No Immunity (26 page)

“We’re probably okay,” she said with more certainty than she felt. “Viruses don’t survive well in the air.
If
Grady had a virus. Whatever, we need to find out what he had and where he contracted it and if it’s the same thing the woman in Gattozzi had.”

Tchernak gave his hands a last shake. “Think like detectives, huh?”

“Right. Did anyone see you come in? Anyone follow you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

Tchernak jolted up to his full six foot four. “Come on, it’s pitch-black out there. How could I miss headlights?”

“Did you see anyone in the parking lot?”

“Yeah, but the car shot out of here so fast, I couldn’t make out anything but speed. So that’s good as nothing, right?”

“Damned suspicious, and useless, right.”

“Did you notify anyone?”

“Not yet.”

“But two strange vehicles in an empty parking lot, next to the room of a stranger …We might as well be advertising a circus in here. Watch the door.” She turned on the light and started toward the body.

“The overhead? Do you want to announce us to the world? Don’t you have a flashlight?”

“Right, Tchernak. It’d be so much better to be discovered lurking in here like burglars. If they’re going to spot us, they’ve already done it. Now’s the time for speed.”

Blood was matted into the orange plaid bedspread all around Grady Hummacher’s body. His was the outside bed nearest the door. She moved between it and its twin. “Tchernak, the blood’s not just on his bed. It’s all over the other one, much thicker there. Strange.”

“Maybe not. He had two boys with him, Panamanians—”

“The seismic aides?”

“Two tribesmen he passed off as seismic aides. Adcock thinks they knew enough about his oil exploration that he didn’t want to leave them behind. The boys are deaf and mute. He brought them back from Panama, stashed them in an apartment in the barrio, and when they got sick, his doctor friend, Louisa Larson, took them to her office and Grady snatched them out of there and disappeared.”

“Wha … ?” Her head was swimming. She eyed the bloodstained bed. “Sick? Feverish, bleeding out?”

“The doc, Louisa, didn’t say.”

“You didn’t touch anything of theirs, did you?” She could hear the alarm in her voice and felt him stiffening behind her. “Did you?”

“No. Probably not.”

Again, fear spiked through her. How had the virus gotten here? Did it come from the boys? Could Grady Hummacher have been in contact with the dead woman? Or was this an epidemic much worse than she had imagined?

“Kiernan, we need to call the cops.”

“In a minute.” She turned from the bloody sheets to Grady Hummacher lying on his stomach, his face into the pillow. It was too late to worry about preserving the scene. The scene was already compromised, the body already moved. She bent over, looking closely at Grady’s arm. No visible bleeding through the skin. But his head was a different story. The bush of sandy hair was caked with blood in the area of the right rear parietal bone just above and behind the ear.

She didn’t move his head. Instead she took off her jacket, wrapped it around her hand, and pushed the pillow down until she could see what she knew was there: the entrance hole in his left eyebrow. She had been ready to discover him dead of disease, but this—a gunshot wound—took things to a different level of desperation. “He didn’t die of virus. Grady was shot.”

“Shot?”

“In the face.”

Tchernak’s “Oh” was so soft, she could barely hear it.

Tchernak needed time to recover from this second shock. But they had no time. “You haven’t found the gun, right?”

“No. But listen”—Tchernak pulled himself up straight—” like I said, he had to have brought the boys up here. He snatched them out of Panama, brought them to Vegas, left them, then snatched them out of there and brought them here to this miserable motel room in the middle of nowhere. It was probably his gun. They probably shot him.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t feel right.”

“Why not?”

“That would be spur-of-the-moment. But Adcock was already worried two days ago. He had some reason for worrying about Grady.”

Tchernak strode to the door. “This is insane, us standing here in a death scene. I’m going to call the cops.”

“No! The local sheriff is in this neck-deep. He’s the last man to call. The only people we can trust are ourselves.”

“You’re planning to leave the scene of the murder? How will that make you look to this sheriff?”

“The gun, Tchernak. Check the bathroom. I’ll explain the rest later.” She looked under the bed, under the table, in the dresser drawers. “Nothing.”

“Same in here. Look, you go out of your way to spite authority, but not me. I’m making a report—”

“Fine, you just stay right here and do that.” Before she could move, the door burst open.

“W
HO ARE YOU?
A
ND
what the hell are you doing in my building?” The woman’s accent was local, her body tall and buxom in lime-green short-sleeved waitress blouse and black slacks. Her hair was short, wiry, apricot-colored, her square face set into an expression that said “Don’t make me ask again.” She was pointing a nine-millimeter automatic.

