Steve Martini: Guardian of Lies

She dashed toward the end of the hall, toward the door that led to the back stairs and to the garage below. There was only one more thing she needed. She held the door behind her so that it closed with a gentle click. Then she moved down the steps as quickly and silently as the rubber-soled tennis shoes would carry her.

Emerson would be donning his robe, running a brush through his hair and heading back into the bedroom any moment. Katia knew the routine. She had maybe two minutes, if that. By now she knew every move she had to make. She had thought it out carefully. This was her last chance.

He was halfway up the stairs when the steady sound of running water somewhere at the rear of the house stopped. In the abrupt stillness, Liquida froze in place. In the momentary silence he thought he heard something.

It was a distant and muted whisper of sound, faint, almost imperceptible. Perhaps the brush of a shoe across the deep pile of the carpeted floor somewhere at the other end of the hallway overhead.

He readied the chef’s knife, now clean and bright in his hand, and crouched on the stairs, ready to spring the instant anyone appeared on the landing above. Liquida strained to hear and for several seconds listened motionless on the stairwell. There was a slight creak and then a click. It could have been a switch snapping on or off somewhere at the other end of the hall. Or maybe it was just the house settling, causing it to creak. He listened for several seconds, his gaze trained like a laser on the landing above. There was nothing, no one, no movement. In the silence after the constant sound of the running water, his hearing was playing tricks on him.

He edged toward the top of the stairs and peeked over. He could see all the way to the end of the hall. The long corridor was clear, no one was there. Quickly he ascended to the top of the landing, then moved silently toward what he knew from the floor plan was the old man’s study. This was the nerve center of the house, the place of business. He assumed it was where the voices he’d heard earlier had come from. The lights were still on inside the study. Unless they left the lights on all night, and he had never seen this before, they had not gone to bed.

He approached the study door nearest the stairs. At a distance, perhaps ten feet, he silently darted across the opening. As he did this he gained a quick visual scan inside the study. There was no one at the desk at the far end. Of that he was certain. It was only a fleeting glimpse, but he saw neither the old man nor the woman. If the angel of death was with him, the two would now be in different rooms and he would be able to take them separately and in virtual silence. He made his way to the study door and stole a quick glance inside. The room appeared to be empty, at least from this angle. There were portions of the study’s interior he could not see.

He scanned the catwalk above, the part he could see from the open doorway. Again, there was no one there. He ventured down the hall toward the other study door, the one closer to the bedrooms farther down the corridor. From here he could see the rest of the study and the remaining section of catwalk on the study’s second level.

Katia had long since opted to use the bath near one of the guest rooms down the hall as her private sanctuary for preparation before sleep. So Emerson wasn’t surprised when he stepped from the shower and found himself alone in the master bath. He toweled himself dry and put on his robe, then stood in front of the mirror over the vanity while he ran a comb through his still damp hair. He couldn’t believe how tired he was this evening; the guests for dinner, the tension of dealing with Katia, and the heavy meal, none of which he was used to, had taken their toll.

He examined his face and an ingrown hair in his beard, then turned off the light and headed for the bedroom.

He was half-expecting to see Katia already curled up under the covers. So when he didn’t, it took a second before the image that confronted him registered. She was taking longer than usual to get ready. The room didn’t look any different than it had ten minutes earlier, except for his pants at the bottom of the bed.

Emerson turned and opened the top dresser drawer. He pulled out a pair of boxer shorts while glancing in the mirror over the dresser.

His pants were still there on the end of the bed but were now crumpled in a heap. None of this alarmed him. He seemed groggy until he saw the other item in the mirror, his empty wallet lying open on the bed next to the pants. It was like a shot of adrenaline. Instantly he was awake.

Once in the garage, Katia quietly opened the driver’s side door of Emerson’s big Suburban. She had to stand on the running board to reach the visor over the steering wheel so that she could pull one of the remote controls from where it was clipped. It was the control for the gate out in front. She had seen Emerson use it many times, coming and going.

Suddenly she heard creaking footsteps on the floor overhead. Emerson was in the master bedroom. She reached up and grabbed the remote from the visor. She glanced quickly at the other remote. She didn’t dare use it. If she opened the overhead garage door, Emerson would hear it upstairs. She climbed down from the running board. Katia left the driver’s side door open to avoid the noise of closing it.

She exited the garage by the side door. Suddenly she was out in the crisp night air, running as fast as her legs could carry her. There was a vapor of low fog over the ground. Now for the first time fear gripped her. In less than a minute, Katia was beyond the gate and out on the street, closing the mechanical barricade behind her, praying that this would not be heard back down the driveway in the big house.

She ran headlong up the street and tossed the remote into the brush in a deep ravine off to the side of the road. She ran, not down the hill toward the lights of Del Mar, but up the hill, in the other direction, into the darkness. Katia was scared, driven by fear, but her mind was clear. She knew exactly what she was doing.

When Emerson came out of the shower and saw the note in the study, he would get into his car immediately and start looking for her. The missing remote would only slow him down for a few seconds, just long enough for him to punch in the code on the keypad at the gate.

What she was counting on was that he would then turn in the wrong direction, to the right, toward Del Mar and the old coast highway, the obvious avenue of escape.

By then Katia would be standing in front of one of the other houses up the hill, using that address to call a taxi on Emerson’s cell phone. Before he could sort it out, she would be in San Diego, and he would be looking in all the wrong places, trying to find her.

It registered immediately. Emerson didn’t have to pick up the wallet and look. He knew. The way it lay limp, pitched up like a collapsed tent; the cash that had fattened his wallet that afternoon was gone.

He didn’t bother to put on his slippers. Instead he ran barefoot out of the room, down the hall toward the study.

“Katia! Katia!” There was an ugly, angry edge to his voice. There was nothing paternal in it. Emerson was mad, mostly at himself for being so stupid. He should have locked her up, and now he knew it. He slammed through the door into the guest room next to the master bedroom. This was the place Katia used to get ready at night, but the lights were out, the room was empty.

He rocketed back out into the hallway. He raced down the corridor toward the study and the stairs in the direction of the front door. He called out her name, glanced into the study as he ran by the first door. He didn’t see her, but something else, out of the corner of one eye, a shadow moving quickly toward the other door, near the head of the stairs. Instantly it dawned on him. Katia would need more than the cash in his wallet to get back to Costa Rica.