“I’m sorry. I just don’t know. Tatro disappeared a day or two after he spotted the traitor.”
“All right. The traitor. What do you have on him? A name, any kind of description—”
“It’s third-hand at best. I hear he’s white and skinny. Wears an expensive black cowboy hat. But supposedly he still looked more like a nuclear scientist than a Texas Ranger.” George smiled. “I don’t mean the ball team. The cops. Chuck Norris had a TV show playing one.”
“Did this description filter down from Tatro?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe the doorman.”
“Any talk on what Tatro did with this supposed traitor after he spotted him?”
“Nothing solid on that, Deputy. Sorry.”
Juliet took George through his story a couple of more times—everything he’d heard, whether it was rumor or umpteenth-hand or something he’d dismissed. He added only minor details. When they called it quits, she tried to pay for his drinks, but he insisted on picking up the tab for both the iced tea and her coffee.
“Come see me being funny sometime,” he said.
She promised she would.
When she arrived back at her apartment, Mike Rivera fell in behind her and followed her into the lobby. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there. I was about to give up on you.”
“It’s not that cold.”
“Maybe not to you Vermonters.” He walked back to the elevator with her, rubbing his hands together as if it were the dead of winter instead of early autumn. “At least there aren’t any protesters picketing to get you out of the building.”
“The ones who want me out don’t need to picket. They’ve got lawyers. You coming upstairs?”
“For a minute.”
Rivera got into and out of the elevator first, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d find and thought he might have to shoot someone. “How is your place?”
“It smells like bleach. I guess it’s an improvement over dead fish and mud. And Tatro’s sweat.”
“You can always sleep on my couch if your neighbors make your life miserable and you need time to find a new place. My daughters are in and out at all hours. That’s the only drawback, but you get used to it.”
“Thanks for the invitation.”
Juliet unlocked her door, cool air and the faint odor of bleach wafted out into the hall from her apartment.
Rivera acted as if he didn’t notice. “No Brooker?”
“He left this morning.”
“You two—”
“There is no we two.”
Juliet could see the chief was skeptical, and he stood in her entry, awkward, until she walked past him and he could laser in on her with a look that reminded her he’d worked his way up the ranks to chief deputy and was known for his intolerance of BS.
“Nate Winter likes you,” Rivera said. “He wouldn’t want to see you burn out.”
Winter was a good ally to have. “I’m not burning out.” She gave him a dry look. “My work is my life.”
“You and that mouth, Longstreet.”
“Made you smile.”
“No, you didn’t. It was a grimace because of the smell in here. You didn’t mix ammonia with the bleach, did you?”
“No.” She was suddenly so tired, she wanted to sink onto her bed and sleep for days. At least the coffee hadn’t given her the jitters—one constant in her life.
Rivera sighed. “All right. You look beat. I’ll keep it short. We’re trying to retrace Tatro’s steps from the minute he got out of prison. It’s not easy. Trail goes cold in about twenty-four hours.”
“The flight to Bogotá?”
“That’s when we pick him up again.”
“I just got back from meeting with a source.”
When she didn’t go on, Rivera grunted at her. “And?”
As unemotionally as she could, she relayed what George O’Hara had told her about Tatro staking out her apartment and coming upon a skinny traitor in a black cowboy hat.
“Guy’s not pulling your leg?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“You know, if it’d been a white cowboy hat—”
She almost cracked a smile. “I thought you’d lost your sense of humor.”
“I never had much of one.” But he narrowed his eyes on her. “You want me to put a security detail on you?”
“No. Come on, Chief. That’d cook my goose for sure. It’s bad enough I end up with a road-rash scar in the line of duty. I’ll never live it down, even if I didn’t save myself from Janssen’s goons. A security detail—” She shook her head, emphasizing her dismissal of his offer. “No way. I can watch my own back.”
He shrugged. “Just thought I’d offer.”
Some of Rivera’s concern she took as genuine; he liked her and didn’t want to see her hurt. The rest was professional. He didn’t want an out-of-control deputy on his hands. That she’d slept with Ethan Brooker and he obviously knew it didn’t boost her claim to exercise good judgment.
“Take a couple of days, Juliet,” he told her. “Transplant orchids, take a walk in the park. Get away from this thing. Come back fresh. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“I was thinking about heading to Vermont in the morning.”