“The dead man is almost certainly her husband. We’ll have a positive identification within a few weeks.”
The woman opened her purse and reached for a small card with handwriting on it.
“This is my address and phone number in Guadalajara. Please notify us when you know for sure.”
“Thank you for your time, senora.”
Outside the afternoon sun was setting, the temperature starting to drop. The street was congested with rush-hour traffic. It was so noisy Maxie had to raise his voice to be heard.
“How much you figure it’ll cost to send Jose’s remains back to Mexico?” he asked.
“It could be expensive,” Joanna said.
“He’ll need a sealed casket, so I guess it would cost at least two thousand dollars.”
“I’ll call around and see if I can get a collection going,” Maxie said thoughtfully.
“A man should be buried in his home country, close to the people who love him.”
Joanna watched Maxie walk away. A little man, broad-shouldered, tough as nails, with a gentle heart.
“He reminds me of the world my parents used to live in.”
“It’s a world I’ll never see,” Lori said half to herself as she unwrapped a stick of gum.
“You know, those ringside seats and the limo rental to take Maxie to the fights will cost us over five hundred dollars. We could contribute that to his donation plate.”
“I think Maxie would like that a lot better than the fights.”
“Me too,” Lori said and reached for the car door.
“But the reality is we may never be a hundred percent positive that the hand belonged to Jose Hernandez.”
“Oh, I think we’ll know for sure,” Joanna said.
“Remember that Jose had his cancer removed at Memorial Hospital. They’ve probably got his tissue stored away somewhere in pathology. All we have to do is check the specimen’s DNA type against the DNA type in the dismembered hand. If it’s a match, we have our man.”
“And then we’ll have three Mexicans with cancer who were blown apart by
C-four,” Lori said, shaking her head in puzzlement. the bomb site and a third somewhere out in the woods of northern Los Angeles County. What do you make of that?”
“They’re connected to one another.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure,” Joanna said, getting into her car.
“But these cases are all interconnected. You can bet your house on
that.” 17
Friday, April 2, 8=50 p.m.
Jean-Claude Fonteneau was running around in circles in Joanna’s living room. The little boy had his arms spread out wide, making believe he was an airplane. He hummed loudly as he zoomed by his mother.
“He looks just like Daddy,” Joanna said.
Kate Blalock Fonteneau nodded.
“He even has some of Daddy’s mannerisms. The same walk, the same smile.”
“It’s the Blalock genes,” Joanna said, watching her nephew stumble onto the carpet and pick himself up and start running again. The two-year-old was already handsome, with sandy blond hair, high-set cheekbones and dark, mischievous eyes.
All Blalock, Joanna thought, now wondering what her children would look like and whether the Blalock genes would predominate.
She glanced over at Kate, tempted to tell her about Paul du Maurier but deciding to wait. With any luck, Paul would be back in Los Angeles next week and they could all have dinner together. That would be the time to-“What?” Kate asked, breaking into Joanna’s thoughts.
Joanna shrugged.
“Nothing.”
“Come on,” Kate urged.
“I can tell when there’s something on your mind. The little lines at the bridge of your nose start to bunch up.”
Joanna grinned.
“I think I’ve found my man.”
“Get out of here!”
“Finally,” Joanna said softly.
“What’s his name?”
“Paul du Maurier.”
Kate moved in closer on the sofa.
“Tell me all about him. I want details.” “He’s tall and gorgeous with tons of money,” Joanna said dreamily.
“He’s an investment banker who loves me to death.”
Kate reached over and hugged Joanna tightly.
“I’m so happy for you, Sis. And you deserve it more than anybody else in the whole world. I know it wasn’t easy for you all these years, looking out for the family.”
“It wasn’t that difficult,” Joanna said modestly.
“Oh, yes, it was,” Kate said, nodding firmly.
“When Daddy died you had to take care of the financial mess he left behind. And you had to make sure Mom and I were all right, and you did it so well. You were only a junior in college, but you took control of things without missing a beat. I marveled at that.”
