Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition (15 page)

“
The helicopter is returning now. Clint
will be expected to go,” Obilio said. “We can take the horses and
go to David this afternoon when Clint will already be
there.”

“
But Clint will not be there after all
of you arrive and we’re seen putting the girls on the bus for
Bocas,” Clint said. “How wonderful! ALL of us went to Bocas! We
even had a special bus, a privado, to take us!”

“
He’ll be watching,” Mike warned. “Is
there somewhere you can get off that he won’t be able to know
about?”

“
Yo!”

“
Should we inform your Mr. Mittermann
of our plan?” Obilio asked.

“
I’ll decide on the way to David,”
Clint replied. “I don’t trust any CIA agent. If he’s being straight
with us I’ll be straight with him. Otherwise ...”

Mittermann landed the chopper and came out to
ask, “Did you find it? He damned well didn’t have anything on him
when we landed in David. He said he didn’t find anything here, that
he was looking for an item that Maria had left by accident, but
didn’t find anything.”

He looked at the bodega and Clint shook his
head very slightly at the others.

“
We took the place apart, literally,”
Mike said. “Whatever, it definitely ain’t in that
bodega.”

“
Damn! He couldn’t have gotten rid of
it since we let him out! Even in the house there wasn’t a second I
didn’t have him in view.

“
That leaves one time. When he was shot
and we were looking at the mountain over there.”

“
You can look, but we thought of that,”
Mike said. Clint liked the way he told the exact truth and left out
a small detail or two.

He went carefully along to the rock garden,
then searched around the rock. “It looks like something was dug up
... but that could be from the flower bed. There’s nothing there
now. Shit!”

“
Maria!” Mark cried. “I’ll be damned!
She was watching him through the scope and saw him hide it! She
could have come back and got whatever it was! You
think?”

“
How could she?” Matt asked innocently.
“We were right there in the house.”

“
Or all of us in the bodega, taking it
apart and making a lot of noise?” Mark asked. “As Mittermann said,
shit!”

“
You were watching her run across the
meadow over there,” Mittermann pointed out.

“
Half a minute or more after the shot
and he dropped,” Clint said. “There was time for something like
that. Maybe after she crossed the meadow. No one could see her
then. A quick look to see he was against the rock.”

“
Shit!” from Mittermann and Mike at the
same time.

“
We might as well go back to David.
Obilio will have the Indios watch for Maria and to call him if
she’s seen. She seems good at staying out of sight,” Clint
suggested. “I hope this bit will let the Campbells out of it. They
simply don’t know anything.”

Mittermann nodded. Matt said they would come
to David in an hour or two. They would go back to Bocas. Obilio
said he and Lila would go with them if they would allow. Clint said
he and the women would go. He’d arrange for a private bus. They
were out of it. It was Mittermann’s headache now. Mittermann seemed
relieved and said he thought there was no further danger to any of
them – except be careful of Maria. She was nuts.

Clint got in the chopper and Mittermann took
him to David. They didn’t talk much on the trip. When he got there
he went to the pensión to pack up his stuff. He talked a bit with
Lee and Bob, then went to the terminal where the bus he ordered was
waiting. After that was settled and ready he went to several places
to ask some innocent questions and to leave copies of the coded
sheets with a friend.. He managed to be back at the terminal when
the bus came with Obilio and company. He called Judi. She said they
would get there in twenty minutes. They would get to Bocas after
dark, but them’s the breaks. She had called Bocas and the Campbells
would stay at the Bahia.

Obilio got a call as they were leaving the
terminal to say that Maria was seen near the road. She may have
left the area. Obilio said the reason she was there was gone.

There was a woman Clint had noted before on
the comarca near the bus stop sitting in front of the restaurant at
La Mina. It was logical they would stop at the restaurant there,
considering the time they left David. The next stop was Punta Peña.
That was two hours.

Clint and the men went into the restaurant
before the women and ordered food for them all. Clint had a beer,
as did Matt and Mike. They walked around a bit while the women took
a bit long to eat (as arranged). When they got back on the bus the
woman just happened to be selling empanadas and tamales. She
stepped into the bus just before it left, but the driver said it
was private. She knew she couldn’t go onto a private bus to sell
anything.

She didn’t argue. She stepped back off. She
had seen that they were all there.

The bus left. It was followed at a short
distance by a small truck. Just before the divide the truck pulled
off the road and turned around. Just past the divide Clint got off
the bus and it continued on. Clint went back a short way, then down
a path past Gabriel’s place and to the town of La Mina. There was a
horse left there by a friend of Luis. It was a long trip to
Obilio’s, but no one could get there faster. Clint had a friend on
the other side of the valley who would drive him to the comarca on
the back road.

It took four hours to get there. Clint went
up the path carefully and arrived at the house. Nobody had been
there from front or back. Clint knew how to make a trap that
someone who knew methods would find. They would trip the real trap
going around those.

Clint went back to the house and waited. He
didn’t expect anything until dawn and there wasn’t anything. Then a
chopper came. He had ridden in that chopper so he hid and watched
as Mittermann and Gault went to the rock to check carefully.
Mittermann and Gault were speaking French, but Clint knew enough to
know that Mittermann was telling Gault that he figured Maria had
gotten it. Gault swore very colorfully about something on his
computer, then they got in the chopper and left.

Clint was very satisfied that he hadn’t told
Mittermann anything. He would have to find just how deeply
Mittermann was involved. He may be playing both ends.

