by J. A. Jance
Chapter 40
DEB’S PHONE RANG. SHE WENT OUTSIDE TO ANSWER IT JUST AS Dr. Morris popped into the room carrying an iPad. He nodded in Joanna’s direction. “Your boy’s off to X-ray and then to the OR. And now, what about you, Latisha?” he asked, reading her name off the chart. “I’m Dr. Morris. How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine,” Latisha said. “I want to go home.”
“According to what I’m seeing here, young lady, you’re anything but fine. Sheriff Brady, if you’ll excuse us . . .”
“No, don’t go,” Latisha said, reaching for Joanna’s hand. To the doctor she said, “I want her to stay.”
“I’m sure you need your privacy,” Joanna objected, “and Mrs. Hopkins will be here.”
“Please stay with me,” Latisha begged. “Please.”
The visible panic and alarm on Latisha’s face was obvious. Given her recent history, the idea of her not wanting to be left alone in a room—any room—with a strange man was entirely understandable.
“I’ll be glad to stay,” Joanna said.
And she did. Joanna remained in the cubicle throughout the entire examination. She learned about the damaged, bleeding gums and the abscessed tooth; she saw the crosshatches of scarring on Latisha’s back left behind by the Boss’s leather belt and buckle. She saw the ugly results of severe malnutrition—the protruding ribs, the distended abdomen, the brittle skin. What Arthur Ardmore had done to this girl was unspeakable.
“When was your last period?” Dr. Morris asked finally.
Latisha shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Is it possible you’re pregnant?”
And that’s when it was all too much. Latisha burst into tears. “When Trayvon had me get that second abortion, the doctor said I’d never have kids,” she sobbed, “never!”
It took a few minutes for her to quiet again. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today. Every other minute I start crying. I seem to cry over every little thing.”
“You go right ahead and cry if you want to,” Dr. Morris said. “Considering what you’ve endured, you’re entitled. In the meantime, from what I’m seeing here, I’m going to admit you for observation.”
“Admit me? You mean keep me here in the hospital?”
“Yes, in the hospital,” he told her. “You’re severely dehydrated and malnourished. Have you had anything to eat today?”
“Garth gave me a sandwich.”
“A single sandwich isn’t going to cut it,” Dr. Morris said. “We need to hook you up to an IV and get some liquids and nutrients into your system. That broken tooth is infected and needs to come out, but it’ll need to be treated with antibiotics before a dentist can perform an extraction. The toenails don’t just need to be clipped. They’re so ingrown and infected that trimming them will need to be a surgical procedure performed in the hospital and under sterile conditions. You need to rest and recover. We’ll be supervising your food intake for the next several days. As for your emotional state? Given the circumstances, the outbursts you mentioned before are entirely understandable. I also believe that counseling of some sort is in order.”
“Counseling,” Latisha echoed. “I don’t want counseling, I want to go home.”
“Counseling may be the only thing that will make your going home possible.”
Joanna left the cubicle while they were making arrangements to transfer Latisha to a room. She found Deb waiting just outside the curtains.
“I heard from Tom,” she said. “The wrecked truck at the crime scene is registered in New Mexico to someone named James Ardmore. Dave thinks he must be related to Arthur.”
“Sounds like,” Joanna agreed.
“And I’m on my way to sort out how,” Deb told her. “Tom wants me to send him whatever I find before the response team heads into Calhoun. It’ll be easier to do research in the office rather than in my car, so my interview with Latisha will have to wait.”
“Go do what Tom needs you to do and don’t worry about the interview,” Joanna told her. “Dr. Morris is admitting her, and she’ll be here for a day or two. You’ll know where to find her when you’re ready.”
Deb hurried out. Joanna was about to go to the OR waiting room in search of Juanita Raymond and Marianne Maculyea when a one-word text from Carol showed up on her phone: TIME!
