8
“The stitches are nicely done,” the stoop-shouldered, red-haired doctor said.
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Decker said. The doctor was a former client with whom he occasionally socialized. “Thanks for agreeing to see us without an appointment.”
The doctor shrugged. “I had two no-shows this afternoon.” He continued to examine the wound in Beth’s thigh. “I don’t like this area of redness around the stitches. What caused the injury?”
“A car accident,” Decker said before Beth could answer. “You were with her? Is that how you hurt your face?”
“It was a lousy end to a vacation.”
“At least you didn’t need stitches.” The doctor returned his attention to Beth. “The redness suggests that the wound is developing an infection. Were you given an anti-tetanus injection?”
“I wasn’t alert enough to remember.”
“It must have slipped the other doctor’s mind,” Decker said bitterly.
“Then it’s due.” After giving Beth the shot, the doctor rebandaged the wound. “I’ll write a prescription for some antibiotics. Do you want something for the pain?”
“Please.”
“Here. This ought to take care of it.” The doctor finished writing and handed her two pieces of paper. “You can shower, but I don’t want you soaking the wound in a tub. If the tissue becomes too soft, the stitches might pull out. Call me in three days. I want to make sure the infection doesn’t spread.”
“Thanks.” Wincing, Beth eased off the examination table and pulled up her loose-fitting slacks, buckling them. In order to avoid attracting suspicion, Friday night’s bullet wound to the fleshy part of her shoulder had not been mentioned. That wound had no redness around it, but if an infection was brewing there, the antibiotics for the wound in her thigh would handle it.
“Glad to help. Steve, I’m in the market for more rental properties. Got any that might interest me? I’m free Saturday afternoon.”
“I could be tied up. I’ll get back to you.” Decker opened the door to the examination room and let Beth use her crutches to go ahead of him to where Esperanza waited in the lobby. Decker told them, “I’ll be out in a minute,” then shut the door and turned to the doctor. “Uh, Jeff?”
“What is it? You want me to check those contusions on your face?”
“They’re not what’s on my mind.”
“Then ... ?”
“I’m afraid this will sound a little melodramatic, but I wonder if you can make sure our visit to you stays a secret.”
“Why would ... ?”
“It’s delicate. Embarrassing, in fact. My friend’s in the middle of getting a divorce. It could get nasty if the husband knew that she and I were seeing each other. Someone might call or come around, identifying himself as her husband or a private investigator or whatever, wanting to know about medical treatment you gave her. I’d hate for him to find out that she and I had been here together.”
“My office isn’t in the habit of handing out that kind of information,” Jeff said stiffly.
“I didn’t think it was. But my friend’s husband can be awfully persuasive.” Decker picked up the bag containing the money.
“He certainly won’t get any information from me.”
“Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate this.” As he left the examination room, he had the sense that the doctor disapproved of the circumstance Decker claimed to be in. He stopped at the receptionist’s counter. “I’ll pay cash.”
“The patient’s name?”
“Brenda Scott.”
It was highly unlikely that Renata would try to check every doctor in Santa Fe to see if Beth received the medical treatment Renata would suspect she might require. But thoroughness had always been Decker’s trademark. He had deliberately avoided taking Beth to his personal physician or to the emergency ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital or to the Lovelace Health System offices. Those were obvious places that Renata could easily have someone watch to see if Beth and, by extension, Decker were back in town. Decker’s precautions were possibly excessive, but old habits now controlled him.
9
The trailer with its yucca-studded gravel area in front looked oddly different from the way it had when Decker had seen it a few days earlier. Correction, Decker told himself. Nights. You saw it in the middle of the night. It’s bound to look different. As he parked the rented Buick at the curb, he glanced at the stunted marigolds in the narrow flower garden that hugged the front wall.
“Do you think it’s safe for you to show up here?” Esperanza asked. “Renata or one of her friends might be watching where I live.”
“Not a chance,” Decker said. “Renata didn’t get a good look at you the other night.”
Esperanza, too, was studying the trailer as if there was something oddly different about it. What’s making him nervous? Decker wondered. Does he truly think Renata is in the area? Or is it because...? Decker remembered Esperanza’s references to the arguments he was having with his wife. Maybe Esperanza was uneasy about being reunited with her.
“You took all kinds of risks by coming with me. I owe you big-time.” Decker extended his hand.
“Yes.” Beth squirmed to lean forward. “You saved my life. I can never repay you. To say thanks doesn’t come close to expressing my gratitude.”
Esperanza continued to stare at the trailer. “I’m the one who should be saying thanks.”
Decker furrowed his brow. “I don’t get your point.”
“You asked me why I wanted to come along.” Esperanza turned, directing a steady gaze at him. “I told you I needed some time away from my wife. I told you I was a sucker for wanting to get people out of trouble.”
“I remember,” Decker said.
“I also told you I’d never met anybody like you before. Hanging around with you was an education.”
“I remember that, too.”
“People get set in their ways.” Esperanza hesitated. “For quite a while now, I’ve been feeling dead inside.”
Decker was caught by surprise.
