ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Little did I know when I started writing my first mystery that it would turn into three books. But my wonderfully supportive agent, Kimberley Cameron, believed that the story of Red Solaris had the legs to run through a full trilogy so I kept going. I am forever indebted to her.
Several helpful and long-suffering readers also deserve thanks and praise. For this third book, a special salute to Cecelia Pearce, as always, and Mark Bacon, a wonderful writer who took time out from his own work to help with mine.
As usual, I counted on editors, Anna Davis, Erin George and Rachel Jackson at Henery Press to make the book better. They never fail me.
More applause should go to reviewers. Ann Ronald has won awards for her books on the West. Don Hardy’s recent creation is a compelling blog on his fight against cancer. They are distinguished academics with intellects and writing talents superior to mine and, fortunately, they share my taste for murder and mystery.
Holly Austin Smith, author of Walking Prey; How America’s Youth are Vulnerable to Sex Slavery, taught me what young girls endure when trapped in this crime, and Sergeant Ron Chalmers described the reality of the Reno, Nevada Police Department’s war on the sex trade in Nevada. I greatly admire the Reno PD and others who work to help save the children and women in my hometown. I hope they will accept my apologies for indulging in exaggerations for dramatic effect. Any errors in describing police work are entirely my own.
Carla B. Higginbotham, Assistant US Attorney, District of Nevada, first alerted me to the magnitude of the problem in this state with her articulate and fact-filled presentation on sex trafficking in Nevada and America.
I am blessed with a group of amazing friends who critique and encourage and keep me sane. So do some wonderful book clubs and Sundance, the best of all possible bookstores.
Finally, daughters Miranda and Temple, and stepson Scott, cheer me on, and my dear husband, Bob, keeps me happily writing and grateful to be living with him.
Chapter 1
The shouting came from somewhere east of the parking lot. It was dark and cold and I was exhausted after a twelve-hour workday. I wanted to get home to Joe and hot food. But the shouts were not the boisterous noises of college students who’d had too much to drink. No laughter. No celebration. Instead the sound of an angry man bellowing. A sharp sense of impending violence cut through the night air. A momentary lull was followed by a woman’s voice, higher than the rest.
“You bastards, I have every right to be here.”
I knew her voice and instinctively ran toward the sound.
Porch lights illuminated a group on the front lawn of a large white house. The house belonged to a fringe student organization of white supremacists who called themselves The American Purists. On our campus, The Purists were a small group who usually went ignored when they weren’t being derided.
They were noted primarily for posters proclaiming beliefs so extreme they could easily be mistaken for satire. The posters would go up in the early morning and, usually by nightfall, would be covered with epithets written by other students who referred to the Purists as nut-wings, “neither left-wing nor right-wing, just somewhere totally off the grid.”
No one on the faculty or in the rest of the student body took the Purists seriously. Once in a while, some graffiti would appear on the side of the large white Victorian house the Purists occupied, but for the most part they were left to themselves.
But that night they were out in force, at least ten of them surrounding a slender girl who lay on the edge of the lawn. A smashed cell phone lay beside her.
“No right to take photographs,” growled one of the young men, crouching down near the girl’s head.
“Get out of here,” said a tall girl standing beside him. “Or you’re going to get hurt.”
The prone girl rolled over and struggled to her feet, taking two steps back onto the sidewalk in front of the house. She was smaller and shorter than the others. “I just wanted to get a shot of them,” she said, pointing to figures standing several yards away in front of a partially constructed platform at the side of the house. I could just make them out, two men and a woman, their faces in the shadow of the house.
The tall girl took a step toward her and stomped on the lifeless cell phone. “No pictures, bitch. Leave.”
But the smaller girl stood her ground. Even in the inadequate light from the porch her posture showed defiance. “You assholes should welcome the publicity. Or do you think the local papers are really going to cover your extremist guest speaker? She’ll be on page seven at the bottom.”
“Leave. Now.” The tall girl took a step closer.
“That’ll be enough,” I said, moving into the light. The group came out of its knot. Several headed back to the house, leaving the tall girl and her growling companion on the lawn.
“Get your reporter out of here,” said the boy, looking slightly nervous and less belligerent than before.
I turned to the defiant girl on the sidewalk. “Rosie, go home. It’s late. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
“Dammit, Red. They broke my phone. It cost me a couple hundred bucks.” She picked up the shattered remains of her cell phone and turned to the boy. “And I’m not a reporter, bird brain. I’m the editor of the student paper, and I can take pictures anywhere on this campus.”
“Rosie, we’ll talk tomorrow. Go home. Now,” I interrupted before the boy could reply. I could see her hands trembling as she shoved the pieces of phone into her jacket pocket. She gave me a sour look and walked off without a word to the others or me.
After Rosie had disappeared into the darkness, I turned to the two remaining on the lawn. “She is the editor,” I said. “And she does have the right to photograph what’s going on.”
“This is private property,” said the boy.
“The house may be. But this area outside is Mountain West University property,” I replied. “And you owe Rosie Jenkins a new cell phone.”
