“Hello.”
The three turned to her. Three young, scared faces.
“We have come.” The young Indian man, Sumaraj Das, shook her hand. He wore a red cashmere muffler and an overcoat.
“Hello, Silke.”
Silke was pale but her expression was determined. “Yes, we are ready,” she said. “And this is Elliott. Raj? What are you doing? Are you all right?”
Raj had closed his eyes and brought his hand up to his chest.
“Raj?” Silke Kilmer said again, panic in her eyes. Then she made another sound, a grunt, a sound that this young lady would never have made in company, except that she had just been shot. Nina knew this instantly.
“Uh.” Silke fell with Raj.
Nina and Elliott tumbled against the short wall at the top of the stairs and fell behind it, entangled.
Nina’s leg was still exposed. She pulled it quickly behind the shelter of the wall. Elliott was shouting something beside her, but she was feeling very quiet, paralyzed almost, praying, Please don’t let him shoot me, too.
She heard screams. Nina opened her eyes. Elliott Wakefield crouched beside her, his glasses askew, peering around the wall toward the steps. He was about to jump out there. She pulled him back.
“But-my friends!”
“Someone else has to help them! He could be waiting for you to show your face!” Elliott comprehended this. He fell back against the wall and reached in his jacket and felt for something.
“Do you have a gun?”
“No! How could I get a gun through customs?”
“Just sit tight,” Nina said. “We’re just going to sit here and not move.”
“Did he kill them?” His eyes were wild.
“Just sit tight!” The tall double doors burst open and several uniformed police officers came running out.
After the ambulances left, after the police took them inside and questioned them at length; after Elliott had some sort of panic attack and had to be subdued and kept from running away; after the officer came in to tell them that Silke Kilmer and Raj Das hadn’t made it; long after full darkness came upon the town and the traffic noises subsided outside; after the German police woke up Sergeant Cheney at his home at Tahoe and confirmed the details of Nina’s story; after she gave them a false address for Kurt and said they’d be available for more questions the next day; after Elliott said to her in the cold waiting room, “What should I do?”; after all that, Nina and Elliott were released.
It was past ten. Kurt and Bob waited for them at the back door. The Citroën was running at the curb, its headlights bright. A police officer walked them down to the car. Nina kept her arm around Bob.
Kurt was waiting in the driver’s seat. Nina sat beside him. Bob and Elliott Wakefield sat in back.
Nina realized he hadn’t made a plan during the long hours he had been waiting. Elliott lapsed into a daze in back, gazing dully out the window at nothing.
“The first thing is, let’s get out of here,” Kurt said after a moment. He put the little car in gear and drove swiftly through the town.
“My stuff,” Elliott said from the back seat. So he was still with them mentally. “At the hotel.”
“We’ll have it picked up tomorrow, okay?”
“But where am I going? To the airport?”
“We can’t, not yet,” Nina said. “We have to stay at least through tomorrow. The police-”
“Screw the police! It happened at the police station!”
“You can stay with us,” Kurt said quietly, cutting through it again. “It’ll be safe. No one knows my address.”
“Maybe he’s following us,” Bob said.
“I’d know it.” Kurt was right. The Citroën’s humbleness provided a novel way to avoid a tail. They were on the autobahn, in the slow lane, moving so slowly the cars seemed to whiz past. Anybody following the Citroën would be obvious.
“Silke,” Elliott said, and began sobbing.
PART THREE
We must know; we will know.
– DAVID HILBERT
23
NINA TOSSED IN THE BED AS if floating on a creaky ship in a storm. Yellow streetlight fanned through the blinds.
She was through sleeping. Maybe she could sneak by Elliott’s couch and get a glass of milk. She threw back the covers and padded quietly toward the kitchen. But Elliott, dressed in Kurt’s bathrobe, was poking at the fireplace. The living room was stuffy, almost hot. He had turned on a small lamp on the side table.
“Hello,” he said. Red, swollen eyes turned her way.
“Sorry to bother you. I was just on my way to the kitchen. How are you doing?”
“I’m hungry,” Elliott said. They never had gotten around to dinner. Elliott had cried all the way to Wiesbaden, then lay down on the couch, turning his back to them, and fell into a sniffly slumber while Nina, Kurt, and Bob tiptoed around him. Though she had tried to act calm around the others, Nina had been struggling with her own emotions, fright and outrage, and her own exhaustion from the trauma of the shooting and the hours of questioning overcame her early. But now, in the middle of the night, the event boiled up and pushed her back into wakeful consciousness with a new emotion. Guilt. She had initiated this sequence.
“Then we’ll eat.” She went into the kitchen, found a pan and melted some butter, and added a half-dozen eggs, moving quietly so as not to wake Bob and Kurt, although in the old apartment with its thick walls they might as well have been a block away.
Elliott followed her. “My father makes them with curry and tarragon,” he said. He sounded pitiful. He was a complete stranger, but Nina felt she knew him well. She had been thinking about him, sought him, for some time, and the fact that he had been saved with her linked them.
“Will salt and pepper do? I could grate in some cheese.”
“Sure. Anything. I’m starving.”
“Do you want to talk?” she asked Elliott when the plates were set on the coffee table.
“This is good.” He was already eating like someone famished. He had a doughy face, not unpleasant, rimless glasses, tousled sandy hair. A budding academic if she had ever seen one.
But few academics would say what Elliott said next. “I’ll kill whoever did it,” he said. Nina sat down next to the fireplace, which began baking her right side, wondering how to respond. “I’ll do anything. What should I do?”
“Your life is in danger.”
“So’s yours.”
“And my client’s and maybe others.”
“It’s all about that stupid robbery. How many people has he murdered?”
“Four,” Nina said. “Sarah Hanna, Chelsi Freeman. And your friends.”
“My friends. I’ll do the deposition. I’ll lay out everything I know. I told the officer here-when he took me in the back room-I told him everything I could think of.”
“That would be courageous of you, to do a deposition in my case now.”
“Do we have to do it here, though? He’s here.”
“I’d feel more comfortable back at Tahoe. I have a friend there, a private investigator, who can help us both with protection.”
“Is my father in danger? He’s disabled. But we have an alarm system.”
“I don’t know. But you should alert him,” Nina said honestly. “Let’s do this. Let’s go back to Tahoe and get you on the record as fast as possible. You can talk to the police there. Then go home to Seattle, and you and your father can decide what to do.”
“I can’t figure out if it was the money or my notebook,” Elliott mumbled. “Do you have any whiskey?” Kurt had a table near the kitchen with bottles on it. Elliott brought back a glass for her.
When he had stretched out again on the couch and had a good slug of the stuff, Nina said carefully, “What’s your guess? Was it the money?”
“You already know about it? The card counting?”
“Mm-hmm.” She thought, What were these kids up to?
“We had about thirty-five thousand in winnings and about twenty for the original stake in Silke’s purse.”