Kiernan planted herself in the doorway. “This man is dead. I was just coming to the cafe to call the sheriff.” She was holding her bloodstained jacket in her hand. The wind had died down a bit in the few minutes she’d been in the room, and the air was colder. But it was fresh, and it felt good. “Are you Doll?”

“ ’S no Doll. Cafe’s ‘Doll’s House,’ see, like ‘dollhouse.’ Husband figured this place for a hobby when I bought it. Supported him for twenty years now. Not that I hear, ‘You were right, Faye.’” Her words had grown almost toneless in the retelling, and nothing in her tough-set face suggested she had any idea how inappropriate the anecdote was to the situation. She started forward.

“Don’t come in here!”

“Hey, lady, don’t you go telling me what to do in my own motel.”

“Wait. The room’s covered in blood. The man looks like he had hemorrhagic fever and bled out, though that’s not enough to explain all that blood. But he didn’t die of it, Faye. He was shot.”

The woman’s feet stopped; she had the look of a car idling, ready to charge forward.

Kiernan let a beat pass. “If you think there’s anything I haven’t told you, worth the chance of your contracting his virus, come on in.”

The gun was loose in Faye’s hand. I could kick it, Kiernan thought. Maybe.

“Were they contagious?” Faye asked.

“They?”

“Those boys of his, who else? He didn’t have the woman with him this time. I believed him, dammit. I’m not one to be taken in. I know people, got to in this business. But this guy, Grady, I trusted him when he said the kids picked up the flu and could he stay till Monday when they’d be fit to travel. I figured what the hell, it’s not like this is the height of tourist season. But I didn’t give him the weekly rate,” she added with a nod of approval, as if her decision restored her to commercial respectability.

Behind Kiernan the door opened. Faye had the gun aimed before Kiernan could say, “My, uh, colleague, Brad Tchernak. Grady went missing a few days ago. We were hired to find him.”

“Uh-huh. He’s the first thing you didn’t tell me about in that room. You say you were
hired
to find him, huh?”

“You want to see my private investigator’s license?”

“Yeah, yours and his.”

“He doesn’t have one; he works for me.”

Faye assessed Tchernak and settled her gaze back on Kiernan. “I’m holding my judgment on you two. Get your employee out of the way. The both of you, move back. Go on.”

Kiernan jumped in front of the door. “Faye, look through the door first. You know how long we’ve been here. There’s no way we could have done that kind of damage to the room. There’s blood all over. We didn’t create that. Grady’s got a bullet hole in his head. If one of us killed him, would we be standing here unarmed? Think before you endanger yourself.”

“Move, lady!”

Kiernan stepped outside and motioned Tchernak to follow.

A foot inside the door Faye stopped dead. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She backed out, turned to lean against the motel wall, then jerked away as if it, too, was contaminated. The color was gone from her face, and her apricot hair made her look clownlike. But she held the automatic steady.

Kiernan knew better than to reach out a comforting hand, even if that hand had not been medically questionable. Faye was the kind of woman with whom you didn’t show softness. With her the battle of wills would be eternal. “Faye, why don’t we go inside the cafe. Nothing more is going to happen to Grady, and Tchernak and I aren’t going to run off.” She eyed Tchernak and he nodded back: the proprietress of the only all-night cafe in the area was too good a source to pass up. As an ally she could be invaluable, as an enemy treacherous; and another enemy in this dark, arid land they didn’t need.

Faye glanced toward the cafe, turned back to Grady’s room, and was almost through the doorway again when she clutched her mouth, turned, and ran for the parking lot.

“Tchernak,” Kiernan whispered, “we’re not going to get another chance. What’ve you got?”

“Let’s see. Louisa Larson. Office in a pretty shabby area, but she drives a blue BMW. Grady flew in from Panama City a week ago Friday. But he had a hotel receipt from down there for Tuesday night His predecessor, Ross Estes, was killed down there three months ago. Last people Estes was seen with were Nihonco reps.”

“Nihonco?”

“Japanese oil company.”

“Whew! Was Grady selling out Adcock?”

“Could be. Adcock’s hocked to the earlobes. And the two boys—”

“Where are those boys?” Faye emerged from behind the gold Jeep, still pale. The gun was now loose in her hand. “Grady said they were too sick to travel. Where are they? Who took them?”

“What makes you think they didn’t shoot Grady and light off on foot?” Tchernak asked.

