Montana Refuge (22 page)

“Okay, that
was
me. I panicked when I learned via the wiretap that you knew I was a phony agent. When I saw you at the police station, I thought you knew it was me.”

“And you killed Nora—”

“No.”

“I was on the phone when you came to ask her to check my apartment. I’ve spoken to her brother. I know.”

Flinching, he quickly looked away. “I didn’t kill her,” he said.

“Yes, you did,” she said. “Don’t lie.”

He shook his head, met her gaze, looked away. “I could tell she knew I’d taken the suitcase,” he said. “I came back just to scare her, and she tried to call the police and I hit her. It was an accident, that’s all. I didn’t mean to kill her.”

He rubbed his eyes and when he once again met their gaze, his face appeared paler and more pinched than ever. “I’m in over my head, I admit that. The gambling has taken over, I’m making some terrible choices and I thought if I could just get proof Killigrew is the assassin I know he is, I could make some money, pay off some debts before my life is ruined.”

Julie shook her head. “Killigrew is the assassin? Not you?”

“Hell, no, not me. I’ve suspected him for a long time. I’ve tried to catch him. Last year I arranged to run into him at a conference, even got our picture taken together.”

“Why? And how did he end up with a copy?”

“I sent it to him. I just wanted him to get nervous. Listen, whether he takes me out or the loan shark does, what does it matter? I was just trying to find a way under his skin. But the man is an ice cube.”

“There were four men in that photograph,” Julie said. “One was Ted, a hired killer who it appears worked with Killigrew in some capacity. Who was the other?”

“Ignacio Lendez. President Lendez’s son, you know, the old president of Uruguay who left office last year after his kid’s ‘untimely’ death. Ignacio was killed by a little pellet filled with poison that has no antidote, kind of like back in the seventies when the Bulgarians filled a tiny metal sphere with a biotoxin called ricin and stabbed it into Georgi Markov’s leg. Ignacio died a couple of days later. Your boss did it.”

“That’s impossible!” Julie said.

“I knew he was getting ready for another job,” Trill continued. “There’s a meeting going on in Seattle that has nothing to do with this conference. Something where a dozen leaders of South American countries are getting together for some powwow on democracy. I was trying to pump you to find out who his target is—”

“So you can blackmail Killigrew?” Tyler snapped as he took the gun from Julie. “I should shoot you now and save the government the cost of your trial.”

“It’s the addiction, man,” Trill said.

“You knew about a murderer and your plan was to make money off him instead of bring him to justice? That’s not addiction, that’s a corrupt soul.” Tyler shook his head and added, “Julie, look around this room. Your boss isn’t staying here.”

Now that she was no longer holding the gun, Julie did just that and realized Tyler was right. Besides the orchids, which had been deposited on a low table, there was no sign of occupancy.

“He never stays in the room he books,” Trill said and produced a dry laugh. “He checks in, changes his appearance and leaves the hotel as a whole different person.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I was hoping he’d left a clue as to the identity of his next target. He specializes in South American policy makers who rub his client’s interests the wrong way. One of those twelve men gathering tonight isn’t going to live to see next week.”

“But why tonight?”

“Because tomorrow the sessions start and it’ll be almost impossible to get near any of the attendees. No, he’ll do it tonight. I should have just gone there and taken a million pictures and pieced it together later. I shouldn’t have come to his room.”

“You’re right,” Julie said. “You shouldn’t have.”

He produced another little laugh. “When the job is done, Killigrew will disappear back into his scholarly role as educator of the young. Face it, Ms. Chilton, when he finds out his hired killers blew it, you don’t stand much of a chance seeing next week either.”

Chapter Sixteen

Tyler wanted to call the police, but Julie convinced him it would take them too long to respond. Just convincing them they weren’t nuts, especially in lieu of Trill’s status as a cop, would destroy any chances they had to stop Killigrew. After Tyler gagged Trill and bound him to a chair using the drapery cords and Trill’s own handcuffs, Julie took Trill’s phone. They put the do-not-disturb sign on Killigrew’s door as they left.

“If we survive this day, there’s going to be a lot of questions to answer,” Tyler said. “Like kidnapping a policeman, carrying a concealed weapon, swiping a cell phone. What do you want the phone for anyway?”

