No Immunity

open.

CHAPTER 44

    “Who are you? And what the hell are you doing in my building?” The woman’s accent was local, her body tall and buxom in lime-green short-sleeved waitress blouse and black slacks. Her hair was short, wiry, apricot-colored, her square face set into an expression that said “Don’t make me ask again.” She was pointing a nine-millimeter automatic.
    Kiernan planted herself in the doorway. “This man is dead. I was just coming to the cafe to call the sheriff.” She was holding her bloodstained jacket in her hand. The wind had died down a bit in the few minutes she’d been in the room, and the air was colder. But it was fresh, and it felt good. “Are you Doll?”
    “ ‘S no Doll. Cafe’s ‘Doll’s House,’ see, like ‘dollhouse.’ Husband figured this place for a hobby when I bought it. Supported him for twenty years now. Not that I hear, ‘You were right, Faye.’ ” Her words had grown almost toneless in the retelling, and nothing in her tough-set face suggested she had any idea how inappropriate the anecdote was to the situation. She started forward.
    “Don’t come in here!”
    “Hey, lady, don’t you go telling me what to do in my own motel.”
    “Wait. The room’s covered in blood. The man looks like he had hemorrhagic fever and bled out, though that’s not enough to explain all that blood. But he didn’t die of it, Faye. He was shot.”
    The woman’s feet stopped; she had the look of a car idling, ready to charge forward.
    Kiernan let a beat pass. “If you think there’s anything I haven’t told you, worth the chance of your contracting his virus, come on in.”
    The gun was loose in Faye’s hand. I could kick it, Kiernan thought. Maybe.
    “Were they contagious?” Faye asked.
    “They?”
    “Those boys of his, who else? He didn’t have the woman with him this time. I believed him, dammit. I’m not one to be taken in. I know people, got to in this business. But this guy, Grady, I trusted him when he said the kids picked up the flu and could he stay till Monday when they’d be fit to travel. I figured what the hell, it’s not like this is the height of tourist season. But I didn’t give him the weekly rate,” she added with a nod of approval, as if her decision restored her to commercial respectability.
    Behind Kiernan the door opened. Faye had the gun aimed before Kiernan could say, “My, uh, colleague, Brad Tchernak. Grady went missing a few days ago. We were hired to find him.”
    “Uh-huh. He’s the first thing you didn’t tell me about in that room. You say you were hired to find him, huh?”
    “You want to see my private investigator’s license?”
    “Yeah, yours and his.”
    “He doesn’t have one; he works for me.”
    Faye assessed Tchernak and settled her gaze back on Kiernan. “I’m holding my judgment on you two. Get your employee out of the way. The both of you, move back. Go on.”
    Kiernan jumped in front of the door. “Faye, look through the door first. You know how long we’ve been here. There’s no way we could have done that kind of damage to the room. There’s blood all over. We didn’t create that. Grady’s got a bullet hole in his head. If one of us killed him, would we be standing here unarmed? Think before you endanger yourself.”
    “Move, lady!”
    Kiernan stepped outside and motioned Tchernak to follow.
    A foot inside the door Faye stopped dead. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She backed out, turned to lean against the motel wall, then jerked away as if it, too, was contaminated. The color was gone from her face, and her apricot hair made her look clownlike. But she held the automatic steady.
    Kiernan knew better than to reach out a comforting hand, even if that hand had not been medically questionable. Faye was the kind of woman with whom you didn’t show softness. With her the battle of wills would be eternal. “Faye, why don’t we go inside the cafe. Nothing more is going to happen to Grady, and Tchernak and I aren’t going to run off.” She eyed Tchernak and he nodded back: the proprietress of the only all-night cafe in the area was too good a source to pass up. As an ally she could be invaluable, as an enemy treacherous; and another enemy in this dark, arid land they didn’t need.
    Faye glanced toward the cafe, turned back to Grady’s room, and was almost through the doorway again when she clutched her mouth, turned, and ran for the parking lot.
    “Tchernak,” Kiernan whispered, “we’re not going