Into Thin Air Read online

  “I saw you leave the courthouse just now. May I have a word with you?”

  Hans Gitter appeared frail and dispirited, his face a diagram of intricate lines in parchment. The thin white swoop of hair rose magnificently from his scalp.

  “I don’t have much time now, Professor,” Kurt said. “Can we talk later?”

  “I know who killed them,” the old man said.

  Kurt froze. He wasn’t sure he had heard this.

  “Do you mind if we sit?” Gitter huffed, struggling to catch up. “This altitude leaves me a bit winded.”

  Kurt led him to a wooden bench where someone had stashed an ice chest, beach towels, a bottle of sunscreen.

  “I took a room across from the courthouse. I have been keeping vigil from my window,” Gitter said in a voice warbled by fatigue. “This morning I saw them bring in a body. It was Dr. Rojas, was it not?”

  “Yes, it was,” Kurt said. “Now tell me what you’re talking about, Professor.”

  “This has not gone well,” Gitter said. “Not well at all.”

  Bright sunlight shone on the display windows of the chocolate shop across the street, a long unbroken mosaic of blinding light. Hans Gitter blinked, squinting, a slight palsy in his head and limbs.

  “I regret that I was not entirely honest with you,” he said. “You see, Sheriff Muller, I came to your office with the story of the young woman because I thought it would help you uncover the truth. I needed your help desperately, but I was uncertain how much to reveal.”

  He spoke from the dark place deep inside his sorrow. “I am quite distressed with myself over this. Dishonesty runs counter to my nature. But we have had unpleasant experiences with the authorities from time to time,” he said, “and I have learned to respect caution.”

  Kurt leaned forward. “Professor Gitter,” he said, “please get to the point.”

  The creases deepened around Gitter’s mouth. “My colleagues and I have known each other for quite some time. I met Quiroga and Dr. Rojas at a conference in Paris several years ago. We are part of an international organization. The world is an unkind place,” he said, “and we are trying, in our way, to do something about the cruelty.”

  “Your group was meeting at Star Meadow?”

  “No. The seminar was our cover,” he said. “It had nothing to do with our work or why we came.”

  He reached into the pocket of his trousers, a pair of badly pressed dress pants that must have matched a rumpled jacket hanging somewhere in a closet, and withdrew a stained handkerchief. “There is a man we were trying to find,” he said, wiping his mouth, “and our sources led us here to Aspen.”

  Kurt was beginning to understand. Graciela, Graciela, he thought, you poor deluded romantic.

  “What in God’s name were you going to do with this man when you found him?” Kurt said. “Ask him pretty please to go back and stand trial?”

  He felt a sudden stab of impatience. What did three soft-skinned academics think they could do to a man who was protected by the United States government and armed with his own bodyguard?

  “Or were you just going to put a bullet in his head?”

  Hans Gitter tilted his face slightly and studied Kurt. There was a measurable pride in the way he straightened his narrow shoulders. “We are not that kind of people, Sheriff.”

  “You’re damn fools is what you are,” Kurt said, heat prickling the back of his neck. He stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of the old man. “And because of your naive stupidity, two of you are dead. What kind of intelligence did your operation have, Professor Gitter? Did you people think you could go after a professional soldier—a man who’s spent his entire life with a pistol strapped to his leg—and throw a sack over his head?”

  Hans Gitter raised his moist eyes to Kurt. “Sit down, young man,” he said, patting the bench with a long venous hand. “There is much you do not understand.”

  Kurt glared at him, his heart laboring in anger.

  “Sit down,” Gitter said. “I’m afraid you have the wrong impression of who we are. We did not come to Aspen to apprehend the colonel and send him back to Argentina. We came about the young woman.”

  Kurt tried to control his breathing, slow himself down. He looked up at the hot air balloons suspended like kites in the blue sky, more spectators jockeying for the best view of the bicycle race.

