Thomas Perry - Blood Money

She strode quietly with her eyes ahead and her ears tuned to the sounds around her. Jane had never been uncomfortable walking in wild country alone. The dry terrain of New Mexico was still alien to her, but it had an unearthly beauty in the early evening, when the last remnants of sun-glow kept the sage and piñon visible and let her feel confident about where she placed her feet. As the minutes went by, the deepening of the shadows made her feel even better. She had learned a long time ago that—barring falls and getting lost—a human being’s worst chance of harm on this continent was from other human beings.

As she walked, she picked out shapes and configurations of rocks and spiky plants that she remembered. Somewhere in her memory she carried a map of this area, and she began to navigate by it. She knew she would have to turn and walk a few paces to the left soon, because there was a dry arroyo coming up and that was the most gradual way down. She did it, then came up the other side. She knew there was a big piñon tree at about the eleven o’clock position from where she stood, and she walked to find it. The longer she walked, the clearer it all seemed.

She could see the house now, alone in the middle of the horizon. Everything looked reassuringly calm. The lights in the kitchen were on but the blinds closed, and there was a light on upstairs in the smaller bedroom. She wondered what they were doing. Probably they were having a late dinner or washing the dishes, and they had left a light on upstairs.

Jane walked more slowly and carefully. If someone was watching the house, she didn’t want to trip over him in the dark. She bent low and tried to tell whether anyone else had passed this way recently, but in this light every indentation in the dirt could be a footprint, or could be nothing.

Then, ahead of her, she saw something, a strange, unexpected shape that she didn’t remember. It was about two feet high and bushy, but it was too long and unvarying to be natural. She changed her course to move closer. She was only a few feet away when she made out the structure. There were posts—four of them—sticking up, and strung between them was a net. She walked around to the far side of it. The net had plants stuck in it, and a couple of large rocks along the bottom. She walked around it again. The ground on the side away from the house was smooth and flat, with a plastic tarp spread over it. She knelt down and ran her fingertips along the bare surface behind it. There were footprints on this side. They were long and deep, as though a big man, or maybe two, had stood here. It wasn’t just kids building a fort.

It was a blind. Somebody had built a blind. But what would they be hunting from blinds here, in midsummer? She stepped onto the plastic tarp, knelt down behind the blind, and looked. There was a clear, unobstructed view of the house and of the trail she was about to take to the kitchen door. She judged the distance. It must be about two hundred yards. There was a wing along the left side of the blind, so she moved to that side and looked over it. This side of the blind had been put here to command a view of the first curve of the road. A car heading from Bernie’s house toward town would come around the curve, then drive straight toward the blind for—what?—ten seconds, before the next curve began and the car went past.

Jane felt an urge to run for the house, but she held it in abeyance. She moved to the front of the blind and touched one of the plants that were stuck into the netting. It was beginning to feel spongy and dehydrated, so it had probably baked in the sun. She followed the stem to the cut, and felt a sticky, wet residue, so it had been cut within a day or two. She decided they must have built this blind after dark last night, when Bernie and Rita could not have seen them doing it. She stared at the blind. They must have planned to come back tonight after dark to occupy it. The sun had already been down a half hour. She let her eyes go unfocused and looked around her for other disturbances in the landscape. A hundred feet to her right she saw a group of big rocks she remembered from her other visits, but it looked different tonight.

She moved closer and saw that a couple of feet behind the rocks was a darker shadow that kept fooling her eyes. Was there a tarp there too? She reached the spot and looked down. It wasn’t a tarp. It was a hole … a foxhole? She dropped to her knees and stared into it, then saw a vague line in the shadows. She reached down for it and touched a smooth wooden handle. She grasped it and lifted it, and found that it was much longer than she had expected, at least four feet. It was a shovel. This wasn’t a foxhole. Nobody could stand in a six-foot hole and still see over those rocks. She looked at the shovel. The spade end seemed to have an odd glow in the darkness.

She held it closer. It was covered with a bright white powder-fine dust. She used it to probe the hole, and heard a sound of paper rustling. She pushed the shovel lower to bring the paper object closer to the surface, where she could see it. The object was a big empty bag. She saw the word “Lime.” She dropped the shovel and stepped back to measure the hole with her eyes. It was a grave.

Jane turned toward the house and broke into a run, dashing straight for the kitchen. When she reached the steps, she leapt up to the landing and pounded on the door.

She stepped back, so that when the porchlight came on she would be right in the middle of it, where Rita could see her, but the light didn’t come on. Instead, the door opened and Bernie said, “Sorry, honey. This is the doorman’s night out, and I didn’t hear your car.”

Jane stepped inside and pushed past him. “I left it in town. Where’s Rita?”

Bernie opened the broom cupboard to put his shotgun away. “Upstairs. She said she was going to read. She’s got the radio on, so I guess her eyes and ears are on separate circuits.” He frowned. “Is something wrong?”

Jane hurried through the dining room past the computers, across the living room, checking that the windows were covered, then up the stairs. “Rita!” she called.

“Yeah?” The voice came from the back bedroom.

Jane stepped inside. Rita was lying on the bed with her bare feet propped up on a pillow with bits of tissue jammed between her toes while the nail polish dried. There was a magazine opened facedown on the other pillow. She sat up quickly. “What’s going on?”

Jane turned off the radio by the bed. She took a deep breath, then glanced down at Rita. The girl’s eyes looked frightened and childlike. Jane’s urge to shout at her dispersed. Jane sat on the bed beside her. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What?”

Jane said gently, “I know you miss your mother. I don’t blame you for wanting her not to be worried. I never specifically said, ‘Don’t write any letters to your mother.’ But I wish now that I had.”

“But I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t say where I was, or who you were, or say Bernie was alive, or anything.”

“How many letters did you write?”

“Two. And they were to my mother, not anybody else. What—I can’t write to my mother in prison?”

Jane sighed. “The problem with prisons is that they’re filled with criminals. I think somebody read your letter. It had to be the first one, because I read the second.” Jane pointed toward the window. “Out there somebody has set up a blind.”

Jane heard Bernie move into the room behind her. “A blind what?”

“A blind. Like a duck blind. A little camouflaged barrier you hide behind to shoot something.” She looked at Bernie, then at Rita. “It’s set up to give them a view of this house and the road to town. It’s fresh—maybe a day old. Was anybody out there today?”