Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (44 page)

    
The
boughs of the sugar pine were swaying, brushing the window.
Tap, tap, tap
. The wind had picked up,
and a second cone hit the roof, sobering Ruthie up more effectively than motel
coffee. She lifted her head, pushing the hair from her eye.

    
“It’s
just a pine cone,” he said quietly. “Not to worry. I’ll go see what this is
about. But just in case . . . why don’t you hit the deck for a minute.”

    
“If you
say so,” she said, obliging. “I hope you’re not gonna get me killed.”

    
“Not if
I can help it,” Raszer said. He went to the bedpost, remaining in a crouch.

A brown satchel that resembled a saddlebag hung
over the post, and from its rear pocket he slipped a seven-inch knife with a
black pearl handle and a steel blade bearing the stamp of its Swedish maker. He
nested it in the back of his jeans and went to the door.

    
“You’re
gonna defend me with a Boy Scout knife?” Ruthie asked from behind the bed.

    
With his
right shoulder levered against the door, he began slowly to turn the knob.
“Who’s there?” he asked, for the hell of it. There was at least a chance that
the inn’s manager or a disoriented guest had knocked, or even that the winds
had blown some debris against the door. Nature had a funny way of teasing its
human overlords.

    
No one
answered.

    
He gave
his neck muscles a stretch and shook the stiffness out of his shoulders before
cracking the door. The aroma of pinesap entered his nostrils, and blown dust
stung his eyes. Pinesap and something else. Wild fennel? Or wintergreen? He
realized his hair was on end and that fear had crept in under the wind, but he
also knew that these collisions of scent and shiver were at the heart of crime
and passion.

    
As he
stepped out onto the planks, keeping his hand on the doorknob, Raszer wondered
what an assassin might use to cover the odor of bloodlust. Something sweet? No,
sweetness was a lousy cover-up. Something clean. Fresh. Something to remind him
of a loving mother whose breath had smelled of betel or mint.

    
The
Inn’s grand portal sprawled to darkness in both directions. A sloping tile roof
admitted little moonlight, so, at either end, details went to gray. Nobody was
out, but three rooms down, the hollowed-out sound of country radio issued from
an open window. Raszer told himself it was too early for this level of
apprehension. Five people knew he’d come to Taos: Borges, Aquino, Monica, his
daughter, and Djapper. Of the five, the last was the dodgiest, but it would
take more than dodgy to tip off foreign assassins. It would take treason.

    
In a
deeper sense, though, suspicion was always apt, especially around
shape-shifting women. Ruthie, too, knew he’d come to Taos. The back of his neck
bristled as he stepped off the deck and felt soil beneath his feet. Then he
heard gravel spitting at the end of the Inn’s long, wooded entrance road, and
pivoted to see the taillights of a big, black car pulling onto the Paseo del
Sur.

    
They
were here, they knew he was here, and they almost certainly knew whom he was
with. The mystery was what they’d come to deliver. It would have been easy
enough to kill him at this stage, but it also would have been messy. Killers
exhibited an odd kind of patience. They waited until you were almost in their
skin.

    
Raszer
dropped to a squat and examined the faint bootprints in the dry dust. His
visitor had walked lightly. The prints would be clearer in the morning with the
low sun. He stood and padded softly along the access road, the scent of his
predator fading with each step. No scent hung around for long in the Southwest,
except when the air was dead still. The desert might be the natal ground of
religions, but it was also the ally of malefactors. If the Devil had a home, it
was in shifting sands and windblown dust.

    
When a
cloud crossed the moon and snuffed his light, Raszer turned back toward the
inn. Except for the scent and the current running up his brain stem, it all
might have been illusion. Not even the taillights were a definitive ID. Except
for the scent, and a plain white envelope tucked beneath the mat at the door of
his room, he might eventually have found sleep that night.

    
He
stooped to pick it up.

    
Inside
was a folded sheet of paper bearing a computer printout of a digital
photograph. The photograph was of Monica, leaving his house after locking up
for the night. Just a little feint to throw off his balance and let him know
that Djapper’s FBI men weren’t the only ones watching over her. Just enough to
ruin his evening.

    
Raszer
reentered the room and latched the door. Ruthie was nowhere in sight, and that
notched his pulse up a few beats until he saw that the bathroom door was
closed. He poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat on the edge of the bed, took
a gulp, and enjoyed it not in the least.
Blecchh
.
Even high-grade motel coffee was still motel coffee. After a couple of minutes,
his recently comatose guest emerged, flushed and distinctly content.

    
“So,
what was all that about?” she asked, zipping up her bodysuit. “I got a little
amped up. Had to discharge my battery.”

    
“Do you
always have an erotic response to fear?” he asked, and took another bitter sip.
“Or was it something I said?”

    
“Somethin’
you did, maybe,” she replied. “Sniffin’ around me like a big dog. Shit, I guess
you answered my question, all right.”

    
“What
question?” he said, knowing full well what she meant.

    
“The one
I asked you back at the bar, Sherlock. Whaddaya think?”

    
“Oh,
that one,” said Raszer. “You should never ask a man that question. You might
not get the answer you want to hear.”

    
“Oh,
yeah? And what do I wanna hear?”

    
“If
you’re asking the question, then what you want to hear is yes.”

    
“Well, I
guess you know everything, don’t you?” She waited for a second, then sat beside
him. “So who was outside?”

    
He lied,
sort of. “Nobody. But I think we should get you home. You ready?”

    
In
reply, she kicked her shoes off, pulled down the quilt, and rolled into bed.