  “Many years ago, just after the war, I was a university professor in Amsterdam,” Gitter began. “One day, while I was preparing a lecture in my study, our son was kidnapped from the street in front of our home. Seven years old, a precious boy.” He halted, struggling to formulate the words. Forty years later the pain was still raw. “The police searched the city for two weeks and finally found our son’s body in a trash heap near a canal. The killer was never apprehended. This tragedy destroyed my marriage,” he confessed. “It very nearly destroyed my life. After many years of grieving in vain, I vowed that I would do something about the harm that comes to children.”

  He explained that their organization was dedicated to the health and well-being of children around the world.

  “Quiroga and Dr. Rojas introduced me to the peculiar abuses that occurred in Argentina during the Dirty War,” he said. “Because I am considered an authority in genetics, they enlisted my services.”

  Kurt had read in Quiroga’s book that many of the orphaned children of los desaparecidos were given away to friends of the junta.

  “These children have grown up in the homes of the ruling military elite,” Gitter said, “and they do not know who they are. They do not even know they are orphans.”

  Kurt closed his eyes. “My god,” he said. The circle of sweat on the back of his shirt grew cold against his skin. “Cecilia,” he said.

  “Exactly.” Hans Gitter nodded.

  Kurt shook his head slowly, thinking about last night. The handcuffs, the blood, the stinging pain in his brow.

  “Whose daughter is she?” he asked.

  Please, he thought. Please not Graciela’s.

  “We feel certain she is Quiroga’s niece,” the professor said. “Omar’s brother was murdered in the Dirty War.”

  Kurt released the breath he held deep in his lungs, then opened his eyes. “Doesn’t she remember?” he asked.

  “She was four years old,” Gitter said. “She remembers something, of course. But a child’s mind is like a delicate jewel box. How much of the trauma of her parents’ disappearance still lingers? How much is forever repressed?”

  “And now you want to tell her who she is.”

  The professor nodded again. “She has a right to know,” he said.

  Kurt thought about Meg in her ashram in Oregon. He wondered how much longer she could rely on convenient lies before Lennon stopped believing them. God damn this world, he thought. Everyone is lying to the children.

  “After all this time, how can you be so sure she’s Quiroga’s niece?” Kurt asked. “How do you know she’s the girl you’re looking for?”

  “Ahh,” the professor said, the smallest suggestion of a smile around his withered mouth. “That is where I excel.”

  Gitter explained that he and a scientist in Berkeley were the ones who had developed a computerized gene test that could positively identify members of the same family. “Genetic fingerprinting,” he said. “You have perhaps used it yourself. In this case I have already worked out the genetic code from the girl’s grandmother and from Omar as well. With a little blood from Miss Panzeca I can prove with absolute certainty that she is their relative. We are doing this throughout Argentina. The test is remarkably successful.”

  Two skateboarders whizzed by in front of them, their rollers clattering across the sidewalk. More spectators were massing at the curb, spreading blankets, a mindless diversion on a hot summer day in the mountains.

  “So you met the girl and told her these things,” Kurt said, “and she told her stepfather you wanted a blood sample. And it made him mad enough to kill.”

  Gitte
r considered his reply. “Not exactly,” he said. “Omar made contact with the young lady, yes. They arranged to meet in his lodging at Star Meadow. He was to tell her then about her parents and ask for her cooperation in the test. Dr. Rojas and I waited till midnight for word of their conversation but did not hear from him,” he said, “so we went to his room. The place was entirely dark and the curtains were drawn. We discussed informing the seminar facilitators or Matt Heron, but it is difficult to explain the nature and scope of our work to outsiders, you see. And we did not want to risk alerting Panzeca. After all, he has been living here under the protection of your government for quite some time, and surely he has friends in high places. We assumed he is being treated as a special guest of your town, and we did not want to run afoul of his protectors.”

  Kurt understood now why Graciela had been so cautious and vague. She was trying to figure out if the sheriff might be one of those friends in high places.

  “Our only alternative was to wait until morning,” Gitter said, wiping his lips with the handkerchief, “and then find someone who could help us. Someone,” he paused, “we could trust.”

  Kurt thought about Graciela’s first appearance in his office. She must have known something bad had happened to her friend. If only she had told him everything.

