Where There's Smoke

Finally she turned away.

Key whipped his head around. “Well, padre, what do you think of the day so far?”

Father Geraldo lowered a flask from his mouth and wiped it with the back of his hand. “It’s a shame we had to leave the goat. It would have fed several families.”

Key looked ready to throttle him, but the priest’s droll comment struck Lara as funny, and she began to laugh. Father Geraldo laughed too. Eventually Key acknowledged the macabre humor of the moment with a taut smile.

“Ah, hell.” He sighed, throwing back his head and gazing up at the patch of sky visible above the two buildings between which they were parked. “A goddamn goat.”

Once their laughter subsided, he turned to Lara and touched her lower lip. He winced with regret when his fingertip picked up a bead of fresh blood. “It was reflex. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s nothing.” She dabbed the cut with the tip of her tongue and tasted not only her blood but the slightly salty spot where his fingertip had been. “I don’t want to stop the search now.”

“ ‘Now’?”

“It’s incredible to me that the credenza was spared. Either it’s a miracle, or Emilio is alive and has recently been in that office setting things right. Those were his eyeglasses. I’d swear to it. He’s been there recently.”

“Well, he won’t be back today. If he was lurking around somewhere, we surely scared the hell out of him.”

He was probably right, Lara thought. Emilio was her best chance of gleaning information—if he was indeed still alive and if she could coax him out of hiding. She intended to return to the embassy later, with or without Key and Father Geraldo, and stay through the night if necessary in order to make contact with her husband’s former aide. Key would have a litany of objections against that strategy, so she decided to postpone telling him her intentions for as long as possible.

There were, however, other avenues she could explore in the meantime. “Father Geraldo, wouldn’t Ashley’s death be a matter of public record?”

“Perhaps. Before the revolt, this nation made stabs at being civilized. If the records haven’t been destroyed, they would be on file at city hall.”

“What kind of red tape would you have to cut through to get to them?” Key asked.

“I won’t know until I try.”

“If it’s known what you’re looking for, we’d just as well raise a red flag.”

The priest thought about the dilemma for a moment. “I’ll tell them I’m looking for the records of someone named Portales. Portales, Porter. If the death certificates are filed alphabetically, Ashley’s name should be in the same volume.”

“Volume? Aren’t they computerized?” Key asked.

“Not in Montesangre,” Father Geraldo replied with a rum-induced smile.

It turned out to be remarkably simple. After the incident at the pillaged embassy, they almost didn’t trust their good fortune.

Not quite half an hour after Father Geraldo had left them in the jeep, parked on a side street a couple of blocks from the courthouse, he returned, walking jauntily and wearing a happy grin. “God has blessed us,” he told them as he climbed into the backseat.

Although he’d been gone only a short while, to Lara it had seemed like an eternity. She feared that no records would be found and that this errand would produce no new information. Key, pretending to take a siesta beneath his straw hat, had kept careful watch, fearing that they would attract attention.

Ciudad Central was a city in turmoil, but a fair amount of commerce was still being conducted. People moved from place to place in the lumbering city buses, in private cars, on bicycle, and on foot. For all the movement, however, one didn’t get a sense of bustling activity.

The pervasive mood was one of wariness. People didn’t collect in clusters to chat, lest their reason for gathering be misinterpreted by the soldiers in the military vehicles that imperiously sped along the thoroughfares. Children were kept near their nervous, cautious mothers. Shopkeepers transacted business without engaging their customers in lengthy conversations.

Lara and Key were relieved to see Father Geraldo return. “You found out where Ashley’s buried?” Lara asked eagerly.

“No, but there was a death certificate. It was signed by Dr. Tomás Soto Quiñones.”

“Let’s go,” Lara told Key, motioning for him to start the jeep.

“Hold on. This Soto,” he said, turning to Father Geraldo, “who’s side is he on?”

Lara was impatient to follow up on the clue. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”