    
“Don’t
think I better go home tonight,” she said. “I feel like a snooze.
Home
. Ha! Not like anybody’s waitin’ up,
’cept maybe Angel, with his prayer beads and his whip.”

    
“Friday’s
his big day, right?” said Raszer, laying the quilt over her.

    
“Yeah,
right. Good Friday. Never could figure out what’s so good about it. Neither could
my f . . . neither could Silas.”

    
“Where
do they do it? The crucifixion?”

    
“Out in
the foothills east of Arroyo Seco. They’ve got a
morada
—a chapel—out there, and all the stations of the cross marked
out. It’s a weird scene. Sad, too.”

    
“I’d
like to see it,” said Raszer. “Any chance?”

    
“Could
be arranged,” she said. “If you’re that into it.” She plumped up the pillow and
settled in. “You know what I’d like right now?”

    
“I’m
afraid to ask.”

    
“Somethin’
to eat. Is there a candy-bar machine around here?”

    
“No, but
there is a breakfast kitchen off the main salon. It’s not do-it-yourself, but I
could probably scrounge you a muffin if it’s not locked.”

    
“That’d
be just dandy,” she said, and smiled sweetly.

    
“I’ll
see what I can do,” he said. “You owe me one.”

    
It took
Raszer a minute to locate the kitchen lights, and another to locate the pantry,
and all he could scavenge was a roll and a banana. Faintly, he heard a car
start up, and thought nothing of it. When he got back to the room, Ruthie was
gone and so was the Jeep.
I borrowed your
car
, read the hastily scrawled note.
Come
to the porch of the Taos Inn at 7 tomorrow night. There’s somebody I want you
to meet
.

    
Raszer stood for a moment with the roll, the
banana, and Ruthie’s note in his hands, taking stock of the altered
circumstances and wondering how concerned—and how pissed off—he ought to be.
Then he set them all down and began to undress, tossing articles of clothing
one by one over the rocking chair near the hearth. On foraging through his
duffel bag to retrieve his toothbrush, he noticed that its contents were
unsettled. A moment later, he affirmed that the Jeep wasn’t the only thing
Ruthie had borrowed. Henry Lee’s black rock—the one he’d pilfered from the
evidence room in San Dimas—was missing. He didn’t at first see any particular
reason for alarm. It didn’t surprise him that she’d gone through his things.
She was the type and, despite the kittenish behavior, was probably still
suspicious of his motives and mission.

    
In fact,
Raszer made Ruthie as the kind of girl whose sexuality was never entirely
without design. Besides that, she’d been Henry’s girl, and might have felt she
could claim the rock as a keepsake. In any case, an act of petty theft clearly
wouldn’t trouble her conscience. He’d have to keep an eye on her, and he’d have
to get the rock back.

    
He fell
into bed, exhausted. As an afterthought, he retrieved the Rumi anthology from
the lamp table. Halfway through the third poem, he fell into a sound sleep.
There wasn’t much point in troubling himself at this hour. He’d worry when the
sun came up.

    
Monica blew a kiss to the FBI men on her way up
Whitley Terrace, and they returned the favor. They were parked in a red zone
about four houses down from Raszer’s, and they’d been to Starbuck’s; both men
held the signature cup. Like all things in America, the look of FBI men had
changed, even in the relatively brief time she’d had dealings with them. They
were less burly, less square-shouldered, less white. But the suits, the
rock-hewn faces, and the sunglasses remained, as if the Bureau’s idea of
blending in hadn’t really changed since 1955. There was something comforting in
that.

    
Lars,
her Danish bodyguard, was waiting on the front stoop. He sat beneath some sort
of Scandinavian porta-shelter resembling a beach cabana on a sling chair that
looked as if it might collapse at any moment under his mass. It was fog season,
and the nights were cool and damp, but by noon the bleached sun would burn
through. He’d been there all night and would remain there through the day, with
a short break for lunch and a couple of forays into the surrounding area to
check for trespassers. Lars claimed never to sleep, or, at any rate, to be able
to sleep with his eyes open. He spun a good yarn about his mother’s ancestors
being Selkies, the fantastical seal people of North Sea legend. But Monica felt
sure she’d caught him dozing during the long afternoon hours when the sun was
warm. As with the FBI men, his assumption of the cloak of masculinity comforted
her, even if it was only bluster.

    
So far,
neither Djapper’s men nor the great Dane had been given cause to demonstrate
their prowess, and the first day had passed with the guys in the car and the
guy on the stoop eyeing each other warily, which in Monica’s opinion was what
men did when they had no real work to do. But this morning, Raszer had emailed
her a scanned copy of the photograph, and it didn’t appear to have been shot
with an especially long lens. He was worried, and now he had her spooked. As
she mounted the steps, picture in hand, she took a breath and prepared to grill
the walrus.

    
“Morning,
Lars,” she chirped. “Sleep well?”

    
“Ha!” he
answered, standing up and habitually flexing his pectorals. “You know me
better, Miss Lord. I sleep like a fish.”

    
“So you
say. Well, could you try being a shark during the day?” She handed him the
printout. “Somebody took my picture yesterday. Too close for comfort.”

    
Lars
knitted his brow. “Hmm,” he grunted. “It was when you leave. I was to checking
out the canyon. Damn.” He glared at the plain black sedan down the street.

    
“They’re
federal agents, Lars,” she protested. “They’re not gonna send my boss a threat.
Somebody took this from right across the street.”

    
“Maybe,”
said Lars. “But I talk to them anyway. Okay if I keep this?”

    
“Sure,”
said Monica, but her eyes were on the mail slot, from which a plain white
envelope protruded. She stooped to withdraw it. “Now, what do you suppose this
is?”