That wasn’t news to Joanna. She hurried out to the parking lot. Marianne’s vintage Sea Foam Green VW Bug was parked next to the Enclave, but there was no sign of Marianne herself. Once Joanna was settled in the passenger seat, Carol handed off Sage and then beat a hasty retreat. “I need a pit stop,” she said.
Figuring out how to nurse Jenny had been challenging, but Joanna was a lot younger back then. As a more experienced mom, first with Dennis and now with Sage, it wasn’t a problem. Sage was an eager eater and immediately got with the program, so when Joanna’s phone rang, once she wrested the device out of her pocket, she had no difficulty feeding Sage and talking at the same time.
“Your friendly neighborhood FBI profiler is calling,” Rochelle Powers said with a laugh. “How are things?”
“You’re not going to believe it,” Joanna said. “We’ve identified the killer, and my people are on their way to make an arrest!”
“An arrest? Are you serious?” Rochelle returned. “Way to go! But tell me about it. Who’s the perp? What do you know about him?”
“Not much so far,” Joanna answered. “He’s a rich old guy named Arthur Ardmore who came out west with enough spare change in his pockets to buy himself a ghost town.”
“To use as a torture chamber,” Rochelle put in.
“Exactly. He kept girls—four of them at least—chained to a wall in some kind of basement. Last night the only one still alive somehow managed to escape. Ardmore took off after her and ended up getting into a shoot-out with the deputy Tom Hadlock left guarding the dump site. The deputy is currently undergoing surgery, but he should be okay.”
“That’s good to hear,” Rochelle said, “but about this ghost town. Is it anywhere near the dump site?”
“Very near. The problem is, we’ve now discovered that there’s a second individual involved—or who may be involved. His name is James Ardmore, and he lives a few miles farther east in Road Forks, New Mexico. We’re thinking James and Arthur are related—brothers maybe, and the two of them are involved in this criminal enterprise together.”
“That would make sense,” Rochelle observed. “One to go after the girls and the other to keep them in line, but is either one of them a truck driver?”
The question was so simple it took Joanna’s breath away. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m sure as hell going to find out. Hanging up now.”
She ended the call abruptly and punched Deb’s number. “Are you there yet?” she asked.
“Not quite,” Deb replied. “Just pulling into the gate. Why?”
“Find out if James Ardmore has more than one vehicle and call me back once you do.”
Joanna hung up. While she waited, she burped Sage and switched her from one side to the other. They were settling in for round two when the phone rang.
“James Edward Ardmore sure as hell does have two vehicles,” Deb Howell announced breathlessly. “The other one’s a Peterbilt.”
“Does Tom Hadlock know?”
“That was my first call.”
“Are you putting out an APB?” Joanna asked.
“Already done,” Deb answered. “Suspects are to be considered armed and dangerous.”
“You think they’re together?” Joanna asked.
“Don’t you?” Deb returned. “Tom tells me that the response team is just forming up to make contact. I told him I’d stay here in the office and do some Internet surfing to see if I can dig up anything else on these guys.”
Once the call ended, Joanna sat for a moment considering that stunning news—news she needed to share with someone else. Still nursing Sage, Joanna used the mic on her phone to dic
tate a text for Rochelle Powers:
YOU NAILED IT. JAMES ARDMORE DRIVES A PETERBILT. NOW ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS FIND HIM AND HIS BROTHER.
Chapter 41
BEFORE HEADING OUT, TOM HADLOCK HAD GONE TO THE SUPPLY room, grabbed a collection of walkie-talkies off their chargers, and then distributed them to all the members of the team. They came with a simple on/off volume control, a squelch knob, a channel selector, and a push-to-talk switch. Once they were all set to the correct channels, he could talk to his separate tactical teams or to the entire group as much as he wanted and the Marliss Shacklefords of the world wouldn’t be able to hear a word of it, unless she or they somehow magically managed to get within a mile of Calhoun.
Starvation Canyon Road dead-ended in the canyon itself, a few miles beyond Calhoun. The plan was to lay down spike strips just east of the fence line. If Ardmore tried to flee the scene in a vehicle, four flattened tires would slow him down to a crawl. Because they expected to approach the ghost town itself on foot and with weapons drawn, Tom directed his officers to block the entrances with parked patrol cars in case the spike strips didn’t do the job.
