Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) (20 page)

Cavallo picks up the folder and flips through its pages thoughtfully. The thoroughness of the dossier seems to make an impression. When she’s done, she sets it on the table.

“All right,” she says. “It stays between the three of us for now, but only because if I took it to Wanda, she’d think I was crazy. Maybe I am. But to answer your question, I do trust you.”

I turn to Wilcox.

“You don’t want my answer. But I’ll take a look and see if I missed anything with Keller’s finances. I have an idea now what I’m looking for.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing,” I say, extending my hand.

After a pause, he shakes it.

Once he’s gone, I launch into my apology to Cavallo. She doesn’t cut me off or tell me there’s no need. She sits through the whole speech, warming slowly to the theme, nodding in agreement when I tell her how wrong I was to withhold information from her.

“With the static between us,” I say, “all the stuff with Wanda taking over, I just didn’t know how much you’d want me to share.”

“Next time, just be honest with me. Don’t make me feel like I have to prove myself all over again before you’ll respect me.”

“I do respect you,” I say. “A lot.”

“Then act like it.”

I extend my hand to her. “Deal.”

———

Afterward, limping back to the garage where I left my car, Cavallo’s frustration settles over me like fog on damp grass. When it comes to ticking off the many flaws in my personality, she’s never held back. I withhold information, obviously. I suppress painful truths to the point of denial. I don’t talk about my feelings. I take an instrumental view of people, which apparently means I use them to achieve my own ends. These are all terrible faults in her mind, even though to me they sound like virtues, things I not only value about myself but wish I could see more of in others.

When she lectures me, I tend to write it off as her thing. Some people can’t help psychoanalyzing others, projecting their own concerns onto the world around them. Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever reflected on the criticism. Maybe I should. Maybe these really are blind spots, forcing me to repeat the same patterns, to fight the same battles over and over again.

Before I can talk myself into an epiphany, I reach the safety of the car. To my chagrin, as I settle behind the wheel, I realize I am breathing hard from the walk.

What is happening to me? I’m falling apart, that’s what.

But that’s another epiphany I’m not interested in having yet. I reach for the radio dial to drown out my inner monologue. Then I pick up the phone and dial.

“What do you want?”

Her voice is cold.

“Hello, Bea. It’s good to talk to you, too.”

“Listen,” she says, lowering her voice almost to a whisper, like she’s afraid of being overheard. “What happened the other day . . . it
didn’t
happen. Understand? And whatever I might have said, I didn’t say it.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t have any luck testing those things you took from Hilda’s place.”

Silence.

“Well, guess what? I have an idea how we might be able to get a line on her. Only it will require a little ingenuity. Since you seem to have a flair for coloring outside the lines—”

“I can’t talk right now,” she says.

“But you’ll call me back?”

After a long pause, she relents with a sigh. “Give me an hour.”

There’s a chain coffee shop
across the street from the apartment building where women in sports gear meet for soy lattes while telecommuters in shorts and hands-free earpieces compete for the tables next to the wall plugs, and the remixes piping down from the ceiling are always available for purchase at the register. When Bea arrives, she gives the place a good scowl, as if I’ve compromised her with this choice of venue. Once I’ve explained about the safe house, the attitude evaporates.

“How did you find out about this?”

“I have my ways,” I say, reluctant at this point to apprise her of Jeff’s existence. “So let me explain the plan.”

The whole point of a safe house is to have a place where you can stash people and still keep tabs on them. You can find them, but no one else can. So there will be some kind of link, some means of communication between the safe house and Hilda. The landlord will have a contact number, someone to call in case the rent is late or there’s a mishap in the building, like a flood or a fire.

“I’m not suggesting we set the place on fire. But suppose we get the manager or concierge or whatever to say the apartment on the floor above was flooded, and there’s water damage she needs to inspect?”

“If she’s blown town, what makes you think she’d show up at all?”

“Maybe she won’t. Let’s give it a try, though, and see what happens.”

“And you’re comfortable doing this without a warrant, without any kind of backup?”

I smile. “You’re the one who said the time for warrants was over.”

We cross the street on foot, dodging a dog walker with three canines on the leash. Entering the lobby, we’re enveloped by cool air. The manager’s office is tucked into a compact but stylishly appointed suite of rooms just off the elevator on the first floor, immediately behind the tenant mailboxes. Bea dazzles the manager, a slender and serious-looking woman in her fifties, with a flash of her
FBI
credentials, and within five minutes we’re all three peering down at a computer screen with all the rental information on file for the seventh-floor safe house. The name on the lease is Hillary Mendez.

“Oh yes,” the manager says, “I remember her. She lives down on Galveston Island and wanted a
pied-à-terre
here in the city.”

