it
was
his business. Long shot, but still …

He pulled up by the motel room, got out, and eased the Jeep’s door shut. The wind slapped his jean legs against his shins, pulled his shirt out from his chest. “You okay in there?” he called through the dark doorway.

The light didn’t go on, but he could hear something inside. “Excuse me?” He leaned closer to the doorway, scrunching his ear, but it was no use. On this desert the wind came too crisply, splattering sand and dirt, rattling all the corners of fixtures, smacking detritus left from who knew what against the tinny motel walls.

“Look, I just want to help. I can call a doctor if you need one. If you’re okay, that’s great. Just tell me and I won’t bug you.”

Still no words came back at him, but now he had factored in the wind and, leaning so close his head was almost into the doorway, he heard an irregular sound. Water. Not dripping. Running. And the smell—he couldn’t place it, wasn’t sure this kind of stench was coming from inside the room or was being carried on the wind from some unseen farmyard. But the water? You don’t leave the tap open like that, not in the desert, of all places. “I’m just going to come in and make sure you’re okay.”

Tchernak slipped his hand around the side of the door. The chain jangled. The chain had been snapped.

Tchernak stepped to the side of the door and reached in till he felt the light switch. The light stung his eyes. He blinked a couple of times, then staying clear of the doorway, pushed the door hard and waited.

Seconds later he eased his head into the doorway. And stared. He was looking at a nightmare. He couldn’t tell what color the room had been; it was blotched with the most disgusting colors, with gut-wrenching smells. It looked like a body had been turned inside out and splattered all the hell over.

A full minute passed before he noticed Grady Hummacher’s body lying half off the bed.

“Y
OU DON’T GET PICKED
up for speeding in Nevada,” Kiernan said aloud. Two hours and she would be in Vegas, the sun would be coming up, she’d be on the phone to the CDC and ready to beard Reston Adcock.

Two hours. Suddenly it seemed an eon, and the straight, dark road, a soporific. She recalled the lines of birds, dead beneath the power lines. How many nocturnal drivers joined them? As she came over a rise, yellow and red lights glowed in the distance. CAFE, the yellow sign shrieked. Did she dare stop? Just for the bathroom? And food. Food! How long would it take to grab a Hershey’s?

Long enough.

She could see the cafe more clearly now—and the motel beside it. Even at this distance she could tell it was not exactly four-star. But still, the urge to turn in to the comforting light, to sit among normal people, where the biggest decision to be made was cherry or pecan pie—it was almost more than she could resist.

Suddenly she realized why she hadn’t smacked into the sheriff on the winding up-country roads or the corner of First Street in Gattozzi. Fox didn’t need to watch those spots. The Doll’s House was the place she had to pass to reach Las Vegas. A sheriff, of all people, would know the allure of the only twenty-four-hour cafe in hundreds of miles. No need for Fox to chill his derriere surveilling First Street when he could park it by the Doll’s House’s warm, fogged window and check out the half-dozen vehicles that passed. And if he was in the middle of a burger when she passed, well, plenty of time for a fine-tuned patrol car to catch the rickety truck before Vegas.

As she neared the cafe/motel, she eyed the parking lot. Yellow light paled down on the barren macadam. But patrol cars can be parked behind buildings. She checked the far side of the road. Nothing there. Dragging her attention from the seductive thought of food, she reached for the radio knob and had the power on before she realized what she was doing—mental wandering from exhaustion. If Tchernak were here, he’d have caught that mental disarray way before she admitted it. “You’re too tired to decide to stop,” he would say. Moving inertia, he’d labeled it. The last time had been heading home from L.A after a long day following a lead that dead-ended and a longer evening explaining to the client. Tchernak had been driving. “Come on,” Tchernak had said as he stretched his long arm across the back of the seat, “think with your eyes closed for a minute.” Her head had nested so easily in the pocket of his shoulder, her own shoulder wedged against the cushioning muscles of his chest, her hand flopped comfortably on his thigh; the fresh smell of wintergreen he’d been using on a strained muscle soothed her, and the sound of her breathing—or was it his?—sucked her into sleep.

