Mortal Prey

with “rectum,” and smiled brilliantly over his shoulder at Malone.
    “Don’t like those body-cavity searches, eh?” Lucas asked.
    “American security is sometimes…unusual,” Martin said.
    When they got out of the truck in Mérida, Malone took Lucas by the elbow and stood on tiptoe, her mouth by his ear, and said, “If you talk for one more fuckin’ minute about fashion, I’ll fuckin’ shoot you.”
    “Hey…”
     
    RAUL MEJIA’S HOUSE was surrounded by an off-white stucco wall, with access through what appeared to be a simple Spanish wrought-iron gate. As they were passing through, Lucas noticed that the bolt was electronic, that the wrought iron was actually steel, and that the black faux wrought-iron leaves at the top of the gate, eight or nine feet up, were essentially knives. If anyone were to scale it, he would need serious protection—like a Kevlar quilt. Without it, a climber’s fingers would be lopped off like so many link sausages.
    Inside the wall was a small, neatly kept yard, grassy in the North American style, with a stepping-stone walk to the front door of the house. The house itself, from the front, seemed as modest as the outer wall, a high single-story, and was made of the same off-white stucco, pierced by tall dark windows.
    Martin led the way through the gate, up the stepping-stone walk, and pushed the doorbell. A moment later, a young man opened it, smiled, and said, “Come in, come in—I’m Dominic Mejia. My father’s waiting in the library.”
    The house was much larger than it appeared from the outside, Lucas realized. From the outside, there was no way to see how far back it extended—but once inside, Dominic led them through a public reception room, across a large interior courtyard, open to the sky, with a small swimming pool, into the back of the house and down another hallway to a library. The library looked as though it might be a hundred years old, all of dark wood with thick shelves set at different heights, to accommodate the books. The bottom two feet of each wall was taken up by cupboards. The books themselves were varied, and included several hundred paperbacks and perhaps three thousand hardcovers. The room smelled faintly of lemon-scented furniture polish and leather soap—it smelled good.
    An old man was sitting in a wheelchair at a library table, a book in front of him. He smiled when they entered, pushed back from the table, and said in English, “Colonel Martin, a pleasure, as always. Your friends, as well. Come in. Sit.” He gestured at a circle of chairs at the back of the room: two leather reading chairs, and three easy chairs that had apparently been brought in for the guests. Mejia wheeled himself over.
    Lucas went along the shelving and said, “This is a good room. I’m building a house now, with a library.” He was looking at the books—they all appeared to have been read. Most were on history, culture, and economics, with a selection of Latin American and Spanish novels; all the bindings were modern. Mejia was a reader, rather than a collector.
    Mallard was settling into one of the leather chairs, while Malone took the other. Mejia wheeled to get a better look at his shelves, then said, “A library. I envy you the task; the thought. The difficulty is to make the library comfortable and distinguished at once. Much thought and a good architect.” He tapped his temple as he said “Much thought.” Mejia spoke English well, but not quite as well as his son. He looked at his son: “Dominic—open the folding doors. And find Anthony.”
    At the far end of the room, two large, four-panel folding doors dominated the center of the wall. Dominic opened them and revealed a built-in desk with a computer console, and an overhead shelf lined with software boxes, then went to find Anthony, whoever that was. “Internet,” Raul Mejia was saying. “A wonderful thing, even for an old man. I have this beautiful library where I can sit with my books…and a high-speed Internet connection behind harem screens made in Andalusia.”
    Lucas took one of the fabric chairs as Mallard asked, “Have you ever put ‘Clara Rinker’ into a search engine?”
    “Three thousand references now, on Google, beginning with the investigation in your Kansas and Minnesota,” Mejia said. “There is discussion of a movie or perhaps a television show.”
    “You were surprised to see them all? The references?”
    “I was…” Dominic came back into the room, trailed by