Clint checked once more. He was about to
leave when he heard something out back so slipped behind the door
to the second bedroom. Maria came in the window in back to look
around the kitchen. She had a silly grin on her face as she went to
the small cupboard where the rice and dishes were kept. Clint made
a noise by throwing a shoe toward the front of the house just as
she was starting to move things. She quietly closed the cupboard
and slipped back out the little window. Clint moved to the main
door and came into the room that way. He took out his Glock,
checked it, and moved toward the bedrooms. He went in the first one
and went to look out the window, studying the area. He then went
toward the second bedroom. Maria would have to get back to the
forest to wait for him to leave.

He went to the cupboard, searched
around until he found two sheets that looked much like the two he
had. He remembered enough to know the number code was different in
a few spots than the two he had. He took out his notepad and
wrote,
Tu siempre falta una cosa. Esta
medio intelligente. G
and put it where the sheets had
been secreted. He then puttered around for a while, then stepped
outside to scan the sky, checked his watch, closed the house and
walked off down the path. He stopped just past the forest end of
the path where he could be seen from above the house. Maria would
be there. He acted as though he was waiting for someone. After
another half hour he went back toward the house a little, then
turned and went to Luis’ friend’s place. He got a horse he would
leave with Luis. He left the horse and asked Luis to see if it
would be possible to detain Maria for one day. Luis said this was
the comarca. He could detain her for one century if he
chose.

Clint said she was a homicidal maniac. It
wasn’t important enough to take chances. Luis nodded and looked
grim.

Clint took the bus to the airport and got a
seat on the plane to Bocas. Judi would have made it seem he was
there to a watcher. He arrived with a small disguise on that made
him look shorter and fatter than he was. He went to Judi’s in a
taxi and swam across to his deck. He was home for about fifteen
minutes, Judi had brought over some supper, when the phone buzzed.
He answered.

“
Clint? Mittermann. I’ve been busy, but
wanted to see that your bunch got to Bocas Town safely.”

“
Yeah. We got here a little before
midnight so stayed in Changuinola last night and came to Bocas on
the first water taxi. I crashed for most of the day. You can ask
Judi if anything else happened.”

Before Mittermann could answer Clint handed
the phone to Judi. She chatted a minute about how the whole bunch
were tired except her and Mike. She could sleep on the bus, Mike
could sleep on the bus, but none of the others could so Clint and
Matt drank beer and talked. The others said they hadn’t slept at
all when they reached Changuinola and it was almost two before they
found a hotel, then got up before dawn to get to Bocas. It was
always good to get home. Had he learned anything else?

This was an act to make him believe Clint was
really there the whole time. Judi had been plenty visible and he
knew damned well she was there. If Clint simply handed her the
phone he had been there all day.

Clint could picture him steaming while he had
to sound totally unconcerned about anything. He said Gault said
there was some kind of package left that was gone, but he couldn’t
find out what. Gault was in the hospital until the wound was
stitched or something.

Judi finally let him go. She laughed a bit
about sounding like a chatty airhead while he was trying to come up
with an excuse to hang up.

Clint took the sheets and copied them, then
hid the originals with the first two sheets. He noted the
differences, which seemed to be on a list that was headed and
followed by paragraphs.

Somebody cooking the books?

If they could find the key to the code it
would tell them one hell of a lot. Clint had a case where a man who
developed code-breakers for comps was murdered. He had left a
program. Clint was trying it out. If he could find any base at all
... the numbers were all less than four hundred. What could that
mean?

A page and line number in a book? There was
one number, then a hyphen, then another number, then a hyphen, then
a number between one and eight.

It was logical that was a page, line and word
number.

Too many sentences had more than eight words.
It was something else.

Whatever, it was useless if he didn’t know
the book. What book was mentioned in all this by any of them?

Clint grinned. Dr. Freud would make a case of
her. Freudian slip?

He Googled Freud to find what books he wrote.
He then checked the page numbers in the books. Nothing – except
references to something called “A Student’s Guide to Dr. Sigmund
Freud” in a College Reference Library edition. Expensive. 487
pages. He thought for a moment. That would be a book almost no
university in Central America would have. It was for medical
students. Advanced medical students.

Granada? They would have most things. They
were closest.

Stupid. Gault would have a copy. He would
even have it here if he came to get those sheets.

Clint grinned. Even better! Gault was
supposed to be in the hospital in David. If Mittermann was in on
some kind of scheme with him he would have to appear to really be
there the way Clint had pretended to be in Bocas Town.

Clint called Mittermann and said he had to
ask Gault a few questions about Maria. He was owed answers to those
questions. Seeing he was in the hospital Clint could be there in
the morning to ask the questions, then could tell the Campbells
whether or not what they suspected was true. It would be a way to
make very damned sure Maria didn’t bother any of them again.

Mittermann mumbled around for a couple of
minutes, then said Gault might not be in the hospital anymore.
Clint said he could talk with him anywhere. He would stay in a
hotel there for three days to be sure there was no infection. If he
didn’t want to do that the police wouldn’t allow him to leave until
they investigated how and why he was shot. He told them it was an
accident so it would be normal for him to stay until the doctors
released him.

“
It would be normal if he was scheduled
to go and did,” Mittermann argued.

“
No. It would look like he was running
from someone,” Clint replied. “He’d be a fool to do anything to
make them suspicious.”

“
He’s staying at the City of David. I
suppose he’ll be here for part of tomorrow, anyhow.”

Clint told him thanks. It probably didn’t
have anything to do with his case. It was about something that was
said about him at a party in Jamaica. That seemed to relieve
Mittermann.

Clint caught the plane to David and was there
just at dark. He would be expected to meet Gault in the morning.
Gault wouldn’t be there tonight until late. He had a date.

Clint had a good meal in the restaurant at
the hotel. He talked with the man at the desk about his friend from
Haiti and said he was supposed to meet him tomorrow, but came in
early. Would he ring his room, please? The clerk rang 306. There
was no answer. He said Mr. Gault was apparently not there.