Santa Fe Edge (17 page)

She hurried across the street and into a building that had a restaurant on the ground floor and a stairway up to galleries on a mezzanine. She ran up the stairs and looked for a way out of the rear of the building. An exit sign over a door drew her, and she opened it to find fire stairs descending to an exterior door. In a moment she was out the rear of the building and into a parking lot that faced the street behind. She ran to the sidewalk and turned up the street in the general direction of where she had parked the car, near the cathedral.

TODD REACHED THE CORNER and surveyed the street, which was not crowded. He couldn’t see her anywhere. He started down the street, looking through the windows of each shop, then crossed and worked his way up the other side, toward the Plaza. She was nowhere to be found.

LAUREN CROSSED THE STREET in front of the cathedral and hurried to where she had parked the green Volvo station wagon. Before she approached the car she checked carefully to be sure the man was not behind her, then she jumped into the car, got it started and pulled into traffic, which was moving slowly because of a stop sign at the end of the block.

She kept checking the rearview mirror, looking for the man, but she didn’t see him. Then it was her turn at the stop sign, and a moment before she was able to turn, she checked the mirror again and saw him come running around the corner into her block.

TODD STOOD ON the bumper of a pickup truck parked on the block, to give himself some more height, and looked up and down the street. The slow-moving traffic was being held up by a stop sign.

He got down from the truck’s bumper and began walking down the middle of the street, checking the driver of each car.

LAUREN TURNED RIGHT AT the stop sign, because that would put her on the opposite side of the car from her pursuer. She forced herself not to do it quickly, because that might attract his attention. Ahead of her was a long, straight stretch of roadway, leading to and crossing a main artery, so she took the first left, then another, then a right, then another right, which she hoped would keep her out of his line of sight.

TODD REACHED THE CORNER just after a green Volvo station wagon made a turn to the right, then drove away. A woman was at the wheel, but all he could see was the back of her head. He began running, but before he could close the distance between them she turned left, and he lost sight of her again. By the time he reached the next corner she had disappeared. The big problem was, he had no idea if the woman in the car was the woman at the Indian market.

LAUREN MADEIT BACK to Canyon Road, then turned onto Garcia Street and pointed the car toward home, constantly checking her mirror. Once home, she pulled into the garage and closed the door behind her. She jumped out of the car and ran into the kitchen, where Teddy was sipping a cup of tea.

“I think I got made,” she said.

“Where?”

“At the jewelry market in front of the Palace of the Governors,” she said. “When he turned his back for a moment I got out of there, but I think he spotted me. Then I lost him for about ten minutes, but he nearly caught up to me in traffic, though he couldn’t have had any idea which car I was in.”

“Do you think the Volvo is blown?” Teddy asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Describe the man.”

“Six feet, a hundred and eighty, short, sandy hair, sort of muscular, like he works out a lot.”

“Did you make eye contact?”

“Once, just for a second, then he turned around and looked at the people behind him. He may have been looking for you.”

Teddy put his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. “He’s lucky I wasn’t there,” he said.

33

B
art Cross woke up at four A.M., shaved, showered and began cleaning up the house. It took him the better part of an hour to make it presentable, then he wiped all the surfaces down with Windex to remove his fingerprints, packed his gear and threw it into the bed of the pickup.

On the front seat were three empty FedEx boxes. Using his super-sharp bowie knife he cut apart two of them and pasted them to the doors of the pickup with two-sided tape. The third box he closed and sealed, and put it back onto the front seat with a clipboard he had bought.

He locked up the place and closed and locked the garage, and by five thirty he was making his way toward Tesuque on dark roads.

He drove up the hill past Ed Eagle’s house and found a perch where he could keep an eye on the place through binoculars, then sat down among the rocks and ate a breakfast he had prepared the night before. At about six thirty he heard a car come up the road, but when he looked down the hill in the dim light he saw nothing.

VITTORIO DROPPED OFF CUPIE at his usual rock, then drove past Eagle’s house and into the rocks, where he normally parked. He was in place by the time the sun began its climb, and he knew that Eagle would appear around a quarter to eight. He pressed the button on the radio. “You okay, Cupie?”

“Yeah,” Cupie responded. “I’ve got my coffee.”

BART KNEW THAT EAGLE arrived at his offices at eight, so he figured him to leave the house fifteen minutes before that. He watched the time carefully. At twenty before eight, he got into the truck, slipped into a navy-blue Windbreaker and matching baseball cap, checked his gun and knife, and started down the hill, coasting, so they wouldn’t hear any engine noise. At precisely a quarter to eight, Bart pulled into the Eagle driveway at the exact moment when Eagle left the house. As Bart got out of the truck, carrying the empty FedEx box and the clipboard, Eagle stopped on his porch to kiss his wife good-bye.

VITTORIO’S ATTENTION was diverted for a moment as he watched a hawk circling in the sky, hunting. When he looked back at the house he was astonished to see a dark pickup truck parked in Eagle’s driveway, and a man in a Windbreaker and baseball cap getting out, as Eagle stood on his front porch, talking with Susannah. Then he saw the FedEx logo on the side of the truck and the box and clipboard the man was carrying, and he relaxed. Just an early FedEx delivery.