“When I ran with gangs, I knew there had to be something more than just going nowhere in a hurry, raising hell, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then the policeman I told you about changed my way of seeing things. I joined the force, to be like him, so I could make a difference, so I could do some good.” Esperanza’s voice was taut with emotion. “But sometimes, no matter how much good you try to do, all the shit you see in this world can get you down, especially the needless pain people put one another through.”
“I still don’t—”
“I didn’t think I’d ever get excited about anything again. But trying to keep pace with you these past few days ... Well, something happened.... I felt alive. Oh, I was scared out of my mind by what we did. Some of it was plain damned insane and suicidal. But at the time ...”
“It seemed like the thing to do.”
“Yeah.” Esperanza grinned. “It seemed like the thing to do. Maybe I’m like you. Maybe I’m reverting.” He stared at the trailer again and sobered. “I guess it’s time.” He opened the passenger door and swung his cowboy boots out onto the gravel.
As Decker watched the lanky, long-haired detective walk pensively toward the trailer’s three front steps, he realized part of the reason the trailer seemed different. There had been a motorcycle and a pickup truck in the driveway a couple of nights ago. Now only the motorcycle remained.
When Esperanza disappeared inside, Decker turned to Beth. “Tonight’s going to be rough. We’ll have to put you in a hotel somewhere out of town.”
Despite her discomfort, Beth straightened in alarm. “No. I won’t be separated from you.”
“Why?”
Uneasy, Beth didn’t answer.
“Are you saying you don’t feel safe away from me?” Decker shook his head. “That might have been what you felt when you were living next door to me, but you’re going to have to break yourself of that attitude. Right now, it’s a l
ot smarter for you to stay as far away from me as possible.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking,” Beth said.
“What are you thinking?”
“You wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me. I’m not going to let you try to get out of it alone.”
“There’ll be shooting.”
“I know how to shoot.”
“So you explained.” Remembering that Beth had killed her husband and emptied his wall safe, Decker glanced beside him toward the bag containing the million dollars. Is the money what she wants? Is that her motive for staying close? “Why are you angry at me?” Beth asked.
Decker wasn’t prepared for the question. “Angry? What makes you think I’m—”
“If you were any colder to me, I’d have frostbite.” Decker stared toward Esperanza’s trailer. Stared toward his hands. Stared toward Beth. “You shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“About being in the witness protection program? I was under strict orders not to tell you.”
“Orders from McKittrick?”
“Look, after I was shot, after I got out of the hospital, when you and I talked in my courtyard, I tried to tell you as much as I could. I begged you to go away and hide with me. But you insisted I go without you.”
“I figured that would be the safest thing for you in case another hit team came after me,” Decker said. “If I’d known you were in the witness protection program, I would have handled it a different way.”
“Different? How?”
“Then I would have gone with you,” Decker said. “To help protect you. In that case, I’d have run into McKittrick, realized what was happening, and saved you and me from the nightmare we went through.”
“So it’s still my fault? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t think I used the word fault. I—”
“What about all the lies you told me about what you did before you came to Santa Fe, about how you got those bullet scars? It seems to me there was plenty of lying on both sides.”
“I can’t just go around telling people I used to work for the CIA.”
“I’m not just anybody,” Beth said. “Didn’t you trust me?”
“Well ...”
“Didn’t you love me enough to trust me?”
“It was a reflex from the old days. I was never good at trusting people. Trust can get you killed. But that argument cuts both ways. Evidently you didn’t love me enough to trust me with the truth about your background.”
Beth sounded discouraged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there wasn’t enough love to go around.” She leaned back, exhausted. “What was I expecting? We spent two months together. Of that, we were lovers for only eight days before ...” She shuddered. “People’s lives don’t change in eight days.”
“They can. Mine changed in a couple of minutes when I decided to move to Santa Fe.”
“But it didn't change.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said it yourself. You’re back to where you started. To what you once were.” Tears trickled down Beth’s cheeks. “Because of me.”
Decker couldn’t help himself. He wanted to lean over the seat and clasp Beth’s hand, to lean farther and hug her.
But before he could act on the impulse, she said, “If you want to end our relationship, tell me.”
“End it?” Now that the ultimate topic had been raised, Decker wasn’t ready. “I’m not sure ... I wasn’t...”
“Because I won’t tolerate having you accuse me of taking advantage of you. I lied to you about my background because I was under strict orders to keep it a secret. Even then, I was tempted to tell you, but I was worried that you’d run from me if you knew the truth.”
“I would never have run.”
“That remains to be seen. But that’s all the explanation you’re going to get from me. Accept it or not. One thing’s for sure—I don’t intend to stay in any hotel room while you face Renata by yourself. You risked your life for me. If I have to do the same to prove myself, that’s what I’m willing to do.”
Decker felt overwhelmed.
“So what’s it going to be?” Beth asked. “Are you going to forgive me for lying to you? I’m prepared to forgive you. Do you want to make a fresh start?”
“If it’s possible.” Emotion was tearing Decker apart.
“Anything’s possible if you try.”
