Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [61]
A coldness began to creep through me. “Whose body?”
“I did not see it, of course. But it is said he was an Anglo.”
“What did this Anglo look like?”
“I did not see the body.”
“What happened to it?”
He shrugged. “It is no longer there.”
“Did the police remove it?”
Another shrug.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Salazar: what did the dead man look like?” Now my voice shook with anger.
Abrego spoke in Spanish, softly and swiftly. I understood none of it, but the words made Salazar go white around the mouth. He turned hard eyes on Luis for a long time before he spoke. “I have heard that the man was tall and thin. His hair was not blond, but not dark either. He had a mustache and a face like the falcon’s.”
The coldness now touched my bones. “Anything else?”
Salazar was watching me intently. Like a predator alerted to weakness in his quarry, he’d heard something in my voice, read something on my face. “There was a ring.”
“What kind?”
“A heavy gold one with a blue stone carved like a bird.”
Hy’s ring—the one with the gull-shaped stone that matched the airborne bird on the Citabria.
For a moment I was isolated by the extreme cold. Sounds dimmed, colors faded, the faces and palm trees and floodlights blurred. Then I heard the beating of my own heart—strong and steady. Odd how it could go on doing that when everything else had shut down….
“Sharon?” John and Luis spoke in unison. John reached for me, and I pushed his hand away.
Now everything came back into focus—hard, bright, sharp-edged. I saw Salazar’s knowing eyes watching me, his lips drawn into a cruel smile.
“You killed him,” I said. “You killed him and got rid of the body.”
He continued to smile, spread his arms wide to profess innocence.
I clamped my hands onto my thighs, gripped them until they hurt. Bit my lip, drawing blood. Tried to bring my rage under control. Fatal to give vent to it now; Salazar’s bodyguard had not moved far away. And I had more than my own life to think of.
After a moment I stood. Took a step toward Salazar. Jaime moved closer, stopped when I did.
I asked, “What happened to the body, Salazar?”
He shrugged, still smiling.
Luis and John stood at the same time, moved to either side of me. Luis’s restraining hand gripped my elbow.
Very softly I said, “Salazar, I know you killed him. I’m going to prove it. And when I do, I’m going to bring you down. Remember that.”
Salazar’s expression didn’t change. The bodyguard didn’t move. Luis and John seemed frozen.
I wrenched my elbow from Luis’s grasp and hurried through the encircling palms to the gate.
Fifteen
I ran down the sidewalk toward the Scout, John and Luis close behind me. When I reached it, I leaned against the door, my forehead pressed against the cool window glass.
“You okay, kid?” John asked.
I didn’t reply. Turned to Luis and said, “He told some lies, but most of that was the truth.”
“… Yes.”
“Even what he left out—that he killed my friend and got rid of the body—was obvious.”
Luis nodded, face drawn with sorrow.
There it was, then: the reason I’d failed every time I’d tried for a connection to Hy. He was dead. I’d traced his every move for three days now, and all that time he’d been dead. Fatally shot on an isolated mesa, his body somewhere in a shallow grave.
Tears stung my eyes. I blinked them away. Not now.
What about the other man in the Jeep? I wondered. Dead, too? No, Salazar wouldn’t have bothered to conceal that. A confederate of his? Probably. For all I knew, Salazar could have been involved in the Mourning kidnapping. And Timothy Mourning? Renshaw was right about his fate: lying in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in his brain. The two-million-dollar letter of credit? Somehow it didn’t matter anymore.
I said to Luis, “I want to go to that mesa.”
“There’s nothing to see,” he said gently. “Salazar’ll have made sure of that.”
“I don’t care. I want to see where it happened.”
“It’s dark. It’s too dangerous.”
“First thing tomorrow, then.”
Abrego and John exchanged glances.
“I’ll go, regardless.”
Luis said, “I got a last-minute job