BART SMILED to put the two people at ease and walked toward them. “Good morning, Mr. Eagle,” he said. “FedEx delivery for you.”

Eagle turned and faced him, while his wife went back into the house and closed the door. “You’re kind of early, aren’t you?”

“Gotta get the day started,” Bart replied, handing him the clipboard. “Sign on line one, please; first delivery of the day.” He patted his pockets. “Left my pen in the truck.”

“That’s all right,” Eagle said, reaching into an inside pocket. “I’ve got one.”

Now both of Eagle’s hands were occupied, and Bart saw his chance. He whipped the bowie knife out of its scabbard stuck down his pants and swung it in a wide arc at Eagle’s throat, feeling it hit the mark and seeing the blood spurt. Eagle went down on one knee, clutching at his throat, and Bart backhanded him and knocked him to the ground, then ran for the front door.

VITTORIO COULDN’T BELIEVE what he had seen. He drew his gun and his cell phone simultaneously and dialed 911 as he made his way, running, through the rocks and down the hill.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?” the operator asked.

“I need an ambulance and the police. A man has been knifed in the throat and the assailant is in his house, where his wife is.” He gave the address, closed the phone and grabbed his radio. “Cupie, Eagle is down, ambulance on the way. Get up here and be careful; single assailant in the house now!”

BART DREW HIS PISTOL and entered the house, leaving the door open behind him. He saw no one inside. “Mrs. Eagle?” he called. “I have a package for you, too. I need a signature.” He got no response. Holding the gun at his side, he made his way toward where he believed the kitchen would be. Then he heard running footsteps from the driveway outside.

“Ed,” a voice shouted. “Hold this on the wound and apply pressure.”

BART FOUND THE KITCHEN and went out the rear door as fast as he could. He made his way around the corner of the house and peeked at the front porch. Eagle was lying on his back, and whoever had been there must have gone inside. He sprinted for the pickup truck, got it started, backed out and started up the hill, away from Tesuque. In his rearview mirror he saw a fat man huffing and puffing his way up the hill, then he was around a bend and gone.

VITTORIO WENT into the house carefully, his gun drawn. He checked the kitchen, then crept into the living room, which was empty. He was headed toward where he thought the bedrooms would be when he heard the truck start outside and the crunch of tires on gravel. Shit, the guy was gone. “Mrs. Eagle?” he yelled. “Are you all right?”

Susannah Wilde Eagle stepped from a doorway, a pistol held out in front of her, and fired two rounds.

Vittorio was spun around and went down.

CUPIE STOPPED TO CHECK on Eagle, who was breathing and pressing a bloody cloth to his throat. “Hang on, Ed, an ambulance is on the way.” He walked into the house just in time to hear two gunshots. “Oh, shit,” Cupie said aloud. “I hope he hasn’t shot Susannah.”

BART DROVE AS QUICKLY as he safely could over the hill, then turned toward the north side of Santa Fe and made his way on back roads until he crossed under I-25. He traveled south, toward Albuquerque, keeping parallel with but avoiding I-25, where he knew the state patrol might already be looking for the truck. At one point, nearly to Double Eagle Airport, he stopped and pulled the FedEx signs off the truck, called the dealer from whom he had bought the truck and told him he could pick it up from the parking lot at Double Eagle and ship it to L.A., as planned. Then he called Barbara.

“Yes?”

“It’s done.”

“You’re sure he’s dead?”

“I cut his throat and left him bleeding out on his front porch.”

“What about the woman?”

“Problem there. She went back into the house. I followed her in, but turns out Eagle had two men, those P.I.s, watching the house. I got out just in time, but I heard shooting from inside. I don’t know who fired or got shot.”

“Do the P.I.s know who you are?”

“They don’t know my name, and only one of them, the Indian, has seen me.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m nearly to Double Eagle. I’ll ditch the car and be in the air in twenty minutes.”

“Call me when you’re back in town.” She hung up, and so did he.

He drove the last mile to Double Eagle, got his gear out of the truck and wiped the vehicle down with Windex, then hurried to the ramp where his airplane was parked. He’d already paid for his fuel and parking, and he wasn’t going to file a flight plan.

He got the engines started and began working through his checklist as he taxied. At the end of the runway he did a quick run-up of the engines, then announced his intentions over the airport frequency, checked for landing traffic, then taxied onto the runway and shoved the throttles forward.

Half an hour later he was at sixteen thousand five hundred feet, sucking oxygen, on his way to Burbank Airport, in the San Fernando Valley, near where he lived. He felt elated.

34

V
ittorio held out a hand and yelled, “Don’t shoot, Susannah!”

“Vittorio?” she asked. “My God, have I shot you?”

“Call nine-one-one and tell them we need two ambulances instead of one,” Vittorio replied, struggling to sit up and check his wounds. He found he had taken a bullet high and to the left in his chest, and after checking his breathing and the blood flow, he figured it had missed the lung and the artery. “You have any bandages?” he asked Susannah. “Just a clean dishcloth will do.”