As Ryan inspected the key, I stared at Nordstern’s belongings. Obviously the man expected to return to the St. Malo. Had he realized the danger he was in? Had he considered the possibility of sudden death?
Ryan held up the key. A plastic tag identified its owner as the Hotel Todos Santos on Calle 12 in Zone 1.
“So Nordstern was going back to Guatemala,” I said.
When Ryan opened the spiral, a square white envelope fell to the floor. The sound told me what it held.
I retrieved the envelope and slid a compact disk onto my palm. It had five letters penned on a homemade label: SCELL.
“What the frig is scell?” Ryan asked.
“Punk rock?” I was still discomfited by my ignorance of the genre.
“Igneous rock?”
“Maybe it’s a code in Spanish.” It didn’t sound right even as I said it.
“Skeleton?” Ryan suggested.
“With a ‘c’?”
“Maybe the guy couldn’t spell.”
“He was a journalist.”
“Cell phone?”
“‘S’?”
We both said the name at the same time.
“Specter.”
“Jesus, you think Nordstern tapped the kid’s cell phone?”
I remembered Chantale’s mother in migraine mode.
“Did you catch Mrs. Specter’s reference to her husband’s games?”
“Think hubby has a zipper problem?”
“Maybe Nordstern had no interest at all in Chantale.”
“Was using her to hook a bigger fish?”
“Maybe that’s what Nordstern meant when he said I was off track.”
“A philandering ambassador isn’t much of a scoop.”
“No. It isn’t,” I agreed.
“Doesn’t seem like enough to get a guy capped.”
“How about hair from an ambassador’s pet turning up in the jeans of a murder victim?”
“Fifty-pound perch.”
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“I just remembered something.”
Ryan gave me a “bring it on” gesture.
“I told you that two members of our team were shot while driving to Chupan Ya.”
“Yes.”
“Carlos died, Molly survived.”
“How is she?”
“Her doctors anticipate a full recovery. She’s gone back to Minnesota, but Mateo and I visited her in the hospital in Solola before I left Guatemala. Her recall was fuzzy, but Molly thought she remembered her attackers talking about an inspector. Mateo and I speculated they might have been saying Specter.”
“Moby fucking Dick.”
I slid the disk back into its sleeve.
When I looked up, Ryan’s eyes were on mine. They were not smiling.
“What?” I asked.
“Why was a Chicago reporter trailing people in Montreal based on a story in Guatemala? Think about that.”
I had been.
“Nordstern was into something so hot it got him assassinated in a foreign country.”
I’d definitely been thinking about that.
“You keep your head up, Brennan. These people were willing to burn Nordstern. They’re ruthless. They won’t stop there.”
