Extreme Denial Part 44

"I also told you I'd never met anybody like you before. Hanging around with you was an education."

"I remember that, too."

"People get set in their ways." Esperanza hesitated. "For quite a while now, I've been feeling dead inside."

Decker was caught by surprise.

"When I ran with gangs, I knew there had to be something more than just going nowhere in a hurry, raising h.e.l.l, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Then the policeman I told you about changed my way of seeing things. I joined the force, to be like him, so I could make a difference, so I could do some good." Esperanza's voice was taut with emotion. "But sometimes, no matter how much good you try to do, all the s.h.i.+t you see in this world can get you down, especially the needless pain people put one another through."

"I still don't-"

"I didn't think I'd ever get excited about anything again. But trying to keep pace with you these past few days ... Well, something happened.... I felt alive. Oh, I was scared out of my mind by what we did. Some of it was plain d.a.m.ned insane and suicidal. But at the time ..."

"It seemed like the thing to do."

"Yeah." Esperanza grinned. "It seemed like the thing to do. Maybe I'm like you. Maybe I'm reverting." He stared at the trailer again and sobered. "I guess it's time." He opened the pa.s.senger door and swung his cowboy boots out onto the gravel.

As Decker watched the lanky, long-haired detective walk pensively toward the trailer's three front steps, he realized part of the reason the trailer seemed different. There had been a motorcycle and a pickup truck in the driveway a couple of nights ago. Now only the motorcycle remained.

When Esperanza disappeared inside, Decker turned to Beth. "Tonight's going to be rough. We'll have to put you in a hotel somewhere out of town."

Despite her discomfort, Beth straightened in alarm. "No. I won't be separated from you."

"Why?"

Uneasy, Beth didn't answer.

"Are you saying you don't feel safe away from me?" Decker shook his head. "That might have been what you felt when you were living next door to me, but you're going to have to break yourself of that att.i.tude. Right now, it's a lot smarter for you to stay as far away from me as possible."

"That's not what I'm thinking," Beth said.

"What are you thinking?"

"You wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for me. I'm not going to let you try to get out of it alone."

"There'll be shooting."

"I know how to shoot."

"So you explained." Remembering that Beth had killed her husband and emptied his wall safe, Decker glanced beside him toward the bag containing the million dollars. Is the money what she wants? Is that her motive for staying close? "Why are you angry at me?" Beth asked.

Decker wasn't prepared for the question. "Angry? What makes you think I'm-"

"If you were any colder to me, I'd have frostbite." Decker stared toward Esperanza's trailer. Stared toward his hands. Stared toward Beth. "You shouldn't have lied to me."

"About being in the witness protection program? I was under strict orders not to tell you."

"Orders from McKittrick?"

"Look, after I was shot, after I got out of the hospital, when you and I talked in my courtyard, I tried to tell you as much as I could. I begged you to go away and hide with me. But you insisted I go without you."

"I figured that would be the safest thing for you in case another hit team came after me," Decker said. "If I'd known you were in the witness protection program, I would have handled it a different way."

"Different? How?"

"Then I would have gone with you," Decker said. "To help protect you. In that case, I'd have run into McKittrick, realized what was happening, and saved you and me from the nightmare we went through."

"So it's still my fault? Is that what you're saying?"

"I don't think I used the word fault. I-"

"What about all the lies you told me about what you did before you came to Santa Fe, about how you got those bullet scars? It seems to me there was plenty of lying on both sides."

"I can't just go around telling people I used to work for the CIA."

"I'm not just anybody," Beth said. "Didn't you trust me?"

"Well ..."

"Didn't you love me enough to trust me?"

"It was a reflex from the old days. I was never good at trusting people. Trust can get you killed. But that argument cuts both ways. Evidently you didn't love me enough to trust me with the truth about your background."

Beth sounded discouraged. "Maybe you're right. Maybe there wasn't enough love to go around." She leaned back, exhausted. "What was I expecting? We spent two months together. Of that, we were lovers for only eight days before ..." She shuddered. "People's lives don't change in eight days."

"They can. Mine changed in a couple of minutes when I decided to move to Santa Fe."

"But it didn't change."

"What are you talking about?"

"You said it yourself. You're back to where you started. To what you once were." Tears trickled down Beth's cheeks. "Because of me."

Decker couldn't help himself. He wanted to lean over the seat and clasp Beth's hand, to lean farther and hug her.

But before he could act on the impulse, she said, "If you want to end our relations.h.i.+p, tell me."

"End it?" Now that the ultimate topic had been raised, Decker wasn't ready. "I'm not sure ... I wasn't..."

"Because I won't tolerate having you accuse me of taking advantage of you. I lied to you about my background because I was under strict orders to keep it a secret. Even then, I was tempted to tell you, but I was worried that you'd run from me if you knew the truth."

