Guardian of Lies (3 page)

Emerson rolled his chair back toward the desk. He knew the only thing that would pull her out of this mood was another full-court press on one of his credit cards. It was beginning to drive him crazy.

“Why are you looking at the pictures again?” she asked.

“Just curious.”

“About what?”

“I’m interested in your family.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you, and I want to know everything there is to know about you.” He almost said it with conviction.

“Uh-huh. You keep looking at the pictures and wanting to know who the people are. You ask me about my mother and her family. How she came from Cuba and what she’s doing in Colombia. You have a lot of questions for someone who is just curious,” said Katia.

“If it bothers you, I’ll stop.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I begin to think that maybe the way we met was no accident.”

“What are you saying?”

She thought about it quickly and decided this was not wise.

“It’s just that I don’t understand. What are you looking for in the pictures?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“You’re looking for nothing? Then you’re wasting a lot of time. If you tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help you.”

She fixed him with her piercing dark brown eyes.

“You said you didn’t know any of the people in the photographs,” he said.

“That’s true.”

“It’s not important. There’s no reason for us to argue about it.”

He’d believed her when she told him she knew none of the people in the photographs, or where the pictures had been taken. According to Katia she had never been to Colombia. This seemed strange since her mother claimed to have relatives there and she visited them at least once a year. But she never took her daughter, nor, according to Katia, did she take any of the rest of her family from Costa Rica. Why? Emerson thought he knew the reason. It was in the pictures.

“Tell me the truth. You are looking for something or someone in those photographs. Tell me what it is? Maybe if you tell me, it will make sense to me. And then maybe I can help you.” Katia was determined to find out what it was. Increasingly she felt that Emerson was a threat, to her, and perhaps to her family.

“I told you. I’m just curious.”

“Yes, because you love me. You want to know everything about my family. I know, you told me.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it. Listen, why don’t we go watch a movie in the video room?”

“I don’t want to watch a movie.” She sat there in a slow burn. “I want to know why you’re always looking at those pictures. And don’t change the subject.”

“I told you the reason. Tell you what. Why don’t I put the photographs away if it upsets you? I won’t look at them anymore. The pictures are none of my business. I’m sorry I ever looked at them. If it upsets you, then I will not look at them again.”

What was he hiding?

“You’re right. It’s none of your business,” she told him. The Latin temper was starting to kick in. Emerson could feel the heat rising in the room.

“You looked in my camera.” It was a sore point with Katia because Pike had taken it and uploaded the pictures without asking her. Then, by mistake, he’d put the camera someplace where she couldn’t find it when they left for the States.

“I never told you you could go through my stuff and mess with my camera.”

“I bought you a new camera when we got here, didn’t I?”

“Yes. But you had no business going through my things without asking me.”

“I was trying to surprise you,” said Emerson. This has been the line since she caught him with the pictures in his computer. That he was planning on surprising her with glossy pictures of her family members as a gift.

Katia wasn’t buying it. True, her mother took the pictures and there were supposed to be some family members in them, but Katia didn’t know a single one of them. She had never been to Colombia, and she told Emerson that. These people meant nothing to her and he knew it. “You had them printed out without even asking.” The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. He was nosing around her family. He may have been sending them money, but he was still an outsider.

“Don’t get angry, Katia.”

“And don’t tell me what to do. Those are not your photographs. They belong to my mother. You had no right to take them.”

“Fine, here. They’re yours. Take them.” Emerson leaned back in his chair, both hands up as if to surrender.

Katia didn’t hesitate. She scooped the photos up and turned her back as she assembled them.

Pike didn’t care. If retrieving the glossy printouts kept her quiet, fine. As long as she didn’t tell him to erase the downloaded photo files from his laptop, what difference did it make? And by now there were digital copies in several places. Pike’s laptop was configured for global travel. Once connected to the Internet, his home e-mail opened from anywhere in the world. Before they had even flown north, Pike had forwarded the digital images from Katia’s camera to a laboratory in Virginia for enhancement and analysis. If all went well, the results should be back any day.

The only picture Katia didn’t get when she grabbed them from the desk was the one Emerson had slid under the magazine. This was a shot he had enlarged and cropped to better see something in the background. He thought he knew what it was, but he wasn’t sure. He tried to enhance it using consumer software. He could make out only a few details—lines and part of a circle. But because of the angle at which the original picture was taken it was impossible to make out anything else. None of the lettering or dimensions on the diagram in the photo could even be seen, much less read. But Emerson had a hunch as to what it was, and who the old man was too. They were the reason he kept going back to the photos.

Katia stood with her back to him, on the other side of the desk. He could tell by the way she stood, stiff, that she was still riding a wave of anger.

Unless he could patch this up, she would not be sleeping with him tonight. This would raise logistical problems: how to keep an eye on her without locking her up so she wouldn’t rabbit. Once the lab report on the photos came back, if what he suspected was true, she would be someone else’s problem. But until then, he wanted to keep her close. She was part of the genetic chain, and blood is thicker than water.

He waited a few seconds, then got up out of the chair and walked slowly around the desk until he stood behind her. He put his hand on her shoulder. Katia jerked and pulled away.

“Katia, please. Don’t be angry with me. I didn’t realize that I was upsetting you. Please forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” she said. “When are we going home?”

“A few more days.”

Why? she thought. What was he waiting for?

She studied his face for a moment. It was impossible to read what was going on behind those eyes. He would tell her in a few days or a week now, but he would tell her anything to keep her here, to keep her quiet. He was lying and she knew it.

A single tear shimmered slowly down her cheek, like mercury running down a piece of silk.

