Chilled, Tina said, “But how much could the kids have seen? You’re the one who said security was easy to maintain when one of these installations is located in the wilderness. The boys couldn’t have gotten very close to such a well-guarded place. Surely they couldn’t have managed to get more than a glimpse.”

“Maybe a glimpse was enough to condemn them.”

“But kids aren’t the best observers,” she argued. “They’re impressionable, excitable, given to exaggeration. If they had seen something, they’d have come back with at least a dozen different stories about it, none of them accurate. A group of young boys wouldn’t be a threat to the security of a secret installation.”

“You’re probably right. But a bunch of hard-nosed security men might not have seen it that way.”

“Well, they’d have had to be pretty stupid to think murder was the safest way to handle it. Killing all those people and trying to fake an accident—that was a whole lot riskier than letting the kids come back with their half-baked stories about seeing something peculiar in the mountains.”

“Remember, there were two adults with those kids. People might have discounted most of what the boys said about it, but they’d have believed Jaborski and Lincoln. Maybe there was so much at stake that the security men at the installation decided Jaborski and Lincoln had to die. Then it became necessary to kill the kids to eliminate witnesses to the first two murders.”

“That’s . . . diabolical.” “But not unlikely.”

Tina looked down at the wet circle that her glass had left on the table. While she thought about what Elliot had said, she dipped one finger in the water and drew a grim mouth, a nose, and a pair of eyes in the circle; she added two horns, transforming the blot of moisture into a little demonic face. Then she wiped it away with the palm of her hand.

“I don’t know . . . hidden installations . . . military secrets . . . it all seems just too incredible.”

“Not to me,” Elliot said. “To me, it sounds plausible if not probable. Anyway, I’m not saying that’s what really happened. It’s only a theory. But it’s the kind of theory that almost any smart, ambitious reporter will go for in a big, big way—if we can come up with enough facts that appear to support it.”

“What about Judge Kennebeck?” “What about him?”

“He could tell us what we want to know.”

“We’d be committing suicide if we went to Kennebeck’s place,” Elliot said. “Vince’s friends are sure to be waiting for us there.”

“Well, isn’t there any way that we could slip past them and get at Kennebeck?” He shook his head. “Impossible.”

She sighed, slumped back in the booth.

“Besides,” Elliot said, “Kennebeck probably doesn’t know the whole story. He’s just like the two men who came to see me. He’s probably been told only what he needs to know.” Elvira arrived with their food. The cheeseburgers were made from juicy ground sirloin. The French fries were crisp, and the coleslaw was tart but not sour.

By unspoken agreement, Tina and Elliot didn’t talk about their problems while they ate. In fact they didn’t talk much at all. They listened to the country music on the jukebox and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

watched Charleston Boulevard through the window, where the desert dust storm clouded oncoming headlights and forced the traffic to move slowly. And they thought about those things that neither of them wanted to speak of: murder past and murder present.

When they finished eating, Tina spoke first. “You said we ought to come up with more evidence before we go to the newspapers.”

“We have to.”

“But how are we supposed to get it? From where? From whom?”

“I’ve been pondering that. The best thing we could do is get the grave reopened. If the body were exhumed and reexamined by a topnotch pathologist, we’d almost certainly find proof that the cause of death wasn’t what the authorities originally said it was.”

“But we can’t reopen the grave ourselves,” Tina said. “We can’t sneak into the graveyard in the middle of the night, move a ton of earth with shovels. Besides, it’s a private cemetery, surrounded by a high wall, so there must be a security system to deal with vandals.”

“And Kennebeck’s cronies have almost certainly put a watch on the place. So if we can’t examine the body, we’ll have to do the next best thing. We’ll have to talk to the man who saw it last.”

“Huh? Who?”

“Well, I guess . . . the coroner.”

“You mean the medical examiner in Reno?”

“Was that where the death certificate was issued?”

“Yes. The bodies were brought out of the mountains, down to Reno.”

“On second thought . . . maybe we’ll skip the coroner,” Elliot said. “He’s the one who had to designate it an accidental death. There’s a better than even chance he’s been co-opted by Kennebeck’s crowd. One thing for sure, he’s definitely not on our side. Approaching him would be dangerous. We might eventually have to talk to him, but first  we should pay a visit to the mortician who handled the body. There might be a lot he can tell us. Is he here in Vegas?”

“No. An undertaker in Reno prepared the body and shipped it here for the funeral. The coffin was sealed when it arrived, and we didn’t open it.”

Elvira stopped by the table and asked if they wanted anything more. They didn’t. She left the check and took away some of the dirty dishes.

To Tina, Elliot said, “Do you remember the name of the mortician in Reno?” “Yes. Bellicosti. Luciano Bellicosti.”

Elliot finished the last swallow of beer in his glass. “Then we’ll go to Reno.” “Can’t we just call Bellicosti?”

“These days, everyone’s phone seems to be tapped. Besides, if we’re face-to-face with him, we’ll have a better idea of whether or not he’s telling the truth. No, it can’t be done long-distance. We have to go up there.”

Her hand shook when she raised her glass to drink the last of her own Coors. Elliot said, “What’s wrong?”

She wasn’t exactly sure. She was filled with a new dread, a fear greater than the one that had burned within her during the past few hours. “I . . . I guess I’m just . . . afraid to go to Reno.”

He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. “It’s okay. There’s less to be frightened of up there than here. It’s here we’ve got killers hunting us.”

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