by J. A. Jance
Latisha shook her head. “No, but when I took off, I noticed there were other buildings around. They looked like they might have been part of an old movie set.”
“Calhoun, then, I’ll bet,” Garth said.
“What’s that?”
“Calhoun is an old ghost town that dates back from the 1870s. It’s located at the base of Starvation Canyon. Grandpa Jeb told me about it, but we never went there. By the time I came to live with my grandparents in Elfrida, some rich guy had come along, bought the town and acreage around it, and then plastered the whole area with No Trespassing signs. But back to the guy who kidnapped you. Did he live there with you?”
“No,” Latisha said, shaking her head. “We called him the Boss, because that’s what he told us to call him. I don’t know where he lived—just not with us. He’d come by, and . . . you know . . . do stuff. Then he’d fill our food containers and go away. We wouldn’t see him again for four or five days.”
Garth sensed there was a lot Latisha was leaving out when she said the words “do stuff.” He could imagine what had gone on, but he didn’t want to think about it.
“He went away and left you chained to the wall?”
“And in the dark,” Latisha said with a nod. “The only time he’d unfasten the chains was when he took one of us upstairs, but we could sort of move around. The chains were long enough for us to walk as far as to the toilet, but that’s it.”
“The place had water?”
“Sort of,” she replied. “There was running water upstairs, but down in the basement the only water we had was in the flushing tank of the toilet. That’s what we had to drink.”
Garth was appalled, but, afraid that any expression of sympathy might derail her, he asked more questions instead. “What can you tell me about him? What did he look like?”
“He was white with sort of a pinkish face and bad teeth,” Latisha said. “He had grayish hair that was thin and kind of spiky.”
“How old?”
“Sixty, maybe? It’s hard to tell.”
“And how big?”
“Taller than me—probably six one or six two.”
“What did he weigh?”
“I don’t know. He was big—a little pudgy, but very strong.”
“Any scars or tattoos?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Tell me about the other girls,” Garth urged gently. “Did they have names?”
For the first time, tears sprang from Latisha’s eyes. She had to wipe them away to see the road.
“Sandra Ruth Locke, Sadie Kaitlyn Jennings, and Amelia Diaz Salazar,” she whispered hoarsely. “They were my friends. He took them away one by one, and I miss them. I know one of them is dead. I’m not sure about the others.”
Garth, occupied with writing down the names, wondered what he should do. Latisha was telling him the truth. Didn’t he owe her the same? “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” he said quietly, “but I believe the other two are dead as well. Do you know where they came from originally?”
The news that they were all gone landed as a terrible blow. More tears fell before Latisha was able to speak again. “Not really,” she said finally, “at least not the actual towns. Sandy was from California, Sadie from North Carolina, and Amelia from somewhere in Mexico. I think she said Juárez.”
“Where are you from?” Garth asked. “You said the Boss picked you up in New Orleans.”
“I’m from St. Louis,” she said. “I ran away from home with my boyfriend, Trayvon Littlefield, when I was fifteen. I thought he was a good guy, but he turned out to be a pimp. He took me to New Orleans. The next thing I knew, I was turning tricks.”
She said it without any particular rancor. For her that was just the way things were, but Garth was shocked. “How old are you now?” he asked.
“I turned seventeen in October,” she said.
Seventeen. That made her six years younger than Garth. He had always resented the way he’d been treated by his father and by Laurie, but what had happened to him was nothing compared to what had happened to Latisha.
“I’m so sorry all this happened to you,” he murmured, “so very sorry.”
“Thank you,” Latisha said matter-of-factly, “but it could have been worse. If you hadn’t come along when you did, he would’ve done the same thing to me that he did to Amelia.”
“What was that?”
“He put her in the freezer and must have padlocked it shut.” Latisha paused for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing. “I heard her pounding on the walls. It took a long time for her to die. I heard her, but I couldn’t help her.”
When the tears came again, Garth found himself tearing up, too. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than standing by, helpless but listening, while one of your friends was murdered.
“I’m glad you got away,” he said finally.
“Me, too.”
While they’d talked, Garth had kept an eye on his phone, waiting for even a single bar of cell service to appear. Instead the radio on his shoulder suddenly chirped to life and the voice of Tica, the dispatcher, came through the speakers.
“Tica!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been out of range. Can you hear me?”
“Of course, Deputy Raymond, what’s up?”
For a moment he wasn’t entirely sure what to say. “Officer down,” he answered at last. “Officer down and needs assistance.”
Chapter 35
WITH BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL, DRIVING ALONG THAT DIRT track, Latisha listened as Garth recounted everything she’d told him to somebody else—to his boss, she guessed. It sounded like a story someone would make up, as though it couldn’t possibly be true, and yet it was true, and it was over. She was out. She was free. And somewhere along the line, she stopped listening.
The world outside the Boss’s darkened basement was huge and beautiful and bright. Even driving away from the sun, there was so much light that it hurt her eyes. The landscape on either side of the road could just as well have been from a distant galaxy. They were traveling through a broad, flat valley with jagged pieces of distant mountain ranges scattered all around them and far enough away to be tinged a strange shade of bluish purple.