“You have a number where you can reach her?”

She points to the screen. “And her home address, too.”

I copy the information down, even though the address is likely to be a sham. As I write, Bea starts explaining how we’re concerned that something might have happened to the apartment’s occupant and so we need to take a look inside. Without asking any questions, the manager opens a key box on the wall.

We take the elevator up and head down a thickly carpeted corridor, pausing at the apartment door. Before trying the key, the manager knocks three times and calls out. There’s no response, so she opens it up.

The apartment is quite small, just a studio with a kitchenette and bath, sparsely furnished, with a breathtaking view thanks to the fact that the back wall is entirely glass. Bea motions the manager to stay put while we have a look around. There are two rolling suitcases on the floor next to the bed, their panels unzipped, and toiletries scattered on the bathroom sink along with a blow dryer and an unplugged curling iron.

“Somebody’s staying here,” Bea whispers.

Now comes the tricky part. I turn to the manager and start to improvise some kind of halfway convincing story. Bea cuts me off.

“We’re going to stay here and wait for her to come back,” she explains. “And we need you to keep this entirely confidential. It’s a matter of homeland security. Thanks for your cooperation.”

The woman teeters on the threshold, looking simultaneously dazed and excited. Then she springs forward and presents Bea with the key.

“If you need
anything
—” she begins.

“We’ll let you know.”

When she’s gone, we close the door. Bea goes straight for the luggage, looking for anything packed away underneath the clothes. She finds nothing in the first case. From the second, she produces a zip-around pouch full of passports, currency, credit cards, and driving licenses, all bearing Hilda Ford’s face but with different names including Hillary Mendez. She puts everything back in place, then shakes the bag over her head in triumph. I motion for her to keep looking. In one of the internal pockets, wrapped in a silk slip, she finds a stack of file folders identical to the dossiers on Brandon Ford and myself.

“Look at this.”

We spread them out on the bed, open to the photos. There are five in total, all of them men in their mid-twenties to late-thirties. I pat my jacket pocket, removing the now-familiar photo. Brandon Ford flanked by two buddies, with Hilda in the background. I lay it on the bed among the folders.

“This one here,” I say, tapping the man on Brandon’s right. “That’s him.” I show her the folder with his photograph. “And the one on his left, that’s him over there.” I slide another folder alongside.

“They’re all using false identities.”

I lift one of the folders, holding the image close up for inspection.

“You recognize that one, too?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I hand her the folder. “That’s the one I killed.”

———

A brooding silence descends as we wait. I sit at the window, listening to the rumble of traffic on the street below, the sun warm on my hands, my face, my closed eyelids. I can hear Bea perched on the edge of the bed, quietly browsing through the dossiers, trying to make sense of what this means. I haven’t told her about my run-in with Ford on Allen Parkway, about the voices of the men who came after me, no doubt the same ones whose files she holds on her lap. If they were Englewood’s team, as I assumed, why does Hilda have their dossiers? Obviously she created their new identities, just as she created Jeff’s. That’s her specialty, he said.

“I should have known about this,” Bea says. “I should have dug deeper to begin with. I just accepted everything they told me. I made it easy for them.”

“It won’t be easy for them anymore.”

“No,” she says. “Not if I can help it.”

I open my eyes. She’s holding all the files in a thick stack, her knuckles white. From across the room, her sinewy, boyish muscularity and the random twists of hair spouting around her temples make me think of a kid in school, stumped by the test.

Sometimes my thwarted fatherly instinct comes out. I’ll find myself connecting, albeit awkwardly, to substitute children like Carter Robb, maybe even Cavallo. Not that I’m old enough to have fathered either of them, but I can imagine Carter as the grown-up son I never had, imagine Cavallo as the daughter who was taken from me. It’s stupid, I know, but maybe it explains some things.

Looking at Bea, I feel none of that. Her broad, unlined face is just a cipher. She could just as easily be carved from stone. And the funny thing is, I bet if I asked about her job, how she gets along with her colleagues, what they think of her, I’d hear a story not unlike my own. We’re a lot alike, I suspect, and that’s why we can sit in a room together and both feel alone.

“You know something—”

She silences me with a finger, then tilts her head toward the door.

I rise quickly, moving across the room, positioning myself inside the bathroom while Bea sets aside the stack of files and slips into the corner to the right of the door. We make eye contact. Bea holds a collapsible
ASP
baton in her hand, a wicked smile on her lips.

Here we go.

The door swings open. A short, plump woman laden with plastic shopping bags walks through, heading straight to the kitchenette. She hoists the bags onto the counter, peels off her sunglasses, and pauses. Her head turns toward the bed, toward the stack of files.