They’d all donned vests and Windbreakers and were gathered in a huddle for a final briefing when Tom’s satphone rang. Knowing the caller was Deb, he switched over to speaker when he answered.
“I’ve got news,” Deb announced. “We now have two suspects instead of one, and they are brothers. According to their dates of birth, James Edward Ardmore, age sixty-six, is five years younger than Arthur. Both were born in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m looking at the photos on their driver’s licenses. I wish you had an Internet connection so I could send you the photos. These guys look like twins.”
“Good work,” Tom said. “Anything else?”
“James owns a 2017 Peterbilt, an eighteen-wheeler.”
Tom felt as though he’d been sucker-punched. “He’s a trucker?” Tom asked despairingly. “If they took off with Arthur’s Subaru loaded into the back of a Peterbilt, they could be anywhere by now.”
“Not literally anywhere,” Deb corrected. “Yes, they have a head start, but even a rig like that can go only so fast, and the distance it can cover is limited. I’ve already put out an APB. Somebody somewhere will spot them—an on-the-ball highway-patrol officer out on the interstate maybe, or else a sharp-eyed inspector at a weigh station.”
Tom felt better. Maybe this wasn’t such a lost cause after all.
“Okay, Deb,” he said. “Thanks for the update. We’ll still proceed with caution on this end, but you’re probably right. I’m guessing the brothers Ardmore are long gone.”
Then, breaking into four separate squads, the Emergency Response Team moved in formation with weapons drawn. Bill Creighton, the department’s champion weight lifter, was the only one not pointing a loaded weapon. He was in charge of the battering ram they’d brought along in case they had occasion to bust down a door or two.
For the approach, Tom Hadlock, accompanied by the K-9 team, stayed in the middle and stuck to the road while the others spread out on either side. It was Mojo’s first official operation with the department. He tracked along on his leash, alert and on the job.
“Looks like a good dog,” Tom told Terry. “Acts like he knows what he’s about.”
As the town of Calhoun came into view, there were only a dozen buildings total. A hundred yards from the first one, Tom called for radio silence. The first one appeared to be an adobe structure minus a roof. When they reached it, they discovered that not only was the roof gone, so was most everything else. Two of the walls had melted away into nothing. Since only a single corner was left, clearing that building was no problem at all.
Next up came a tottering wooden shack that might have been part of a stable. It leaned drunkenly to one side, looking for all the world as though it would topple over at the slightest touch. Jaime Carbajal peeled away a loose plank and peered inside before giving the thumbs-up signal that meant it was clear.
The next building was not old at all. It was one of those prefab Tuff Shed one-car garages that came complete with an automatic door. If someone was inside, the only way out would be to activate the door. Hopefully the team would hear the door opening in time to react.
On his way past, Tom saw that something—a moving vehicle, most likely—had slammed into the structure with enough force to shift it so it was no longer square with the concrete pad beneath it. There was no way to tell if the damage was recent, but a confusing tangle of nearby tire tracks suggested it might be. Wanting to preserve the tracks left in the dirt, Tom waved everyone away from the garage. They’d have to come back and look at that one later on, after Dave Hollicker had a chance to process the tracks.
The two most substantial structures in town came next, facing each other across the narrow dirt track. The larger of the two was constructed of faded red brick and looked like a fortress. The windows, largely intact, were covered by rusty iron bars, some of them hanging loosely on their mountings on the exterior of the building. The second structure was a dilapidated wood-frame storefront.
Ernie and his team quickly cleared the brick building, since the solid wooden doors to both the front and back entrances were padlocked shut from the outside. Once Ernie gave the all-clear, Tom walked up to the building and pressed his face against the window, attempting to peer inside. All he saw was a dense curtain that appeared to be nothing more than thick layers of black plastic garbage bags. His first thought was that they looked similar to the ones found filled with trash near Amelia Salazar’s body.