“I missed plenty of beats,” Joanna muttered, more to herself than to Kate.
“No, you didn’t,” Kate told her.
“Even when Mom got sick you saw to it she was always comfortable and well cared for. And while you were doing that you paid my way through college and graduate school and supported me until I could earn a living as an archaeologist. You put everybody before yourself, and we all knew it.”
“It was my pleasure to do it,” Joanna said, a picture of her dead parents flashing in her mind. Her father had been gone over twenty years, her mother almost ten.
“Lord! The debts you must have accumulated,” Kate went on.
“Did you finally get them paid off?”
“Four years ago,” Joanna said.
“And now there’s not a piece of paper on the face of the earth that says a Blalock owes anybody anything.”
“And now you’re free, Joanna. It’s your time to fly.”
Joanna smiled broadly.
“It’s my time to fly.”
The doorbell rang, then rang again.
Joanna glanced at her watch. It was almost 9:00 P.M. With effort she pushed herself up from the sofa, wondering who it was. It couldn’t be the pizza man, she told herself. They never delivered that fast.
She hurried across the living room and looked through the peephole. Jake Sinclair was standing in a light drizzle, his coat spotted with rain.
Joanna cursed softly under her breath and opened the door.
“Jake, you’ve got to call before you come over.”
“I tried, but the line was busy.” Joanna shook her head.
“That’s impossible. Nobody has been on the phone for the past hour.”
“Then it must have been off the hook.”
“I hope this visit is professional.”
“It is.”
Joanna studied Jake’s face, still not sure he was telling the truth.
“And it’s important enough for this late at night, huh?”
“If you want to discuss it in the doorway, fine,” Jake said hoarsely. He reached into his coat pocket for an envelope.
Joanna sighed deeply and stepped aside.
“Come in.”
“Jake!” Kate jumped to her feet and ran over, hugging him with all her might.
“I’ve missed you.”
He hugged her back, then held her out at arm’s length and carefully inspected her.
“You look great, kiddo.”
“Somewhat better than the last time you saw me, I would hope.”
“Those were bad days,” Jake said, remembering her life-threatening illness five years ago. Kate had been infected with an Ebola-like virus while on a dig in Guatemala. She was airlifted back to Memorial Hospital near death, her liver almost destroyed by the virus. No one, including Joanna, had expected her to live. But an experimental treatment with plasma had turned the tide and Kate made a complete recovery. It had been a very close call.
Jake felt something tugging on his pants leg. He looked down and saw a little boy smiling up at him. Quickly he picked the toddler up and held him high.
“Do you have a name?”
“Jean-Claude,” the little boy said immediately.
“Bonsoir Jean-Claude,” Jake said, his French accent passable.
“My name is Jake.”
The little boy looked over to his mother, unsure of the name he’d just heard.
“He is called Jacques,” Kate explained.
“Jacques,” Jean-Claude repeated, then leaned forward and kissed Jake’s cheek.
“Merci,” Jake said and put the boy down.
Kate looked at Jake admiringly.
“He really likes you. Do you always do this well with children?”
“I guess.”
“And puppies,” Joanna added.
“Little children and puppies are his favorites.”
“Why little children and puppies, Jake?” Kate asked. “Because they love unconditionally and don’t make any demands.”
Joanna felt her face color, knowing the barb was meant for her.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you in,” she said, half-meaning it.
Jake walked over to the wet bar and replaced the phone on its hook.
“Just in case somebody needs to reach you.”
“That’s Jean-Claude’s doing,” Kate explained, then waved a finger at her son.
“Do not do that again unless Aunt Joanna tells you to. Do you understand?”
Jean-Claude went over to Joanna and opened his arms wide.
Kate said, “That’s his way of asking you to forgive him.”
Joanna knelt down and ran her hand through the little boy’s hair.
“Would you like to go watch television?”
Jean-Claude nodded and looked up to his mother for approval.
“All right, but keep the sound low.” Kate watched her son scamper away, then turned to Jake.
