In Big Trouble

Even as the sheriff had tried to pry information out of her, he had provided her with the next lead she needed. The Barrett place, the last place Crow had been, a place where a convict's body lay rotting in the pool house, belonged to one Marianna Barrett Conyers of San Antonio, just eighty miles south of Austin according to the sign posts she had seen that afternoon.

Maybe she'd get to see the Alamo, after all.

Chapter 7

The front desk clerk at the Marriott in downtown San Antonio took one look at Tess, with her wrinkled T-shirt and unraveling braid, and announced he had nothing for her. Esskay's presence probably didn't help her cause, but the dog had howled so piteously when Tess tried to leave her in the car.

'No room at the inn. No room at any inn,' he said, showing off his teeth in a ravishing smile. He was a handsome young Latino, a type Tess had always found attractive, perhaps because it was in such short supply in Baltimore. But this man's charm was perfunctory and impersonal, a wall with no footholds.

'There has to be a hotel room somewhere,' she said. The highway into the city had been one long red blur of No Vacancy signs, so she had headed for downtown, assuming the larger, expensive hotels would be more likely to have rooms available. So far, she had been turned away at three of them.

'Sorry. La Posada came early this year.'

' La Posada?'

' La Posada. The inn. Around here, it's the reenactment of the Mary and Joseph story. The kids go from hotel to hotel on the Riverwalk, getting turned away. At least they get hot chocolate at the last hotel. All I can give you is some candy.' He pushed a dish of brightly wrapped sour balls and Hershey kisses across the counter.

Tess sighed and, hating herself for it, called on those powers granted every reasonably attractive woman between the ages of thirteen and death. Her eyes widened, her voice sweetened, the coffee cup on her Cafe Hon T-shirt expanded just a little bit. 'Are you sure there's nothing you can do for me?'

'Oh, there's a lot I could do for you,' he said amiably, without a flicker of interest. 'I just couldn't find a hotel room to do it in.'

Aware that it would be hypocritical to be insulted-she had put the ball into play, after all-Tess rested her upper body on the counter and tried not to whimper audibly. The long day, with its singular events, was beginning to take its toll. All she wanted was a place to sleep for a little while. A place with room service, where she could shower and put on CNN at full volume, hoping it would drown out the night's sounds and the day's images.

'What's the deal, anyway?' she asked. She had been shooting for plaintive, but ended up whiny. 'Why are all the hotels full?'

The clerk thawed a little then, as if he had been merely waiting for her to drop the bullying and bullshit. 'There's a medical convention in town and then the All Soul Festival starts up mid-week. You won't find a room anywhere downtown. Especially not with that,' he said, jerking his chin at Esskay. The dog reared up on her hind legs and propped herself on the front desk next to Tess, as if she were going to demand to speak to a manager. Instead she helped herself to a hard candy from the dish.

'She'll never be able to eat that,' the attendant said. But he must have liked dogs better than humans. He stroked the dog's snout and scratched behind her ears, crooning something in Spanish.

'She eats charcoal briquets, too,' Tess said. 'Look, isn't there anywhere I can find a room? It doesn't have to be downtown. All I need is a place with a phone and a bed, something clean and safe.'

Esskay coughed up a gnawed piece of red candy. Cinammon, Tess guessed. She didn't like spicy things.

'How loose are your standards on cleanliness and safety?' the attendant asked, as he looked for something to wipe up the pinkish drool on his counter. 'I know a place maybe fifteen minutes from here, on Broadway next to the park. Look, I'll even call ahead for you, make sure they hold something.'

'Great,' Tess said. 'What's it called?'

' La Casita. Ask for the daily rate. It's a better deal.'

'As opposed to the weekly?'

He stifled a laugh. 'As opposed to the hourly.'

Mornings were quiet at La Casita, in marked contrast to the nights. Tess woke to the sound of a local news program, coming in on the television's only working channel. The television was bolted to the stand, just in case anyone developed a hankering for a 15-year-old Samsung sans remote.

Tess rolled out of bed and put on fresh clothes, taking a perverse pleasure in the spareness of her surroundings. Her clothes, her toothbrush, her copy of Don Quixote. It was Friday, she realized as she pulled on that day's allotment of underwear. She'd have to buy some Woolite, or drop in at a laundromat soon.

For a hooker motel, La Casita was nice enough, a Southwestern version of the Route 40 motor court that Tess had camped outside not even two weeks ago. Funny, it seemed like months had passed since that day, although in the wrong direction. When she cracked open the door of room number 103, the warm Texas autumn was so much like summer that she felt as if she had gone backward in time.

'Is it safe to walk around here?' she asked the elderly Vietnamese woman who sat in the front office, behind a Plexiglas shield with a pass-through for keys and money.

'Very safe, very safe,' Mrs. Nguyen said. 'Even in the park, very safe. Chris Marrou on Channel 5 said. You can walk to the river from here, walk to zoo, ride in the little cars on the wires, the ones above the trees.'

'Sounds good.'

Mrs. Nguyen shook her finger at her through the bullet-proof glass. 'But don't talk to strangers, bad boys who ask you to go for ride, drink beer. They not good. Not good. They do things to girls who go with them. Chris Marrou said.'

Although Tess didn't know this local oracle, Mrs. Nguyen's warning made her feel cozy and cared for. She headed up Broadway, in order to get her bearings before trying the park. The neighborhood around La Casita wasn't seedy, but it had a jumbled look to it, as if it wasn't quite sure what it was, or what it wanted to be. There were inexpensive ethnic restaurants, the familiar fast-food chains, some upscale antiques stores, a secondhand book store, and the clothing store opened by Selena, the young Mexican-American singer killed by her own fan club president a few years back. Maybe Tess would go back to Baltimore with a sequined halter.

Within a few blocks, she came to a large museum set back from the street. The Witte Natural History Museum, according to its sign. She and Esskay walked around this and found themselves in a shadowy lane parallel to Broadway, on the park's edge. The zoo must be nearby-she had been able to hear a lion's roar last night. At least, she hoped it was a lion. Where was the river, though? If it were like Austin's Town Lake, maybe she could rent a scull somewhere. She missed rowing, her day felt unfinished without it.

But the San Antonio River proved to be a narrow, sluggish channel, smaller and shallower than the streams back home. 'I thought everything was supposed to be bigger in Texas,' she scoffed to Esskay. She'd be running and jumping rope for exercise as long as she was in San Antonio. She scouted a route and found a long, steep hill that ran above an amphitheater and past a Japanese-style garden.

Funny-she was worrying about running for exercise, when she should be worried about the fact that she was on the run. She would have to call Kitty, or Kitty's machine, and leave a detailed message about what to say if a certain sheriff called. Keith would play his part perfectly, for he truly believed she was heading back to Baltimore.

At the foot of the park, on a street called Mulberry, she stopped at a convenience store and bought breakfast-a large cup of coffee, a pint of orange juice, and a bag of Fig Newtons-and some dry dog food, dog treats, and a spiral-bound map book. It occurred to her she had gone almost five days without a bagel, and this single fact made her feel truly dislocated.

Back in the gloom of La Casita, she and Esskay stretched across the synthetic flowery spread and nibbled on Fig Newtons together as Tess paged through the phone book, which was thicker than she had expected. Even so, she found what she was looking for easily enough. Marianna Barrett Conyers lived on a street named for a sock,