“Hello, Hilda,” Bea says, pushing the door shut.

In the photo I’ve been carrying, Hilda Ford is a hard-looking, ashen-faced woman with demon eyes. In real life, she has a dimple on one cheek and a crooked smile. She gives off a comfortably aged, grandmotherly vibe, and if she’s shocked to find two unexpected visitors in her safe house, she doesn’t let on.

“Hello yourself,” she says, dragging the words out like she’s trying to recall a forgotten appointment. “Bea. And you—” she turns my way—“I recognize you. You’re Roland March.”

“That’s right. You made a file on me.”

“And I see you’ve been sneaking through my files.”

“You got careless, Hilda,” Bea says, moving forward, slapping the baton against the palm of her hand. “You thought I wouldn’t find you.”

The older woman shrinks back at Bea’s approach, and I have a terrible premonition of sudden violence, Bea’s arm lifting and the baton crashing down. I edge myself between them to head off the possibility. Seeing this, Bea smirks.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Hilda?” I ask. “We need to have a little talk.”

“You set me up,” Bea says. “You lied to me.”

“That’s not true—”

“
You told me Brandon was dead
.”

Hilda smiles sweetly, her palms turned up. “I thought he was. I only told you what I believed myself. I was trying to help.”

“Then why did you disappear?”

“Not because of you, dear,” Hilda says.

She trails past the bed, glancing around as if the room is unfamiliar, finally settling herself on the chair I recently vacated by the window. She wears a flowery capped-sleeve top, stretched tight across her thick arms, and boot-cut jeans with little sparkles down the side. There’s nothing threatening about Hilda, nothing to even suggest the sort of work she’s done or the secrets she must have been privy to over the years.

Bea puts the tip of her baton on the arm of the little sofa and makes a show of collapsing it back to its original size. Then she slumps onto the cushion, leaving the last chair for me. I scoot it over, positioning myself between Hilda and the door. It’s force of habit. I don’t anticipate her making a run for the exit.

“I knew Andrew Nesbitt,” I tell her. “Were you aware of that?”

“Yes, I was. But I’m surprised you are. He went looking for you a couple of years after your first meeting, to see if you had ripened up. And lo and behold, you were out of the military and working as a Houston cop. He didn’t have any use at that time for a Houston cop, but he kept you in mind. He told me he figured he could make something out of you.”

“I’ll bet. Do you know what it was he wanted to give me?”

She strokes thoughtfully at the fold of skin beneath her chin. “I have an idea what it might have been, but no more than that.”

“Can we back up a minute?” Bea says. “Who are you talking about?”

“I’ll let Hilda explain.”

“Andrew Nesbitt was my boss,” she tells Bea, “before you were my boss.” She’s using the slow, clear enunciation of a first grade teacher. “It was Andy who brought our little family together, and Andy who gave us work to do.”

“He worked for the
CIA
,” I say.

Hilda tilts her head, acknowledging this might be so.

“And so did you?” I ask.

She smiles. “I’ve done some things here and there. I give people new lives. I’ve been doing it a long time. It’s gotten harder in some ways and a whole lot easier in others. Documents are a snap. It’s all the computers that pose the challenge now. That’s why I called to warn you, Bea, because I knew that my work for Brandon was only going to hold up for so long. If the police dug past the middle of 2002, things would look a little fishy. And if they ran his
DNA
, well, like all my boys, Brandon was ex-military. They were sure to find out who he was.”

“Only we didn’t,” I say. “The database came back with the fake identity.”

“Which is why I had to disappear. There are people who can fiddle things like that, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them. You shouldn’t, either.”

“You’re talking about Tom Englewood? I’ve met him.”

Her smile hardens and she doesn’t reply.

“Again,” Bea says, “why do I feel like I’m the only one who’s not in the picture?”

I explain to her about my meeting with Englewood, watching Hilda’s face for any reaction. For context, I have to bring in Nesbitt’s shooting and the investigation that followed, along with the official denials and the conspiracy theories. Hilda sits through this placidly. When I start talking about the headless body in the park, she leans forward a bit. The pointing finger puts a frown on her face. Once I’ve traced the line between the finger and the stretch of road where Nesbitt was killed, her jaw is hanging open. I’ve got Hilda’s attention.

“On that same stretch,” I say, “on the same night I met with Englewood, Brandon Ford and the other men in those files of yours took a shot and me and ran me off the road. They were either trying to kidnap me or kill me, and I imagine either scenario would have ended up the same way.”

“In that case, you’re lucky to be here.”

“What Bea and I both want to know is, what’s going on?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning.”