Betrayed (11 page)

During the interrogations Alberto arrived from Casa de Esperanza with Evelyn’s Jeep  and a change of clothing for Vicki. Gratefully changing in the cook shack at the back of the compound, she emerged to find a crime lab technician waiting to bag the clothes she’d stripped off.

Later Vicki borrowed Evelyn’s cell phone to call the local WRC office.

“Vicki! I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Where’s Holly?” Vicki recognized the exasperated voice of Alison, the Australian volunteer she had talked to before. “I thought she’d at least call. Is she there with you?”

“That—” Vicki had to clear her throat before she could answer. “That’s why I’m calling. Holly . . . she’s dead.”

The shocked silence allowed Vicki to explain quickly. Then she got in her own questions. “When did you last see Holly? The police need to know.”
And so do I
. “I didn’t even know she was back in town.”

“She flew in with Joe and Bill yesterday. The second half of our German volunteers arrived on the afternoon flight. Holly came in to take them up on up to the Wildlife Rescue Center on the bus."

“Yes, I saw Joe at the embassy,” Vicki said automatically as Alison paused. “Then Holly was with them?”

“Oh no, the Cessna had to be back on the ground at the Center by dark. Joe and Bill flew back out even before Holly had the team settled into the hostel. That’s when I talked to her last. She said she had a visit to make, and she’d see us at the bus in the morning. I gave her your message. Are you saying you never saw her at all? Then where was she? Where did she spend the night?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

"What are you going to do? Do you have someone there with you?”

“I’ll be fine. Can you ask around to see if anyone knows where Holly went or why?” Vicki noticed that the crime scene technicians were back from the landfill. “Please excuse me. I’d better go.” She hung up.

Whatever evidence they’d collected, they didn’t say. But after a huddle with the special unit patrol, they announced they were finished.

A new dispute arose when ambulance personnel began moving Holly from her makeshift bier. Vicki insisted on accompanying her sister’s body. The lieutenant in charge of the unit asserted that no civilians could ride in a police vehicle. Vicki would have appealed to Michael, but he had disappeared into his own vehicle, and Vicki could see through the windshield that he was conversing on a hand radio.

The stand-off ended when Evelyn handed the lieutenant her cell phone, his supervisor on the line. Under other circumstances Vicki would have smiled. Was there anyone the missionary didn’t know?

A police guard climbed in after Vicki, inexplicably feeling the need to rest his automatic rifle across his thighs as he settled down across from her.

Ignoring him, Vicki reached for Holly’s hand that had slipped out from the sheet now replacing the
basurero
homespun. But the fingers were cold, the vital life force that was Holly no longer in any way connected to that flaccid grip. Folding her hands instead in her lap, Vicki stared at the white wall of the ambulance, avoiding the curious gaze of the guard and the city streets flickering by outside.
Don’t feel. Don’t think
.

The ambulance pulled up at the gates of a sprawling installation whose crenellated ramparts, arches, and statuary looked more like a medieval castle or palace than a police headquarters. Vicki was reassured to see Evelyn’s battered Jeep park behind the ambulance. But this time her fierce persuasion was not enough to get Vicki through the gates.

“You will be informed when the medical examiner is finished,” the lieutenant told Vicki. Until then, she was not to leave the capital, though he stopped short of demanding her passport.

Then the gates slammed shut on the police unit and the gurney. The ambulance sped away, leaving Vicki standing in the gravel, for the first time bereft of a clear next step.

“Come on, honey. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

Numbly, Vicki allowed Evelyn to steer her toward the Jeep.

Before they could climb in, the embassy Land Rover pulled up beside them with a spurt of gravel. Climbing out, Michael handed Vicki his business card. He studied Vicki’s face before he said with more gentleness than she’d heard from him so far, “I never did express how sorry I am about your sister. I wish I could stay to be of assistance, but I’ve already delayed too long the departure of a field op that’s been on the books for a long time. In fact, that’s why I was trying to catch Holly. I wanted to see her before I left. I’ll be gone a few days, and if there is anything you need in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact my assistant. The number is on the card.. And I will definitely be in touch as soon as I get back.”

Then he was gone, and Evelyn ushered Vicki into the Jeep. The soothing murmur of her small talk flowed over Vicki as Alberto drove them back to Casa de Esperanza, but she heard none of it. Staring out the window, she watched the sky pale and lights blink on along the narrow streets. What was she forgetting? What needed doing next?