The tall girl shook her head and spit on the lawn.
“Not very ladylike,” said a tall older woman coming toward me from the direction of the construction. “Good evening, Dean Solaris.”
I recognized her from her television appearances. Danica Boerum, a woman I believed to be an out-and-out racist. I stared at her. How did she know my name?
A ghost of a smile played on her face. She was not conventionally pretty, yet she was remarkably good-looking. Wide-set brown eyes, straight nose, firm chin, and thick, dazzling white hair she wore close-cropped so it haloed her faced. She extended her hand. “Danica Boerum. I saw you speak at a journalism conference in Cincinnati a year ago. You were eloquent about the protections of The First Amendment.”
Oh, shit. Did I give her some tips on how to use the First Amendment to defend her own awful opinions?
Her hand remained outstretched, and I took it briefly. It felt like ice. Or perhaps it was my own hand that was chilled to the bone. “Ms. Boerum,” I mumbled. “I gather you’re going to visit here in the near future.”
“I am,” she said, gathering a thick white shawl around her shoulders. “Tonight I’m checking out the platform details. Hope to see you at my talk. Perhaps we can meet afterward and chat about freedom of speech.” She turned back to the two men still in shadow by the house.
Chat? Not unless you put a gun to my head. “I hope you’ll allow photographers,” I called to her retreating back.
“Just official ones. No amateurs.” She waved her hand.
“So that’s the dreaded Danica Boerum,” I said out loud once in my car. And I shook her hand. What an idiot. I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a sani-wipe and scrubbed my hand vigorously. That’s what you get for being stupidly appropriate.
Granted, Boerum had been polite and pleasant. There had been no trace of animus or hostility, although she must have known I
despised everything she stood for, even if nothing she said to me had touched upon her racist speeches, her insistent calling for “a purer America.” I hated everything I’d ever heard about her, especially her drumbeat argument that the Founding Fathers had intended America to be a nation founded solely for the descendants of Europeans, a nation that should be governed exclusively by men who looked as white as the signers of the Declaration.
I had been following her in the media for several months, thinking the stories on her would be a good case for my journalism students to study. Her speeches had caused at least two violent campus riots. Six students and two faculty members had been seriously injured at her last appearance. She was persona non grata at most of the nation’s universities. In spite of her extremist views, she drew audiences of a thousand or more. Almost every one of her events had ended in rioting, gunshot wounds, split lips, cops with face shields, and students in handcuffs. I remembered the television coverage and the grisly picture on Facebook of a girl with her front teeth broken. I swallowed hard. Now the trouble Danica Boerum caused was coming to my campus.
What was it Justice Holmes had said about the importance of free thought? “Not just for those that agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Freedom for the thought that we hate. Was I prepared to agree with Holmes? I was a First Amendment fanatic, according to several friends. And the freedom to utter even hateful words was the root of my own deep belief in free speech. I knew I would have to keep telling myself that over and over again when Boerum came to Mountain West University.
The next morning, I decided freedom for the thought that we hate was a tough concept to digest before breakfast.
Footfall on the stairs intruded on my thoughts. Detective Joe Morgan had been living in my house for six months, but the sound of his rapid descent from the bedroom we shared still startled me before I had finished my coffee.
“You’re later than usual,” I said.
“Court this morning. Judge wants us there at ten. I thought I would take it easy until then.” He treated me to a grin that always seemed unexpected in his rugged chief of detectives face. He leaned down, pulled back my hair and kissed the side of my neck. I could smell his shaving cream and the touch of his fingers in my hair produced predictable warmth. He walked to the stove still dressed only in his shorts. His shoulders were wide and his back was long and muscular. He had played basketball in college and his legs still looked eligible. A replica of the statue of David in my kitchen. Lucky me.
He turned to give me an amused look with his dark green eyes. His face opened again into a crooked smile as he reached one long, well-defined arm for the cast-iron skillet hanging by the stove. “Can I make you an omelet?”
“I wish you could. But I have a deans’ meeting in an hour and there’s always way too much food there. And, of course, I always eat it.”
Pity. Joe’s omelets were worth making anyone late for work.
He broke eggs into a bowl and stirred vigorously. “All carbs at a university deans’ meeting, my love. I’m offering protein here. Fresh eggs, shallots, cheddar cheese. Plus, fresh orange juice and a little morning sex. Keep you slim and satisfied.”
“Stop. Stop. I’m already late.” I sighed loudly enough for him to hear, stood up, gently passed my fingertips over his impressive shoulders and headed for the stairs.
“Your loss,” he said to a shallot and sliced it.
The drive to the university took me along a two-lane road that cut through the west side of Landry, Nevada. Spring had come early after an unusually mild winter and, much as I worry about global warming, I had to say that the exceptionally high temperatures benefitted the beauty of northern Nevada. It was still March and, instead of snow, the daffodils were massed and brilliant on the front lawns of my neighbors’ homes. Puffy white pear trees and pink flowering plums lined the street. The air was warm and the sky bright blue. If I’d owned a convertible, I would have put the top down and let the wind ruin my carefully combed hair.
