Short Cut to Santa Fe (17 page)

Out of the dark came the sound of footsteps. She crept silently back to the others. “Stay back here,” she whispered. “I'll just be a minute. Don't move.”

She scrambled up and over the rock toward the road as quietly as she could and crouched once more behind some shrubbery. A huge, bearlike creature came shuffling up, stopped and looked around, and then called out softly, “Harriet?”

“John?” she said tentatively, stepping out from her hiding place. “What are you covered with? You look like a hunchbacked grizzly.”

“Everything I could carry. I haven't got your camera case or film cooler or my suitcase, but I do have water and some stuff to sleep on.”

He was whispering, and she automatically lowered her voice to match his. “My God. What's happened?”

“I found the van all right. Jennifer's in it. Dead.”

“Dead?” The whispered word echoed in the still night air. “What happened?”

“Her throat's been cut. There is someone out there. Some crazy. The van is—we couldn't spend the night in it. So I came back,” he concluded lamely.

“Good,” said Harriet softly. “Let me take some of this stuff.”

“Where have you stashed everyone?” he asked, peering into the dark and empty landscape.

“I found a sort of niche behind there with lots of dead leaves and stuff in it. It's protected in its own way and not too uncomfortable.” She paused. “With the kids talking about seeing someone, I thought maybe we should lie low. I guess I was right.”

“We should go back for the rest of the stuff. Get everything out of there that we can.”

“For God's sake, John, you're not going to leave them here with a maniac who wanders around slashing people's throats?”

“We don't know that it's a maniac,” said John. “It may be someone who had a reason to get rid of Donovan and Jennifer.”

“And the two guys who hijacked the bus? That's four people, John. I think we should stick together as much as possible, don't you?”

“Nervous?”

“No—terrified,” said Harriet.

“You could be right. Well—let's get the party settled for the night, then.”

The canvas and two blankets made a sufficient bed for one invalid and two children, with the duffle bag underneath their heads as pillow. “We don't like sleeping outside,” said Caroline in a panicky voice when it became clear that they were staying where they were.

“Sorry about that,” said Harriet briskly. “But John had a look at the van and it's not safe to sleep in it. You're better off here. We'll be just up there,” she said, pointing to a spot slightly above them. “And we're taking turns keeping watch.”

After the previous night's horrors and the hardships of the day, the children were too exhausted to protest. Harriet gave them a reassuring pat on the shoulder and climbed up on the rock to join John. “Poor kids,” she murmured. “It's scary at night to be deprived of family, room, and bed all at once. But they'll sleep. It's a pity we can't.”

“Wake up, Kate. We're here.”

“Where?” Kate's eyes fluttered open reluctantly and saw almost nothing but velvety black.

“At my brother's place. No one will look for you here. I don't think even Deever knows about it. Tomorrow I'm going to stash you with my mother, but it's too far to drive tonight. I have to go on duty pretty soon.” He got out of the car and walked around to help her out. She stumbled after him along a rocky path and up a couple of steps she couldn't see, feeling like someone in a strange dream.

Once inside, he struck a match and lit an oil lamp. Kate looked around the cabin astonished; she felt as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep and found herself on another planet. This was so distant from Deever's ranch, so safe and clean and honest, that it seemed a small, enclosed paradise, even if it was very like hundreds of other mountain cabins. He carried the lamp into the corner of the room that functioned as the kitchen, and she limped after him. Every time she sat down, her bruised body stiffened further and she felt worse.

Primitive stopped at the kitchen. Rodriguez pulled a container from the freezer and popped it into a microwave. He took a package of frozen tortillas, turned on a gas range, and set one in a frying pan. “In spite of the oil lamps, you see we do have power out here,” he said. “For essentials, like freezers and microwaves. But I hate it. It's much too bright unless you have to do something that needs light.”

“Frozen tortillas?” said Kate.

“That's what happens when you have a place owned by two bachelors. Of course there are a couple of stones out there in back and a bushel of dried corn if you want to start grinding your own.”

