Then we went back to Cancun. And Kimberly has been missing all these years. All these years. Only she wasn’t.
(E) BLACKMAIL
They threatened to kill me if I said a word. It took a few days for the American authorities to come down and join the investigation, and the boys tried to stop me from talking to them. But they had no choice. No one had a choice. I couldn’t leave Cancun until I talked to the FBI. But I was young and scared, and I really thought they would kill me if I told the truth, so I said nothing. Finally we all went back to the States, and I haven’t been able to make a move since without them. They made it clear I’d end up dead if I ever breathed a word. But I had to tell my mom. It nearly destroyed her. She took the secret to her grave, terrified for me. But those guys, they just all went on with their lives. Davis became a business tycoon, Schultz became a doctor, and Alan Torento became a state legislator and later a member of Congress; like how the hell does he have the right to hold high office after what he did? I have their threatening letters and phone messages. It’s been going on for years. They set me up with this crazy daycare business, and that’s been my life. My whole damn life. They monitor me. These are powerful men. Every time I thought about calling the authorities, I thought about their power. They would crush me. They told me so. It’s not even like they paid me off. They didn’t have to. I got a thousand dollars a week for allowance, plus whatever shit change I get from the daycare. Big deal, right? And Kimmy never came home. [Undecipherable, crying.]
40
Woods is sitting at the edge of Mills’s desk, peering at the computer. “That’s all great stuff for the FBI, but you’re not working for the FBI.”
“I know that, Jake. But it shows motive for the graveyard murders, which she admits to! I sent you that file, as well.”
“I know. I read the file,” Woods says. “That’s some crazy shit.”
“No kidding. She fessed up to everything. That’s huge!”
“Do you believe her?”
“Believe her? We got her gun. We found the shovel in her garage. It’s covered in dirt and DNA. A fucking salad of DNA that will match our victims.”
Sergeant Jake Woods folds his arms across his chest and bites his lip. “How do we know we can trust her version of everything that happened in Mexico?”
“Once we get all the emails and phone messages, hopefully the photos, into evidence, I think we’ll be able to corroborate enough,” Mills says.
“Too bad we’ll never find that body.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Woods looks at him as if Mills just pulled a piñata out of his ass. “Oh, come on, Alex.”
“Maybe not the body. But certainly some remains,” Mills insists.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Send me down there,” Mills says.
Woods laughs.
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are. Ask your friends at the FBI,” his boss says. “Or better yet, ask Mexico.” Then he walks out of Mills’s office.
Mills’s friends at the FBI, namely Special Agent Henderson Garcia, call him a few weeks later to tip him off to the arrest of Al Torento. Garcia explains that the Mexican government has waived its right to prosecute the congressman, due, in part, to the abundance of evidence that is, like the key witness, impractically at arm’s length. Mexico, however, has agreed to continue the search for Kimberly Harrington’s remains. “We’ve been really careful around this,” Garcia says. “But we’re ready to go. Thought you’d want to know.”
“He arranged to surrender?”
“Yes,” Garcia says. “At his house stupidly. Agents out of our Phoenix office are handling this. He could have gone quietly to the office, but he wouldn’t. Now they have to go out there and get him.”
“Right. That is stupid. He can’t possibly want a scene.”
“It’s his wife,” Garcia says. “She wants a scene. She won’t let him hide from this.”
“You think she’s leaking it to the press?”
“I know she is.”
“Wow. What a difference a murder makes.”
Garcia says his Phoenix colleagues will be at the Torento home at three o’clock. “Just in case you want to see the humiliation firsthand.”
Mills opts to watch the humiliation later on the evening news, both local and national. And it’s colossal. The video captures Torento in his complete walk of shame, from the doorway of his home all the way to the curb, where a car awaits to take him away. The zoom shows no mercy on the congressman’s pouting face, his head bowed, his eyes heavy. And, oh, the money shot! The cuffs around Torento’s wrists as the agents turn him around and lower him into the car. Your Pal Al tries to duck his head and cover his face as the agents drive him through the gaggle of reporters and cameras. But the duck and cover just makes it worse. Or better. Just depends if you’re Torento or the camera.