The weird, otherworldly plants she saw growing on either side of the road were fascinating and completely foreign to her. Even the barren trees with their blackened, twisted trunks were like no trees she’d ever seen back home. Still, strange as they were, those trees, set against a cloudless bright blue sky, were as astonishingly beautiful as anything she’d ever seen.
Traveling along, she took a few more careful bites from the sandwich. The softness of the bread, the taste of actual meat in her mouth, the ease with which she could chew and swallow it—that was amazing too. Yes, her tooth still hurt, but in the face of all this wonder the ache that had plagued her every waking moment had somehow receded into the background.
A series of pings broke in on Latisha’s reverie. She hadn’t heard sounds like that in months, but she instantly recognized them for what they were—text alerts on a cell phone. Garth was still talking on the radio, but the ping meant there was cell service now, too.
“All right,” Garth said, turning away from the radio and speaking directly to Latisha. “The ambulance is on its way. So is Detective Howell, the lead detective on the homicide case. We should meet up with them soon. The dispatcher asked if I thought you needed an ambulance. I told her no, but Detective Howell will take you to the ER so doctors can check you out, if that’s okay. After that she’ll most likely need to interview you.”
Latisha nodded, but she wasn’t really paying attention. She was thinking about the phone. It hadn’t been working before, but now it was.
“What day is it?” she asked.
“November twenty-first.”
“No, I mean what day of the week is it?”
“Monday.”
“And where are we?”
“Arizona.”
The cloc
k on the dash said fifteen past eight. “If it’s eight fifteen here, what time is it in St. Louis?”
“We’re on Mountain Time. St. Louis would be Central.”
“Can I borrow your phone to call my parents?”
“What’s the number?” Garth said. “I’ll put the call on speaker. This road’s too washboarded for you to drive one-handed.”
Latisha recited the number for her mother’s cell phone, then worried about what she was going to say. Instead the call went to voice mail. That probably meant her mother was already at work. At the hospital she always turned off the ringer and put her phone away.
“Do you want to leave a message?” Garth asked.
“No,” Latisha said. “I need to talk to her in person.”
“Anyone else?” Garth asked.
Nodding, Latisha reeled off her stepfather’s number. Lyle was probably at work, too, but he went in early, and nine to ten was when he usually took his lunch break. Lyle answered on the second ring, and he sounded angry. “If you’re calling to sell me something, don’t bother,” he growled. “Hang up now and don’t call me again.”
“It’s me, Lyle,” she said, her voice a tiny squeak. “It’s Latisha. A cop rescued me. I’m safe.”
The phone went dead silent. For a moment she thought the call had failed. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed at last. “Is it you? Is this really true? Does your mother know? Have you talked to her?”
“I tried, but the call went to voice mail.”
“She’s at work,” Lyle said. “I’ll call the hospital and have someone give her a message. Can she call you back on this number?”
Latisha glanced in Garth’s direction, and he nodded.
“Yes, she can call me back here.”
“But where are you?”
“In Arizona.”
“Arizona? How did you get there?”
“It’s a long story.”
“That worthless piece of crap Trayvon is responsible for this, right? If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to see that he ends up in jail.”
“Lyle, Trayvon didn’t do it,” Latisha objected. “It’s not his fault.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Lyle muttered. “We’ll talk about this later. Where are you in Arizona?”
“Bisbee,” Garth put in, answering for her.
“Who’s that?” Lyle wanted to know.
“A friend,” Latisha said quickly. “Someone who’s helping me out.”
She didn’t want to say anything more than that right then—she didn’t want to mention that the deputy who had come to her rescue had been shot and that they were on their way to meet up with an ambulance.
“So if you’re in Bisbee, Tucson’s the closest airport, right?”
With Latisha at a loss, Garth answered for her. “That would be correct, sir, Tucson International.”
“Okay,” Lyle said, “I’ll call your mom now. As soon as we can get plane reservations, we’re coming to get you. It’s so good to hear your voice, Latisha. I can barely believe it. Your mother and I both thought we’d lost you for good. We didn’t think you were ever coming home.”
“I didn’t think so, either,” Latisha said, speaking around the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.
“We love you, girl.”
“I love you, too, Lyle,” she whispered back, but he had already ended the call.
“You call your father by his first name?” Garth asked.
“Lyle’s my stepfather, not my father,” she said. “I’ve never told him I love him before, and I don’t think he even heard me.”
“He may not have heard you,” Garth said quietly, “but I’ll bet he already knows.”
A text alert came in, and then another call. “All right,” Garth said. “Hold on, I’ll have her take a look.” After doing something to the phone, he turned to Latisha. “I need you to pull over and take a look at something.”
“What?”
“Chief Deputy Hadlock just sent me a photo.”
Once the SUV stopped moving, he handed her the phone. The image staring back at her from the screen took her breath away. Her fingers spasmed, and she dropped the phone.
“It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s the Boss.”
Chapter 36
THE FACT THAT JOANNA HAD GONE TO BED LATE AND HADN’T BEEN able to fall asleep for a long time had no effect at all on Sage’s preferred wake-up time, which was evidently permanently fixed at 6:00 A.M., come what may.
