Wolf Pack, page 17
A pile of clothes consisting of black trousers, a white shirt, and a white jacket were on the floor near the foot of the bed. And on top of the bed wearing a sheer lavender negligee, her long brown legs crossed over each other and a glass of champagne raised near her lips, was Abriella.
“That was mean,” she said.
“Sorry,” Infante said. “I didn’t want to be seen standing outside.”
“Pedro, meet Fidel,” she said while the room service waiter scrambled to his feet and smoothed the robe over his thighs. “He’s from home. From Baja—a little fishing village called La Ventana. Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Me, either. But it sounds cute.”
Fidel backed away from Infante and raised one of his hands to ward off the man. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
Infante looked at Fidel for a moment before he realized that the waiter assumed he was a jealous husband or lover there to break up the tryst. The waiter’s eyes flashed over to Abriella in the bed as if to say, She invited me in.
But of course she did, Infante thought.
He told Fidel to go into the bathroom, close the door, and turn all the faucets on full. Infante didn’t want Fidel to overhear his conversation with Abriella.
“Don’t come out until I tell you,” Infante ordered.
Fidel nodded briskly and nearly sprinted across the room. Infante waited until he heard the white noise of open spigots before turning to her.
“Really?” he asked her. “On our first night here, you risk everything by bringing a stranger in?”
She sipped at her glass and then placed it on the bedside table. As she did, the camisole tightened over her breasts and her nipples poked through the fabric like buttons. She knew exactly what she was doing, he thought.
“I get lonely when I spend my days with you and your goons,” she said. “Don’t worry, he knows nothing.”
“He doesn’t have to. All he has to do is place you and me here. We already stand out like sore thumbs.”
“Not my fault,” she said with a flip of her hair. “This is your operation. You’re in charge of everything. I’m just along for the ride until I’m called. So I’m making the best of a bad situation.”
Infante knew—and Abriella knew as well—that he’d strayed a few times on operations himself. He couldn’t help himself, because he loved and needed women, and when the tension was high he needed them even more. But he’d always bedded them on the side, during downtime or in a location other than one where they were working.
This was different and they both knew it. She was literally the only guest in the entire private club. Every staffer there would know about her. And that she’d invited a waiter into her room . . .
Infante breathed deeply to calm himself and he rubbed his temples with the balls of his hands. He didn’t want to provoke her into turning on him with her particular kind of twisted black rage. He could tell by her expression that she was pleased with herself and calm enough, but a harder push from him might end it.
“He’s a sweet boy and he’s a long way from home,” she said, as if it were about Fidel and not her. “He’ll keep quiet about this because he doesn’t want to lose his job.”
“You’re sure about that?” Infante asked.
“I’m absolutely sure,” she purred. “He may want to see me again.”
Infante conceded her point. He said, “Cesar and Adelmo have located the target. They’re getting ready now and they’re waiting for us to pick them up at the motel. We need to move on our subject tonight.”
“Tonight?” she said, her eyes flashing. “I just got unpacked.”
“They said they could see luggage stacked up on the porch of Mecca’s house. That says to me he’s preparing to leave in the morning.”
“Did someone tip him off?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But we can’t risk him hitting the road. We might never find him again.”
She frowned, which to Infante was frighteningly attractive.
“I’d be able to find him again,” she said.
“And that means we’d stay out in the open even longer,” he said. “I thought you wanted to go home and get paid.”
“I do,” she said as she stole a glance at the closed bathroom door as if reconsidering.
“Please pack your clothes,” he said. “I’ll stay here until you’re done and keep an eye on Fidel. When you’re gone, I’ll have a talk with him.”
She nodded, then swung her legs off the bed and stood up. He was always amazed how small she was next to him. On the bed she’d seemed longer, all limbs and warm brown skin.
She nodded toward the bathroom door. “Don’t be too cruel to him,” she said.
“Of course not. But he’ll understand. I’ll tell him we can locate his family in La Ventana within hours if he talks.”
He watched as she dressed in front of him without embarrassment and expertly rolled up her remaining clothing and jammed it into her bag. She was experienced at clearing a room out under pressure.
As she zipped up her bag, she paused and her eyes turned dark.
“This better go well,” she said.
“It will.”
With that, she pushed past him and went out the door.
* * *
—
HE WAITED UNTIL her taillights vanished into the trees before he went about wiping the door handles, the surfaces of the small kitchen, the champagne and shrimp cocktail glasses. He double-checked to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind. He even looked under the bed for stray panties. Then he stripped the bedsheets off and balled them up. He’d take her DNA with him.
Meanwhile, the water flowed in the bathroom.
When he was satisfied that he’d missed nothing, he knocked on the bathroom door. It was good that Fidel couldn’t hear him because it meant he hadn’t heard their conversation. When there was no response, he rapped harder.
