Play Dirty

CHAPTER 31

JUDGING FROM THE LOOK ON HER FACE, THE QUESTION HAD TAKEN her completely by surprise. She stared at him for several seconds, then made a small motion with her head.

He felt an expanding pressure inside his chest. He’d never felt anything like it before, so he couldn’t put a name to it. It was a strange feeling, and yet a good one. Like supreme satisfaction. Like the total opposite of what he’d been feeling the other day in the motel when he’d reviewed his life history.

He looked down at her abdomen but couldn’t detect any change. Of course there wouldn’t be any yet.

He wondered if she was thinking, like he was, about their last afternoon together, when he’d reached around her and closed the front door. How could they have foreseen the cataclysmic impact that simple motion would have? Because of it, one life had ended. And another had begun.

His gaze tracked back up to her face. Their eyes met and held. This warm, closed space in which they were standing seemed suddenly to be very small and airless. He didn’t dare take a deep breath for fear of breaking the silence that pressed in on them, teeming with implication.

He knew there must be something appropriate to say to a woman who had your baby inside her, but damned if he could think of what it might be, so he didn’t say anything, just continued staring into her eyes, until she finally looked away.

He touched her chin and brought her head back around to face him. “I’ll go to death row unless I find Manuelo Ruiz. Do you understand?”

She shook her head, slowly and then more adamantly. “No, I don’t. It’s not possible. Manuelo worshiped Foster. He wouldn’t-”

“But I would?”

She searched his eyes, then made a motion with her head and shoulders that could have meant either yes or no. But even if she had the slightest doubt, it was crushing to him.

He dropped his hand. “I don’t know why I hoped you would believe me when my own lawyer didn’t even bother to ask whether or not I had killed your husband. He just assumed I had. I didn’t. Manuelo did.”

“He couldn’t.”

“It was a bizarre accident. Seeing what he’d done, the guy wigged out. He bolted. He’s scared and may be halfway to El Salvador by now. But without him, I’m sunk.”

He shone the flashlight beam on his wristwatch. They’d driven away from the hotel twenty-seven minutes ago. Thomas and Lane and the rest of them were probably catching hell from Rodarte by now. Soon a posse would be dispatched.

“My time’s running out.” He motioned her up the staircase.

On their way, she said, “If Manuelo is running, this is the last place he would be.”

“Officially, there’s no record of the man beyond a social security number, which was fake, and a Texas driver’s license with a phony address.”

“How do you know this?”

“Rodarte. He was quoted in the newspaper.”

“If the police can’t find him, how do you hope to?” By now she had reached the door at the top of the stairs. It was unlocked. Griff switched off the flashlight and followed Laura into the apartment.

“Where are the windows?”

“There aren’t any. Only skylights on the back side of the roof.”

Trusting her to be telling the truth, he turned the flashlight back on but kept it aimed at the floor. It was a spacious single room which, Griff estimated, covered half of the garage below. It was equipped with a small kitchen area with dormitory-size appliances, and a TV in a cabinet opposite the bed. The bathroom was compact.

The apartment had already been tossed by the police. Bureau drawers had been left open, the closet door stood ajar. The twin bed had been stripped. The mattress was askew.

“Hold the light.” Griff passed her the flashlight, then started his search with the TV cabinet. “How did Manuelo come to be Foster’s aide?”

“He was a janitor at the rehab center. Foster was there for several months after he got out of the hospital. One day after a strenuous therapy session, he experienced respiratory distress. He was no longer hooked to monitors, he couldn’t reach the call button. Manuelo happened by. He didn’t summon help but came in, lifted Foster out of bed, and carried him to the nurses’ station. Foster credited him with saving his life. I think Manuelo felt the same about Foster. His life improved dramatically when Foster took him in.”

The drawers of the cabinet had yielded nothing except some loose coins, a broken pair of sunglasses, nail clippers, underwear, folded T-shirts. “In from where?” Griff asked. “Where had he lived before?”

“Foster may have known. I never did,” she replied, following his movements with the beam of the flashlight. “Manuelo showed up here with a small duffel bag of belongings and moved into this apartment. Foster bought him new clothes. He paid for his training as a nursing aide, on how to care for paraplegics. Manuelo was devoted to Foster.”

Griff snuffled. “Yeah. I know.”

Although the bed obviously had already been searched, he felt the mattress and box springs, looking for bumps where something could have been stashed. He moved the bed away from the wall and motioned for her to direct the flashlight onto the floor beneath it. Low-nap carpet. No sign that it had been sliced to form a secret pocket. “Did he have family? Friends?”

“Not to my knowledge. Griff, Rodarte has already asked me all this. The police have been searching for Manuelo since the night…the night Foster died.”

