Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

"The Company sent some goons two days ago, right in this room."

"I didn't know."

"You guys aren't very good at communicating, are you?"

Simmons rocked her head. "The different agencies cooperate like an estranged couple. But we're in counseling," she said, smiling to cover her annoyance: Fitzhugh had lied about interrogating Tina. "Fact is, we're now investigating your husband on multiple levels, with the hope of understanding how the levels connect."

Tina blinked again. "What multiple levels?"

"Well, murder, as I said. Two suspected murders and one verified murder."

"Verified? Verified how?"

"Milo confessed to killing Thomas Grainger."

Simmons braced herself for an explosion, but got none. Wet, red-rimmed eyes, yes, and tears. Then, a quiet sobbing that shook Tina's whole body, her elevated knees swaying. "Look, I'm sorry, but-"

"Tom?" she spat out. "Tom Fucking Grainger? No…" She shook her head. "Why would he kill Tom? He's Stef's godfather!"

Tina cried for a few seconds, face down, then raised her head, cheeks damp.

"What does he say?"

"What?"

"Milo. You said he confessed. What's his goddamned excuse?"

Simmons wondered how to put it. "Milo claims that Tom used him, and in a fit of anger he killed the man."

Tina wiped at her eyes. With eerie calmness, she said, "Fit of anger?"

"Yes."

"No. Milo, he-he doesn't have fits of anger. He's not that kind of person."

"It's hard to know what people are really like."

A smile filled Tina's face, but it didn't match her voice: "Don't be condescending, Special Agent. After six years, day-in-day-out, with the stress of raising a child, you get a pretty good idea what someone's like."

"Okay," said Simmons. "I take it back. You tell me, then-why would Milo kill Tom Grainger?"

It didn't take long for Tina to reach a conclusion: "Only two reasons I can think of. If he was ordered to do it by the Company."

"That's one. The other?"

"If he needed to protect his family."

"He's protective?"

"Not freakishly so, but yes. If he thought we were in serious danger, Milo would take whatever steps necessary to remove that danger."

"I see," Simmons said, as if committing this to memory. "A week ago, he visited you. In Texas. You were at your parents' house, right?”

“He wanted to talk to me.”

“About what, exactly?"

She chewed the inside of her mouth thoughtfully. "You know this already. Rodger told you."

"I try not to depend on the reports. What did Milo want to talk to you about?"

"About leaving."

"Leaving Texas?"

"Our lives."

"I don't know what that means," Simmons lied.

"It means, Special Agent, that he was in trouble. You, for instance, were after him for some murders he didn't do. He told me Tom was dead, but all he said was someone had killed him, and he had killed that man."

"Who's this other man?"

Tina shook her head. "He didn't share details. Unfortunately, that's the kind of man he-" She paused. "He always avoided details that might upset me. He just said that the only way to stay alive was to disappear. The Company would kill him, because they would think he killed Grainger. He wanted us-me and Stef-to disappear with him." She swallowed heavily, remembering. "He had these passports all ready. One for each of us, with other names. Dolan. That was the family name. He wanted us to disappear, maybe to Europe, and start life again as the Dolans." She went back to chewing her cheek.

"And you said?"

"We're not sitting in Europe, are we?”

“You said no. Any reason?"

Tina stared hard at Janet Simmons, as if shocked by her lack of intuition. "All the reasons in the world, Special Agent. How the hell do you rip a six-year-old girl out of her life, give her a new name, and not leave scars? How am I supposed to earn a living in Europe, where I can't even speak any languages? And what kind of a life is it when you're looking over your shoulder every day? Well?"

Simmons knew it from the way the series of rhetorical questions burst out, so smoothly, as if it were a speech Tina Weaver had been practicing ever since that moment, a week ago, when she refused her husband's last request: They were reasons after the fact, the ones she used to justify her abandonment. They had nothing to do with why she'd said no in the first place.

"Milo's not Stephanie's biological father, right?"

Tina shook her head, exhausted.

"That would be…" Simmons pretended to be trying to remember, but she knew all this by heart. "Patrick, right? Patrick Hardemann."

"Yes."

"How much of Stephanie's childhood was he around for? I mean, before Milo."

"None of it. We split up while I was pregnant.”

“And you met Milo…”

“On the day I gave birth."

Simmons raised her brows; her surprise was honest. "Now, that's serendipity."

"You could say so."

"You met in…"

"Is this really necessary?"

"Yes, Tina. I'm afraid it is."

"Venice."

"Venice?"

"Where we met. Vacation. I was eight months pregnant, alone, and I ended up spending time with the wrong guy. Or the right guy. Depending on your perspective."

"The right guy," Simmons said helpfully, "because you met Milo."

"Yes."

"Can you tell me about this? Really, everything does help.”

“Help you put my husband behind bars?”

“I told you before. I want you to help me get to the truth." Tina put her feet on the floor and sat up so she could face Simmons head-on. "Okay. If you really want to know.”

“I do."

Tina couldn't get over how hot it was. Even here, at an open-air cafe along the Grand Canal, just short of the arched stone monstrosity of the Rialto Bridge, it was unbearable.

Venice, surrounded by and veined with water, should have cooled off some, but all the water did was raise the humidity, the way the river did in Austin. But in Austin she hadn't carried an eight-month heater in her bloated belly that swelled her feet and played havoc with her lower back.

It might have been more bearable, were it not for the crowds. The entire world's population of sweaty tourists seemed to have come to Italy at the same time. They made it impossible for a pregnant woman to move comfortably along the narrow, bumpy passages and avoid the African vendors selling Louis Vuitton knockoffs, ten hanging from each arm.

She sipped her orange juice, then forced herself to gaze at, and appreciate, a passing vaporetto overflowing with camera-toting tourists. Then she returned to the paperback she'd opened on the table-What to Expect When You're Expecting. She was on the page in chapter twelve that dealt with "stress incontinence." Great.

Stop it, Tina.

She was being remarkably unappreciative. What would Margaret, Jackie, and Trevor think? They had pooled their meager resources and bought her this final splash-out five-day/four-night Venetian holiday before the baby arrived to put the last nail in the coffin of her social life. "And to remind yourself that that prick isn't the only example of manhood out there," Trevor had said.

No, philandering Patrick wasn't the only example of manhood out there, but the examples she'd come across here weren't encouraging. Lazy-eyed Italians whistled and hissed and muttered invitations at any piece of ass that walked by. Not her, though-no. Pregnant women reminded them too much of their own blessed mothers-those women who hadn't beaten their sons anywhere near enough.

Her belly not only protected her from the men, but encouraged them to open doors for her. She received smiles from complete strangers, and a few times old men pointed at high facades and gave her history lessons she couldn't understand. She started to think things were looking up, at least until last night. The e-mail.