Майкл Смит - The Lonely Dead

'Okay,' I said. 'I understand.' I did, too, or thought I did. John had cut her deep. Right now I was his surrogate. Given how angry she was, I thought he was lucky to be somewhere else.

She took a step back from me, put her hands on her hips. Looked away and breathed out in one harsh, long exhalation. 'Did I hurt your shoulder?'

'Least of my problems,' I said. 'My face feels like I ran into a wall. When you slap someone, they stay slapped.'

She looked back up at me, head cocked. 'Right. You know that about me now. So don't make me do it again.'

'I'll try.'

'Don't just try. Anyone can try. I need you to be better than that.'

'Okay,' I said, seriously. 'Trust me. I won't do it again.'

'Good,' she said, and cracked a smile that was briefer than a flap of a bird's wings but still made the hair rise on the back of my neck. 'Because remember — I've also got a gun.'

She turned briskly and started walking to the stairs.

'Christ,' I said. 'You really aren't like the other girls.'

'Oh, I am,' she said, and now I couldn't tell whether she was joking or not. 'You men just have no idea.'

— «» — «» — «»—

We made the last flight up to Seattle, but only just. By the time we were out the other side and in a rental, it was midnight. With a map and a pair of burgers from a Spinner's in Tacoma we were good to go, though by then neither of us was moving fast.

I drove, trying to keep my arm from seizing completely, and also leaving Nina free to do what we'd finally agreed on the flight. She still wouldn't talk to the FBI — for all she knew, the man who'd sat in the boardroom with Monroe might still be in town, and on her case — but there was one person she was prepared to try.

She called Doug Olbrich. They spoke for five minutes. I was sufficiently busy dealing with Seattle-Tacoma's freeway system to not get much of what was said, though at least some of the conversation sounded positive.

She finished the call, stared into space for a moment, then rapped her hand on the dashboard — tap tap — as she had the day before, but this time not seeming so pissed.

'What's the score?'

'It could be worse,' she said. 'Monroe isn't dead.'

'You're joking.'

'Nope. Fucker's still alive. Astounding. He evidently has far more balls than I gave him credit for. He's got five holes in him and has been in surgery for six straight hours. He's very sick. They're saying he's got a twenty percent chance at best. But he's not dead yet.'

I felt appallingly guilty for having abandoned Monroe, for having assumed he was as good as gone.

'You did the right thing pulling me out,' Nina said. 'Without that I probably wouldn't be here.'

'There's more bad news. I can hear it.'

'Doug went up to my place to try to find me. Someone's taken it apart. Smashed it up and stolen all my files.' She shrugged, and sounded weary rather than sad. 'You were right, Ward. It was time to leave.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Whatever,' she said, tightly. 'The Gary Johnson thing is getting very heavy. It turns out this lawyer in Louisiana has a lot of money behind him, and a powerful following wind.'

'Really. I wonder where that's coming from.'

'Indeed. Monroe's in a hard place even if he lives. You know how these things go. Once someone lifts up that kind of rock, they have to find something underneath to justify lifting it in the first place. I know I didn't miss a beat with the Johnson case, but what's to say Monroe didn't cut a corner somewhere? He wanted that ball down. It's how he made SAC

She stopped and sat quietly for a little while. I let her be until I was safely out onto 18, with 90 in sight, and I had a cigarette in my hand.

'You didn't tell him what we know,' I said then.

'Think we know.'

'Whatever. You didn't tell.'

'No,' she said, quietly. 'Does that make me a bad person?'

I laughed, but then realized she wasn't smiling. I glanced at her a moment, thinking she was hard to get to the bottom of. 'In the eyes of the law, yes. In a withholding-of-evidence kind of way. Which is a jail-sentence kind of thing.'

She nodded, but said nothing.

'Come on, Nina,' I said. 'The deal cuts both ways.'

'I know,' she said. 'So here it is. I didn't tell him because I don't think there's anyone other than us going to see this through to where it needs to go.'

'And where is that?'

'There's a place for men who stick things in women's heads, and it isn't jail.'

'You don't mean that.'

'Right at this minute I do. Even if it's John. And I also didn't tell Doug because he mentioned something in passing and after he said it I just couldn't seem to…' She turned to me, and finally smiled. 'You got some miles in you yet?'

'I guess so. How many do you need?'

'The car that Monroe mentioned, the one that was clocked passing through Snoqualmie the night before Katelyn's body was found?'

'What about it?'

'Three hours ago a local sheriff ran a check on it. It bounced because it's a rental and there was no felony involved, but Doug noted it as logged and said someone might get around to a look-see tomorrow, if it's a slow day. The shout came from about another fifty miles into the mountains after Snoqualmie. I think we should be there first.'

'So where are we heading, exactly?'

She looked at the map briefly, then stabbed her finger in a spot that seemed to be right in the middle of the mountains.

'This place. Sheffer.'

— «» — «» — «»—

At about one a.m. Nina drifted off to sleep, head lolling on the rest but arms folded tight in front. I listened to her breathing as I sped us east along 90. The landscape was way too dark to make out clearly, but some vestigial organ in my body or head clocked the steadily increasing altitude. Every now and then a car sped the other way, some other traveller on some other journey.

We climbed higher, and I dropped back to fifty, and then forty, as the road became more twisty. It was getting very cold, too, misty ghosts hanging in the trees that pressed the road, illuminated by sodium lights and a moon that kept swapping places with clouds way up above. I pulled over at one point, to get a clearer fix on where I was headed. Nina shifted, but didn't wake, and I set off again as gently as I could.

Just over the crest of the mountains I took an exit onto a smaller, local road, which signposted Sheffer ten miles ahead. After feeling as if the mountains and trees were a mere backdrop, I quickly felt like an intruder among them instead.

Sheffer was small, and closed. It was quarter of three in the morning. I pulled slowly down the main street, feeling like an alien invader who'd picked exactly the right time to make his move. I passed a market, a bar, a couple of diners. Then I saw there was a sign for a motel, right at the other end.

I pulled into the lot and pulled around in a big, slow loop to park up. There was no light on in the office. Out of season, a town this small, I didn't see there being a night bell. It was looking like a couple of cold, stiff hours in my seat.

I turned the engine off and opened the door, slipping out quickly before too much mountain chill could enter the car. My intention was to have a final cigarette before trying to get some sleep.

As I stood, sucking it down, I suddenly realized four cars were parked on the other side of the lot. Of course — there always are, in motel lots. But we were looking for one in particular.

I didn't know the licence we were after. Nina hadn't told me and I probably wouldn't have remembered it anyhow. And would it really just be parked outside a motel?

I walked across to the first of the cars, and peered in through the window. The back seat was full of vacation junk: spare fleece jackets, trail maps, and a selection of brightly coloured objects designed to forestall questions as to whether we were there yet.