Free Silencer by Campbell Armstrong Page A

eerie, where the dark land seamlessly met the dark sky.

15
    During the trial of Victor Sanchez, Randolph Hanseimer, defence attorney, had tried to club Isabel Sanchez into submission. His tactics were crude, and once or twice Isabel had closed her eyes and swayed a little in the witness stand as if she were about to faint. Aren’t you just trying to get back at your ex-husband because he left you? Aren’t you just mad at him for dumping you because you didn’t live up to reasonable expectations as a wife? Isn’t this just a seriously malicious case of sour grapes ?
    Objection, objection, objection.
    Amanda was replaying the trial in her head. She kept seeing Isabel in the stand, clenching her hands into small fists. Hanseimer tried to break her, but she always found the resolve to come back at him. The jury admired her. The jury saw an unassuming young woman abused beyond reason by a husband who was a cold-blooded killer.
    Amanda stretched one arm across the bed. Her thoughts raced and her throat was raw from cigarettes and the desert still clung to her, the dread she’d felt, dread she was still feeling. Drumm’s flashlight, the jackrabbit running, blood in the dust. The dogs, the goddam dogs: she kept hearing the way they yelped and whined. Isabel running from them, that fear, that solitude, just her and terror under an unyielding black sky.
    She sat up. ‘Two people I entrust to the Program. New names, identities, the whole Federal package. So what the hell were they doing back in Arizona?’
    Rhees propped himself on an elbow. ‘Maybe they were lured back somehow.’
    â€˜Lured?’
    â€˜Who would stand to get satisfaction from their deaths anyway?’
    â€˜Only Victor Sanchez. Lured though? I don’t see how.’
    â€˜Sanchez wants revenge, but he wants it in a very special kind of way. What’s the point of killing them in Idaho or wherever? That’s remote. Better to draw them back here somehow and kill them where they’re going to be discovered. Where you’re going to know about it because it’s your state, your own backyard so to speak. He’s giving you the finger. He wants to show you he can cut through the Program like cream cheese, but he also wants you to be aware of it. He wants you to know that although you have him under lock and key on death row, he can still call the shots.’
    She thought about this, then said, ‘Explain why we couldn’t find Isabel’s body. If Sanchez was giving me the finger, why wasn’t the body left right there?’
    â€˜Maybe you just didn’t see it in the dark. Maybe she wasn’t killed.’
    â€˜Drumm’s going back in the morning with some help,’ she said.
    â€˜Then he’ll find her. If she’s there to be found.’
    Amanda didn’t want to think about Drumm and his search-party. She remembered the many hours she’d spent with Isabel in a hotel room on the outskirts of Phoenix, where she’d been sequestered during the trial. Armed guards at the door, unmarked cop cars in the parking-lot. She hadn’t been taking any chances. She remembered how fragile Isabel had been. Her small face, dainty in its pale-brown perfection, had been taut most of the time. The atmosphere in the room had been a mix of tension and uneasy allegiance. It had been difficult for Isabel to testify against her husband, because even if the marriage had been a kind of crucifixion, even if Isabel had been hammered nail by nail into the splintered wood of matrimony, and Victor a bundle of unspeakable cruelties, there was still some stunted form of vestigial loyalty. At times Amanda had held Isabel, telling her she was doing the right thing, Victor belonged in jail and she could put him there for a very long time. Don’t think of it as betrayal, Isabel. I promise you’ll be safe afterwards .
    Promise. Empty words, dry kindling.
    She got out of bed, walked around the