There was a slight edge to his voice as he spoke and Kate searched her weary brain for something more gracious to say. “Thank you for coming out to Deever's to get me,” she said at last into the silence and the cooking noises. “I'm really very grateful.”

“It was a pretty stupid place to go,” said Rodriguez. “Don't you know who he is?”

“Actually, I do,” she admitted. “I realize he's not exactly St. Francis of Assisi.”

“And you went out there anyway?” He hooked a stool out from under a counter that divided the kitchen from the rest of the room and pushed it over to her.

“I thought I had no choice.”

The simplicity of her response shook him. “Couldn't you have screamed for help?”

She sat down. “No, no. It wasn't that. I figured the risk was worth taking—the calculated risk that I could find something out and get away again. Just in case he did have information on Harriet that he wasn't going to hand over to the police. Of course, I should have asked myself why he would want to give it to me. Since giving things away never was his style. I miscalculated,” she said ruefully.

“You sure as hell did. I thought you got in that car with Ginger because you didn't know who Deever was. You know—big-time journalist, too wrapped up in her glamorous overseas career to know about home-grown viciousness.”

“Oh no,” said Kate. “I knew. Overconfidence—or if you prefer, stupidity—took me out there, not ignorance. I was part of a team covering the whole Santa Rosa story. The girls he had kidnapped and brought in from Mexico. Right up to the hearings. Remember that one?”

Rodriguez nodded grimly.

“I still can't figure out how he got off. You'd think they had enough evidence—”

“There's never enough evidence to get someone like Deever,” he said. There was bitterness in his voice. “It's not just that he has lots of money, but he knows exactly where to put it. Where it will do the most good.”

“Is he still going in for things like that?” asked Kate. “Selling children, I mean.”

“No,” he said, setting the last tortilla in the frying pan. “Even Deever began to feel the heat on that one. He likes to maintain an air of respectability. He's slid over into other enterprises, just as profitable.”

“You know, I really didn't think he'd recognize me,” said Kate. “But he did. That was another miscalculation. People don't, usually. You shove a camera in their faces day after day and they don't notice you. You stop being a person. You're just a lens.”

He opened the microwave and removed the container of sweet and hot-smelling chili. He ladled a generous amount into their wide flat bowls, handed her the basket filled with warm soft tortillas, and set the plates on the counter. “Simple, fast, and ought to be good,” he said.

“What's in it?”

“Pork, I imagine. And chilies. My mother makes it, usually. She's a better cook than I am. Now—let's not talk about Deever while we eat. The man gives me indigestion.”

They sat on the stools, leaning on the kitchen counter, and chatted in a desultory and disorganized fashion about everything but the events of the previous twenty-four hours. Kate told him about her Denver grandmother who had brought her out to Colorado every summer to stay with her in the mountains, since any intelligent person knew that the East was an unhealthy place. Rodriguez told her about his uncle's farm, and working on it whenever he could, and learning how to cook and ride and everything else important in life.

“Do you know,” said Kate groggily, as sleep began to overcome her again, “what
la noche oscura del alma
is?”

“The dark night of the soul,” he said. “Of course. Something we all have to fight through at some point—like death and taxes. Why?”

“I knew I'd meet someone someday who understood,” she murmured, her eyelids drooping. She began to tip sideways in the direction of his shoulder.

“I can't stay,” said Rodriguez suddenly. “You're going to sleep up in the loft. If you'll give me the key, I'll collect the stuff from your motel room. Take the oil lamp with you—there are matches up there and a flashlight.” He put a hand on her arm and then took it away. “When you're up there, raise the ladder. It's not difficult.”

“You'd better show me,” she said, yawning and blinking herself awake again. “I'm too sleepy to figure much out for myself.”

“It's simple. Come over here,” he said, nodding at the back wall of the kitchen. “See—open this box and yank on that handle.”

As she did, she heard a loud snap. Above her, a trapdoor dropped open and a ladder slowly lowered itself to the ground, revealing a square opening at its top.

“That's your bedroom up there. The system works with counterweights and springs and God knows what else. My brother Roberto is a mad inventor—it's his creation. Go on up.”

