After ten minutes, when Greeley did not come out, McFarland called the motel desk to make sure he�d checked in.
He had. Breathing easier, McFarland left, thinking about the beginning Spanish lessons he was taking, wondering if the advanced course would provide a more colorful approach, if it might include some of the old man�s impressive vocabulary.
McFarland had had a good day. He had, with the two detectives and Karen working the urgent missing cases, been given free reign with the village murders. He had acquired, by means he might not want to relate to the chief, enough evidence to bring in both Tucker and Keating for questioning-for visits that, he hoped, would result in arrests. As for the third murder, he was convinced that it, too, would turn out to be a domestic, though as yet they had nothing solid.
As Greeley signed the register and palmed the key to his room, up in the hills his sister, Mavity, was airing out the apartment that he had occupied. Setting down her arsenal of vacuum cleaner and dust mop, scrub mops and chemicals and buckets, she flung open windows as violently as if the wind coming up the canyon could blow away Greeley himself. Her attack of cleaning included new contact paper in all the drawers, which gave her an excuse to go through them to see if he�d forgotten anything of interest. She had already searched Greeley�s duffle, two days earlier.
That was part of what had upset her so, and made her pursue the restraining order. She had been searching his bag for his stash of whiskey, meaning to throw it out. She felt no guilt in poking around. It wasn�t her fault her brother was a drunk, but she did feel responsible for the fact that he was disturbing her friends. She hadn�t found his bottle, but she�d found something far more interesting.
In the bottom of the bag was a small white paper box, maybe two by three inches, embossed with the logo of a Panamanian jewelry store; the box was old and stained, as if perhaps it had been used for many purposes. Inside, packed carefully between layers of yellowed tissue paper, was a little gold devil. An ugly little figure with an evil leer-devil, or some other idol, one of them pagan idols from Central America. It looked like real solid gold, and it felt warm and rich like gold; it was so heavy it startled her.
But it couldn�t be real gold, the real thing would be worth thousands, maybe more. It had to be a museum copy. She remembered Greeley telling about little gold figures, ancient artifacts, he�d said. She couldn�t remember the name he called them. Did he say they were pre-Columbian? From the time before Columbus discovered South America? Didn�t seem possible anything could last that long, anything so small. Sacred trinkets, Greeley�d said, fashioned by vanished tribes. He�d been only a little drunk at the time, just enough to be in one of them showy moods when he liked to tell what he knew, and embroider on it. He said them little gold figures were in great demand, now, that even one would be worth a fortune.
With Greeley, she never knew what to believe.
She didn�t know much about history or archeology, and she didn�t remember those long-ago dates. Huacas, she thought suddenly. That was what he�d called them. The real gold huacas, Greeley said, were illegal to own, in Panama, except by the national museum. He said the museum made copies, though, and sold them to the tourists. Surely this was one of the copies. But why was it so heavy?
Greeley wasn�t above stealing, if he could get away with it, or thought he could-but Greeley couldn�t steal this kind of state-guarded treasure. If what he said was true, such a theft was far more sophisticated than anything that old man was capable of. Greeley�s thefts ran to cracking the safe of a small mom-and-pop store and making off with a few hundred dollars. Not some high-powered international operation; that wasn�t Greeley�s style, he wouldn�t know how to go about such a thing. All his talk that night, that had been whiskey talk, colorful storytelling, more than half from Greeley�s sodden imagination.
All their lives, her brother had stolen, ever since they were kids. She was forever surprised he didn�t spend more time in jail; it was just short sentences and then out again. Well, she had to admit, in spite of his thieving ways, he�d held down a good job for forty years-but only because he loved the diving. She never ceased to wonder that he could be so responsible at his work and so worthless in the rest of his life.
That day she�d found the huaca she�d stood there in the basement apartment looking down at that evil gold devil, wondering. Itwas an evil little thing; its stare had given her the creeps, made her think of voodoo curses, the pagan magic that Greeley liked to tell about.
Wilma said those countries weren�t all pagan, that they were Christian, too. Catholic. But Mavity had seen pictures of those South American churches, their voodoo idols all mixed in with the saints and the virgin. That, in her book, wasn�t any kind of Christian.
Quickly she had wrapped the gold devil up again, closed it away in its box, and put the box back in the duffle. Hurrying, she�d latched the worn leather bag and left the room, her hands icy, the image of that devil face too clear in her mind.
Now, she cleaned the room vehemently until she�d eradicated the sour smells. She carried the sheets and towels into the little laundry at the end of the hall, put them in the washer with plenty of Clorox. When she gathered up her cleaning equipment and locked the door to the apartment, she left the windows open, to air the place. She felt noguilt at possibly sending Greeley to jail. If he didn�t obey the restraining order, a cell was what he deserved.
23
C harlie�s whole body was sore from the battering Cage gave her, and from bumping along in the Jeep; her face felt bruised and raw where he�d struck her, hit her three times for trying to roll out of the vehicle. And then when it blew a tire and skidded on the narrow trail, jamming hard between two trees, she�d prayed it was stuck. She�d thought at first the sharp report was a gunshot, it had sent her ducking down, filled with hope-but it was only the tire exploding when the wheel hit a deadfall. The men�s rage would, under other circumstances, have been amusing. They were near hysteria by the time they got the wheel off, then found that the spare had no air, that it, too, had a hole in it. The situation was entertaining, but turned heart-stopping when they grew so enraged that she didn�t know what they might do to her.
But they hadn�t taken it out on her. They had sworn and argued, then at last had set about patching the spare, irritably bickering. Now, bumping along again, she was terribly hot and thirsty, her sweaty T-shirt plastered to her, the too-tight ropes burning into her. The worst discomfort was the gnats; millions of gnats had found her, and were feasting. Their bites made her wild with itching, and she couldn�t scratch. Her last thread of composure was almost gone. And she was ashamed, so ashamed that her disappearance would have Max frantic, would cause all kinds of trouble. Ashamed that she hadn�t been watchful, that she�d let her guard down, had come out of the house completely unprepared for a prowler. She knew better. After several previous threats to Max, she knew better than to become complacent. She had stepped out thinking the dogs were barking at nothing or at some small wild animal; and now Max would have to deal with the trouble her foolishness had caused. Worst of all, she knew he�d come after her, that she�d put him in unnecessary danger.
No matter how she twisted and worked at the knots, she�d not been able to loosen one. With her feet tied, and her hands tied behind her, even if she�d been able to roll off the Jeep, she couldn�t have run, couldn�t get away, could only hop stupidly, like a trussed-up chicken.