Mills flips from channel to channel, Kelly curled at his side, and watches essentially the same report with different screaming lead-ins.
Shocking news in Phoenix! Senator Al Torento arrested for murder! Stunning! Startling! A missing person’s case that’s gripped the nation for twenty-five years. . . . Twenty-five years of intrigue . . . of heartbreak . . . of dead ends. Your Pal Al in handcuffs! The sensational Kimberly Harrington case comes to a close. Is your college student safe tonight? Is she???
Kelly squeezes his arm.
And then it happens. The one thing Alex Mills did not expect from tonight’s clusterfuck of news reports. At one point in every story, on every channel, local and national, the videotape cuts to an FBI spokesperson holding a makeshift press conference opposite the home of Al Torento. The spokesperson is visibly careful with his words, straining to convey the facts without releasing unauthorized details. None of that surprises Mills, but this does:
“If it weren’t for the expertise of the Phoenix Police Department in their handling of a local murder case, we would not be standing here today sharing this very important news about critical developments in the case of Kimberly Harrington’s disappearance. Had the Phoenix Police Department, homicide detective Alex Mills, in particular, not painstakingly investigated a string of murders in this city and located and apprehended the alleged perpetrator of those crimes, Mr. Torento would not be in custody today for the crimes he committed relevant to the Kimberly Harrington case. I cannot and will not discuss specific evidence at this time, but I will say the suspect arrested by Alex Mills’s squad provided extremely valuable information, which prompted the government to seek charges against the congressman.”
Mills all but jumps out of his skin. Not with joy. Not with dread. Maybe a little dread. Mostly surprise.
“Oh, my God,” Kelly cries. “You’re a hero! What do you think Woods will say now?”
“He won’t call me a hero. Because I’m not a hero, babe.”
She jumps onto him. “You are if I say you are. I’m so damn proud of you.”
She kisses him deeply. They writhe and grind for a moment, the moment almost certainly leading to something more, until Trevor emerges from his bedroom and says, “Jesus, you two, it’s almost seven thirty. Can’t this wait ’til after dinner?”
Can’t this wait? The irony is stunning. Also shocking and startling.
41
This newfound notoriety, Mills realizes, doesn’t have an expiration date. Especially now, almost two months later, when Mexican authorities make a discovery along a lonely stretch of beach highway between Cancun and Tulum. The news comes first from Special Agent Henderson Garcia, legal attaché. “I flew to Cancun with another agent, and we worked with the Mexicans,” he says. “They could not have been more diligent. And it wasn’t easy.”
The Mexican authorities, according to Garcia, had availed themselves of the information provided by Lee Leighton in her statements to Alex Mills and the bureau. They gave Leighton’s memory a two-mile radius and had determined three specific places to search. Mexican investigators had no t
rouble finding photographs of the coastline from twenty-five years ago, since the country’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources had been monitoring erosion even further back than that. They searched the first site and found cliffs mostly untouched by the years of wind and salt and tides. They also found the divots, the craters, the gaps in the rock. And they combed and scoured just as they would any other crime scene. They turned up nothing but ocean debris, rocks, and grains of sand. The next day they blocked traffic and set up a search at the second site. It started raining, though, and it was too wet and slick for the team to lower itself over the cliffs or walk the tunnels between them. Instead, they went to the third site, which was just a wide-open beach and hotels where no hotels existed twenty-five years ago. They were there all day, through alternating hours of sun and passing storms. But nothing. Except frustration.
“We were really just there for moral support,” Garcia tells Mills, “and that’s what we did. We just told them to keep going. Don’t give up. I had a much better feeling about the second site because it more closely matched the description that Leighton gave us both.”
“Moral support? That’s it?”
“Well, no,” he replies. “We also had an agreement with the Mexicans that we’d bring her home if they were successful.”
“And did you?”
“We thought we had about a sixty percent chance of finding her,” Garcia says. “The Mexicans weren’t so sure, but we decided that if she couldn’t be found in one of those three sites, we’d be done. We’d pack our things and go back to La Ciudad.”
