Body of Truth Read Online Free PDF Page B

long time. I wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t always spot her even now, but if I work at it I can find her. She’s very good.”
    “You think Muller and Baine are trafficking?”
    “No. I really don’t. I don’t think it’s like that at all.”
    “Then, what?”
    “I don’t know. Look, I’m getting off this phone in twenty seconds. This conversation is not private, Stuart, remember that. Look, if you can’t justify coming down here on this case, you know, coming down to verify the girl’s alive so you can close the book on it, then take a day off. I’m asking for a favor here, Stuart. I’ll owe you one. Come down here, give me twenty-four hours of your time. You’ve traveled around down here. You know how it is. I can’t go into it anymore over the telephone, believe me.”
    This was extraordinary. Jim Fossler did not operate like this. The cloak-and-dagger business was alien to his nature. His investigative procedures were as down to earth as his steady diet of meat and potatoes, nothing fancy. He didn’t see ghosts; he didn’t let his imagination run away with him. And he didn’t ask for favors.
    “What do you say?”
    “I’ll talk to Dystal tomorrow.”
    “Look,” Fossler said, “I’ve got to know before we get off this phone. Can you do it or not? There’s one flight out of Houston every day. Continental. It’ll get you here just after dark. I need to know now. It’s important that I know now.”
    Listening to a man like Fossler, a self-controlled, unflappable veteran, forced by events to betray his nervousness, was an odd experience. It was like communicating in code. On the surface of things, Fossler never broke character, but his urgency was telegraphed in nuance and subtleties. He wasn’t going to hit you over the head with it. When you communicated with Fossler, more than half the burden fell on the listener.
    “Okay,” Haydon said. “I’ll be on tomorrow night’s flight. You want me to get in touch with Mari, see if she has anything to send down?”
    “No, no need for that. I talked to her just before I called you. I’ll pick you up at the airport.” He hesitated. “I appreciate this, Stuart, I’ve got to go.”
    In an instant, Haydon was listening to a dead line.

CHAPTER 4
    “G et a little chilly?” Nina was walking into the library with the coffee service on a tray. Haydon was back in front of the fireplace, holding one foot up to the fire and then the other. Nina’s feet were never cold. In fact, she was so warm natured that she seemed never to feel the effects of winter at all. She wore only cotton sweaters, and her big concessions to winter dress around the house were long pants—she rarely wore them otherwise—and socks without shoes. Usually she wore sandals or was barefooted.
    After setting the service on a low rosewood table in front of the sofa, she poured each of them a cup. Taking hers, she settled back where she had been before, turning sideways and tucking her feet under the cushion again.
    “Better get it while it’s hot,” she said.
    Nina drank her coffee black and scalding, nothing complicated about it. Haydon, on the other hand, added one spoon of cream—not milk—and, when he could get it, a few shavings of bitter chocolate. As for the temperature, he liked it hot to very warm, not scalding.
    He bent down and turned off the gas jet in the fireplace. The logs were burning on their own now, giving off a soft crackling sound and a sweet, spicy scent.
    “Ramona’s having a good semester,” Nina said, watching him as he came over and sat on the edge of the sofa and pulled his coffee over in front of him. “I was afraid for a while that all the madness at home was going to distract her. She was getting a lot of letters from the family after her cousin was killed in Medellin. I don’t know how she kept her mind on school with all that going on.”
    “She’s lucky,” Haydon said, taking the paring knife and the wedge of Lindt bitter chocolate off