She shook off the memory. Maybe she was too tired back then, but now she was just fine. She was almost abreast of the yellow lights of the cafe. She slowed slightly—anyone would do that—and eyed the cafe for a telltale hood or fender poking out from behind. There was only one vehicle, too big and bright for a law enforcement vehicle, and it was parked not outside the cafe but by a motel door.

Reluctantly she stepped harder on the gas. She checked the rearview mirror for sudden headlights and a flashing red bar above. But all she saw were the tan buildings and yellow lights shrinking farther away until there was nothing but shapes and colors, tan and yellow and the dot of gold from the vehicle by the motel, till the whole oasis was a tiny amber bead on a black velvet table.

She crested a rise and it was gone.

T
CHERNAK HEARD THE WHOOSH
of a car on the interstate. In the stone-still air of the motel room, it sounded like an eighteen-wheeler … driving through his head.

He forced himself to focus. He should do something. He had seen blood, plenty of it on the field. He’d seen legs broken, jagged ends of bone snapped through the skin. He’d been there when the whistle blew, the pile unpiled, and a body was left lying on the AstroTurf dead-still, and the coach and the trainer and the medical crew rushed on and hovered, and every player on either team and all seventy thousand fans in the stands remembered guys who had snapped their necks or smashed their skulls so hard that their brains tore loose. Those guys were friends a helluva lot closer than Grady Hummacher. But they hadn’t been dead. And Grady Hummacher sure as hell was. Tchernak didn’t need to get any nearer to his body to know that. He couldn’t get nearer; his legs felt like they were wrapped in cement. Like they were dead.

God, and
the
smell! He had to get out of here.

But he couldn’t do that. Not with Grady lying there. From the looks of the room, Grady’d be lucky to have any blood left in him. Tchernak stared at Grady’s back. He knew he should turn him over, check his face. But he just couldn’t.

He’d check out the room first.

He stuck his hands in his pockets, safe from the danger of leaving fingerprints, and lumbered to the far side of the bed, running his gaze over the floor, the chair, the walls—anything but Grady Hummacher, who had been sitting in the airport bar with him talking about the girlfriend who was no longer a girlfriend and the teenaged boys he’d plopped on her.

Tchernak froze. The boys. Where were they? Teenagers? Thirteen years old, or nineteen? He was breathing through his mouth now, teeth together as if they could fence out the smell. He moved slowly across the room, keeping his back to the wall. There were no bodies on the far side of the bed. The bathroom door was open. Tchernak pushed it hard against the wall. Nothing behind it. He flicked on the light before he thought about it. And flicked it off as soon as he eyed the whole room. The boys were not here. Water gurgled in the sink.

Tchernak turned off the water and stood in the bathroom doorway. Last night Louisa swore Grady had plucked the boys from her office. That had to be true. No one else would have bothered with them. It had to be Grady who’d taken them. They trusted Grady.

Or so Grady had intimated.

Tchernak surveyed the swirl of blood and sheets one more time. Maybe these boys weren’t so trusting. Maybe they got fed up with Grady coming and going, leaving them in a barrio apartment with neighbors they couldn’t hear. They were boys used to fending for themselves in the jungle; given the alienation and frustration of their lives, the two of them could have snapped and beaten Grady till he stopped moving.

And then run off into the dark.

Or they could be lurking within, spitting distance, panicked out of their minds, ready to lash out at anyone in the world they couldn’t understand.

It was stupid to stay here at the death scene, Tchernak knew that. He had to get out. But he couldn’t do that without checking out the body. He was a detective, after all. And he owed that much to Grady.

He swallowed hard, walked over to the body, and grabbed its shoulders. God, it was still warm. Still soft, like Grady was just sleeping. Like he wasn’t covered with blood. Tchernak cut off all thought, all emotion, all urge to drop the body and run like mad.

His face was matted with blood. Even his eyes were bloody.

Tchernak dropped him so fast, he bounced. Then he ran outside away from the room and threw up his guts.

K
IERNAN SCREECHED INTO A
U and headed back north on Route 93 and into the cafe parking lot. The gold Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo had Nevada plates but no rental sticker. The Jeep could belong to anyone. Still, she couldn’t ignore it.

