A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (28 page)

     
She slapped her palm gently on the table. "Cash, was Jesús the father? Was that why you never helped Elena name the baby?"

     
Wheeler stood, dropping the phone to the tabletop. He swayed, then recovered. For an instant, his face revealed nothing but pain and fear—but just as quickly his expression softened. He clasped the phone one last time, held it to his mouth, and whispered, "Tell Serena the drawing's from me."

     
Then he turned his back on Sylvia. Within seconds he was gone. Alone, she pressed the inmate's drawing against the hard tabletop.

     
. . . sketch a man—a self-portrait if you want
.

     
He'd sketched a forlorn little man—almost a stick figure—trapped inside a rectangle. Arms and legs were extended, and they pressed against each of the four corners. The face had only two features—wide black eyes. There was no mouth at all. He'd initialed it as requested: C.W.

I
NFRASTRUCTURE IN JUÁREZ
was crumbling in comparison with its sister city, El Paso. Streets were scarred with potholes, reconstruction projects slow or nonexistent, traffic patterns chaotic. The primary colors of Mexico—red, yellow, magenta, cyan—were splashed across buildings, clothing, and billboards like an endless rainbow. The sounds this side of the border were cacophonous—horns, engines without mufflers, bells and whistles, music and voices. The smells were a rich brew of pollution, raw sewage, grease and food, and whatever else the heat cooked out.

     
Matt winced when Victor swerved sharply to avoid a bus pulling into traffic from a frontage lane. Victor didn't seem to notice his passenger's distress; he waved a cautionary hand at the bus driver and then sped ahead. At the intersection, he turned onto another boulevard—Avenida Abraham Lincoln—passing a massive ten-story skeleton of steel beams that rose into the skyline like the hulk of a neoteric dinosaur watching over the city.

     
"Monument to the drug lords," Victor said. As Matt studied the naked structure from his window, Victor explained: "Construction started in the mideighties. It was a project to launder drug money. That particular
patrón
got busted, died, or just disappeared."

     
"No more
dinero?
"

     
"A waste of perfectly good steel. There are others like it in this city." Victor braked for a red light. "If your dead man is Paco Fortuna, then Amado ordered the hit on his own cousin."

     
Matt massaged the base of his neck with one hand. "I can think of plenty of reasons to shut up a runaway bookkeeper."

     
The light changed, but Victor was caught up in his thoughts. Behind the taxi, horns blared. Victor shifted into gear, and the car crept slowly forward. He asked, "So what did Paco have on Amado? Political payoffs? New distributors in the U.S.? A second set of books? They all keep them because the
chingados
can't trust each other as far as they can spit."

     
"A money trail?" Matt leaned forward in the seat as if his body would propel the vehicle through the intersection. He realized that Victor Vargas was testing him.

     
Victor raised his eyebrows. "A money trail would be helpful," he said mildly. "We've never been able to follow his cash." The speedometer hovered at fifteen kilometers per mile. A massive truck careened past, and the trucker mouthed something unpleasant.

     
Matt spoke casually. "Paco Fortuna's carotid artery was sliced, and he was left to drain out."

     
"
¿Sí?
" Victor nodded.

     
"Does that sound like one of Amado's hits?" Matt watched the other man; from the corner of his eyes he saw the outside world moving by. They were on a wide boulevard lined with modest shops and apartments. The city was a socioeconomic jigsaw puzzle with barrios, middle-class neighborhoods, and mansions side by side.

     
Vargas's eyes were suspended in the rearview mirror. "What does E.P.I.C. say?"

     
Matt took a guess. "The killer is a cop."

     
"Why do you say that?" Vargas's voice was icy.

     
"That's not what I say; it's what
you
say. You don't trust me as far as you can throw me." Matt laughed uneasily. "Come on, Victor, you're not dead yet."

     
"I'm not worried about dying by your hand, but I am concerned about stories getting into the wrong ears." Victor's frown was cryptic. He turned the taxi down a series of winding streets, passing cul-de-sacs, parks, and houses that gained square footage with each block.

