“Mind if I ask how old you are?” Nina said.

“Twenty-six.”

“Were you raised in the mountains?”

“You know I wasn’t. You know I still have an accent. I was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand.”

“Oh,” Nina said. “I’ve heard it’s a beautiful place.”

“No snow there. I can’t believe how hard it’s snowing. It scares me. But we’ll have so much business from the snowboarders. We get a lot of people from England and France and Germany.”

Nina added some olive oil to her salad.

“What are those little green balls on your salad?”

“Capers. They’re-you know, I’m not sure what they are.”

“So do you despise me? Because of the photos on the Web? You don’t think I really gave permission for those things to be in every bedroom in America, do you?”

“Is that why you’re eating lunch with me?” Nina said. “Because you need a lawyer to help you get those photos off the Web?”

“What are my chances? The creep is my ex-boyfriend, of course. He’s in Bangkok.”

“Did he take the photos?” Nina asked.

“Every one. He set it up. He brought the dog. My boss-Mr. Bova-doesn’t really know.”

“Did you sign anything?”

“It wasn’t like that. It was a joke at the time.”

“When did he post the photos?”

“Over a year ago.”

“Did he use your real name anywhere?”

“No, he used the Brittney name.”

“We found the site by Googling your real name.”

“God damn it!” For such a small girl, she spoke with a lot of force.

Nina stabbed a small tomato and said, “I’m sorry, Meredith. If he were in California, even somewhere in the U.S., maybe I could do something.”

Meredith finished her wine. “I think I’ll tell my cousin back home. I’m mad enough to confess to him. My cousin will take care of it. This is good food. Could I see a dessert menu?”

She chose crème brûlée with a drizzle of raspberry syrup. “It upsets my stomach, but so what.” Nina watched her eat, drank her coffee, and let her talk. Snow fell from the sky, and another day in her life was passing. Meredith wasn’t going to solve the case for her. She relaxed and started thinking about the two cords of wood due to be delivered on Saturday, and that it would take her days to stack it without Bob.

“I have to get back.”

Nina got out her credit card.

“I still don’t know why you did this,” Meredith said when they were back in the Bronco with the heater on, compacting snow with the studded snow tires as they moved slowly down the street on their way back to the Ace High. “I told you I wouldn’t say anything.”

“It’s all right,” Nina said. “You already told the truth. No need to make you tell it over and over.”

Meredith pulled down the visor and applied lipstick. “I like my job. I need it.”

Nina kept her eyes on the road, nodded.

“You’re making me feel bad.”

“Why?”

“There is something I didn’t tell, because I’ll lose my job.”

Nina stopped the Bronco right in front of the office.

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

Nina said, “Yes. But I have no way of finding out, except if you decide to tell me.”

Meredith grabbed her purse. “Well, I can’t!”

“Suit yourself. Door’s unlocked.”

The girl flung it open and snow immediately drifted in. Jumping down, she said, “Bye.”

And then she paused.

“I owe you now. You were nice to me. I’m really not what you think I am.”

“It’s all right.”

Meredith leaned her head back into the cab and said, “When I heard the shots, I ran out of the cafe, across the lot, and around the corner to the vending machine by the office. The husband was halfway down the stairs, yelling. I didn’t see the robber. But I did pick up something. Stay here.”

She ran into the office and a minute later came out with a plastic grocery bag. The Bronco door on her side was still wide open. She set the bag on Nina’s seat and said, “So look. I didn’t know the lady had been shot or I never would have taken it. I couldn’t sell it when I learned she was dead.”

Nina opened the bag and saw a blue-steel revolver.

“No lecture,” Meredith said with a warning tone in her voice. She had the sullen, frightened look of a child about to be spanked.

“Why now?”

“You have brought back the whole thing for me. After your boy talked to me I can’t sleep. I was broke and I was going to go to Reno to pawn it. Then-I realized I couldn’t do that. I almost threw it in a trash can, but I kept thinking about her. Maybe the gun was important. So I said to myself, Okay, let’s see if they find the killer without this. I’ll just keep it. And they haven’t found him, and I have this thing which is like a tool of a demon, like it’s on fire in the secret place where I kept it. And you come. That’s all.”

Nina couldn’t quite believe this story. “Who has handled this gun?”

“No one but me. Oh well, I can always go to Vegas. Even if Mr. Bova-”

“You think Mr. Bova will fire you? Why would he?”

She brought her face close and hissed, “You really want to know? You want to know why I kept the gun?”

“Tell me.”

“What if he shot the lady? What if he was the robber?”

“He was in Sparks that night,” Nina said.

“That’s what he said.”

“His girlfriend agrees. So do several neighbors who saw him there that night.”

She got very still. “Really? He really didn’t do it?”

“So you thought you were protecting him?” Nina said. “Weren’t you afraid if he found out he would hurt you, if you thought that?”

“How would he find out?” Meredith said. “I wasn’t going to say anything. I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting my job. And now I look stupid. Oh well. I took the gun and I kept it. I thought I could sell it someday, and I thought maybe my boss did the shooting. If he went to jail, he would have had to sell the motel.”

“His alibi is as solid as Hoover Dam,” Nina said.

“Okay, you see? I’m stupid. I’m mixed up. I have been very, very poor in my life. And now I’m very, very cold.”

“Thanks,” Nina said.

Meredith said, “You’re welcome.”

27

NINA DROVE TO THE COURTHOUSE COMPLEX on Johnson Boulevard. Snow lay heavy on the fir boughs. The sky had turned iron-hued. It was disorienting, this sudden change from blue and green to whites and grays. Traffic was building on the highway as the skiers poured out of their knotholes in the valleys below the Sierra, drawn to the mountains like carpenter ants to fine woodwork. The snow came over the tops of her heels and her feet froze.

The police department was right next door. Sergeant Cheney came out and escorted her to his office. Still standing, she placed the bag carefully on his desk and said, “I haven’t touched it. It’s the gun that killed Sarah Hanna.”

Cheney looked at the bag as though it contained scorpions, then, gingerly, pulled it open at the top and peeked inside. He picked up the phone and said, “Is the forensics tech still around? Send him in. Tell him to bring an evidence kit.”

While they were waiting, he said, “Where’d you get it?”

“The clerk at the Ace High Lodge picked it up off the ground right after the shooting.”

“She’s been hiding it all this time?”

“She didn’t want to get into trouble.”

“She made her trouble worse.” He made another call.

He gave her a speculative look. “You know, we’re going to have to make you an honorary member of the police department if you keep this up. ’Course, there are a few officers you’ve crushed on the witness stand who might differ with me.”

“It is an interesting change from criminal-defense work,” Nina said.

“You’re as persistent as a horsefly on a hot day. It’s been a bitch of a case. If you hadn’t come charging in, I don’t know where we’d be.”

The tech knocked and came in, carrying rubber gloves, a digital camera slung around his neck, and a small case.

“It’s the weapon. Hanna case. Or so we have heard.”