“The first time I saw him, Manuelo struck me as a survivor,” Griff said. “Foster told me he’d walked to the U.S. from El Salvador.” A small curtain hid the plumbing for the tiny kitchen sink. He parted it but found only pots and pans, some dishwashing liquid. He looked in the oven and microwave but came up empty. He checked the fridge but found nothing except a few canned drinks, condiments, three oranges.

“Walking through Guatemala and Mexico? That tells me that he was either very, very poor or running from something and didn’t want to risk traveling on public transportation. Probably both.”

In the bathroom, he looked in the tank of the toilet, then took the light from Laura and shone it down the shower drain.

She asked, “How do you know to do that?”

“Some things you learn in prison.”

There was nothing in the medicine cabinet above the sink except shaving implements, toothpaste, toothbrush. He returned to the main room, hands on hips, looking about. The ceiling? He couldn’t see any seams in the material where Manuelo might have cut out a section to form a hiding place.

Inside the closet were several pairs of black trousers, two pairs of black shoes, and a black baseball-style jacket. “Where’s the duffel bag?” he asked rhetorically.

“The what?”

“You said he arrived with a small duffel bag of personal belongings. Where is it?”

“I suppose he took it with him.”

“Trust me, he didn’t stop to pack that night. He didn’t take his clothes or his toiletries. It said in the newspaper that cash was found in his apartment. Nobody leaves money behind, unless they don’t leave of their own accord.”

“Which is why Rodarte suspects you of-”

“Killing Manuelo, too. I know. But I didn’t. Laura, the man was hysterical. Out of his head. He ran like the devil was after him.” He frowned at the look she gave him. “No, it wasn’t me he was afraid of.”

She didn’t respond to that. Instead, she said, “He didn’t pack, so you believe that his duffel bag is here somewhere. So what? What good would finding it do us?”

“Maybe none. But a top-notch rehab hospital wouldn’t have hired even a janitor without immigration documents. If Manuelo sneaked into the country, he must have had help getting falsified papers so he could get work. He had to have had a contact. And I bet he would have stayed in touch with that contact in case he had to get the hell out of Dodge, quick. He would have-”

The wail of approaching sirens cut him off. “Shit!” He grabbed Laura’s hand and pulled her through the door onto the landing of the stairwell. He switched off the flashlight, but just as he did, he noticed the door opposite the one to Ruiz’s apartment. “What’s that?”

“What? I can’t see anything.”

“That door. Where does it go?”

“It accesses the attic space above the other side of the garage. It’s not finished out. Foster had talked about one day flooring it, but-What are you doing?”

Griff had pushed open the door, and the hot, contained air rushed out to envelop them. He switched on the flashlight and shone it into the large space, empty except for exposed insulation and joists, plumbing pipes, and electrical conduits.

About three feet in front of him, an air-conditioning duct stretched along the floor for the entire width of the attic; it was the duct that would have conveyed a/c and heat into Manuelo’s apartment.

Griff aimed the flashlight beam on the silver tube and tracked it from the far wall forward.

The sirens were getting closer, louder.

He tried to block them out and concentrate on the duct, taking in every seam, every wrinkle in the material, looking-

He uttered a soft cry of elation when he saw the patch. “There it is!”

Wasting no time to think about it, he stepped out onto the two-by-four nearest him and inched along it toward the patch. If he slipped, he could drive his foot through the Sheetrock, which wouldn’t support his weight. The only thing keeping him from falling through it and landing hard on the garage floor twenty feet below was his agility. And his will to find Manuelo Ruiz.

When he got even with the patch, he stuck the flashlight in his mouth, and, balancing on the balls of his feet, leaned across the emptiness toward the duct.

The sirens had stopped. Not a good sign.

He ripped away the tape forming the patch and plunged his hand into the hollow duct. His fingertips brushed something, but it was just out of reach. The flashlight fell from his mouth onto the Sheetrock floor several inches below the two-by-four on which he balanced. It rolled away, out of reach. He let it go.

He crabbed along the two-by-four until he could grasp the object inside the duct. The attic space was as hot as an oven. Keeping his balance while reaching into the duct was an extreme effort. His knees were screaming. Sweat ran into his eyes, making them sting. The policeman’s shirt was too damn small. It was confining his shoulders, limiting his reach. He strained against it, ripping the shoulder seams but gaining a longer reach.

Finally he got two fingers on the object, clamped them shut, and pulled the object far enough forward for him to grab hold. He gave it a hard yank, ripping the skin of the duct as he pulled it out. It was a black duffel bag.

He stood up quickly and, with the deft steps of a tightrope walker, made his way back to the door at the staircase landing. “I’ve got it!” But he was talking to empty darkness. Laura had vanished.