The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,154

building. His secretary had called an hour earlier. The senator had taken the first available flight and wanted to see her in the VIP room of the hospital where Brad Nelson was being treated. She’d made sure a police officer was posted outside the ICU.

Things couldn’t have turned out better in the Nelson case. Twenty minutes earlier, the physicians had informed her that Nelson had regained consciousness. The FBI couldn’t interrogate him yet because he was intubated, but the doctors were confident he would recover. It was practically a miracle that the SWAT officer’s bullet hadn’t killed Nelson, though it had smashed his vertebra, meaning he would probably never walk again. Tucker knew that a dead Nelson would have been an extraordinary achievement, but bringing a serial killer to justice in court would also generate a remarkable amount of publicity favorable to her.

She offered her right hand to her reflection and rehearsed a respectful nod. Not servile, not at all; professional, rather. Neither impressed nor indifferent. Tucker was the FBI agent in charge of the operation that had saved the lives of the family of a United States senator, but that was her duty. She needed to strike a tone between hero and seasoned pro, appropriate for graciously accepting the well-earned gratitude she was expecting from the senator.

54

FERMENTING

Elizondo

It was a gesture he found comforting, so internalized that he resorted to it instinctively even in his sleep. This time it failed. He reached out for her furtive warmth and opened his eyes. Rosario was gone.

She wasn’t in the house. He knew that the instant he awoke. Even so, he went through the rooms one by one, barefoot, the chill creeping up from his feet. He returned to their room and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the hollow on her side where she should have been. He bent over the bedside table, pulled open the drawer, and pushed aside the pile of carefully paired socks inside. He took a large yellow envelope from beneath them and put it down next to him on the bed. With a trembling finger, he traced the letters in blue ink someone had used to inscribe his daughter’s name. He sighed, deeply upset by Rosario’s disappearance.

His wife had stopped visiting the girls’ room at night as soon as Amaia went to live with her aunt Engrasi. And she hadn’t left the house at night for the past twelve years, not since she was last pregnant.

Sleepless years they’d been for him, as he watched to make sure she was still beside him in bed. He remembered the first time he’d awakened and realized she was gone. He recalled his initial astonishment at finding she wasn’t there, his alarm at the prospect of a sudden illness or fainting spell, the worry about a possible miscarriage. After that, checking the house, mastering his panic, and throwing an overcoat over his pajamas to go to the bakery, only to confirm she wasn’t there either. Then sitting in the living room, waiting, speculating, tormented by worry and suspicion, staring at the telephone and deciding he’d wait another fifteen minutes before calling the police. Finally, hearing her key in the lock and hurrying upstairs to feign sleep and pretend to wake just as she returned to bed, her body still chilled by the cold of the streets outside.

Then gathering his courage and asking in a tremulous voice, “Where were you? Is everything all right?”

She replied, in a reassuring voice, “Don’t worry, I’m fine. I couldn’t sleep and I went downstairs for a glass of milk.”

Juan couldn’t go back to sleep after that.

Rosario continued to leave the house in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning at least one night out of ten. She always returned before the sun rose, chilled but serene, to slip into bed and pretend she’d never left.

He’d thought a thousand times of confronting her, racking his brain for a way to bring up the subject. Each night that she left the house, he sat in the darkness waiting for her in the living room, imagining how the conversation might go when she came in and he caught her sneaking back before dawn. She’d be obliged to explain, in that case, and tell him where she’d been and with whom. She’d have to tell him why his pregnant wife had left his side in the middle of the night.

Then came the moment he heard her key in the door. After that,