Kate took the lamp he handed her and climbed awkwardly up the steps. The loft was finished and considerable in size. A double bed, two small chests, a desk, and two comfortable chairs were swimming in all that space. She sat down on the bed.

“Don't fall asleep. Not yet. This is the important part. You see this rope? Pull it down until you get to the loop—see?—and then hook the loop over this cleat. It draws the ladder up and seals the opening behind it and keeps anyone from opening it down below.”

“What a security-conscious brother you have,” said Kate, yawning. His eyes looked even more golden in the warm light of the lamp, and his skin glowed. He crouched down in front of her to answer, and to Kate he smelled headily of sunshine and cut grass.

Rodriguez laughed. “No—I walked in on him once with a woman—I mean he had the woman, not me, and he spent the rest of the year coming up with a foolproof system for keeping unwanted visitors out of the bedroom. To get out again, you just remove the rope from the cleat and unsnap the hook that holds the trapdoor in place. As soon as it's released the counterweight will let the ladder down. If you need to exit in a hurry, as in an emergency, there's a rope ladder fastened to that window over there, beside the bed. You can open it if you like. Once you've doused all the lights. It's not far to the ground. There's a little bathroom behind that door.” He took one of her hands in his. “Please don't show any lights, and don't come down, no matter what, until I get back here, myself. In person. And before you open the trapdoor, be sure it's me.”

“How?” she asked. His hands were cool and strong, gripping hers without hurting.

“I'll give my name. My actual name. If some guy turns up and says it's Rodriguez, or claims to be one of my brothers, or a friend of mine, don't move. Or if someone says he works with me,” he added. “That's an old trick of Deever's. Remember that. Just lie low if anyone knocks on the door—or even breaks in. They won't find you up here.”

“But I don't know what your name is,” she protested. “I can't go on calling you Rodriguez all the time anyway. You don't call me Grosvenor.”

He shrugged. “Everyone calls me Rodriguez.” He seemed to realize that he had been gripping her hand for some time and let go suddenly, laying his own square, strong palms on her knees and continuing to scrutinize her face.

“What is your name?”

“Fernando,” he said slowly. “After my grandfather. Fernando Cristobal Jaime Rodriguez. Not one name in there an Anglo wouldn't butcher. My brothers, now, are lucky. They can just call themselves Bob and Bill, except when they're at home. I've got nothing left but my last name, and so I use it.”

“Fernando,” said Kate. “It's beautiful. I suppose you could call yourself Andy. For us—uh—Anglos and our notorious inability to deal with any names but our own.” She grinned, and the classical purity of her face broke into sparkling life.

“Andy,” he said, sounding horror-struck. “It doesn't go with Rodriguez. Doesn't sound right.” He looked at her laughing face and turned red. “All right. You win. My mother would kill me. She'd rather they all called me Rodriguez. Just don't call me—”

“Rod. Yeah. I know. Everyone called me Grover when I was a kid. Hell, isn't it?” She leaned back on her arms and let her hair fall down over her back, swinging and heavy and sensual. It was a long time since she'd been aware of it and the feeling was intensely satisfying. “Does your mother do anything in the work-for-profit world when she isn't making chili? Or is she a genuine housewife?”

He shook his head, amused. “She's a teacher. Very fierce but lovable. I think you'll like her.”

It was an unanswerable remark. A heavy silence fell between them, and they stayed where they were, frozen in their positions, looking at each other. “Thank you for doing all this,” said Kate finally, sitting up and trying to look brisk and friendly. “It's a miserable little thing to say, but I really mean it.”

“You're welcome. It's been my pleasure, Miss Grosvenor.”

“For God's sake, call me Kate. Miss Grosvenor sounds as if you're about to give me another lecture.”

His face turned blank for a moment and he leaned forward to touch her face gently. “You're very beautiful, you know. Kate. As well as very brave. I must go. Don't forget to pull up the ladder after me.” He lowered it rapidly and almost jumped to the ground floor.