Day three was not a charm. Day three was a complete washout. But day four brought a dry, hot day with clear skies and intense heat. Garcia and his associate met up with the Mexicans not far from Akumal. They found the “Hurricane Evacuation Route” sign at that fateful intersection of the highway and the smaller road leading to the sea. The Mexicans cordoned off the site. Here erosion had had an appetite. The photos showed it clearly. From above, looking down at the water, the team could see that the cliff to the left of the walkway had completely vanished during the past twenty-five years.
“My heart kind of sank right there,” Garcia says.
But the Mexican team followed the path down toward the water and began searching the remaining cliff, working their way back up from the sand, to the rock, to the ledges, to the road. They dug into various divots and craters. Nine men and three women carefully scraped at the rock, crouched into miniature caves, and removed small boulders by hand. They were there for hours. Garcia and his team made several trips for water to relieve the workers.
“They were extremely dedicated,” he tells Mills. “Like it was personal for them, you know. It was redemption for them to find this girl who’d gone lost in their country.”
“That’s what they told you?”
“Absolutely.”
Returning from the fourth trip to fetch water, Garcia found the head of the operation, a woman named Sonia Ramos, waiting expectantly for him on the roadside above the cliffs. They had found something. She led Garcia down the pathway to a gully within the wall of rock. She pointed, then called to one of the workers. A woman emerged from a fissure in the cliff, barely large enough for her body to escape. In her gloved hands she held fragments of bone. And they knew. They all knew.
They would not find a skeleton intact, of course. Nor would they find a skull intact. So much was lost to storms and heat and the encroachment of a rising sea. But they found fragments in that makeshift tomb, most likely jaw, rib, hip. Enough to test conclusively.
“So I just found out about an hour ago we have a match,” Garcia says. “We brought her home. Congratulations, man!”
“Congratulations?”
“Your arrest of Lee Leighton was the key to this case.”
“So you’ve said. But you can spare me the attention this time around,” Mills tells him.
“Too late,” Garcia says. “Already prepared a statement for the media. Washington has already approved it. Can’t change it now. Not even the punctuation.”
“Jesus . . .”
“This is huge!” the man says. “We found Kimberly Harrington.”
42
The next morning Alex Mills sleeps in late. He told his boss he wouldn’t be at work until whenever o’clock. He’d been at headquarters until midnight, making the rounds of satellite interviews. By the end of the ordeal, he felt as though he had put his head through a cement wall a few dozen times. Actually banging his head against cement would have been more pleasant.
He doesn’t hear Kelly get up. Doesn’t hear her get ready for work. He has some fleeting memory of a kiss on his forehead. He brews a pot of coffee, gets in the shower, and avoids the TV and the newspaper. Yes, he knows what he and his squad have accomplished. He’s proud of it. He understands the magnitude. But instead of the stream of accolades, he’d really like a lone hike up Camelback at sunrise (he hasn’t climbed it in years) and the white noise of altitude.
When he gets to work, before he even gets to his desk, he’s told he has a guest in the lobby. He detours for the front of the building and peers out from behind the reception cage, and standing there is Gus Parker. He does a big stride for the door and swings it wide open. “Hello, stranger. Long time no see. Not like you just to pop by unannounced.”
“What have you done?” Gus asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Can we talk someplace privately?”
Mills leads him upstairs to his office, then shuts the door. They sit. “I saw you on TV last night,” Gus says. “You mentioned my name. More than once.”
“Is that a problem, my friend?”
“I just got home from LA this morning, and I have TV crews all over my front yard. Like, what the hell, dude?”
Mills laughs. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? Why?” Gus begs. “Don’t you think I got enough press from the Richard Knight ordeal?”
He’s right. He did. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. Oh, shit, Alex.”
“I’m so sorry. But all your visions of Mexico led up to this.”
Gus shakes his head, massaging the back of his neck. “Not really.”
“Yeah, really. If we had connected the dots sooner, this would have been a slam dunk. But your visions, man, they were spot-on. You deserve some credit. That’s the only reason I mentioned you.”
“I deserve peace and quiet,” Gus says.