This is where those girls were held prisoner, Tom thought grimly. This is the real crime scene.
By the time he stepped away from the window and back out onto the street, Jaime’s team had cleared the storefront and then moved on, leaving behind what must have been the business part of town and progressing into the residential area. That consisted of four tin-roofed wooden shacks, little more than one-room cabins, all of which appeared to be in fairly decent repair. They all had glass in their windows, and their coats of exterior paint were probably only a few years old. They were no bigger than what HGTV often refers to as “tiny houses.”
They reminded Tom of the old miner shacks that still clung like so many brightly colored burrs to the hillsides above Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon.
The first three were all padlocked shut and showed no sign of habitation. Up close, Tom could tell that the one on the end, the fourth one, was different. For starters it was half again as big as the others and had a no-kidding white picket fence around it. A lone cottonwood tree, leafless now, towered over the front yard. Beneath the tree sat an old wooden Adirondack chair. In the heat of summer, the tree would have provided a pleasant, shady retreat.
Tom spotted the fence first, then the tree, and finally the chair. A moment later he saw something else—an evaporative cooler hanging on the sill of a side window. That suggested that the house was most likely occupied or had been occupied fairly recently. The front door was closed, but it wasn’t padlocked shut, meaning that someone might be inside.
Tom motioned his team into a whispered strategy session on the far side of the fence. Then, with the others covering him and accompanied by Terry and Mojo, Tom walked up to the door and pounded on it.
“Police!” he shouted. “Open up!” But nothing happened. There was no sound from inside and no movement either.
Terry reached out and tried the doorknob. It twisted in his hand, and the door cracked open. “Should I send Mojo in?” he whispered.
Tom didn’t want to send any of his team into danger, but with Deputy Raymond already in the hospital, putting the dog in jeopardy was better than losing another person. He nodded reluctantly. “Send him in,” he said.
“Find him!” Terry ordered the dog, and Mojo sprang forward, slamming the back of the door hard against an interior wall and sprinting into the house. Tom held his breath, but nothing happened then, either—no shouts of alarm, no gunshots. Half a minute after Mojo charged inside, h
e came back. Wagging his tail, he went straight to Terry and was rewarded with a “Good dog!” pat as well as a suitable treat.
“Clear,” Terry reported. “Believe me, if anybody had been inside, Mojo would have let us know.”
Tom pulled out the satphone and an index card, squinting at the card until he located the number of Deputy Creighton’s satphone. “Are you finished?” he asked when Dave Hollicker answered.
“Just about,” Dave said. “The tow truck is on its way. Why?”
“Come on up to Starvation Canyon Road. I’ll send someone down to move the patrol cars out of the way and pick up the spike strips. We’re about to bust down some doors on a building or two, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to have another whole crime scene to investigate.”
Chapter 42
THEY ROLLED LATISHA’S BED FROM THE ER INTO FIRST A DIFFERENT wing and then a different room. A new doctor, someone named Dr. Lee, came in and introduced himself. He told Latisha he was prescribing antibiotics for the various infections and giving her something to dull the pain in her tooth.
“It might make you a little drowsy,” he said.
The doctor seemed nice enough, but she was glad the nurses were still in the room while he was there, and she wished that little red-haired woman in the uniform would come back. She wanted to ask about Garth. She needed to know if he was okay.
The nurses covered her with a blanket, but that made her too hot. Her body was accustomed to the chill of the basement. In this very warm room just the sheet was all the covers she needed. But that sheet—that amazing sheet—was smooth and soft and clean. It felt heavenly. She kept running her fingers over the silkiness of it in sheer wonder. Someone—a nurse or maybe a nurse assistant, she wasn’t sure—had rubbed lotion into her hands and feet. That felt heavenly, too. And then, even though there was an IV dripping liquids into her arm, they brought her a tray of food—a bowl of Jell-O and a bowl of chicken-noodle soup. It was a feast, almost as amazing as Garth’s meat-loaf sandwich.