  “After spending time with you, observing you carefully, Dr. Rojas felt you were our man. Frankly, I argued that we needed more proof of your integrity,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “But Graciela was willing to take the risk. If you will forgive an old man his unsolicited observation, I think she had developed a special fondness for you, Sheriff Muller. She said you reminded her of her late husband.”

  So the story was true. “The one who hanged himself during the Dirty War?” he asked.

  “Why, yes.” The professor looked surprised that Kurt knew this. “Her first husband, the father of their daughters. It was such a beastly business, that ordeal in Argentina.”

  Kurt saw Graciela’s face on the examination table, the bite marks deep to the bone. She had been through so much only to end like this. Dead in a foreign country, ravaged by wolves.

  “Are you in contact with the family?” he asked. He wondered how old her daughters were now and what they would do with the rest of their lives.

  “Carlos Rojas is in Berkeley working with my colleague on the genetics program,” Gitter said. “I reached him by phone.”

  Kurt knew how her husband would feel. Devastated, enraged, helpless. He had been feeling that way ever since Bert’s death.

  “As you surely observed,” Gitter said, clasping his hands, touching them to his lips, “Dr. Rojas was a remarkable woman. I shall miss her intelligence and her dedication.” The old man was suddenly overwhelmed with grief. “I shall miss her great heart.”

  Tourists ambled by toting designer shopping bags filled with booty. A juggler named Willie the Wizard was entertaining an audience near the steel sculpture on the corner. There was an air of cheerful euphoria in the crowd gathering for the race.

  “Colonel Panzeca will pay for what he’s done,” Kurt said. He gave the old man’s shoulder a consoling squeeze and stood up. “And there’s a journal Graciela wanted back from the FBI. It was Quiroga’s. You’ll have it before you leave town.”

  Gitter gazed up at him, squinting into the harsh white sunlight. “And what will you do about the young woman?” he asked.

  Kurt had no idea how any of this would play out. Had Quiroga gotten his chance to tell Cecilia about her parents and the Dirty War? Only one living person knew the answer to that.

  “If she doesn’t know already,” Kurt said, “I’ll tell her myself.”

  He left the old professor sitting on the bench and made his way down the busy sidewalk to the Blake Building. Cecilia’s forest-green Miata was still parked at the curb where she’d left it, and Dwight the tow-truck driver was hitching the rear bumper to his rig.

  “Say, Muller,” Dwight greeted him. “Can you believe this asshole? Signs up all week for the race. Must have their face deep in somebody’s cobbler.”

  More spectators were arriving to stake out sidewalk space with their lawn chairs and coolers. Kurt peered up at the windows of Jake’s corner suite and saw that the curtains were still closed. He stepped to the glass entrance, read its tidy row of intercom buttons, and pushed the one for Pfeil. A few moments went by. He pushed the button again. There was a white hum from the wall speaker.

  “¿Papi, sos vos?”

  Cecilia’s voice, distressed, in tears. Kurt didn’t know what to reply.

  “¿Sos vos, Papi?” she repeated, her words distorted by the speaker.

  He waited, giving her time. And then the buzzer sounded, opening the door for him.

  Chapter nineteen

  He mounted the stairs and walked down the carpeted hallway to Jake Pfeil’s suite. The door was ajar a couple of inches so he gave it a cautious push and stepped inside. He looked around the elegant foyer at the antique vases, the Oriental throw rugs. Someone was sobbing in another room, the bedroom where he and Jake had had their conversation. He thought about drawing his gun but decided against it.

  She was sitting on the floor next to the bed, one leg tucked underneath her, wearing nothing but a man’s white dress shirt. Her face was buried in the rumpled black satin sheet hanging off the edge, her sobbing now a mournful, breathless moan.

  “¿Papi?” she said, raising her head to look at him. A dark greasy snarl of hair covered her eyes. Mascara had dried like streaks of charcoal on her beautiful face.

  “Papi,” she said, “algo terrible ha pasado.”