“I can access the internet with this phone and find out where the meeting is taking place. And I can call Killigrew’s old assistant. She might be able to tell me something that would help us figure out how Killigrew disguises himself. He’s not an ordinary-looking man, Tyler. He’s tall and distinguished-looking, kind of haughty in his way. People don’t look past him. How could he really be what Trill says he is?”

“Trill seemed pretty sure of himself.”

“Still.”

She tapped keys and scanned the internet until she finally said, “Eureka! The meeting starts tomorrow at the Pacific Sound Institute down near the wharf. Tonight there’s a ticket-only cocktail party held at the same venue. I’ll see if I can buy tickets online.”

She poked around a little more and sighed. “It’s been sold out for weeks.”

“Now what?”

“I guess we go watch the arrivals. Now to find Marti Keizer.”

That turned out to be surprisingly easy with one of the people search engines. “Here it is. Martina and Frederick Keizer, 211 Bay Street, Seaside, Oregon.” As Tyler pulled into a parking lot, Julie punched in the phone number and, miracle of miracles, the phone was soon answered by a man.

“I’m looking for Marti Keizer,” she said. Nerves were beginning to assert themselves as she tried to figure out how to ask Marti about Killigrew without alarming her.

“This is her husband. Who is this?” the man asked.

“She doesn’t know me, Mr. Keizer. I took her old job. I just had a question—”

“What kind of crank are you?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, alarmed. “After she retired—”

“Marti spent two whole days retired before she was killed while getting money from the ATM. If you are who you say you are, why didn’t Killigrew tell you that?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m so sorry.”

“We bought a beach house over here when she got that big payoff. We still hadn’t unpacked the boxes when she was killed. I just stayed here, never went back to the city. They never caught the person who took her life....” His voice choked up and he added, “She was only fifty-eight years old. Damn.” And he hung up.

“What is it?” Tyler asked as she clicked off the phone.

She looked at him. “Marti is dead. Murdered a couple of days after she left her job. Killigrew never mentioned it.”

“Didn’t the other people in the office say anything?”

“There are hardly any other people around. The professor kept a really low profile at the school and only one other woman worked in the office. She’s a generation older than me and would hardly give me the time of day. I gathered it was because she figured she should have gotten the job I took, so I avoided her.”

* * *

B
Y THE TIME
J
ULIE
and Tyler found a parking spot and walked quickly back to the Pacific Sound Institute, cars had begun to pull into the portico to let off their occupants.

Some of the vehicles came equipped with flags, which they assumed held the diplomats from different countries. Being as there were no movie stars, the media attention was modest with just one news truck, a cameraman and a reporter hovering near the entrance. Pedestrians dressed in street clothes had stopped to watch and Julie and Tyler joined them.

Once people disembarked, they tended to blur together, some stopping to talk to the reporter, others standing off to the side looking relatively uncomfortable with the attention.

“That’s the Uruguay car,” Tyler said, pointing out a long black car with twin blue-and-white-striped flags each sporting a sunburst in the corner. The flags were affixed to the front bumper on either side.

Julie stared at the flags, then down the row of cars waiting their turn to unload. One car had the horizontal stripes of red, yellow and green—Bolivia’s flag, she thought—and two down from that sported flags of green almost bisected by red-and-yellow chevrons set one upon the other.

She put her hand on Tyler’s sleeve. “Look.”

“What am I looking at?”

“Those flags. They remind me of the doodles in Killigrew’s notebook. What country is that one with the green field?”

“I’m not sure. Guyana, I think.”

“That has to be it. Killigrew’s victim is in that car.”

“And so are the diplomat’s bodyguards. If we approach from the street, they’ll probably shoot first and ask for ID second.”

“But when the man gets out of that car, Killigrew is going to have to be close by, right? All he has to do is poke the man with something, mumble an apology and get away.” They angled their way through the gathered crowd, arriving close enough to witness the unloading process when the Bolivian car disgorged a tall, handsome man and a woman equally as attractive.

The Guyana car was two down in line.

