Spectre Black (6 page)

Dark hair with blond highlights swept up and back with one of those stick things women put in to keep their hair from falling down. She was nice-looking. Slender, with a strong face that he had seen on some Brazilian models, bold but narrow, high cheekbones, a flare at the end of her long, thin nose, dark lipstick. She wore a deep cerise blouse, collar out, under a dark navy suit. Expensive leather shoes, lots of support. Hose. In this heat.

A professional. The question was, a professional
what?

He stood up and walked over to refill his cup at the coffee-and-tea station near the window. Took his time, looking out at the parking lot—

And saw what he expected to see. One row back, sun glinting off the windshield.

Landry felt a motion behind him, a misplacement of air. The slightest rustle. An expensive sound. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a sliver of her suit jacket and a hand with short nails polished smooth. He caught her scent—subtle but enticing.

She filled her coffee cup and reached past him for the half-and-half jug. No perfume, just the clean scent of soap.

He looked back at the car under the hot glare of the New Mexico sun. It was black, a plain-wrap Crown Vic. He couldn’t see the back plates, but he knew what they would look like. They would be white.

The lady was an FBI agent.

He felt the air whisk against him and she was gone.

He did not look around, but kept his eyes on the plate-glass window. The interior of the donut shop was reflected in faint outlines. He saw her pull out her chair and sit down. She did not look back at him.

As he walked back to his table, Landry kept track of her out of the corner of his eye. Looking for eye response but getting none. She seemed absorbed in her iPad.

He set his cup on the edge of his table. Three-quarters of the ceramic mug teetered in thin air before falling to the floor with a crash.

He hunkered down, head low, scanning the room. Looking for a quick eye response, and seeing it everywhere: “flash focus.” Everyone’s eyes turned immediately to the sound of the ceramic breaking. Except for the woman. Instead of looking at him, she was assessing everyone else’s reaction. He liked that, too.

Finally, she turned her head slightly in his direction. Their eyes met. He threw her a rueful smile as he helped the busboy pick up shards of ceramic.

The busboy apologized and Landry told him he didn’t need to, it was his fault, no problem. All the time, watching the woman out of the corner of his eye. The boy bustled back with a replacement mug, and Landry walked back to the coffee station.

Once again, his eye went to the window, the ghostly reflection of people behind him. But she was fast. Already beside him, reaching for the half-and-half. “Your handle should be closer to your belt,” she said. She poured the cream into her cup and walked away.

Landry fought the urge to look down at his shirt, looking for a telltale shape, but ultimately, he did. As God intended, the knit material puffed out over the band of his polo shirt, completely concealing the H&K snugged underneath. She’d seen nothing. He assumed she’d made him because he had come dressed for the show. That was all.

Maybe he could get her to tell him what she knew about Jolie’s disappearance, if she knew anything at all.

Landry stared into the plate-glass window. She had her phone out, her head tipped forward, engrossed in whatever she was doing. Then she looked up at him, and their eyes met through the window’s reflection.

It was faint, a ghostly image, but Landry saw that her face was impassive. Not just impassive. She held him with a cool stare that his body responded to.

She dismissed him and looked back down at her phone.

Landry remained where he was, staring into the window. She did not look up again. She ignored him. He stood there, shaking a packet of sugar, eyes holding her reflection. Then he put the coffee mug down next to the coffee machine, turned around, and walked in her direction. She sat at a table where people had to funnel past her to get to the door. As he passed her, he felt her gaze on his back.

He’d walked here. Duncan’s Donuts was only five doors and one four-lane bridge down from The Satellite INN.

He stood just outside the shop, taking in the air, looking at her car, but not looking. Clearly, the FBI agent had targeted him for some reason. Maybe she suspected he had something to do with Jolie’s disappearance. Or maybe she thought he was the guy who shot the militia guy at the checkpoint. There were plenty of maybes. It was her turn to make a move.

And he’d give her that chance.

He stood just to the side of the door, pulling a cigarette from the pack he always carried. He didn’t smoke, but it was a good piece of stage business—a reason for him to pause.

The door’s bell jangled behind him.

“How long will it take me to find out what you’re really up to?” she said. Her voice was low but musical, with an underlying sarcasm. He liked it. She stood next to him, eyes forward, taking in the view.

Landry pushed the cigarette behind his ear. He did not look at her. “Do we know each other?”

“I know you,” she said, staring at the parking lot. “I’ve run into your kind before, plenty of times. You think you’re fooling people, but you don’t fool me. You can dress like a cop but that doesn’t mean you are one.”

“I’m not such a bad guy. I’ve been known to grow on people.”

“That kind of thing takes time, and I’m a busy person.”

Landry removed the cigarette from his ear and flicked it into the parking lot. “Then I guess we have nothing to talk about.”

He crossed the lot and followed the road back toward the motel.

He’d spent some time studying the horse whisperers. The famous one, Monty Roberts, once got a deer to follow him over miles and miles of open country. It took patience, but the main thing the man did was
never
pursue the deer. He made it so that the deer wanted to pursue him. The animal never felt threatened. And Landry had learned that to walk away would very often lead his intended target to him.

It did this time, too. She fell into step beside him. Landry smiled.