“Yes?” Fidel sounded terrified.
“You can come out.”
Infante stood aside while Fidel turned the water off and opened the door. Inside the bathroom it was a cloud of steam from the hot-water taps. The waiter beaded with sweat from both the steam and the situation.
He took in the room as he came out, looking for her.
“She’s gone,” Infante said.
“I swear on the head of my mother that she invited me in.”
“I believe you.”
Fidel nodded. “I want to get dressed and leave now,” he said.
“Soon.”
Fidel looked at him, his lower lip trembling. “I won’t say nothing. Ever.”
“That has to be the case. If you do, we’ll know. And it will be the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life. We have people in La Ventana.”
Fidel nodded. He knew it to be true.
“Tonight never happened,” Infante said. “You never saw me, and you never met her.”
“Si, of course.”
“Is there a closed-circuit camera at the front gate?”
Fidel nodded. “There is, but they don’t turn it on until the club opens up in the summer.”
“Good. I hope you’re telling me the truth about that.”
“I am. I swear it.”
Nevertheless, Infante chinned toward the pile of clothing at the foot of the bed. “Gather up your belongings and step outside with me. I know there has to be another way to drive out of here without going through the front gate.”
“There is the service road.”
“Good. Come point it out to me.”
Infante followed Fidel out the door until the waiter paused between his room service cart and the white van. Fidel clamped his clothing in a ball under his left arm while he pointed through the trees to the southwest. The lights of Saddlestring twinkled across the river.
“There is a road over there,” Fidel said. “It will take you over an old bridge and into the town.”
“Is there a security gate?”
“Not that way. No one will see you.”
“Thank you, Fidel. I know it’s been a crazy night,” Infante said. “Remember what we talked about.”
“There are some crazy nights here in the summer when the members show up,” Fidel said with a smile that revealed white teeth in the starlight. “But nothing like this.”
As Fidel turned away toward his golf cart with his clothes in his arms, Infante pulled out his semiauto with the suppressor and fired two quick rounds into the base of the waiter’s skull.
Pop-pop.
He dropped like a sack of rocks.
Infante opened the back doors of the panel van and dragged the body over and grunted as he lifted it and rolled it inside. He threw the clothes as well as the bedding on top of Fidel and closed the door.
Then he pointed the golf cart downhill toward a small lake and weighted the accelerator with a large rock from the landscaping. He watched as the vehicle whined down the hill on the grass and entered the lake with a splash.
Since Abriella had been registered after hours under a false name and she was now gone, it would take the local cops a while to piece anything together. Maybe the strange beautiful woman left with the Mexican national? Maybe she’d been kidnapped by him?
Who knew? Who would ever know?
Of course, now there was a body to take care of. But later tonight, there would be more.
And Cesar was good at that.
* * *
—
TEN MINUTES LATER, Joe and Nate drove through the dark and empty second homes and rental cottages at the Eagle Mountain Club looking for either the white van or the Mercedes SUV.
The resort was deserted.
TUESDAY,
MAY 1
He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf,
a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.
SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, Joe drove his pickup through a cold hard rain to Winchester with dark storm clouds pressing down on him and obscuring the mountains. The temperature hovered at thirty-eight degrees and he knew that the moisture could morph into heavy spring snow at any time as he climbed in elevation.
“April showers bring May flowers” was a maxim that applied to other places. In the Northern Rocky Mountains, it was: May showers bring blizzards, muds, and bad flash floods.
Before turning around and heading to Winchester, he’d been on his way into town first thing that morning to meet with Sheriff Reed and let him know about the four visitors to Saddlestring whom Nate had seen—who now seemed to have vanished. Ranger at the Bighorn Motor Court said he hadn’t seen his guests leave, only that they’d left their keys in the rooms and cleared out sometime during the early-morning hours.
But when Joe called Reed to set up the meeting, the sheriff was en route north to Winchester with a small convoy of departmental vehicles.
“It looks like a murder/suicide,” he told Joe.
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. Meet me there.”
He gave Joe the address.
Joe said, “Oh, no.”
“You know them?”
“I know where they live.”
“Better use the past tense from now on.”
Joe disconnected and frowned to himself. He couldn’t recall a murder/suicide happening in the county since he’d been on the job.
Daisy looked over from where she’d curled up on the passenger seat and cocked one eye.
* * *
—
ELKHORN DRIVE WAS darker and seemed closer than usual. The gloom fooled the automatic headlights into thinking it was night. Moisture dripped from the overhanging branches and his windshield wipers could hardly keep up with the deluge. Potholes in the old surface of the road were filled with mocha-colored runoff.
