I shook my head. I wiped rain from my eyes. I told myself to think of what was noble, good, and true. The vision faded, but the screams remained. I had to stop the screams this time. I started up the trail, and with my first step out into the open, a strange sense of peace descended. This was what I had been created to do. This was who I was and who I would continue to be in whatever time was left to me without Haley. It wasn’t about a death wish. On the contrary, life at last had regained meaning, even if the end of life was imminent. Climbing that path, knowing bullets might slam into me at any instant, I was happy for the first time since I lost my wife. I still had a purpose, after all. I was useful. It felt like I was going home.
49
I reached the cabin. I assumed a position with my back to the wall beside the door. Since nobody had killed me, they must have assumed Nuñez would intercept anyone who came along the path. They must have felt safe devoting their attention exclusively to Olivia. Rain sheeting off the overhanging roof cascaded down before me. Just inside I heard her begging for mercy. I heard two voices, one male and one female. The female laughed and said something. When Olivia screamed again, I went through the door.
Medallion was very fast. He had his weapon out of its holster within half a second and was already raising it when I reached him, my M9 about a foot away and aimed between his eyes. I said, “Stop.”
He froze, his sidearm pointed toward my knees.
I said, “Raise it even slightly, and you’re dead. Just open your fingers and let it fall.”
His eyes were focused on the small hole at the end of my M9’s barrel as he did exactly what I said. I stepped back out of his reach and said, “Kick it toward me.”
As his foot sent the weapon sliding across the plywood floor, I heard a woman cursing his stupidity. Looking past him, I saw Olivia. She had been strapped in a standing position to a folding ladder with masking tape at her ankles, waist, and chest. The legs of the ladder had been bolted to the floor. Her head was bowed, and her long black hair hung loosely down, obscuring her face. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, and both of her hands were covered with blood. It dripped freely from her fingers into twin pools on the floor beside her feet.
Standing beside Olivia, holding a bloody knife, was her torturer. With my M9 leveled at Medallion, I said, “Move away from her, Doña Elena.”
Instead of moving away, Doña Elena Montes stepped behind the ladder where she had bound Olivia and laid the knife’s edge against the carotid artery in Olivia’s neck.
I pointed the M9 toward her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “If I fire from here, there’s no way I could miss.”
“Maybe,” said the movie star. “Or maybe you’ll hit your girlfriend by accident. And even if you hit me, there’s no way I won’t cut her on my way down.”
It was probably true. I glanced around the room. A pair of cots with sleeping bags had been moved into the shack, and along one wall stood a large ice chest and some cardboard boxes filled with groceries. A butane camping lantern on a folding table cast the only light across the room. They must have visited the shack earlier to prepare it, bringing up camping gear and food. It explained the muddy Navigator.
I said, “Are you planning on a long stay?”
“As long as it takes. Drop your gun, or I’ll slice her pretty neck.”
“Do that and there won’t be anything to stop me from firing.”
Medallion lunged toward me. I spun and shot him in the gut. He fell to the floor with a groan.
When I turned back toward Doña Elena, she was smiling at me beautifully. There was a small splatter of Olivia’s blood on her forehead. She tucked herself more carefully behind Olivia and said, “It seems we have a stalemate.”
With Medallion on the floor, I lowered my weapon, hoping it would make Doña Elena careless.
She said, “I thought the police arrested you.”
“They did.”
She glanced between the ladder rungs toward Medallion, then back up at me.
I said, “If you’re hoping Special Agent Nuñez will come to the rescue, forget it. I took him out on my way up here.”
Lowering my weapon had worked. She exposed more of her face to me, peering over Olivia’s shoulder and thrusting out her lower lip to pout while she still held the knife at Olivia’s throat.
Her voice changed, became younger, like a little girl’s. “I need someone to help me, Malcolm. Someone who can take care of me. Finish that one off and go kill the other one. I’ll kill her. We can go away together. Rio. Buenos Aires. Paris. Anywhere you want. I have a lot of money, Malcolm. Millions and millions. I’ll share it all with you. I just need somebody big and strong and smart to tell me what to do.”
“You kill too many people. Those two cops were walking away. You could have let them live.”
“But they recognized me, silly. Everybody recognizes me.”
“Olivia,” I said, “can you hear me?”
Olivia’s head hung loosely, but she nodded just a little.
“Did you tell her where the money is?”
She shook her head, and a wave of relief passed over me.
I said, “Way to go.”
“That’s enough!” screamed Doña Elena. “Shut up or I’ll slice her!”
“You won’t do that,” I said. “She’s the only link you have to the money.”
She screamed at the top of her lungs. “You think I can’t get my money back without her? You think I’m too stupid to do that?”
She was slipping into some kind of psychosis. I recognized the symptoms well, having seen them in my own mirror. It meant Olivia wasn’t safe, even though killing her would mean Doña Elena wouldn’t get her money. I had to distract the woman.
I said, “Of course I don’t think you’re stupid. You fooled everyone. Arturo, Alejandra, the police, the congressman, the press. I think you play the sex-symbol airhead role so well, people almost always underestimate you. But I also think Olivia is smart enough to hide that money where you’d never find it.”
Doña Elena went back to her little girl voice. “I’ll bet you know where it is. I’ll bet you could help me. If you did, I’d be very grateful.”
“Maybe we can work something out. Why don’t you tell me how you got the money in the first place?”
“Oh, that’s such an old, boring story. Let’s not dwell on the past.”
“When Arturo told you he had hired Alejandra from the travel agency to be his personal assistant, you suspected something. You were smarter than he was. That’s why you looked into her background.”
Doña Elena said, “You don’t know anything about it.”
“I think I do,” I said. “I think you did what Arturo should have done. You were so much smarter than he was. You had Alejandra checked out. You found out she was from Cobán, and her father was one of the disappeared.”
“You think you understand me? You’re pathetic, just like every other man.”
“Are you saying you didn’t run a background check on her?”
“Of course I did.”
“And then what happened?”
“You’re so smart. You tell me.”
“Okay. I figure Arturo never admitted he had left Guatemala with a fortune, not even to you. All those millions, and he wouldn’t even tell you, his own wife, that he really had the money. I think you had a right to that money. Or at least half of it. I think that’s all you really wanted. Just your fair share, right? But he wouldn’t give it to you, even though half of it was really yours. Isn’t that how it was?”