“Where?” At this point the road was arrow straight, cutting through snow-covered fields and farmland.
“That’s just it, you don’t know where.”
Frowning, Ronny let out a sharp breath. The pickup slowed to seventy-five, keeping pace with a van a hundred yards ahead.
That was better. But Stillwell was still obviously shaken, close to cracking up. Boxer hated to think it, but Ronny was a liability.
A major liability.
Sooner or later, he’d have to be dealt with.
* * *
The man in the hospital bed looked as near death as just about anyone Tanaka had seen. Wynn Ellis’s face was seared, red, and oily looking, so puffy that his eyes were the barest of slits, the top of his head, where bandages didn’t hide it, was charred skin. He lay in the burn unit of the medical center in Albuquerque hooked to an IV with monitors surrounding him. He didn’t move his head, but his eyes followed Tanaka and Paterno as they stood near enough to him to be heard.
“Is this the woman who attacked you?” Tanaka asked, showing him a picture of Ivy Wilde.
His cracked lips moved slightly. “Maybe,” was his raspy whisper.
Oh, so he was going to be cute and play coy with her. She didn’t have time for games and sure as hell wasn’t going to play any. “But you’re not sure?”
“Looked different. But her maybe.”
“What about this one?” She held up photo number two, an unaltered picture, one she’d had Photoshopped showing Ivy with choppy darker hair and more makeup, as this man had originally described to the officer on the scene when they’d found him on the street, his hair ablaze.
“Yeah, it’s her.”
Ellis’s eyes moved as he turned his attention from the altered photo to the original picture of Ivy. “That one. The girl with the long blond hair. I saw her at the motel.”
“The Sunset Valley Inn?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “But I never seen her come out. The other girl did. The fat one with the weird haircut. She jumped me.”
“This girl,” Tanaka said, holding up the doctored photo of Ivy.
“Yeah.”
“She’s the woman who attacked you in the doorway of a pawnshop?”
He hesitated, as if he sensed a trap but couldn’t quite see it coming. “Maybe.”
“The pawnshop only a couple of blocks away from the bus station.”
Ellis didn’t reply. In her peripheral vision she saw Paterno shift, fold his arms over his chest, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. She pressed, “How would you know who went in and out of the motel, the Sunset Valley Inn, if you were attacked by the bus station?”
“It was earlier. That’s when I seen her go inside.”
That much was probably true and they’d already confirmed with the clerk on duty at the time that a woman matching Ivy Wilde’s description had, indeed, rented a room for one night and been gone early the next morning.
“So you were following her?” Paterno asked, and Tanaka saw a look of panic flare in the bandaged man’s eyes.
“No.”
Tanaka said, “I guess it’s a good thing that the gas station across the street from the Sunset Valley Inn and Good and Plenty Pawnshop and the bus station all have exterior cameras. You know, to confirm your story.”
Beneath the bandages and seared skin, Ellis actually lost color. “I ain’t sayin’ anything else. I know my rights. I want a lawyer.”
“You’ve got a record,” Paterno reminded him, stepping closer.