By 7:00 the baby had been fed, changed, and bathed. Since Sage didn’t seem ready to go back to sleep, Joanna settled into the rocking chair in the nursery. In the ensuing quiet moments, with Sage’s tiny fist holding Joanna’s index finger in a baby death grip, Joanna sat studying her daughter’s features. Like Jenny and Dennis, Sage had blue eyes and fair skin, but the older kids’ hair had been blond from the get-go. Sage’s wispy curls had a definite hint of red. So maybe Butch was going to get his wish and end up having a daughter who looked just like Joanna.
“But will you give me as much grief as I gave your grandmother?” Joanna asked aloud. “I certainly hope not.”
Naturally, Sage didn’t reply. Once the baby was asleep and back in her crib, Joanna treated herself to her second cup of coffee for the day. That was the thing about babies. They could always go down for a nap. As for mommies? Not so much.
Since Denny was leaving for school directly from Carol’s house, Joanna booted up her computer, located the audio file of the previous evening’s briefing, and fired off a copy of it to Agent Powers. Then she returned to the file and fast-forwarded to close to the end. After running the control back and forth several times, she finally located the spot where she’d taken Sage and exited the room.
Hitting the Play button, Joanna was able to hear the portions of the briefing she’d missed. Once she had handed Rosa Moreno off to Detective Howell, Deb had gently questioned Amelia’s aunt, eliciting much the same information that Joanna had learned earlier in the day. She repeated the story about how Amelia hadn’t come home after going out to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. She related her frustration with law enforcement’s lack of interest in searching for the missing girl. She expressed her gratitude toward the one person who had reached out to help her—the lowly clerk/receptionist in the homicide unit who had pointed Rosa in the direction of NamUs. Only at the end of the recitation did she ask the question Joanna had been expecting and dreading.
“How did Amelia die?” Rosa asked.
At that point Deb deftly passed the buck. “Here’s Dr. Kendra Baldwin, the medical examiner. I’d like her to address that.”
“She died of a lack of oxygen,” Kendra said.
A white lie if ever there was one, Joanna thought, a lie that bypassed the ugly truth that Rosa Moreno’s niece had perished after being locked in a freezer by a cold-blooded killer.
“Did she suffer?” Rosa asked.
Joanna was afraid Kendra would dodge that question, too, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Moreno, but I’m afraid your Amelia went through a terrible ordeal. We have evidence that suggests she was abducted and held prisoner, most likely from the time she went missing until her death. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one.”
There was a brief silence on the phone. When Rosa spoke again, her words were barely audible. “I’m sorry there were others,” she murmured.
“We’ve located the bodies of at least three additional victims who are also deceased,” Kendra continued. “Unfortunately there may be more.”
“Did the other victims die the same way Amelia did?”
“One victim, a male, is thought to have died of a gunshot wound,” Kendra answered. “Amelia’s death was recent enough that we were able to autopsy her remains. The other two victims exhibit signs of blunt-force trauma.”
Rosa took a ragged breath. “Will you catch the monster who did these awful things?”
“Believe me, Ms. Moreno, everyone in this room is fully committ
ed to doing just that.”
“What will happen to Amelia’s body?”
“That is up to the family—to you, really,” Kendra said. “At your direction we’ll release the remains to a local mortuary, and they’ll handle the arrangements from there.”
“We don’t have much money,” Rosa said. “How much will it cost?”
“That depends,” Kendra said uneasily. “Shipping a loaded casket will cost more than if they ship after cremation.”
Joanna could tell from the way Kendra answered that the question had made her uncomfortable. Rosa and her family had lost a child. Now they were dealing with the unexpected, budget-busting expense of bringing home a body.
Joanna was pretty sure that she knew how George Winfield, her deceased stepfather and one of Dr. Baldwin’s predecessors, would have handled that situation. He would have figured out a way to pay for the shipping and called it good.
Joanna was turning her attention back to the briefing when her phone rang. “Holy crap!” Tom Hadlock exclaimed. “You’re not gonna believe what just happened!”
“What’s going on?”
“Tica patched me through to Deputy Raymond. He’s been shot.”
Joanna’s heart fell. Another one of her deputies had been shot? Losing Deputy Sloan had been bad enough. She didn’t think she could bear to lose another one.
“An ambulance is on the way to rendezvous with him on Geronimo Trail, somewhere east of Douglas,” Tom continued. “They’ll transport him to the ER at the Copper Queen in Bisbee.”
“What happened?”
“Garth evidently got into a shoot-out with the bad guy and took a bullet in his leg.”
“What bad guy?”
“The bad guy,” Tom replied. “The one we’ve been looking for.”
“You mean the serial killer?”
“Yes, ma’am, one and the same.”
“What about the shooter? Is he in custody?”
“No, ma’am, he got away.”
“Tell me about Garth,” Joanna said. “How bad is he?”
“Not as bad as it could have been,” Tom replied. “He says that the clotting kits you bought probably saved his life. Like I said, I’ve got an ambulance on the way to pick him up. The EMTs should meet up with him somewhere between Douglas and the Peloncillos.”