Joe squinted at his GPS unit as he made the sharp turn from Elkhorn Drive onto the ancient muddy two-track that led to a semicircle of three Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department SUVs and Reed’s wheelchair-accessible van. The vehicles were all pointed at the old single-wide trailer set back in the trees that Joe had noted before. The one marked by the hand-lettered sign tacked to a tree trunk that said Behrman.
Deputy Ryan Steck stood in the front yard in a yellow cowboy slicker with a spool of crime scene tape he was preparing to unwind. Justin Woods, the other deputy rumored to be running for Sheriff Reed’s job, paced on the rickety covered front porch with his phone pressed to his face.
Joe parked his truck behind the county vehicles and climbed out. The ground was soft and the heels of his boots sunk into the mud. He pulled on a Simms rain jacket he used for fly-fishing trips and splashed through the yard toward the trailer.
Rain was an unusual occurrence in Wyoming, where precipitation was largely made up of snow. Joe was reminded once again that locals became discombobulated when it rained because few people had raincoats and fewer yet had umbrellas. He wondered if the weather conditions had somehow been a factor in the tragedy at hand.
“Sheriff around?” Joe asked Steck.
“He’s inside where it’s warm and dry,” the deputy said as he gestured toward the trailer. His slicker was beaded with rain and his beige cowboy hat was brown from being soaked.
Joe thanked him as he passed by. “Murder/suicide, huh?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Who called it in?”
“Mrs. Behrman’s cousin,” Steck said. “She showed up early this morning to give them a ride to the Billings airport.”
Joe noted that there were old-style suitcases without wheels lined up on the wooden porch. Deputy Woods was weaving around them as he gave directions to the evidence tech and the coroner about how to find the place.
“That’s odd,” Joe said. “They were going somewhere this morning, but they died last night?”
“Apparently. But you’ll need to talk to the boss man.”
* * *
—
SHERIFF REED SAT slumped to the side in his wheelchair with his elbow on one of the arms as he rubbed his chin and studied the scene inside.
Joe was careful not to leave more muddy tracks in the house as he approached his friend. He looked everywhere except at the two bodies in the small living room, but he’d seen just enough when he stepped inside that he thought there was a good possibility he might lose his breakfast.
Although he didn’t stare directly at the bodies or the crime scene, what he glimpsed he couldn’t unsee: two overweight and elderly victims seated in chairs that looked to be afloat in pools of coagulating blood. Both bodies were collapsed into the chairs, their legs and arms askew, displaying the casual immodesty of the dead.
Instead of looking over, Joe found himself facing a shelf of framed photographs. There were black-and-whites of a couple holding a baby in front of a sixties-era Pontiac, and later shots in color of a husband and wife dressed up for a wedding or graduation, camping with a tent, and standing next to a dark-haired boy who stood a head taller than both of them. They seemed to Joe to be a sweet couple. The man was jug-eared and squat and obviously uncomfortable smiling for the camera, and the woman was stout with tight curls of hair and cat-eye glasses.
Reed was describing the crime scene to himself as he observed it, using a recording app on his iPhone. It was standard procedure with the sheriff since his days as a patrolman and he’d told Joe it helped him recall all the details when he sat down later to write his report.
“Rex Behrman, age seventy-two, is sprawled out in his lounge chair. His pant legs are hiked up revealing his ankles as if he’s in the process of sliding forward out of his chair. His legs are straight and he’s wearing slippers. Both of his hands are hanging palms-out on the sides of the chair. There is a revolver that looks like a Smith and Wesson .357 in a pool of blood on the floor next to Rex just beneath his right hand.
“Rex’s head is thrown back and it looks like he’s staring at the ceiling. There’s an entry wound with powder burns beneath his chin and a large exit wound on the crown of his skull. Blood spatter on the walls and ceiling, including the light covering.”
The dank metallic smell of blood inside the trailer was unmistakable, and Joe turned to go back outside for fresh air.
But he paused as Reed continued.
“The blood under both bodies is separating on the floor, leaving a two-inch outside ring of viscous fluid, which indicates the victims died at least six hours ago. Long enough for the blood cells to clot up, but not long enough to dry.
“Rex’s wife, Fran, also seventy-two, is slumped over to the side in her lounge chair not five feet from Rex. She’s wearing a housedress and slippers as if she was getting ready to go to bed. It appears she was shot in the heart at close range. There’s singeing around the hole in the fabric of her dress from what looks like a point-blank shot. The round exited the back of her chair and I can see a hole in the refrigerator door where we’ll likely find it.
“From the look of things it appears obvious that she was shot first before Rex turned the gun on himself.
“Poor old gal,” Reed said.
“The note on the kitchen table appears to be written by Rex because he signed it. It says, ‘We’ve had it. There ain’t nothing good for us left in this world.’”
Which rendered Joe incredibly sad as well as nauseous.
* * *