She knocked on the motel room door. It swung open. The room was dark, but the outside light sent an ever paler trapezoid across the floor and onto the bed. She could see the jumble of dark blankets and sheets clumped together on the far bed. The air coming out of the room was hot. And the smell. Jesus, she knew the smell of bowels released, of urine shot in fear, of blood spurted and pooled. Of death.

Feet. Jean-clad legs. “Oh, God, Tchernak! No!” Her throat swelled closed; her eyes stung. She was shaking so hard she couldn’t move. She didn’t hear any sound till the door creaked behind her.

“Kiernan? What’re—”

“Tchernak?” She looked from him to the body on the bed and back at him. Her throat tightened, but the knot inside evaporated. In two steps she was wrapping her arms around him, squeezing hard. He squeezed back. She could barely breathe. She pushed her head away from his chest, but he was still holding her like a football he was afraid of fumbling. “Jesus, Tchernak, you scared me. I was so worried about you. If you’d been dead … I can’t even think .…You are
alive
!”

Tchernak was saying something, but his words didn’t penetrate. He was shaking. She pressed tighter against him. But he didn’t grow still, and the initial relief she felt gave way to the smell of death. Now she did push free and turned to the beds. Both were caked with blood. On the nearer one, the body lay facedown. “If that’s not you there, Tchernak, who—”

“Grady Hummacher.” Tchernak left his hand on her shoulder. It was a big, meaty hand; his thumb rested on her clavicle. “Grady Hummacher, the guy—”

“I know, the one Reston Adcock hired you to find.”

“Adcock’s flying up here. But how’d you know I—”

She turned to face him. “Adcock left a message for—Oh my God, the blood! Did you touch anything?”

“Of course not.”

“Blood, did you get it on your hands, even a speck?”

“No.”

“Liar! Idiot! Look at your hands. They’re covered in blood. Wash them. Wash every part of you. Oh, God, Tchernak get in there. Get the water running.”

“Why? Is he infected?”

“He could be. A woman has already died, almost certainly of hemorrhagic fever. I’ve got Clorox in my pack.” She ran for her truck and grabbed the small pack she’d brought in case of just this kind of emergency. She had figured it would take place in Jeff Tremaine’s morgue with the dead body, not here in a motel room with Brad Tchernak. Clorox was the staple coroners used to clean their autopsy rooms. It was the best she could do.

Tchernak was scrubbing his hands in the sink. She turned off the water, jammed the stopper in the drain, and poured in the Clorox. “Is the blood just on your hands?”

“Yeah. I turned the body over—”

“Did you touch anything else?”

“No. Well, only the door as I was running out to barf. And—oh, no, Kiernan—you. Look at your shoulder; there’s blood all over it.”

For the first time she eyed herself. Her right shoulder was stained from Tchernak’s hand. “Let me see your shirt, Tchernak, where my face was when you hugged me.” The shirt looked clear. She eyed his back where her hands had clutched him. “No sign of blood. But it takes so little, one drop in a cut …” She looked down at her hands in horror. They were still scraped from climbing in the morgue window. She stuck them Wrist-deep in the Clorox. At least with the Clorox the bathroom smelled better than the death scene.

“Hey, this stings like crazy, Kiernan. You sure it’s going to protect us? You sure Grady had a fever?”

“No and no.”

Tchernak shook his head. “I touched him. His body was still hot. And his eyes, they were covered in blood. Whatever this fever is, he had it, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know. Hey, keep your hands in here!” She could hear the panic in her voice. “He could have what the dead woman had. Or it could be something different.”

“But common sense says it’s the same, right?”

“Tchernak, whatever it is, we’re doing all we can. Okay, take your hands out. Wash them good. Shake them dry. Don’t touch
anything.
” She had never told Tchernak about those days in Africa, every time she swallowed watching for signs her throat was closing, checking her face every few minutes for hints of edema, waiting for fever and bleeding and death. At least then she knew it was Lassa fever that might kill her and that treatment was on the way. This was many times worse. All she knew was she and Tchernak could end up lying on beds with their eyes covered in blood.