As Tyler inched closer, trying to be on hand when the diplomat disembarked, Julie studied the people around her.

How would Killigrew disguise himself? He couldn’t make himself shorter unless he stooped or maybe he wore lifts while being a professor. She’d never noticed his shoes looking odd, so she looked for a person kind of slumped over. His hair was his signature, so she could assume no white hair to suggest his own.
Look for darker hair or hats.
It was Seattle, in June—everyone was wearing a scarf or hat. Even the bag lady with the shopping cart looked bundled up.

A man standing behind the woman carried an umbrella, also a pretty common sight in the Pacific Northwest. Wasn’t that how the pellet that killed Georgi Markov had been delivered, via a jab with the tip of an umbrella? This guy had dark hair and a mustache, glasses, a large nose...and was leaning heavily on the umbrella. He wore a shapeless trench coat and a fedora. He was about the right size....

Julie moved that direction. That had to be Killigrew, and she was gripped with the need to stop him. As she got closer, he stepped forward. She twisted her head to see where the Guyana car was and found the door had been opened and an average-looking man of Latin descent wearing a black tuxedo had emerged. He paused to adjust his cuffs. Julie looked back at the man she’d targeted as Killigrew and found he’d paused and was once again leaning on the umbrella. Behind him, the bag lady flipped back a corner of the blanket that covered a shopping cart stuffed with odds and ends and castoffs. Julie stared transfixed at the old woman’s hand.

Julie made an intuitive leap. As the bag lady closed her fingers around what appeared to be a harmless mechanical pencil, Julie backtracked. The bag lady was moving again, this time quickly, the pencil all but hidden in her big hand, her movements seemingly random but taking her right into the path of the Guyana diplomat.

“Tyler!” Julie yelled, and dozens of heads turned her way, but not the woman’s. “Watch out. It’s the bag lady. It’s in a pencil.” Tyler stepped in front of the diplomat, which alarmed the man’s bodyguard and the police. Julie, unencumbered, ran to the diplomat. The bag lady stopped just two feet away.

“She’s going to kill you,” Julie said, unsure if the man even spoke English. “You mustn’t let her touch you.”

The police had started to pay attention to Julie, who yelled out another warning. Eyes turned to the bag lady and Julie cried, “That’s not an old woman, it’s an assassin. He’s got poison—”

The bag lady looked right at Julie, but it was with Killigrew’s eyes. He grabbed Julie and hissed in her ear. “You’ll get it instead, you troublemaker.”

And then Tyler was suddenly there. He struggled with Killigrew, who levered the pencil at Julie, choking her in the process as she pushed against the arm and the little point of the pencil that was getting closer with each beat of her heart. Tyler pulled his arm in the other direction, but the point kept coming. Then Julie heard a hiss issue from Killigrew’s mouth as Tyler kicked him hard.

All of a sudden, Killigrew let go of Julie. She didn’t know why, just that his arm slipped from her throat. She turned quickly to make sure Tyler was all right. He stood there staring at Killigrew, who had fallen to his knees and now gaped at his hand. The pencil stuck out of his palm, its deadly mission under way inside his own body.

* * *

T
HEY STAYED IN
S
EATTLE
three days to answer a seemingly endless slew of questions. Killigrew refused to utter a word and died at the end of the second day without ever revealing anything. But Trill had amassed a lot of the information and was trying to buy his way into a plea bargain for causing Nora’s death by spilling his guts.

The days were spent with the police, but the nights belonged to them. Tyler began to hope that a miracle was happening and that Julie was at last finding in their relationship what he’d always found—excitement, fulfillment, love. The admiration for her tenacity that had begun to grow out on the cattle drive just escalated as he watched her maneuver her way through a quagmire of legalese.

And then she got a phone call, and by the end of the call he could tell something had changed. Still, she didn’t say anything and he was afraid to ask. Instead, he watched with interest as she dressed for dinner, wrapping herself in a new red dress that clung to every curve.

“That call today?” she said, as she buttered a roll at dinner. They’d both settled on Seafood Louies, crisp greens mounded with Dungeness crab and tender pink shrimp.

Tyler’s stomach tensed at the tone in her voice. She was nervous and that made him nervous.