     
Matt turned, gazing out the passenger window. Here the houses were massive and set close together, most with adjoining walls, all with metal grillwork or thick security walls. Huge satellite dishes glared over walls. Driveways and garages were stocked with Mercedes, Porsches, and fun buggies. Four prime British roadsters were parked behind iron gates at the end of one cobblestone drive. As Victor slowed to navigate a sharp corner, the screech of mynah birds and parrots echoed from within a glass atrium. Security increased with each block: six-foot-high walls embedded with broken glass gave way to twelve-foot-high walls topped with deadly razor ribbon. Armed guards leaned languorously against grilled gates. They watched the taxi through half-shut eyelids.

     
Victor said, "I wouldn't mind this so much except these people have robbed my country blind."

     
Matt shook his head and murmured, "Damn, that wall must've cost a year of my salary." Two rancheros caught his eye; they were wearing dirty, misshapen clothes, smoking small black cigarillos, and walking a groomed and pedigreed miniature poodle.

     
Victor turned another corner, and Matt saw the greenish-brown sea of a golf course visible behind ornate mansions. "Want to test your handicap?" Victor asked, pointing a finger at an impressive blue-glassed skyscraper in the distance that seemed to loom over the golf course. "Amado Fortuna keeps an office in the penthouse. That way he can watch over his home turf from behind a desk." Victor guided the taxi left as the road forked.

     
"So we're in Amado's neighborhood?"

     
"Look up, my friend."

     
The wall was at least eighteen feet high. It was constructed of plaster in places, stone in others, and it went on and on, curving around acres of land. Twenty acres? Twenty-five? After about a quarter mile, massive wooden gates interrupted the wall. The gates were open, revealing a ten-inch crack of space. Through the opening, Matt saw an old ranchero with a shotgun eyeballing him. Behind the ranchero, a naked gravel yard seemed to stretch for miles. In the distance, low buildings ran parallel to the wall. A stable, maybe? A garage?

     
"Paco lived here, too?"

     
"No. He just worked here. At his cousin's city estate. That's the barracks for Amado's private army. He lands his helicopter inside." Victor spoke in a low voice. He kept the taxi moving at a crawl, his eyes locked on the road. "And he's touchy about sightseers." Two minutes later he pulled up at a stop sign. The wall was still to their left. The main boulevard was directly in front of them, and beyond the road an empty lot shimmered with broken glass.

     
Victor raised the dark muzzle of an automatic and pointed it discreetly at Matt. He said, "Get out."

     
"Are you fucking crazy?" Matt saw that the curious ranchero was on his way out to the street, drawn toward the idling taxicab.

     
Victor ordered Matt out of the taxi a second time—in Spanish. "
Ya salte o te mato
." Get out now, or I'll kill you.

     
Matt believed Victor Vargas; he didn't know the man well enough to disbelieve him. He opened the door of the taxi and stepped into the street. The ranchero was outside the gates now, standing hesitantly with a cigarillo dangling from between his lips, watching.

     
Matt stared at the drug lord's fortress. From this vantage point, the wall continued into infinity in either direction. Every three hundred feet, turrets rose into the sky. And now he could see the rooftops of the main house—Moorish domes, finished in turquoise, white shell, and gold mosaic. Above a chapel roof, a gold cross stabbed the sky.

     
Here lived a man so rich and powerful he could own his own private path to God.

     
Matt tried to absorb what he was seeing—a billion-dollar fortune, another monument to total corruption. A flash of light caught his eye.

     
He said, "Those are gun turrets."

     
Victor Vargas glanced out the driver's window of the taxi. "
Sí
. I'd say an AK-47 has a bead on you right this minute.
Adiós, amigo
." He slammed the sedan into gear and accelerated down the street and around the corner.

     
The ranchero watched the taxi disappear. Then he tossed his cigarillo to the ground, wrapped his fingers around the stock of the shotgun, and began striding slowly toward Matt.