"I would never have run."

"That remains to be seen. But that's all the explanation you're going to get from me. Accept it or not. One thing's for sure-I don't intend to stay in any hotel room while you face Renata by yourself. You risked your life for me. If I have to do the same to prove myself, that's what I'm willing to do."

Decker felt overwhelmed.

"So what's it going to be?" Beth asked. "Are you going to forgive me for lying to you? I'm prepared to forgive you. Do you want to make a fresh start?"

"If it's possible." Emotion was tearing Decker apart.

"Anything's possible if you try."

"If we both try." Decker's voice broke. "Yes."

At once Decker's attention was distracted by the sound of Esperanza's front door being opened. Esperanza came out. The lean detective had put on fresh jeans, a denim s.h.i.+rt, and a Stetson. A semiautomatic pistol was holstered on his right, hip. But something in his expression indicated that more than his outward appearance had changed since he went in the house.

Esperanza's boots crunched on gravel as he approached the Buick.

"Are you all right?" Decker asked. "Your eyes look-"

"She isn't here."

"Your wife? You mean she's at work or-"

"Gone."

"What?"

"She left. The trailer's empty. The furniture. The pots and pans. Her clothes. All gone, even a cactus I had on the kitchen counter. She took everything, except for my jeans and a few of my s.h.i.+rts."

"Jesus," Decker said.

"I was a while coming out because I had to phone around to find out where she went. She's staying with her sister in Albuquerque."

"I am really sorry."

It seemed that Esperanza didn't hear him. "She doesn't want to see me. She doesn't want to talk to me."

"All because you wouldn't quit your job as a police officer?"

"She kept saying I was married to my job. Sure, we were having problems, but she didn't have to leave. We could have worked things out."

For the first time, Esperanza seemed fully aware of Decker and Beth. He glanced toward the back and noticed the strained expression on Beth's face. "Looks like I'm not the only one with some things to work out."

"We've been playing catch-up," Beth said. "Truth or consequences."

"Yeah, that's the name of a good New Mexican town, all right." Esperanza got into the car. "Let's do it."

"Do?" Decker asked in confusion.

"Finish what we started with Renata."

"But this isn't your fight any longer. Stay here and try to settle things with your wife."

"I don't walk away from my friends."

Friends? Decker suffered a pang of grief as he remembered the price that Hal and Ben had paid for being his friends. Again he tried to dissuade Esperanza. "No. Where you work? Where you're known? That's crazy. If there's trouble, we won't be able to cover it up the way we did in New York and New Jersey. Word will get around. At the very least, you'll lose your job."

"Maybe that's what I finally want. Come on, start the car. Renata's waiting."

10.

A buzzer sounded as Decker entered the store. The sickly sweet smell of gun oil hung in the air. Racks of rifles, shotguns, and other hunting equipment stretched before him.

The shop was called The Frontiersman, and it had been the first store Decker went to when he arrived in Santa Fe fifteen months earlier. To Decker's left, a clerk came to attention behind a gla.s.s counter of handguns, a.s.sessing him. The clerk appeared to be the same stocky, sunburned man, wearing the same red plaid work s.h.i.+rt and the same Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol, who had waited on him before. Decker felt a vortex sucking him backward and downward.

"Yes, sir?"

Decker walked over. "Some friends and I are making plans to go hunting. I need to pick up some things."

"Whatever you need, we've either got it or we can order it."

Decker didn't have time to wait five days for the mandatory background check on anyone who applied to purchase a handgun. A rifle could be obtained on the spot. Before Congress pa.s.sed the a.s.sault-weapon ban, Decker would merely have chosen several AR-15s, the civilian version of the U.S. military's M-16, commonly available in most gunshops until the ban. Now his choices weren't as easy. "A Remington bolt-action .270."

"Got it."

"A Winchester lever-action .30-30. Short barrel-twenty-four inches."

"No problem."

"Two double-barrel shotguns, ten-gauge."

"No can do. The heaviest double-barrels I've got are twelve-gauge. Made by Stoeger."

"Fine. I need a modified choke on the shotguns."

"No problem there." The clerk was writing a list.

"Short barrels on them."

"Yep. Anything else?"

"A .22 semiautomatic rifle."

"Ruger all right? Comes with a ten-round magazine."

"Got any thirty-round magazines?"

"Three. Get them while they last. The government's threatening to outlaw them."

"Give me all three. Two boxes of ammunition for each weapon. Buckshot for the shotguns. Three good hunting knives. Three camouflage suits, two large, one medium. Three sets of polypropylene long underwear. Three sets of dark cotton gloves. A tube of face camouflage. Two collapsible camp shovels. A dozen canteens-those army-surplus metal ones. Your best first-aid kit."