Me, The Mentor: Chapter 17

I parked the SUV in the dark­est spot of the park­ing lot that I could find, changed out of my black cov­er­alls, and left the weapons in the bags pro­vid­ed.  Before going into the hotel, I cov­ered every­thing in the back of the vehi­cle with the bed cov­er­ing that had been around Willa’s body.  Even though I had thrown the Bullpup into the SUV, it appeared that I wasn’t going to be allowed to keep it.  I didn’t want to deal with try­ing to get it back home in light of the hasty arrange­ments I was going to have to make to leave Del Rio.  So, all the weapons were left, includ­ing my beloved .308 and the pis­tols, includ­ing the Browning that Willa had con­fis­cat­ed from the gun case at the ranch.

It was still only about ten-thir­ty when I entered the hotel lob­by and walked toward the ele­va­tor, nod­ding non­cha­lant­ly to the night clerk behind the counter who seemed to be engrossed in some­thing at his fin­ger­tips and only mild­ly inter­est­ed in me.

I was in tur­moil as I entered my room and sat weari­ly on the side of the bed, the ambi­ent light fil­ter­ing through the win­dow, throw­ing the room into a shad­owy solitude.

God, I wish I had a drink.

I got up and went to the bath­room to throw some water on my face and give myself some time to clear my head.  Putting my hands under the run­ning water, I noticed the red­ness wash­ing into the drain.  The blood of Willa was being washed away, and I hadn’t even been aware of it before!  As I turned my hands over to see if all traces of the blood were gone, I saw them invol­un­tar­i­ly shak­ing, from ner­vous­ness or anger I couldn’t be sure.

I cleaned the basin and fin­ished wash­ing my hands, grab­bing a tow­el as I walked back into the bed­room and threw myself onto the bed.

I guess the tow­el was used for dry­ing some­thing besides my hands as I lay there think­ing about the oper­a­tion and Willa and how she had been watch­ing my back, but I had failed to watch hers.

What a rot­ten, lousy operation.

I didn’t sleep much that night.  I wasn’t wor­ried about ret­ri­bu­tion or car­tel mem­bers barg­ing in on me; I just couldn’t stop think­ing about how I might have done some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly that might have kept Willa alive.

By the time morn­ing arrived, I had for­mu­lat­ed a plan for get­ting out of Del Rio, so I got up with the first day­light stream­ing into the room, com­posed myself, shaved and show­ered, and packed my things, prepar­ing to leave.  It was just dumb luck that Willa had left her room key in my room before we left for the mis­sion, so I hur­ried over to her room and col­lect­ed every­thing I could find of hers, packed it away in her bag, and returned to my room.

Before clos­ing up, I called the Delta desk in San Antonio to inquire about my book­ing and find out what time the flight would be leaving.

“Checking out, Mr. Tate?” was the inquiry from the clerk as I front­ed the desk to clear the bill.

“Yeah.  My asso­ciate had to leave last night, and we’ve been called back to head­quar­ters to set up anoth­er sem­i­nar in Memphis.  I offered to stay until this morn­ing to get every­thing togeth­er and join her there.  Guess I’ll be dri­ving back to San Antonio by myself.  Oh, and here’s her room key as well.”

“Well, I hope your stay with us was pleasant.” 

The morn­ing clerk was not the same as the one who manned the desk the night before, so he had no rea­son to give a sec­ond thought about my lie of Willa leav­ing ear­li­er than expected.

“Fine, but I’ll have to forego your great break­fast buffet.” 

He didn’t catch the sarcasm.

When I got into the SUV, it was as clean as a whis­tle, with no sign of any­thing from the night before and I real­ized that I might nev­er know what was done with Willa’s body.  The clean-up crew was very pro­fes­sion­al.  It would have been real­ly easy for them to sim­ply have sub­sti­tut­ed anoth­er SUV like the one I was using and not wor­ry about pos­si­bly get­ting caught doing the clean­ing.  But they sure­ly real­ized that return­ing even a sim­i­lar SUV to the rental agency would have result­ed in too many ques­tions when the VIN num­ber was checked.  I sus­pect­ed that they had tak­en the vehi­cle some­where else for the clean­ing and returned it later.

I pulled out of the lot, the morn­ing sun already rais­ing the tem­per­a­ture for the day, and head­ed east.

When I reached the San Antonio Airport (is every air­port in the U.S. now an inter­na­tion­al one?) I dropped off the SUV and caught the shut­tle to the ter­mi­nal.  I had about three hours to kill after check­ing in, and by this time my appetite had returned.  I set­tled on LaGloria’s, one of the con­course restau­rants, and tried to enjoy a decent meal before board­ing the plane to Atlanta.  I don’t recall what I ordered.  It was prob­a­bly taste­less as I con­tin­u­al­ly went over the events of the night before until, final­ly, fin­ish­ing with two glass­es of Chardonnay, I head­ed off to my board­ing gate.

I didn’t know when the Del Rio paper would be out and was pret­ty sure that small pub­li­ca­tion wouldn’t be avail­able at the news­stand in the air­port so it was unlike­ly that I would hear or see any­thing more about sev­en bod­ies being found at a ranch in a small south­ern Texas town.

I real­ly didn’t care anyway.

The trip home, with a short lay­over in Atlanta, was unevent­ful.  On both laps, and while await­ing the flight to Lexington in Atlanta, I dozed off a num­ber of times, nev­er for more than a few min­utes.  Any dreams I had were short and about the mis­sion and seemed to end with me wak­ing up the moment Willa was shot.

I knew that when I arrived home there was going to be a call to L.T.