I turned onto the main drag in Landry and slowed to admire the elegant white brick theater that housed our opera and ballet companies. For a small city, ours was blessed with the active cultural life characteristic of a university town.
Landry was located about an hour from Reno and was a four-hour drive from San Francisco. Mountain West University was Landry’s largest employer and the city had grown up around the campus. Luckily, we were still a community of low one- and two-story buildings, so you could see the Sierra Nevada from almost everywhere you went. The mountaintops at thirteen thousand feet above sea level were still covered with snow that often lasted until July.
It was the beginning of my favorite time of year and my mood was light in spite of my concerns about Danica Boerum’s appearance. I tried to push my worries aside and concentrate on the beauty of the main entrance to the university and enjoy the drive through the clear morning. I thought about Joe. After almost two years of a back-and-forth love affair, he had finally decided to move into my house last fall. For two months afterwards, he kept his old apartment, which made me nervous, but finally, at Christmas—perhaps as a gift to me—he abandoned his ambivalence and the last of his books and records found their places on the shelves in my living room.
Sadie Hawkins was right. One afternoon during a long walk she had said, “Red, you are deliriously in love and it is most becoming. I have never seen you look so radiant.”
Sadie was my best friend, in spite of our age difference. I was thirty-seven and she had just turned seventy. I was a newly appointed university dean and she was the retired Dean of Liberal Arts, wiser and more experienced than I and as close to me as a surrogate mother.
Her delight in my new circumstances warmed me. Sadie had been opposed to my candidacy for the dean’s job, but now seemed rather pleased that I had won it after a long and controversial search. She was even more pleased that Detective Joe Morgan and I were finally living together and, better yet, not quarreling.
“Maybe if you stick to education and let Joe do all the criminal investigations, your relationship will be less turbulent,” Sadie had said at our weekly lunch.
“Maybe, but I’m really good at figuring out details,” I said. “He may get angry about how I do it, but Joe acknowledges I have been helpful with his cases. I’m good at strategic thinking. I read clues well. I make connections. Joe says he admires that.”
“I’m sure you are very useful in tracking down bad guys. But you drive Joe crazy when you risk your own safety.”
She was right. Joe hated it when I took it into my head to go out on my own to solve a puzzle or a crime, worse yet to participate in the hunt and capture. Twice, I had come close to being killed. But how do you achieve success without taking risks?
And success was something I thoroughly enjoyed. I pulled up in the parking lot of the Mountain West School of Journalism at a space marked “Reserved for the Dean of Journalism.” I never thought I would so enjoy parking my car in the morning. With my new dean’s salary, I had treated myself to a hybrid Toyota that suited my liberal sensibilities and still gleamed in the sunlight.
I smiled again when I saw “Dean of Journalism: Dr. Meredith Solaris—Room 300” at the top of the directory in the school lobby. I had fought hard for the privilege of running my school and won out over some serious opposition. The memory of that triumph always cheered me up.
“I don’t know what in the hell you’ve got to look so sunny about.” The voice belonged to Phyllis Baker, Professor of Media Graphics and a good friend. Tall and dark, she appeared especially severe standing by the elevator, clutching her briefcase and frowning as I approached. Her lovely face looked grim and her voice sounded choked.
“Just enjoying the morning,” I replied. “What’s got you down?”
“Did you see the paper? Danica Boerum is coming here to spread us with her filthy philosophy.”
> The elevator doors opened and I pushed the button for the third floor. Phyllis folded her arms tightly cross her chest and leaned against the elevator wall, a study in disapproval. “If Danica Boerum had her way, I’d be deported even though I’ve been an American citizen for a dozen years.”
“Calm down, my dear Dr. Baker. Legitimate and law-abiding citizens like you can’t be deported. It’s unlikely Danica Boerum will ever get her way. She represents a very small minority of bigots.”
“Not small enough for me. I wish the administration would ban her speech here.”
“Nonsense. We’re journalists. We don’t ban speech. We defend it.”
I got an angry grunt for that. The doors opened and Phyllis headed out. I grasped her arm. “I’m sure everything will be all right, Phil. Most of the faculty and students will boycott Boerum’s appearance and, a week later, she’ll be completely forgotten.”
Phyllis turned toward me, her black eyes flooded. “Unless there’s violence, Red. Unless there’s violence.” Phyllis had escaped the genocide of non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur. She and her parents arrived in America with nothing but their clothes and a powerful work ethic that had put Phyllis through college. Now a grown woman with a family of her own and a distinguished career, any reminders of her childhood filled her with old terror.
I hugged her shoulders. She pulled away, her eyes narrow and her mouth a straight, bitter line. She pulled off her jacket and flung it over her shoulders, narrowly missing my head. “We both know how racism damages a place and how awful things happen when people get riled up.”
No comforting reassurances came to mind and I stood silent, looking up at the tears in my friend’s eyes. Then I tried again: “Freedom for the thought that we hate, Phil. You remember that.”
Red Solaris Mystery Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 47