Vicki roused herself when they bumped through the huge portals of the children’s home, parking in the cobblestoned courtyard.

“I’d better start a list of people to call,” she told Evelyn as they crossed through the gate to the children’s home and up the freight elevator. “Here and stateside. The WRC headquarters. Her friends. Oh, and Roger and Kathy. I don’t even have their number.” She paused outside her door to rub a hand over her face.

Evelyn lifted the key from her hand. Pushing open the door, she shepherded Vicki inside.

The apartment was as bare and orderly as when Vicki had arrived a week ago, her few belongings tucked out of sight under the beds, the covers and mosquito nets pulled tidily up. But a card table and pair of folding chairs had been added as a work area for Vicki’s computer and piles of paperwork.

Evelyn took out one of the chairs. “Honey, just sit down.”

Vicki resisted Evelyn’s hand on her shoulder. “I can’t. There’s too much to do. The funeral arrangements. I’m not even sure who to call. And how am I supposed to make them if the police are holding the . . . the . . . if I could just think straight.”

“Sit down.”

At the authoritative command, Vicki sank slowly into the chair, trembling, suddenly as exhausted as though she’d been physically instead of mentally beaten.

Settling into the other chair, Evelyn leaned forward to fold Vicki’s cold fists in her small, warm hands. “There, dear, let it go. You’ve been brave and strong and capable all day. But you don’t have to be strong any longer. Just let it go.”

Vicki looked at her blankly. The shrewd kindness behind the thick-framed glasses dissolved something tight and hot in her chest. She blinked slowly.
Holly is dead. My sister is dead. My family is gone. It’s happened again. It isn’t a dream. I won’t wake up
.

Then in a burning flood that was at once painful and yet somehow the beginning of healing, the tears began and they did not stop for a long time.

“Señor, please come this way.”

The thin gray-white beams of the fluorescent lanterns were enough to illuminate the camouflage nets and the scattering of inflatable shelters beneath them but not to pierce more than a few meters through the thick foliage and underbrush of tropical rain forest. Leaving the four-wheel drive under a patch of giant elephant ears and ferns, he followed the sentry to the nearest shelter.

The personage supervising activity from the ease of a canvas lounge chair in front looked up at him impassively. “So, the gringa—she has been found.”

“Yes.”

“Dead?”

“Of course, dead! That was the objective; was it not?”

“What took so long? I expected your communication hours ago.”

“A miscalculation.” His Spanish was idiomatic, if accented. “The locals are less inquisitive than one might expect. Still, it was done before the trail became too muddied for those imbéciles to read. You’re safe—
we’re
safe.”

“This time.”

His eyes narrowed at the flat statement. “What do you mean?”

“You are not the first to give me news.” The occupant of the canvas recliner waved a hand toward the radio set perched on a packing box beside him. “I am told there is another gringa, maybe more, now making noises. If more questions are raised, they too will have to be dealt with.”

“I told you that equipment should be used only for emergencies.” His teeth gritted with the effort to keep his voice even. “As for these others, of course there are noises. Did you think the woman’s friends would ask no questions? Give them the right answers, and they will go away soon enough. It’s over; do you hear me? Over!”

“Just ensure that it is. Or we will begin making our own choices . . . and allies.”

He chose to leave before the speaker’s gesture made it an order. Ducking under an anchoring rope, he  hurried beyond the feeble reach of the fluorescent beams. He felt out a rock outcropping he knew to be there. Clambering up the brief incline, he braced himself against the sudden cold draft, letting the night winds sweep over him with the rich, damp growing scent of the rain forest and the chitter and caws and chirps of its restless animal life.

The foliage was so thick that it should have made it impossible to see an arm length in front of his face were it not for the angle of the slope on which he stood. An incline so steep that the gentle shifting of shadows beyond his boots was the swaying of treetops. With dawn, the black void at his feet would lighten to a tangled green cascade dropping hundreds of feet to the river whose rushing waters he could hear above the murmur of workers’ voices.

But on this moonless night and without the contaminating haze of city lights or any other human habitation, there was presently only deep, absolute darkness. The horizon itself across the void was the far-flung black shadow of another mountain range so that only directly overhead twinkled the cold, hard-edged sparks of the constellations.

His kingdom, he occasionally let himself reflect before iron pragmatism forced such dangerous contemplation under control.

It really was too bad about the girl
. He paused to feel the twinge any decent human felt for the loss of a life. He’d felt a similar regret for the majestic tapirs his men occasionally butchered to supplement their MREs.