Guardian of Lies (4 page)

He had already loaded most of the coins he would take tomorrow into a small sample case on the floor near the desk. They were valuable just for their gold content. They were worth much more to collectors. She had heard Emerson talk about this. Other coins encased in two plastic sheets lay scattered, off to the side of the desk, near the phone and the needle-sharp letter opener that some might have mistaken for a replica of a Byzantine dagger. Katia knew better, because he had told her. The dagger was real, fashioned from the finest Damascus steel and dating to the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century. Emerson Pike had paid more than forty thousand dollars for the piece at a Christie’s auction three years ago. This was supposed to mean something to her, but it didn’t, other than the fact that Emerson Pike had more money than he could use.

“I’m sorry I was so angry,” she said. “I don’t know why. I think I am just tired.”

With the very suggestion he yawned. “Of course you are. Listen, I’m going to take a shower, try to wake myself up so that I can finish up here. Then I’m going to come to bed. Why don’t you go on ahead of me? I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

He put his hands on Katia’s shoulders once more. This time she did not pull away. Now was not the time to provoke him. Let him continue to believe.

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, called her “sweetie.”

She hated it when he called her that. It reminded her of Tweety, the stupid yellow bird in a cage in the cartoons. Still she gave him a smile, the full twinkle job. Two could play this game.

“You’re right,” she said. “I am tired. But first I want to get a glass of milk. Do you want anything more?”

“After that meal? You have to be kidding. I’m stuffed. Why, I’m falling asleep. But it was delicious. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not a good cook,” said Emerson.

“I won’t.”

He yawned once more, stood there, and smiled at her.

She could tell by the satisfied look on his face that Emerson believed she was back in the fold, at least for now. He would be fondling his ego in the shower, having won another battle. Emerson thought that at least there would be no need for separate bedrooms and the locked doors that could follow.

Katia turned and headed out of the study, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor until she reached the plush carpet of the hallway outside. Emerson followed her. Katia turned toward the top of the stairs that descended to the first floor. Emerson headed the other way, toward the master bedroom and the shower. “See you in a few minutes, sweetie.”

“Yes.” She could tell that the jaunty bounce was gone from his stride. Still, Katia was afraid that with the coffee and the shower Emerson would revive himself. It would be a long, uncertain night wondering if he was asleep, afraid each time she moved that he would wake. And by then the coins on his desk might be locked away.

She took two steps down the stairs, then suddenly stopped and turned. She waited as she watched Emerson disappear down the long hallway and into the master bedroom.

For a few seconds Liquida stood over the maid’s body, ten feet from the foot of the stairs. Straddling her, he carefully avoided the spreading pool of blood as he studied the situation. It presented complications, but nothing insurmountable, matters of adjustment to the original plan, little details. Still, they were important if the authorities were to believe what he wanted them to. He worked it out quickly in his head.

Then he heard footsteps coming from upstairs, a woman’s heels on wood and then silence. Only at the last second did he realize she had traversed from the wood to a carpeted surface and was still moving this way and at speed. She was above him, directly behind him in the hallway at the top of the stairs.

He slipped toward the shadows of the dining room, away from the foot of the stairs, and watched. If she saw the maid’s body before he could get to her on the stairs, everything would change. If he had to chase her up the stairs with the bloody knife, he could throw the plan out the window. He would have to torch the house, burn it to the ground to cover the physical evidence. If she screamed and the old man grabbed a gun, the coroner might be rolling his body and not theirs out to the hearse in the morning.

She came into view on the landing above, started down two steps, and then suddenly stopped, as if she’d remembered something. The adrenaline pulsed through his veins. He was sure she saw the body. He gripped the knife. In his mind he was already flying up the stairs to take her until he realized—she wasn’t looking this way. Her attention was drawn to something behind her in the hallway upstairs. She stood there for two or three seconds and then, as suddenly as she’d appeared, she was gone, back up the steps and down the hall.

He waited almost twenty seconds, certain that whatever fleeting distraction caught her attention would soon be dealt with and that she would be likely to return. But she didn’t.

He listened intently. There was nothing but silence. Then he heard the sound of running water drumming on a hard surface somewhere toward the back of the house, a bathtub or a shower. Maybe they were settling in for the night. That would make it much easier.

He retreated silently back down the hall, toward the kitchen. He was dripping blood from the knife on the hall carpet, but it didn’t matter. As long as he didn’t step in it on the way back and track it upstairs everything would be fine.

Katia paused on the stairs, then turned around, headed back up, and entered one of the guest rooms along the hall. Working in the dark, she fished under the bed for the overnight bag, the one with her passport and visa. She ditched her heels, dropped them into the bag, changed her dress for a pair of hip-huggers and a blouse, and then put on a pair of running shoes and a jacket. It broke her heart to leave behind all of the clothes and some of the other things Emerson had bought for her, but there was no way to carry all of it. As it was, the small overnight bag was full.

By the time she was finished, the water from Emerson’s shower had been running full bore for almost five minutes. Without a sound, she crept into the master bedroom. She had carefully thought it all through. This had to be her first stop. He had gone to the ATM that afternoon. She had watched him count the bills before he put them away in his hip pocket. He had left his pants on the bed. She pulled his wallet from the back pocket and quickly counted the cash, two hundred and sixty dollars in twenties along with a few smaller bills. She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew from her search on the Internet that this would be enough, at least for the first part of her journey. She took it all and tossed the empty wallet back onto the bed.

She grabbed Emerson’s cell phone from his belt and, with the overnight bag over her shoulder, headed back down the hall, this time almost at a run. She ducked into the study and went directly to his desk. There she scooped into her bag every loose coin she could reach from the top of the desk. She took both of the plastic sheets with coins and stuffed them into the bag as well.

