A gentle knock on the motel door woke him and he listened without moving. Another knock, soft, insistent, and Marquez rolled to his feet, the bed creaking as he stood. He eased the curtain back and saw Sophie Broussard standing under the pale yellow corridor light. The dark hood of a sweatshirt surrounded her face. She turned toward the window, her eyes meeting his. He opened the door.
“I have to talk to you,” she said.
“How’d you find me?”
“I followed you.”
“I didn’t see your truck.”
“I hid it. I was waiting for Eric to show up.”
“You didn’t want him to know you were there?”
“I was thinking about killing him.”
Her eyes were shiny and unreadable. He tried to guess at why she was here.
“Can I come in?”
He stepped aside, shut the door, and she took a seat on the corner of bed. He smelled tequila and lilac. Her fingers turned like worms in her lap.
“Look,” she said, and slid her hood back. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut, the white of the eye crimson, the bruising a purple-green darkness around the eye. “Eric thinks I’m helping you and that’s how you found the bait pile and busted the hunt. He says he’s going to kill you. He really flipped out because you took his truck and guns.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s gone.” She touched her eye and winced.
“Let me have a look in the light.” He guided her over and looked at the bad eye. “You need a doctor.”
“I can’t afford a doctor.”
“A blow like this can detach the retina. It ought to be looked at. I can drive you to the clinic.”
He remembered Eli Smith sobbing, saying it was Sophie’s idea to poison his dogs. She was much brighter than Smith and probably knew the insurance claim would never be collected. She pointed up at the overhead light.
“Can we turn that off?”
Marquez turned on the nightstand light and turned off the overhead. Drinking tequila might have blunted the pain but she had to hurt. He went to the coffeemaker and offered again to take her to a clinic. He asked again where she thought Eric was tonight and didn’t get an answer.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“I’d rather have something to drink.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Don’t you want me to talk?” Said that almost coyly, if that was possible after being beaten as she had.
“Were you really thinking of killing him?”
“He’s lucky he didn’t show up there. What do you want to know about? Ask me anything you want.”
“Are you here to get even?”
“Seems like you’d want me to talk.”
“Okay, tell me about Durham.”
“He likes to sleep with me and I pretend to like him. He loaned Eric money so Eric could be a partner, and all Eric has done since is work to pay it back.”
“So why sleep with him.”
“He’s taking off part of the debt. That shocks you, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t really care.”
“You’re doing it for the guy who just beat you?”
The smell of coffee battled the other odors now. He washed a cup, asked when Durham had entered their lives.
“Eric met him at a gun swap in Reno. You know what he told Eric after he got arrested this time?”
“What?”
“He said the partnership is over if the charges stick and he’ll want the money he put up for Eric’s truck and some of his guns.”
“Even though he was in on it.”
“See you know everything already.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“That’s right, I forgot, that’s what you said when you came into the Creekview that night, that you don’t know anything.”
“Did I put it like that?”
“No, you pretended.”
“So my cover has been blown for a while.”
“Well, yeah.”
Marquez poured coffee, showing little reaction. He offered her a cup.
“Durham also told Eric that if he did everything right he would take care of him afterwards. They’d start all over again somewhere else.”
“What’s ‘doing everything right’ mean?”
“Leaving him out of it.”
“Will Eric do that?”
“I don’t really care what happens.”
He caught her looking at him, studying him as he poured more coffee, an almost feral look of cunning, assessing him, and he realized despite everything she might be here to try to get Nyland’s truck freed. The idea blew him away, but it was possible Nyland had sent her. The only thing he’d heard so far that he didn’t doubt was that his cover was blown.
“Does Durham ever hunt?” he asked.
“Haven’t you seen all his big boy photos?”
“Does he hunt now?”
“He’s not even a good shot.”
“How good a shot is Eric?”
“Very good.”
“Durham’s lawyer contacted us. He’s working another angle, wants to help us prosecute Eric. It’ll get Eric away from you for a long time, but do you think we can trust Durham?”
“Did a lawyer really call?”
“This afternoon.”
“I knew it.”
He let her think about that and asked, “Where would I find Durham tonight?”
“I don’t know where he stays when he’s here. Some old rundown place is what Eric told me.”
“You’ve never been there?”
“When I meet him it’s at a motel or his office.” She touched her eye. “Eric is talking about killing one of you, taking you out in the woods somewhere and gutting you, field dressing you and leaving you hanging from a tree. He talks about it with Troy. I really am warning you.”
“Has he ever killed anyone?”
“Now we’re getting really heavy and I need a drink. Do you think the night manager has a bottle? Can we go wake him up?”
“I don’t think we should.”
“We could go somewhere.”
“Will it help you remember?”
“Maybe. One time Durham put his finger on my eye, right on my eye, not the eyelid, and he said he’d killed a man once and felt the life go out of him through his eyes. He said he could feel the energy and it made him kind of high. He told Eric it made him stronger, and now Eric does these bullshit ritual things like burning bones. He has a fire pit and he gets old bones. It’s all supposed to make him stronger so he’s a better hunter. He drinks blood. He drank some of my blood once.” The one eye stared. “If he killed you, he’d probably drink some of your blood.”
Marquez smiled, couldn’t help himself. He had a lot of images of Nyland but none as a vampire. Neither did he believe her, though there was something chilling in her account of Durham’s touching her eye. That had the ring of truth. He decided to give the Durham questions a rest for a moment and come back to them.
“No one has seen Bill Petroni,” he said.
“I’m sorry if I hurt Billy, but he was the one who wanted to keep it going. I’m not really sorry about his wife though. She came into the Creekview looking for me, and it was pretty raw. She wanted to blame me for her marriage so I told her she could have him back.”
“Where do you think Petroni is?”
“Everybody is asking me and people are blaming me, but Billy was freaked out over the money and because of the detective. He probably just split.”
“Did he ever say anything that made you think he might hurt her?”
“He was real angry because she was screwing him out of his money. She was trying to take his house.”
Car lights swept into the motel lot, and he heard an engine outside the window. He motioned to her to stay out of view and pulled the curtain back after she went into the bathroom. He saw Kendall and Hawse get out of the car, and opened the door before they could knock.
“You’re working late tonight,” Marquez said to Kendall.
“You know how I like the early morning.”
They looked past him at Sophie, who’d opened the bathroom door and was wrapped in a towel. She walked across the carpet to them and touched Marquez on the shoulder as she opened the towel. She was naked and there were welts along her lower back and side that she turned to show him.
“This is what Eric did to me today.”
She kept her eyes on Marquez until Kendall cleared his throat.
“Okay, Sophie, cover up,” Kendall said, “and we’ll take you down and get you checked, and we’d love to press charges against your boyfriend.” When she went back into the bathroom, Kendall said, “I can’t believe this.”