“Okay. I’ll have some patrols go over and keep the peace. That’s the least I can do.”
Gus rises. Smiles. He extends his arm for a handshake. Mills gets up, too, grabs Gus’s hand, but instead of shaking, he pulls Gus toward him as he comes around the desk and forces the man into an embrace, the two of them slapping each other’s backs. Gus says, “You mentioned taking Kelly to Hawaii.”
“Yeah. Hopefully soon. We got to get out of this heat.”
“Billie rents a house in Maui. She wants you to stay there.”
“Seriously?”
“She watched you on the news last night, too. And we got to talking.”
“Come on . . .”
“Yeah. She’s going to fly you and Kelly to Maui. You’re going to stay in her house. And Trevor’s going to stay with us in LA.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. I’m not.”
“How long are you in town for?”
“A couple of weeks,” Gus says. “Billie started her tour. So I get to have a normal life for a while.”
Mills wonders if Gus understands the real meaning of what he’s just said. And all of the implications.
Then Gus says, “Yeah. I know what I just said.”
And Mills feels a small riptide in his chest. “Fuck you and your mind reading, surfer boy.”
“It wasn’t mind reading. It’s just what I intuited from your silence,” Gus replies. “Billie and I are fine. I got no predictions at the moment. No visions, really. Just a vision that we’re fine.”
They�
��re walking outside to Gus’s car. It’s oven hot right now. One hundred eight degrees. The men reward each other with more slaps on the back.
“So, what’s happening with Lee Leighton?” Gus asks.
“Man, it’s too fucking hot out here,” Mills tells his shaggy-haired brother. “I’ll fill you in over dinner tonight. Kelly and I will pick you up.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Believe her?”
“When she says she was too scared to go to the police all these years?”
Mills shrugs. “I guess . . .”
“Believe her.”
As Mills heads back to his office, he debates just how much Lee Leighton should be punished. She killed three men. She killed three men who had tormented her for twenty-five years. She killed three men who were responsible for covering up Kimberly Harrington’s death. But she killed three men. They stole her life. But she is neither judge nor jury. Jennifer Torento, from what Mills has heard, makes regular trips to visit Leighton, who is awaiting trial in a state prison. As promised, Mrs. Torento is paying the woman’s legal expenses with the help of Carla Schultz, the doctor’s widow, who, when hearing of Mrs. Torento’s gesture, offered to match the donation with the money she’s inheriting from the plastic surgeon and the money she’s expecting from the pending sale of his prized Maserati. Davis Klink’s wife is not participating in the legal fund.
Leighton, apparently, stands to gain quite a bit from her association with the Kimberly Harrington case. There’s a plea deal in the works for a highly reduced (and no penalty of death) sentence in exchange for her testimony in the federal government’s case against former US congressman Alan Torento. The widows are paying for a very good lawyer who’s getting traction with the county attorney for both the reduced sentence and/or revised charges now that discovery of evidence shows a determined effort by Torento, Klink, Schultz, and Gaffing to prevent Leighton from telling the truth about the Kimberly Harrington case.
It’s hard for Mills to stand at the intersection of the Torento and Leighton cases and not be furious. And distressed. He thinks he understands now why most women are fed up with most men. He wishes he had been around to smack those college boys upside the head, to knock their teeth out, break their faces, something. That’s just the fury speaking. He’s angry at a world that raises these boys. The antidote would be a good book. He thinks he’ll start rereading all of the classics from his vast collection, though the boys (and the men) of great literature didn’t always subscribe to the strictest moral codes, either. Still, some of them were heroes. He wishes his love for literature had rubbed off on his son. But they both like football, so there’s that. It’s remotely creepy that Trevor will be attending U of A, the alma mater of three murderers, in the fall. But he will. He’s a man now who’s not yet graduated from boyhood. It seems as if it was just yesterday that Mills was tickling a four-year-old to shrieks of laughter and shrieks of agony. Just yesterday they were writhing on the floor, the four-year-old begging him to stop. Just yesterday so many things. So many fucking precious things.
Dig Your Grave Page 41
