Eight years later, the museum hadn’t changed. The towers were still there, the skywalk and the glass entrance.
An idea started to form in Will’s mind. An idea that had some justice to it.
He got out of the car, ignoring Pablo’s protests.
He walked to the entrance. It was the middle of the day, but the sign said CLOSED.
Inside, he saw shattered windows in the back of the entrance hall, tables covered in plastic. He tried the doors. They were locked.
Will knocked on the glass, knowing he was taking an absurd chance. But no one expected him here. No one would think to look for Will Stirman at an art museum.
Finally a guard came up and frowned at him.
The patch on the guard’s uniform said I-Tech. Sam Barrera’s company still held the security contract. Good.
The guard unlocked the door, cracked it open. He kept one hand on his holster. “We’re closed, sir.”
Stirman said, “Why?”
“Flood damage.”
The guard said it like it should be obvious. The broken windows. Plastic covering the patio tables. Pools of water on the tile floor.
Perfect.
What had Sam Barrera told him, when he called to set up the meeting, eight years ago? It’ll be a private place to talk. Secure. Hell, I own the security.
Will smiled apologetically at the guard. “Okay. Sorry.”
The guard locked the door. He stood at the glass, his hand still on his holster as Will walked back to his car.
Pablo waited on the hood of the car, trying to ignore the rain.
He wanted to throw the phone across the museum parking lot. He’d just heard from their man watching Erainya Manos, and the last thing he wanted was to share the news with Stirman.
It had been bad enough, dealing with a private investigator. It brought back too many memories of his big mistake-the stranger he’d found in Angelina’s bedroom, four and a half years ago.
So far, Pablo had resisted the urge to call his wife. He needed to be on the plane first, on his way to Mexico. He just hoped Angelina had read his letters from jail, and understood his veiled directions about what she should do if he ever got free.
But what if she’d burned the letters? He kept thinking about the look on her face the night he came home with the shotgun.
In the month or so leading up to that night, she’d acted cagey, nervous. Money had vanished from their checking account without explanation, and they never had any extra money to spend. She would go out and tell him she was visiting a sick friend, or seeing a doctor-little excuses that didn’t add up.
At first Pablo was too bewildered to be angry. He was used to Angelina depending on him for everything. She’d come to the country illegally years before, gotten separated from the rest of her family in transit, when they’d run into some vigilante ranchers in the high desert. She had only Pablo, who’d given her citizenship through marriage, a good home, all the love she could want. She would never betray him.
Then his next-door neighbor told him about the man who was visiting her while Pablo was at work-twice he’d come to see her, over the last week.
And when Pablo had walked in that last night, and found the man talking with her on their bed-on his bed…
Angelina had looked up, and screamed at Pablo to stop.
He would give anything to take back those few seconds, as the man rose to face him, and Pablo’s finger found the trigger.
“Yo, amigo. Wake up.”
Stirman’s presence jarred Pablo out of his thoughts.
“What’s wrong?” Stirman demanded.
“Bad news,” Pablo managed to say.
He told Stirman about their private eye, who had followed Erainya Manos out of town that morning. She’d taken I-35 north-her and her boy, Jem.
“Running?” Stirman asked.
“No. She came back.”
“Where did she go in Austin, then?”
Pablo shifted uncomfortably. “Our guy lost her when she turned off on Ben White. He missed the exit, never found her again. He drove back to San Antonio and sat on her house, in case she came back. She did-a few minutes ago. Without the boy.”
Pablo saw the rage building in Stirman’s face.
They both knew what the PI’s news meant. Erainya Manos had hidden her son. She was trying to protect him, insulate him from danger, which meant she probably wasn’t going to cooperate. She would try to double-cross them.
“The woman is a problem,” Stirman decided.
“She’s still got twenty-four hours,” Pablo said halfheartedly. The last thing he wanted was another death, especially a woman’s. “Maybe she’ll come through. We just got to stay low and wait.”
“No,” Stirman insisted. He took a deep breath, and Pablo knew he was filling himself with that cold, homicidal sense of purpose Pablo had seen too many times over the last few days. “Change of plans, amigo. We’ve got work to do.”
12
Robert Johnson was a great help going through the agency’s old files.
He would crouch at the far end of the living room, get a running start, and dive straight through them like a snowplow. Then he would look at me, wild-eyed, a manila folder tented over his head.
“Yes, thanks,” I said. “That’s much better.”
In terms of finding important information, however, neither of us was having much luck.
The only things that belonged to Erainya in the locked file cabinet were mementos of her transitional year, from Barrow’s wife to self-made PI. There were stacks of clippings about her defense trial in Fred’s murder. Her change-of-name paperwork, officially declaring her to be Erainya Manos. Her U.S. passport, stamped for Greece. Jem’s adoption paperwork from a Texas-based agency called Children First International. His birth date, which Erainya had told me was a guess-April 28, 1995. His birth parents’ names: Abdul and Mariah Suleimaniyah. The usual signatures and medical work. A letter from some government official in Bosnia-Herzegovina, authorizing Jem’s release to Erainya’s custody.
An early picture of Erainya and Jem. Jem looked about one year old. His dark eyes were wide with amazement as the woman with the frizzy black hair held him up to the camera and kissed his cheek.
I went through some of Erainya’s correspondence. Several notes of support from women’s advocacy groups. Fan letters from women who admired her for shooting her husband.
I put those down. They made me nervous.
The rest of the stuff was from Fred Barrow’s time.
I’d always thought of Fred as an old man, but the only photograph I found showed him looking not much older than me. It must’ve been from the early eighties. Fred’s greasy black hair was parted in the middle, too long at the collar. He had a square face, battered from years as an amateur boxer. His eyes were sly and shallow, his smile insincere. He looked like a wife-beater, in the middle of saying, Look, officer, you know how these women are.
I didn’t want to find anything that would make me like him, but he did seem to have a soft spot for illegal immigrants. His first job out of college was ten years with the Border Patrol, and the experience must’ve affected