Then she grabbed a piece of paper, one of Emerson’s embossed letterhead. Her eyes scoured the top of the desk for a pen but there wasn’t one. Typical of Emerson, he had every trinket and toy imaginable on his antique desk except something to write with. She fished in her purse and found a pen and scrawled a quick note in Spanish. She knew that he would be able to read it. Whether he would comply was doubtful.

I am going back home to Costa Rica. I took some coins but only for airfare. Please do not try to follow me. I do not want to see you again. If you come near me, I will call the police.

She signed it with a large letter “K,” dropped the pen on top of the paper, and then grabbed the letter opener, the Byzantine dagger, off the desk and laid it across the top of the note as a paperweight.

He looked at the window over the sink, then checked his watch. He had no choice. He had to move and move quickly. He could not stay below the level of the windows and complete what he had to do. The way he was clad would cause anyone outside who happened to be looking to take immediate notice. He reached around the corner of the door and flipped off the lights in the kitchen. He quickly stepped up to the sink, washed the blood from the knife carefully, making sure that he got it all. Then without taking it off he rinsed the blood from the neoprene diving glove on his right hand as well as from the suit covering his forearm. The instant he was done he stepped away from the windows and back into the hall. He used a small dish towel to dry the gloves, the surface of the suit, and then the knife.

He started down the hall, headed for the unfinished business upstairs.

Zipping up the overnight bag, Katia ran out of the study and back down the long hallway toward the master bedroom and the back of the house. As she passed the door to the master bedroom, she realized suddenly that Emerson had turned off the water in the shower. He would be coming out any second.

She dashed toward the end of the hall, toward the door that led to the back stairs and to the garage below. There was only one more thing she needed. She held the door behind her so that it closed with a gentle click. Then she moved down the steps as quickly and silently as the rubber-soled tennis shoes would carry her.

Emerson would be donning his robe, running a brush through his hair and heading back into the bedroom any moment. Katia knew the routine. She had maybe two minutes, if that. By now she knew every move she had to make. She had thought it out carefully. This was her last chance.

He was halfway up the stairs when the steady sound of running water somewhere at the rear of the house stopped. In the abrupt stillness, Liquida froze in place. In the momentary silence he thought he heard something.

It was a distant and muted whisper of sound, faint, almost imperceptible. Perhaps the brush of a shoe across the deep pile of the carpeted floor somewhere at the other end of the hallway overhead.

He readied the chef’s knife, now clean and bright in his hand, and crouched on the stairs, ready to spring the instant anyone appeared on the landing above. Liquida strained to hear and for several seconds listened motionless on the stairwell. There was a slight creak and then a click. It could have been a switch snapping on or off somewhere at the other end of the hall. Or maybe it was just the house settling, causing it to creak. He listened for several seconds, his gaze trained like a laser on the landing above. There was nothing, no one, no movement. In the silence after the constant sound of the running water, his hearing was playing tricks on him.

He edged toward the top of the stairs and peeked over. He could see all the way to the end of the hall. The long corridor was clear, no one was there. Quickly he ascended to the top of the landing, then moved silently toward what he knew from the floor plan was the old man’s study. This was the nerve center of the house, the place of business. He assumed it was where the voices he’d heard earlier had come from. The lights were still on inside the study. Unless they left the lights on all night, and he had never seen this before, they had not gone to bed.

He approached the study door nearest the stairs. At a distance, perhaps ten feet, he silently darted across the opening. As he did this he gained a quick visual scan inside the study. There was no one at the desk at the far end. Of that he was certain. It was only a fleeting glimpse, but he saw neither the old man nor the woman. If the angel of death was with him, the two would now be in different rooms and he would be able to take them separately and in virtual silence. He made his way to the study door and stole a quick glance inside. The room appeared to be empty, at least from this angle. There were portions of the study’s interior he could not see.

He scanned the catwalk above, the part he could see from the open doorway. Again, there was no one there. He ventured down the hall toward the other study door, the one closer to the bedrooms farther down the corridor. From here he could see the rest of the study and the remaining section of catwalk on the study’s second level.

Katia had long since opted to use the bath near one of the guest rooms down the hall as her private sanctuary for preparation before sleep. So Emerson wasn’t surprised when he stepped from the shower and found himself alone in the master bath. He toweled himself dry and put on his robe, then stood in front of the mirror over the vanity while he ran a comb through his still damp hair. He couldn’t believe how tired he was this evening; the guests for dinner, the tension of dealing with Katia, and the heavy meal, none of which he was used to, had taken their toll.

He examined his face and an ingrown hair in his beard, then turned off the light and headed for the bedroom.

He was half-expecting to see Katia already curled up under the covers. So when he didn’t, it took a second before the image that confronted him registered. She was taking longer than usual to get ready. The room didn’t look any different than it had ten minutes earlier, except for his pants at the bottom of the bed.

Emerson turned and opened the top dresser drawer. He pulled out a pair of boxer shorts while glancing in the mirror over the dresser.

His pants were still there on the end of the bed but were now crumpled in a heap. None of this alarmed him. He seemed groggy until he saw the other item in the mirror, his empty wallet lying open on the bed next to the pants. It was like a shot of adrenaline. Instantly he was awake.

Once in the garage, Katia quietly opened the driver’s side door of Emerson’s big Suburban. She had to stand on the running board to reach the visor over the steering wheel so that she could pull one of the remote controls from where it was clipped. It was the control for the gate out in front. She had seen Emerson use it many times, coming and going.