SUNDAY MARCH 13
18
S unday morning, shortly after midnight, Evan finally let himself weep for his murdered mother.
Alone in the cheap Houston motel room, not far from the shadow of the old Astrodome and the distant hum of cars speeding along Loop 610, the lights off and the bed weathered with hourly use, he lay down, alone, and memories of his mother and his father flooded his mind. The tears came then, hot and harsh, and he curled into a ball and let them come.
He hated to cry. But the moorings of his life had been shorn away, and the grief throbbed in his chest like a physical pain. His mother had been gentle, wry, careful as a craftsman about her photos. Shy with strangers but expansive and talkative with him and his father. When he was little and would beg to sit in her darkroom and watch her work, she would stand over her photo-developing equipment, a lock of hair dangling in her face, singing little songs under her breath that she composed on the spot to keep him entertained. His father was quiet, too, a reader, a computer geek, a man of few words but when he spoke every word mattered. Always supportive, insightful, quick to hug, quick to gently discipline. Evan could not have asked for kinder and better parents. They were quiet and a little closemouthed, and now that quirk loomed large in his head. Because now it meant more than computerish solitude or artistic introversion. Was it a veil for what lay beyond, their secret world?
He’d believed he knew them. But the burden of a hidden life, lived just beyond his eyes, was unimaginable to him.
Because they didn’t want you hurt. Or because they didn’t trust you.
Ten minutes. Crying done. No more, he told himself. He was done with tears. He washed his face, wiping it dry with the paper-thin, worn towel.
Exhaustion staggered him. He had driven straight into San Antonio, changed the license plates off the stolen pickup, trading with a decrepit-looking station wagon in a neighborhood where it seemed less than likely the police would get a prompt phone call. He drove the speed limit on I-10, heading east, winding through the coastal flat- lands and into the humid sprawl of Houston. He only stopped for gas, eating Slim Jims and guzzling coffee, paying with cash when he had to refill the tank. He found a cheap motel – cheap in that the hookers shook their moneymakers a block away – and booked a room for the night. The clerk seemed to resent him – Evan supposed they didn’t get much demand for more than an hour or two in the room. Evan palmed the room key and drove the truck – too nice for the lot – past an old woman smoking cigarettes in a doorway, past two whores chatting and laughing in the parking lot. He locked the door behind him. There was no furniture other than the bed and a worn TV stand, bolted to the floor. The TV brought a fuzzy picture and offered only the local Houston channels.
All gone. The words spoken by one of the killers in the kitchen. The file they killed his mother for had been on his computer. Somehow.
Gabriel said she’d e-mailed the files. Assume it was true, since she’d sent him a large e-mail late the night before she called him. So she must have hidden a program inside the songs, tucking these hidden files on his laptop in a place he would never look. He wasn’t a computer geek, he didn’t explore the innards of his laptop, he didn’t browse through his library or preference files. But the data would be there, a backup for his mother or insurance for Gabriel, and Evan would have never thought twice about receiving a set of music files.
Music files.
He dug his digital music player out of the duffel. Evan always synced his music files with his digital music player, and he had Friday morning, so he could listen to the music during the drive to Austin. So potentially he still had the file – still encoded, but not lost. If he could move the correct music file to a new computer, it might automatically re-create the files his mother had stolen.
If it was in a digital photo – those he didn’t back up. It would be lost forever.
He would need a computer. He didn’t have enough cash for one, and he did not dare use a credit card. Tomorrow’s problem.
Outside, a woman cussed, a man laughed and asked her to love him until tomorrow, then the same woman laughed with him.
He dug out the small, locked box he had taken from Gabriel’s house. A single wire hanger dangled in the closet; he tried to pick the lock with its bent end, feeling ridiculous. Got nowhere. He walked down to the motel office.
‘Do you have a screwdriver I can borrow?’ he asked the clerk.
The clerk looked at him with empty eyes. ‘Maintenance’ll be here tomorrow.’
Evan slid a five-dollar bill across the counter. ‘I just need a screwdriver for ten minutes.’
The clerk shrugged, got up, returned with a screwdriver, took the bill. ‘Bring it back in ten or I’ll call the cops.’
Customer service, alive and well. Evan headed back to his room, ignoring a ‘Hey, sweetheart, you need a date?’ from a prostitute at the edge of the parking lot.
Evan broke the lock on the fifth try. Small, paper-wrapped packages spilled out, and Evan hurried back to the office in case the grumpy clerk made good on his threat. The clerk didn’t look over from his TV basketball game as Evan slid the tool back across the counter.
The low groans of a couple sounded through the thin walls when he went back into the room. He didn’t want to hear them and he cranked on the TV. Evan opened the first package. Inside were passports from New Zealand, held together with a rubber band. He opened the top one: his own face stared back at him. He was David Edward Rendon, his birthplace listed as Auckland. The paper looked and felt appropriately high-grade government authentic; an exit stamp indicated he’d left New Zealand a scant three weeks ago.
He picked up another New Zealand passport from the spill of papers. His mother’s picture inside, a false name of Margaret Beatrice Rendon, the paper worn as if it had flown a lot of miles. A South African passport in the name of Janine Petersen. Same last name as his African identity. A Belgian passport for his mother as well, her name now Solange Merteuil. He picked up another Belgian document. His picture again, but with the name of Jean-Marc Merteuil. He opened the second package: three passports for Gabriel, false names from Namibia, Belgium, Costa Rica.
The next package held four bound passports at the bottom of the pile, looped together by a rubber band. He flipped them over, freed them from the band. South Africa. New Zealand. Belgium. United States. Opened them. And inside each, his father’s face stared up at him. Four different names: Petersen, Rendon, Merteuil, Smithson.
Odd. Three for him, three for his mother, but four for his dad. Why?
In the final package were credit cards and other identity documentation, tied to his family’s new names. But he was afraid to use the cards. What if Jargo could find him if he charged gas or plane fare or a meal? He needed cash, but he knew if he made an ATM withdrawal from his accounts, the transaction would register in the bank’s database, the security tape would capture his image, and the police would know he was back in Houston. So what if they know you’re in Houston? You’re leaving for Florida. But he was still reluctant to go to a bank.
He tucked the passports back into the bag.
The awful question wormed in past his fatigue: Was Jargo waiting for you at Mom’s? If Jargo wasn’t expecting Evan, then they were after his mother and Evan had simply arrived at the wrong time. But if they were… how had they known he was coming? He had talked directly to no one but his mother. He could phone in an anonymous tip to the police, suggest they look for bugs on her phone. Or on his. He had called Carrie, left her a voice mail. They could have intercepted that message.
You’re ignoring that Carrie quit her job that morning. She vanished without telling you. Did she know about this?
The thought dried his throat. Don’t love me, she had said. But that couldn’t mean regret. That couldn’t mean she was preparing to betray him. He knew her, he knew her heart. He could not believe Carrie would have any voluntary involvement in this horror. It had to be a phone tap. Which was an entirely scary prospect of its own. Gabriel had called Jargo a freelance spy – assume that was true, then Jargo could tap phones. But if it wasn’t, then