“Too sick. That blood in there, if it’s not Grady’s, it’s theirs. Grady kept saying they had the flu, but I knew better. You don’t bleed all the hell over with the flu.”

“Did you call a doctor?”

“Didn’t have to.” Her hands were on her hips and she was nodding up at Tchernak. Chalk up another for his masculine appeal, Kiernan thought as she eased herself into the shadow and tried vainly to get her turtleneck tighter around her icy shoulders.

“Grady called Tremaine. Came into the cafe to use the pay phone—we don’t have phones in the rooms. Thought he was being smart. Waited till I was busy with a party of four.”

“So how do you know?” Tchernak’s tone was almost baiting.

“How’d I know? Redial. It’s not marked, but it’s on the phone. Come in handy more than once.”

“Did Grady call about the boys’ being sick?” Tchernak asked.

Faye shrugged. “Redial only tells where, not what.”

“Did the doctor come?”

“Not as I saw.”

“Faye,” Kiernan said, starting toward the cafe, “when did Grady make that call to Tremaine?”

“Soon as he checked in.”

“And he didn’t call again?”

“Nope. No calls to no one.”

“And the boys didn’t get better?”

“Not as I could see. Looked worse to me. But I wasn’t in the room. I don’t go in my guests’ rooms, not ’less I need to. Makes it easier all around. But I’ll tell you, I was tempted here. ‘Tomorrow,’ I told myself. ‘If those kids aren’t better by tomorrow, I’m going in.’”

Kiernan nodded, wondering what tomorrow would have brought—the doctor or chance at another tomorrow. If the boys lived that long. “Faye, who is it you think shot Grady?”’

“His girlfriend.”

“Louisa?” Tchernak said, moving in beside her.

“Oh, so he’s got more’n one. Can’t say that surprises me. I know men—see enough of ’em shacking up here—and Grady was too much a charmer for his own good. They only stopped for bottled water and picnic sandwiches—”

“When was that?”

“Sunday morning, ’bout ten. Before the after-church crowd.” Tchernak opened the glass door. Kiernan followed Faye inside through an almost visible curtain of grease. She didn’t turn to see Tchernak’s appalled expression, but Faye read it. “Yeah, mister, we get the after-church trade. May not look like much, but I’m a damned good cook” She moved protectively behind the counter and began wiping the Formica.

The cafe probably sat fifty at the tables or the booths by the windows. Now it was empty but for two egg-caked plates and stained mugs on the counter. In one sweeping motion Faye moved them into the dishpan and pocketed the dollar-fifty tip. Somewhere beyond her a refrigerator rumbled.

“You said the girlfriend’s name was not Louisa. What was it?” Kiernan asked.

“Irene. I remember because it’s such an old-fashioned name. But maybe that’s only in the Anglo world.”

“Irene was Hispanic?”

“Looked it. But she was dressed American, and by the sound of her, she could have been from Iowa City.”

“Wearing jeans? Nails polished a pale peach color?” In her mind Kiernan could see those manicured nails with skin grotesquely swollen around them.

Faye nodded so matter-of-factly that Kiernan had to remind herself that she had seen a normal, healthy woman with forty, maybe fifty years to live, a woman who had stood by this counter and assumed that her biggest danger was buying the wrong chocolate bar.

Faye squeezed out the rag and tossed it by the sink. “I’ll tell you, she had Grady pegged. She was already pissed.”

“About?”

“Time. She was carrying on to get him to hurry. You know the kind of thing you make a fuss about when it’s not the real issue. What the real issue was I couldn’t tell you.” She stopped and her face puckered as if she realized the ominous implications for Irene. “Is she the one who sent you? You a friend of hers maybe?”

Kiernan shook her head. Irene could have used a friend. Grady Hummacher might have seemed like a friend, but he watched her get sick, dumped her off at the morgue, and called Jeff just once to find out what happened. Some friend. Jeff must have told him the disease’s progress, and Grady would have recognized the increasingly ominous symptoms in the boys. But he didn’t gas up the car and drive like crazy to Vegas or Reno or even St. George, Utah. He didn’t even call Tremaine back. Grady Hummacher sat in his motel room and watched the boys dying. What kind of man was he? She shot an accusatory glance at Tchernak, but if Tchernak felt guilt by association, he wasn’t showing it. He’d only said he’d known Hummacher; he hadn’t said how well. And what about Jeff Tremaine? How, she wondered, did Grady Hummacher even know Tremaine?