     
"Fuck," Matt whispered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

S
YLVIA WAS TALL
, but she had to lift her chin to address the turbaned security guard who occupied the hospital hallway just outside Serena's room. "Who are you?"

     
"Khalsa."

     
Sylvia reached for the doorknob located somewhere behind the guard's substantial waist. He didn't budge. His dark blue uniform was equipped with various clipons: radio, beeper, cellular phone. A holster—with gun—hung off his belt. Sylvia set her hands on her hips.

     
"Are you keeping me out, Khalsa? Who put you here?"

     
"You first, ma'am. May I see some I.D.?"

     
Sylvia shrugged and pulled her hospital badge from her pocket. She clipped it to her cotton sweater. "I'm her doctor."

     
"I know about you, Dr. Strange." The guard shifted from the door.

     
"What am I,
famous
?"

     
He laughed. "No, ma'am."

     
Sylvia said, "Noelle Harding, right?" She walked past him without waiting for a response.

     
Serena was seated in a chair by the window. Cool blue sunlight washed over her face and shoulders, coating her hair with a blue-black sheen, bringing out the olive tones in her brown skin. Her head was bowed, hands clasped in her lap. Her narrow shoulders hunched forward expectantly. She looked scrawny in the new turquoise T-shirt Sylvia had purchased for her. She also looked much older than ten.

     
The child glanced up at Sylvia, her eyes flickering with recognition. Then she returned her attention to her vigil. Was she waiting for the dark-haired attacker to return and finish what he'd started?

     
Sylvia remembered an earlier vigil—only four days ago?—when she had found Serena perched in her study window. That night, the tension had been palpably brittle. At this moment, there was a stillness to the child, a concentration that belied fear.

     
Was she praying? Sylvia suspected Serena's spiritual leaning bordered on the fanatical. It made sense that a child who wasn't talking to humans would establish an intimate dialogue with an archetypal figure—a saint, a goddess, someone who would act as a channel for her emotional energy.

     
Sylvia supported that dialogue—as long as it didn't overwhelm Serena. From a therapist's standpoint, that was the kicker—judging whether a spiritual experience crossed the line of "normalcy" to become delusional or psychotic.

     
Sylvia's muscles gave an involuntary shiver. Outside the glass, the Santa Fe sun shone hot and cold; the burning orange globe disappeared behind a blanket of gray clouds. She positioned the only other chair in the room so it was about three feet from Serena and the window.

     
It would be best to stay in the room for the morning session. The child didn't seem to be bothered by the guard's presence; most likely, she welcomed the protection.

     
Sylvia had known Serena for one week. Without the benefit of verbal clarification, the child's actions had sometimes appeared bizarre. But in retrospect, Serena had demonstrated irrefutable logic—she had hidden like a hunted animal, she had attempted to bury her trail at Nellie Trujillo's home, she had stowed away in Sylvia's truck—all the while very probably eluding a flesh-and-blood predator.

     
And, finally, she had led Sylvia to Paco's body—and the photograph of Cash Wheeler and Elena Cruz.

     
It was only logical to accept a guard outside the door.

     
Sylvia spoke softly to the child. "Are you praying? Do you have someone you talk to?"

     
A quick look of acknowledgment crossed the child's features.

     
"Can you show me who it is?" Sylvia asked. "Can you draw me a picture?"

     
Seemingly unsure, Serena shook her head.

     
Sylvia didn't appear fazed. She simply said, "Someday, if you feel like sharing that with me . . . I'd like to know."

     
She opened her briefcase and pulled out Cash Wheeler's initialed stick-figure drawing. Without offering any explanation, she set the page on the window ledge, directly in the child's view. Serena glanced at the paper but she showed no visible reaction. Sylvia hid any disappointment—what had she expected?—reaching once again into the briefcase to produce her father's copy of Grimms as well as a small tape recorder.

     
When Sylvia pressed
PLAY
, the tape began to roll, the whine of gears barely audible. She set the machine on the floor by her feet. And she opened the book. Over several days, Serena had heard the tale of the Six Swans several times. Now they were once again at the story's last act.