“If we both try.” Decker’s voice broke. “Yes.”
At once Decker’s attention was distracted by the sound of Esperanza’s front door being opened. Esperanza came out. The lean detective had put on fresh jeans, a denim shirt, and a Stetson. A semiautomatic pistol was holstered on his right, hip. But something in his expression indicated that more than his outward appearance had changed since he went in the house.
Esperanza’s boots crunched on gravel as he approached the Buick.
“Are you all right?” Decker asked. “Your eyes look—”
“She isn’t here.”
“Your wife? You mean she’s at work or—”
“Gone.”
“What?”
“She left. The trailer’s empty. The furniture. The pots and pans. Her clothes. All gone, even a cactus I had on the kitchen counter. She took everything, except for my jeans and a few of my shirts.”
“Jesus,” Decker said.
“I was a while coming out because I had to phone around to find out where she went. She’s staying with her sister in Albuquerque.”
“I am really sorry.”
It seemed that Esperanza didn’t hear him. “She doesn’t want to see me. She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“All because you wouldn’t quit your job as a police officer?”
“She kept saying I was married to my job. Sure, we were having problems, but she didn’t have to leave. We could have worked things out.”
For the first time, Esperanza seemed fully aware of Decker and Beth. He glanced toward the back and noticed the strained expression on Beth’s face. “Looks like I’m not the only one with some things to work out.”
“We’ve been playing catch-up,” Beth said. “Truth or consequences.”
“Yeah, that’s the name of a good New Mexican town, all right.” Esperanza got into the car. “Let’s do it.”
“Do?” Decker asked in confusion.
“Finish what we started with Renata.”
“But this isn’t your fight any longer. Stay here and try to settle things with your wife.”
“I don’t walk away from my friends.”
Friends? Decker suffered a pang of grief as he remembered the price that Hal and Ben had paid for being his friends. Again he tried to dissuade Esperanza. “No. Where you work? Where you’re known? That’s crazy. If there’s trouble, we won’t be able to cover it up the way we did in New York and New Jersey. Word will get around. At the very least, you’ll lose your job.”
“Maybe that’s what I finally want. Come on, start the car. Renata’s waiting.”
10
A buzzer sounded as Decker entered the store. The sickly sweet smell of gun oil hung in the air. Racks of rifles, shotguns, and other hunting equipment stretched before him.
The shop was called The Frontiersman, and it had been the first store Decker went to when he arrived in Santa Fe fifteen months earlier. To Decker’s left, a clerk came to attention behind a glass counter of handguns, assessing him. The clerk appeared to be the same stocky, sunburned man, wearing the same red plaid work shirt and the same Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol, who had waited on him before. Decker felt a vortex sucking him backward and downward.
“Yes, sir?”
Decker walked over. “Some friends and I are making plans to go hunting. I need to pick up some things.”
“Whatever you need, we’ve either got it or we can order it.”
Decker didn’t have time to wait five days for the mandatory background check on anyone who applied to purchase a handgun. A rifle could be obtained on the spot
. Before Congress passed the assault-weapon ban, Decker would merely have chosen several AR-15s, the civilian version of the U.S. military’s M-16, commonly available in most gunshops until the ban. Now his choices weren’t as easy. “A Remington bolt-action .270.”
“Got it.”
“A Winchester lever-action .30-30. Short barrel—twenty-four inches.”
“No problem.”
“Two double-barrel shotguns, ten-gauge.”
“No can do. The heaviest double-barrels I’ve got are twelve-gauge. Made by Stoeger.”
“Fine. I need a modified choke on the shotguns.”
“No problem there.” The clerk was writing a list.
“Short barrels on them.”
“Yep. Anything else?”
“A .22 semiautomatic rifle.”
“Ruger all right? Comes with a ten-round magazine.”
“Got any thirty-round magazines?”
“Three. Get them while they last. The government’s threatening to outlaw them.”
“Give me all three. Two boxes of ammunition for each weapon. Buckshot for the shotguns. Three good hunting knives. Three camouflage suits, two large, one medium. Three sets of polypropylene long underwear. Three sets of dark cotton gloves. A tube of face camouflage. Two collapsible camp shovels. A dozen canteens—those army-surplus metal ones. Your best first-aid kit.”
“A dozen canteens? You must have a lot of friends. Sounds like you’re going to have yourself quite a time. You’ve covered almost everything—distance, midrange, up close.” The clerk joked, “Why, the only thing you haven’t included is a bow and arrows.”
“Good idea,” Decker said.
11
The total came to just under seventeen hundred dollars. Decker was concerned that Renata had contacts who could provide her with information from the computers of credit-card companies, so he didn’t dare use his Visa card and thus warn her he was in town buying weapons. Instead, he invented a story about having had a big win at the blackjack tables in Las Vegas and paid cash. He needn’t have worried that the seventeen one-hundred-dollar bills would attract attention. This was New Mexico. When it came to weapons, how you paid for them and what you did with them was nobody else’s business. The clerk hadn’t even made a comment about the scrapes on Decker’s face. Guns and personal remarks didn’t mix.