“Right,” Pete managed to say.

“I think that can be arranged without much trouble,” Rachel said. “The family’s fairly prominent, but you’re not thinking of bringing charges against anyone in the family, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, “strictly trying to figure out what might have happened to the Owens girl.”

“You’re going to have to stop calling me ‘ma’am.’ If I ever introduce you to my mother, call her ma’am. Meanwhile, I’m Rachel.”

“Rachel.”

“Buono! Shall we call first? She’s Elaine Owens Tannehill now. Her parents still live in the area, but they’re out near a country club in the desert. She and her husband live in the old family mansion.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to drop in unannounced,” Pete said.

Rachel looked at him. “Why not? The maid will just give us the heave-ho if the lady of the house doesn’t want to talk to us.”

She took us out through a blast of heat to a white police car and we drove off to a ritzy section of Phoenix. We wound our way up a road to a hilltop that overlooked the city. A long wrought-iron fence covered with vines ran for some distance. We came to a break in the fence where two brick pillars stood. I could see a similar set a little ways down the road. We turned right and drove up a sloping circular drive to the front of a place that could have been used to film Gone with the Wind, a white Georgian-style mansion that commanded a magnificent view in every direction. I found myself looking down at my simple outfit and immediately felt out of place. How had young Jennifer felt, coming here from the silver trailer?

We went to the front door, a massive carved affair. Rachel seemed perfectly at ease. She rang the doorbell. As we waited I turned around and looked out across the perfect lawn to the road. I grabbed Pete’s arm in panic when I noticed a car at the entrance we had just come through. The driver was staring at me, grinning. As Pete turned around, the car peeled out, but not before I’d recognized the driver. “Hawkeyes,” I said aloud.

“Who?” asked Pete.

“Sorry. Name I made up for the guy on the plane-the last one on.”

“Shit.” Pete pounded on the door.

“Am I not clued in on something?” Rachel asked.

“Irene just saw someone watching the front of the house-he may be someone who was on our flight from Las Piernas,” Pete explained. He looked around anxiously. “You know if there’s any other way in? This Elaine Owens could be in danger.”

“You think he’s alone?”

“Couldn’t be positive, but I think so. Irene, stay here.”

“And let him come back and find me standing out here by myself? Forget it.”

“Capa tosta!” Pete exclaimed and ran around to the back of the house.

“Hardhead,” Rachel explained, and we started to run after him. I tried to keep up with her long strides as she followed Pete through a small gate. We rounded the corner of the house just as he made his way through an open sliding glass door. He ran back out almost immediately. “Rachel! Call for an ambulance!”

He ran back in and Rachel went full speed back to the car. I followed Pete to a room nearer the front of the house, but I followed slowly, afraid of what I would find there. As I came through the doorway of the room, I saw a woman tied to a chair. An ornate dining-room chair. Her shoes were off and her head was bent forward. On the top of her head a dark-red patch matted her platinum-blond hair. Pete grabbed a beautiful lace napkin from a formal table setting and pressed it to her head. “Mrs. Tannehill!” he shouted. “Elaine!” again and again.

I stared, suddenly realizing that this woman in her fifties was Elaine Owens Tannehill. Unlike her cousin, she had aged.

Pete stopped shouting. Elaine Tannehill was no longer breathing. We both heard her make a gurgling noise. He looked at her with alarm. She coughed once, and as I watched in horror, blood gushed out of her mouth and down the front of her elegant suit.

Pete frantically looked at the back of the chair. “Goddamn-son-of-a-whore! He shot her in the back! Her lungs have been filling up with blood the whole time I shouted at her like a dumb son-of-a-bitch!” He held his face in his hands for a few moments, calming himself. “Stay here,” he said. “And don’t touch anything.”

He ran out of the room. I tried to look anywhere but at the dead woman. That was how I noticed something odd. An iron was plugged into the wall. In the dining room. Near Elaine Owens Tannehill’s feet.

From a distance I heard Pete say, “Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.” It was not a prayer.

27

RACHEL CAME IN carrying a blanket, and stopped cold when she saw the lifeless figure in the chair. She walked over and stooped down to look at the face. “Is it Elaine Tannehill?” I asked.

She nodded.

“She’s dead,” I said, realizing as I said it that Rachel knew that already.

Just then, Pete came back. “Bastard tortured her with the iron, then shot her in the back. I didn’t even see the wound till after she coughed.”

“Nothing you could’ve done if you’d seen it, Pete, and you know it,” Rachel said. “Her lungs had probably been filling up with blood the whole time we were out knocking on the door. What about the maid?”

Pete shook his head.

“Irene,” Rachel said, bringing me out of a fog that kept trying to settle over me. “Do you think you can describe the guy you saw? I put out a call on the car, but I didn’t get a look at him.”

I told her all I could remember about him.

She started to go back out to the car when Pete called to her. “Rachel, can you get somebody over to the parents’ house? And maybe check on anybody else in the family? Who knows what the hell he wanted.”

She nodded and left.

Pete looked over at me. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said. I didn’t argue. He led me into another room, where we sat on a couch, not saying anything.

The wail of sirens soon reached us. Pete pulled back a curtain and from the window behind the couch we could see the police cars and ambulance beginning their climb up the road. “Son of a bitch probably watched us coming,” he said angrily.

Soon the house was a swarming hive of activity and uniforms. I tried to stay out of the way of police, paramedics, and other officials who seemed to arrive in an endless stream. I overheard Pete telling someone the maid was downstairs, her throat cut. Rachel walked over to me. “Come on outside. You’ve had enough of this kind of stuff.” She walked me out to the large veranda and sat me down in a shady spot. “You gonna be okay?” she asked.

“Sure, thanks.” She hurried back inside. I fought down that now familiar set of sensations: queasiness, shakiness, weepiness. I forced myself to concentrate on the scenery around me. Before long I could feel my fears giving way before the view of city and farmland below, the distant mesas and muted red and sandy colors of the desert stretching beyond the city boundaries. The sun was hot and bright. Just below the veranda a beautiful garden was laid out in bright splashes of color. Birds and insects chirped as a hot breeze blew my hair around my face. I felt a welcome numbness gradually come over me. Then another siren would go up or down the hill, and I would have to start all over again.

I sat there for a couple of hours, I guess; I’m not really sure how long it was I waited. Eventually Pete and Rachel came walking across the stonework toward me. I noticed they seemed to be quite chummy, gesturing and smiling as they spoke in Italian to one another. They both grew circumspect as they drew nearer.

“Ready to go?” Pete asked. “I called the airline and changed our flight out. Leaves about seven. That okay with you?”

I nodded. “Did they find him?”

They exchanged looks. “Not yet,” Rachel said. “But I doubt he’ll use the airport. He’ll know we’re watching for him. We’ve got people on both the state line and the Mexican border watching for him and the car. The airport too, but I doubt he’ll fly out of here-too risky. You gave us a good description. A guy like this has to have a sheet a mile long.”