Lonesome Lawmen

Four-4

The drive seemed to take forever. Matt held excitement in check, but it wasn’t easy. They were close. So close, he could almost smell her coconut shampoo.

He stalked into her hotel room, pushing aside the manager with the key, felt death’s visit before he saw the leg protruding from the bathroom.

Behind him Alice inhaled sharply.

Matt paced forward, dread fading, to be replaced by anger, when he saw the white stockings and comfortable shoe on the foot. He pushed the door open.

“It’s not Gwynne.” He stared down at the sprawled body, fighting back the anger. Too late for that. “Call some cops, Alice.”

Matt stalked to the center of the room and looked around with a frustrated sigh. “You got the list of what she was wearing, Riggs. See if she made any calls or somebody saw her leave.”

“Right.” He slid out the door with his characteristic slouch.

While Alice made the call, Matt made a restless circuit of the room. The bed had clearly not been slept in, though the cover was rumpled. Otherwise the room looked undisturbed, phone books, paper and pens still neatly stowed in the desk drawers, the closet bare of occupancy.

“Well, look at what we have here.” He crossed back to the desk and crouched down, lifting up the telephone line lying free of the wall plug. He fingered it for a moment, remembering the laptop in the safe house plugged into the telephone line. She had bought a fully loaded laptop. That meant it had a modem.

Pretty high tech for a romance writer. He would expect her to know more about bubble baths and aphrodisiacs than computers. He didn’t give voice to the thought. Alice had strong opinions on stereotyping, even of romance writers. He showed the line to Alice. “Is the other phone line in or out?”

Alice checked. “In.”

Matt stood up. He had one of their computer people going over Gwynne’s safe house laptop, but had considered it a footnote in her file, something that might dot some “I’s” or cross some “T’s.” Apparently Gwynne didn’t see it that way or she wouldn’t have moved so quickly to replace it. “She had her notebook modem hooked up at the crime scene.”

“Yeah.” He could hear the question in Alice’s voice, but he wasn’t sure he had the right questions, let alone any answers. “What’s going on in her head? She was almost killed this morning. I can understand her panicking, taking off. But this,” with a sweeping gesture he indicated the bland empty room, “this isn’t panic.”

Alice turned slowly, studying the room as if it might give up more information if she just looked hard enough. “No, it isn’t.” She frowned. “She’s decided on some course of action, but I don’t think it includes us.”

“She doesn’t trust us.” If she had tarred him with Neuman’s dirty brush—well, she ought to have more sense. He saw amusement in Alice’s face. “What?”

“It isn’t personal, Matt.”

The hell it isn’t, he wanted to snap back. Couldn’t because Alice wouldn’t understand. Which left him nothing to say that made sense. Luckily Riggs came back, looking more melancholy than when he left. Matt snapped at him instead, “What you got?”

“Doorman wasn’t much use about Gwynne. Says she left in a private car. He doesn’t remember the tag, though he was pretty sure it was local. Apparently the romance writer has great legs.” Riggs leered good-naturedly as he held out a computer sheet. “Here’s a list of her calls. I dialed them on my way up.”

“Who’d you get?”

Riggs shrugged. “What. Not who. Computers. You ever had one of them whine in your ear?” He stuck a finger in the offended orifice with a pained look. “I faxed the list in. We should have something by the time we get back.”

The cops arrived, filling the emptiness with crime scene techs. The woman detective from the safe house gave him a tired nod before getting down to business.

At the door, Matt hesitated, then looked back. The late afternoon sun shone in the windows at a cruel angle, bleeding what little color there was out of the room. Dust hovered in the beams of light. The coconut scent had faded, leaving the pervasive smell of hotel and drying blood to reclaim the air. Despite the bustle of activity the room felt more empty than the bloody, burned out safe house he’d stood in—was it only this morning? It felt longer. A lifetime longer.

He felt all of his forty-five years, plus some. Maybe it was running into Hayes again. He didn’t want to think about the past, hated postmortems on it. Just reminded him of what he couldn’t change. What was gone. The lives of friends. His marriage. The confident idealism of the young man he had been.

Odd that Dani Gwynne was clearer in his mind right now than his ex-wife. He hadn’t seen Judith for almost ten years, but they had been married for eight—just long enough to find out how wrong they were for each other.

Judith hated what Matt did. Despite her sleek image and high profile job, she had kept her sixties prejudice towards cops and Feds. Matt thought she’d get over it. She thought he’d get over being one. Instead they got over each other. Hayes’ entry into the ranks of hit men—and Matt’s problems in dealing with it—had helped speed the demise. Judith’s infidelity hadn’t helped either.

Ironic to think the day his divorce was final was the high spot of that year. What he remembered of it. His brothers had taken him on a drinking binge that cost him three days and gave him the worst hangover of his life. He had returned to his work free of distractions to face the ugly reality that there were things he couldn’t change no matter how good he did his job.

He shook his head. This case was messing with his head big time. There was an itch he couldn’t scratch between his shoulder blades. Maybe it was because of that bastard Hayes popping up on the horizon. Or Gwynne dropping off it. It didn’t matter. A man couldn’t live half his life around horses and not know a serious pile of s**t when he saw it in his way or wish he knew a way to avoid it.

Alice touched his arm, bringing him back to the present. “Find something else?”

Just some old memories, but he couldn’t tell her that. He hunched his shoulders impatiently. “No. Let’s get out of here.”