I had to smile. "A case like this can make a career."
"Exactly," Edward said.
"Well, we know Marks' price now."
"Price?" Bernardo asked. "You guys bribed him?"
"No," I said, "but his principles that he so kindly spat in my face yesterday weren't as precious to him as his career. Always nice to know how strong a person's convictions are."
"Not that strong," Edward said.
"Apparently not," I said.
I heard Donna coming down the hallway, talking loudly to Becca, but I think it was to warn us that they were coming. The men grabbed the rug and went for the doorway. Edward said in his loud, cheerful Ted voice, "Saddle up, boys and girls. We got work to do."
I went for my room. If we were going to go outside the house, I needed more weapons.
31
I SAT IN THE front seat beside Edward. It was probably my imagination but I could feel someone staring at the back of my neck. If I wasn't imagining it, I was betting on Olaf.
I'd added the shoulder holster complete with Browning Hi-Power. Usually it was the only gun I wore until someone tried to kill me, or some monster showed in the flesh. But I'd kept the Firestar in its inner pants holster. Too many pictures of dismembered corpses for comfort. I even took all the knives which tells you how insecure I was feeling. Being stared at hard enough to bore a hole through my flesh was beginning to get on what nerves I had left It wasn't my imagination. I could feel it.
I turned in the seat and met Bernardo's eyes. There was a look on his face when I turned around that was nothing I wanted to see. I had an uncomfortable thought that he was fantasizing and I just might be in the starring role.
"What are you staring at?" I asked.
He blinked, but it seemed to take a long time for his eyes to really focus on me rather than whatever was inside his head. He gave a slow, almost lazy, smile. "I wasn't doing anything."
"Like hell," I said.
"You can't tell me what to think, Anita," he said.
"You're presentable enough. Go get a date."
"I'd have to wine and dine her, and then I couldn't count on sex at the end of the evening. What good is that?"
"Then get a hooker," I said.
"I would if Edward would let me out on my own."
I turned and looked at Edward.
He answered the question without me having to voice it. "I've forbidden Olaf from … dating while he's here. Olaf resented it, so I told Bernardo the same thing."
"Very even handed," I said.
"It is totally unfair to punish me because Olaf is a psycho," Bernardo said.
"If I cannot meet my needs, then why should you be able to?" Olaf said There was something in his voice that made me look at him. He was staring straight ahead, no eye contact to anyone.
I turned around in my seat and looked at Edward. "Where do you come up with these people?"
"The same place I find vampire hunters and necromancers," he said.
He had a point. Enough of a point that we finished the drive to Albuquerque in silence. I felt I had enough moral high ground to throw stones, but evidently Edward disagreed. Since he knew Olaf better than I did, I wasn't going to argue. At least not now.
People talk of ranch-style houses, but this really was a ranch. A ranch as in cowboys and horses. It was a dude ranch for tourists so whether it counted as a really real ranch, I wasn't sure. But it was the closest thing to an actual working ranch that I'd ever set foot on.
The ranch really wasn't in Albuquerque, but in the middle of nowhere. In fact the house and corrals sat in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. Empty space with bunches of dry grass and strange palish soil stretching out and out to the horizon. Hills ringed the ranch like smooth piles of rock and brush. Edward drove us under an entrance that had a cow's skull nailed to it and said, "Dead Horse Ranch." It was so similar to a hundred western movies I'd seen on television that it seemed vaguely familiar.
Even the corral full of horses spilling in an endless nervous circle seemed stage-managed. The house wasn't exactly what I had pictured, being low to the ground and made of white adobe much like Edward's house but newer. If you could have just erased the plethora of police cars, emergency units, and even some fire rescue equipment, it would have been picturesque in a lonesome down-on-the-prairie sort of way.
A lot of the police cars had revolving lights, and the crackle of police radios was thick in the air. I wondered if it was the lights, the noise, or just this many people making the horses nervous. I didn't know much about horses, but surely rushing back and forth around their pen wasn't normal behavior. I wondered if they had been running in circles before the cops came or after. Were horses like dogs? Could they sense bad things? Didn't know, didn't even know who to ask.
We were stopped just inside the gate by a uniformed cop. He took our names and went off to find someone who would let us pass, or find someone to tell him to kick us out. I wondered if Lieutenant Marks was here. Since he'd issued the invite, it seemed likely. What kind of threat to his career had they used to get him to invite me back?
We waited. None of us spoke. I think we'd all spent a lot of our adult lives waiting for one uniform or another to give us permission to do things. It used to get on my nerves, but lately I just waited. Maturity, or was I just getting too worn down to argue over small stuff? I'd have liked to say maturity, but I was pretty sure that wasn't it.
The uniform came back with Marks trailing behind him. Marks' pale tan suit jacket flapped in the hot wind, giving a glimpse of his gun riding just behind his left hip. He stared at the ground as he walked, briskly, all business, but he was careful not to look at us, at me, maybe.
The uniform got to us first, but he stood a little back from the open driver's side door and let the lieutenant catch up. Marks finally got there, and he looked fixedly at Edward, as if he could exclude me by just not looking at me.
"Who are the men in the back?"
"Otto Jefferies, and Bernardo Spotted-Horse." I noticed that Olaf had to use an alias, but Bernardo got to keep his real name. Guess who was wanted for crimes elsewhere.
"What are they?"
I wouldn't have known how to answer that question but Edward did. "Mr Spotted-Horse is a bounty hunter like myself, and Mr. Jefferies is a retired government worker."
Marks looked at Olaf through the glass. Olaf looked back. "Government worker. What sort of government worker?"
"The kind that if you contacted the state department, they'd confirm his identity."
Marks tapped on Olaf's window.
Olaf rolled the window down with the nearly silent buttons on the door handles. "Yes," he said in a voice that was totally devoid of his usual German burr.
"What did you do for the state department?"
"Call them and ask," Olaf said.
Marks shook his head. "I have to let you and Blake inside my crime scene, but not these two." He jerked a thumb at the back seat. "They stay in the car."
"Why?" Bernardo said.
Marks looked at him through the open window. His blue green eyes were mostly green right now, and I was beginning to realize that meant he was angry. "Because I said so, and I've got a badge and you don't."
Well, at least it was honest.
Edward spoke before Bernardo could do more than make inarticulate noises. "It's your crime scene, Lieutenant. We civilians are just here on your sufferance, we know that." He twisted in his seat to give the two men direct eye contact, but turned so Marks couldn't see his face well. I could, and it was cold and full of warning. "They will be happy to stay in the car. Won't you, boys?"
Bernardo slumped in his seat, arms crossed on his chest, sulking, but he nodded. Olaf just said, "Of course, whatever the good officer says." His voice was mild, empty. The very lack of tone was frightening, as if he were thinking something very different from the words.