Once over the fence, “Muerte Liquida” moved swiftly across the grass and slipped between the bushes at the side of the house. A thick row of camellias now shielded him from anyone who might be wandering in the yard or near the wrought-iron fence behind him.

He moved through the shadows toward the back of the house and climbed the steps two at a time. Halfway up he stopped. He reached out with a gloved hand and felt the deep, almost rutted, grain of the smooth fiberglass surface on what appeared to be the wooden handrail of the stairs. The entire exterior of the house, from the siding to the railings, every detail, was made of exquisitely fashioned fiberglass, all of it molded and shaped by artists who knew their craft. Whoever had done the finish probably worked at one of the Hollywood studios. It was all designed for illusion.

He climbed to the top of the steps. Once on the deck at the back of the house, he could see the broken balustrade. It completed the false impression of disrepair. The gap in the railing at the edge of the deck was covered by a clear sheet of acrylic, forming a solid barrier for safety. Unless the acrylic caught the glint of the sun or you were within a few feet, you would never see it.

It took him less than thirty seconds using a set of picks from his pocket to work the pins in the cylinder of the dead bolt at the back door. Using a tiny tension wrench and a pick, he aligned the pins along the sheer point inside the lock, and turned the cylinder until the dead bolt snapped open. In less than a minute he was inside and into the darkened pantry.

Liquida knew the routine. The owner was a bachelor. The maid and the cook came and went, neither of them lived in. The maid came three days a week and always left by four in the afternoon. The cook was there each day, from just before breakfast until just after dinner. Without exception she was always gone by seven thirty in the evening.

It was now just after ten at night, which meant that only the owner and his single houseguest were at home. The woman was part of his contract, but only because she was at the house with the old man. He knew about her from the photographs taken with a telephoto lens.

The presence of the woman complicated things, but only slightly. They had to be taken separately, without a sound and in different rooms. Otherwise, he ran the risk that one of them might get to a phone or a door, or worse, a loaded gun. No one had told him to expect firearms, but he had to assume there might be one, perhaps more. It went with the turf, the nature of the old man’s business.

He stood stone still, listening for sounds, the hum of a motor in the kitchen, and something else, maybe a fan, an exhaust vent somewhere. In the distance he could hear voices, faint, almost muted. He couldn’t be sure, but they sounded as if they were coming from somewhere upstairs.

He glanced around the corner of the door into the kitchen. There was no one there, but there were two dirty dishes on the counter, small dessert plates, forks, and coffee cups. They must have had a late-night snack. The motor he’d heard from the pantry was the dishwasher. It was chugging away.

Even though the nearest house was a hundred yards away, Liquida moved in a crouch, low, beneath the line of windows over the sink. He saw what he needed on the countertop of the island in the center of the kitchen. It was a hard wooden block with slots and the handles of eight knives were sticking out of it. He had his own, a folding survival knife with a razor-sharp blade. But he loved to use what was at hand, to make it look as if the murders were the result of a botched burglary.

Down on one knee he reached up over the top of the counter and with a gloved hand sampled the cutlery. He pulled one out and then another until he finally settled on a ten-inch chef’s knife. It had a needle-sharp point and a solid wooden handle that matched all the others. When the cops found it they would know where it came from. He could tell by the swirls in the metal that the blade was high-carbon steel. He tested it with his gloved finger. The cook, no doubt, kept the edge honed to a sharp finish.

He moved away from the bright lights of the kitchen and down the dark hallway toward the living room and the front of the house. He knew from the floor plan that the stairs were to his left. The voices upstairs were now growing louder. He could make out a few words. They were arguing over something. The woman wasn’t shouting, but there was a definite edge of anger in her tone.

Liquida strained to listen, trying to pick up the threads of the conversation on the second floor. Perhaps it was for this reason that he didn’t see the maid until he rounded the corner and faced the foot of the stairs. At first sighting, his eyes opened like saucers. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She had her back to him and was walking the other way, down the hall toward the dining room. Liquida froze in place, then tried to lean back into the shadows of the hall. At the last second, before he could retreat, the maid turned and saw him. She must have sensed the motion behind her.

For a split second she stood there, a quizzical expression on her face, wondering who he was, or, perhaps more to the point, what he was.

Liquida’s appearance often had this effect, for he wore a hooded lightweight neoprene wet suit to easily rinse the blood off. He closed the distance in an instant, and before breath could carry sound from her body, his gloved left hand was over her mouth.

A stream of warm blood ran like a river from her abdomen down over the handle of the knife and the neoprene diving glove on his right hand. From the vigorous pulsing he knew it had severed a main artery. He kept his hand to her mouth until her knees buckled, her body convulsing.

“Woman, what are you doing here at this hour?” he whispered in her ear. Liquida did not kill from wanton disregard. It was his business. He harvested people in the way a farmer harvests crops, because he was paid to do it. When fate placed a life under his knife because of the vagaries of chance, there was always regret. The fate of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The maid had stumbled into death in a cosmic collision between time and space.

She went limp in his arms. He looked straight into her eyes, her pupils open like the lens of a camera. Her full weight was now completely supported by the handle of the knife wedged in her body. He eased her to the floor and slid out the knife.

At this moment Katia had but a single thought as she looked at Emerson across the green felt inlay of his desk. It was strewn with more than two dozen gold coins of different sizes and shapes. Some of them were clearly hammered and stamped by hand. There were gold escudos from the old Inca mines of Peru and double eagles from the SS
Central America
that had sunk off the East Coast of the U.S. in 1857. They glinted in the muted light of the large study.

In the morning he would go a few miles away to La Jolla to see his client. He would take Katia with him and make her sit in the car and wait. He had done this before. If she was lucky he might give her a few dollars and tell her to go shopping. But the cash he gave her was never enough to go far.