She repeated the line she’d used before. “How long will it take for me to find out what you’re up to?”

“What I’m up to?”

She continued to keep her eyes forward. He walked fast, but she had no trouble keeping up. Expensive shoes with sensible heels: practical. They took the sidewalk on the four-lane bridge spanning the riverbed. It was well past eight and there were few cars on the bridge at this time of the morning. The clean soap scent of her followed the breeze—sometimes strong, sometimes faint, sometimes non-existent.

“So what do you think?” Landry asked, walking faster.

“What do I think about what?” She had to take a fast stutter step every now and then to keep up with him. He was tall and had long legs—no one said life was fair. “You’re a cop.”

Landry said nothing, but increased the pace. She took faster stutter steps.

“Who are you with? Sheriff’s or PD?”

He said nothing.

“Or an outside agency?” She stopped, wiped at a bead of sweat on her cheek. Beautiful. Even the sweat bead was beautiful before she mashed it with her beautiful finger. He noticed her nails. Deep purple, engraved with turquoise
fleurs-de-lis
.

Landry stopped as well. She was tall, but he was taller. She tipped her face up to him and he felt the thrill again, only this time it wasn’t in his stomach, but in his groin. A thrill down deep in the muddy bottom silt of him.

“I’m retired,” he said.

She came closer, mashed up close against him, lifted a manicured hand and touched him.

Landry felt the thrill. It was like a short, sweet carnival ride. He felt a lot of things. But the one that screamed at the top of its lungs was the wire. It thrummed like a guitar string all the way up his body.

“Where’d you say your motel was?” she said.

It was great and it was awful.

Thrilling and stupefying.

She hit every note.

There was one moment he thought he’d been devoured and what little remained had been left by the side of the road for the buzzards.

At first it was brilliant. Stimulating. Beyond stimulating. Then it passed the point of pleasure to wanting it to be enough to waiting for it to be over. His own pride was his worst enemy. She kept at him. He lost count of the hours, which could only be marked by the moving bar of sunshine across the bed.

They were too loud.
She
was too loud. Like she had something to prove. In the fifth inning, he was starting to dislike her. At the bottom of the ninth, he hated her.

He was lucky to have made it to the seventh-inning stretch. By that time he was running purely on pride.

He couldn’t stand the stink, even if it was arousing. The sweetness of her fresh-soap skin cloyed. It gave a clean soap smell a bad name.

And it was no fun to feel like a pile driver, looking into the eyes of not just a stranger, but an alien.

Her eyes changed from time to time. There was lust, yes. Unquenchable lust. But also contempt. Cold contempt. He had misjudged her. She’d presented someone else to him, cool and composed, attractive and . . . normal. But now, her eyes were like fixed turquoise stones in her head, her face a mask of incredible but virulent beauty.

His body hurt. It didn’t want to go again, but again and again she picked at him. Nasty words, contempt, belittlement—switched out with the most ridiculous of compliments, heaps of praise. A wheelbarrowful of praise like heaped roses, once beautiful, now fading, damp, smelling of the dirt and decay. The smell of the grave.

A supernatural experience.

She wanted to go again, and again. It challenged his manhood, it challenged who and what he was, because he knew she was willing him to fail.

When she’d shucked her clothes, they could not wait to get at each other: a windfall. A gift. And then there were the repeat performances, three strikes and he was out. After that there was the contempt. Icy.

He’d once ridden a horse who would not submit, and to his great shame he rode that horse and rode him and rode him and rode him until it stopped, head down, sweat dripping from its hide, and gave up. Just gave up and gave out.

Now he felt like that horse.

And her screaming. It felt playacted, but he knew she was enjoying herself. Had to be. But there had been knocks on the door. There had been voices outside on the walkway. There had been banging on the wall. And muttered comments he could hear: “This is a family motel.”

Landry didn’t believe in shame—he’d dumped that Catholic idea long ago when he had to go and kill people in a foreign country.

But he felt it now.

He felt hollowed out, cored.

Finally, she fell into a deep sleep. Hours later, she still slept. The sleep of the fulfilled, the slightest smile on her lips.

Landry couldn’t sleep, though.

He wanted to get away from her. So he took a long, hot shower followed by a long, cold shower, and pulled on his clothes. He looked through her purse and found her service weapon and FBI creds. Her full name was Carla Angela Vitelli.

Then he went for a walk.

A long one.

When he returned, she was gone. There was just the smell of sex. And underneath, the smell of rage.

He’d gotten nothing out of her on Jolie’s disappearance or where she was in the investigation. And he’d left a lot on the field.

He walked back to the donut place. The FBI car was gone.

He didn’t go back inside. Half of him thought she might be waiting there, some sort of weird sexual ambush.

What did she want from him? He couldn’t figure it out. She had told him nothing. Was she working the case, the missing persons case of Jolie Burke? How did he show up on her radar? How had she made him? Did she connect him with Jolie Burke in some way, or was he just cannon fodder? He’d kept in good shape, and maybe he gave off
some kind of vibe. It had happened before. But not with an FBI agent.

She had targeted him for some
reason
.

He should have paid attention. He should have caught on much, much sooner.