  A nude body was lying facedown on the bed. The body of a shapely young woman with skin as flawless as October snow. Her thin wrists were handcuffed to the brass headboard. She wasn’t moving. A plastic Baggie of coke was split open on the nightstand next to her handcuffed wrists, the powder spread across the surface like baker’s flour. Two thousand, three thousand bucks of blow.

  Kurt knelt down and turned the lifeless face toward him, pushing aside ringlets of blonde hair. It was the girl from Jake’s party, the one who’d pulled out a handful of beard. A small puddle of vomit had caked on the sheet by her slack mouth. He reached out and touched the lovely sway of her back and recognized the cold, unmistakable texture of death. She had been lying like this for at least two hours.

  He stood up and surveyed the room. The place was a mess. Lingerie and gaudy sequined gowns were strewn everywhere, across armchairs, on the floor, as though the women had been playing some cabaret costume game. Empty champagne bottles littered the carpet like knocked-over bowling pins. Near the bed there were several half-eaten cartons of take-out Chinese food, a disgusting odor.

  “Where’s Jake?” he asked.

  Cecilia stared at him, her eyes bloodshot, teary, doomed. “Vos,” she said in a strained voice, “no sos mi papi.”

  “In English, Cecilia,” he said, bending down to brush the hair from her eyes.

  She studied his face. A tiny flicker of comprehension struggled to hold pilot somewhere deep inside those suicidal eyes. She slapped his hand away and scooted against the bed. “I know who you are,” she said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You’re the one who is trying to kill my father.”

  He rested back on his haunches. “Your father has done some terrible things,” he said. “But I don’t want to kill him.”

  “You people are gusanos,” she said, her streaked face tightening with hatred. “You tried to destroy him in our own country but you failed. Now you pursue him here.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about your father,” Kurt said.

  “¡Mentiroso!” she said. “Liar! You gusanos twist the truth.”

  “What happened to your friend?” he asked, nodding toward the body. “Did you and Jake get a little too kinky with her? Or was it the toot?”

  Cecilia’s face held her anger another moment, then collapsed again in tears.

  “Is that what h
appened with Omar Quiroga?” he said. “You went out to Star Meadow and had a few drinks with him, and then you got a little rough?”

  “No!”

  “Or maybe you slipped something in his wine,” he said, “and then hauled the poor drugged bastard out to the Grottos and put a bullet in his head.”

  “No.” She shook her head, weeping louder now.

  “No, you’re right, Cecilia. You couldn’t do something like that all by yourself, could you, darling?” he said. “Lug around a big man like Quiroga. Stick him in the trunk of a car.” He reached over and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Drop his body off a cliff into the river.”

  She jerked her face away.

  “Even a pretty little weightlifter would need some help for a job like that,” he said. “So who was it, child? Who helped you get the job done?”

  He heard a footstep in the doorway behind him and turned quickly.

  “That’s quite enough,” the man said. It was her stepfather. Rafael stood beside him, pointing a .22 Beretta automatic.

  “¡Papi!” the young woman shrieked. She sprang to her feet and ran to him, throwing her arms around his chest.

  Panzeca seemed embarrassed by her lack of dress and this desperate outburst of emotion, but he kept his gaze focused fiercely on Kurt. “Quítale la pistola,” he ordered the bodyguard.

  “Up!” Rafael waved the gun at Kurt. He reached into Kurt’s parka, withdrew the Luger from his shoulder holster, and stuck it in his belt. Then he turned Kurt around and patted him down, his legs, his crotch.

  “You were right, my friend,” Panzeca said. “We meet again.”

  The bodyguard stepped back from Kurt and spoke to his boss in Spanish. Kurt recognized the low, gravelly voice now, the deep resonance in the man’s native tongue. He could hear this voice bark the words el cloroformo in the dark living room.

  “Colonel Panzeca,” Kurt said. “Does she know the real reason why you murdered Quiroga?”

  Panzeca glared at him through the black frames of his impenetrable horn-rimmed glasses. Without the slightest movement of head or shoulders, he instructed Rafael in Spanish and the bodyguard took Cecilia by the arm and led her away into the bathroom.