“That’s a habit I must break him of. You see, when Jean-Claude’s father comes home, the first thing he does is take the phone off the hook so he can play and talk with his son. Thus, Jean-Claude associates removing the phone from its hook with happiness.”
Jake smiled thinly.
“So do I.”
“Well, I know you two have things to discuss, so I’ll ” “No, no,” Jake said quickly.
“We might need the expertise of an archaeologist.”
Kate rubbed her hands together gleefully.
“Is it murder?”
“For sure.”
“I’d better get us some cold beers,” she said and hurried over to the bar.
Joanna moved closer to Jake, unable to contain her interest.
“Did you find something new?”
He nodded.
“We found something new in something old.”
“What was the something old?”
“The dismembered hand.”
“And what was the something new?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Jake glanced around the living room, with its French antique furniture covered with royal blue silk. There was a fire going in the fireplace, the logs red hot and crackling softly. Jake’s gaze stayed on the fireplace and the bearskin rug in front of it, where he and Joanna had
spent so many nights together. He wondered for the hundredth time if they would ever get things right. Jake vowed to try harder the next time.
Kate came back with three bottles of beer and frosted mugs. They sat around a coffee table, Jake in a high back chair, Joanna and Kate on the sofa. Carefully they poured their beers to minimize the foam.
Jake took a large swallow of his beer, delicious and cold as ice.
“You’ve heard about the bomb explosion in West Hollywood?” he asked Kate.
“I think the whole world has,” she said.
“Well, here are some things the whole world doesn’t know.” Jake told her the particulars about the plastic explosive that was used and the terrorists who were involved.
“And two of the four terrorists had cancer.”
Kate looked over at Joanna.
“Cancer? What the hell does that mean?”
Joanna shrugged.
“Don’t ask me.”
“Anyhow,” Jake went on, “the C-four explosive used in the West Hollywood bomb was not the run-of-the-mill C-four. It contained an unusual mixture of RDX and PETN, which were its two major ingredients. The mix was so unusual that the people at the aTF. laboratory believe it was custom-made.”
“So?” Joanna asked, hearing nothing new thus far.
“So that same C-four was recently used in another crime.”
“What crime?” Joanna leaned forward, her ears pricked.
“To blow off the dismembered hand you have in your lab,” Jake said.
“The piece of plastic from that hand contained the exact same C-four ingredients as the West Hollywood bomb.”
“Jesus,” Joanna hissed softly.
“I knew they were connected. I knew it.”
“How did you know?” Jake asked.
“Let me fill Kate in.” Joanna told her sister about the dismembered hand found in a secluded wooded area and the small fragments of plastic in it. Then she related the details of the visit to Jose Hernandez’s apartment.
“That hand almost certainly belonged to Jose Hernandez. And he too had widespread cancer.”
Jake groaned; now the case was even murkier.
“Why are Mexicans dying with cancer involved?”
Joanna shrugged again.
“I’m not sure, but I have the feeling if we can answer that question,
everything else will fall into place.” Jake nodded. That was the key question, but he didn’t have a clue about the answer. He finished his beer and lit a Greek cigarette, then turned to Kate.
“For a minute, I want you to forget everything I’ve told you about this case. Just concentrate on the dismembered hand. What would you think if you came upon an isolated hand while you were out on one of your archaeological digs?”
Kate gave the matter thought, moving her head one way, then another, as if excluding or including possibilities.
“You understand I would be dealing with bones. There’d be no soft tissues remaining.”
“Right,” Jake said.
“Then just from his bones, tell me how you’d determine who the guy was.”
“Are there any rings or jewelry?”
“Only bones.”
“Well, we could distinguish children from adults by bone size and whether the epiphyses had fused. And if it was an adult we could approximate the age from the degree of degenerative changes around the joints. If his hand showed evidence of old fractures, we would assume he was a warrior or athlete.” Kate considered another idea but shook her head at it.
“Of course, where we found it could help. For example, if we found a hand with old fractures in a palace, that would suggest it belonged to a warrior-guard or a high-ranking officer.”
“Suppose you found it out in the woods?”
“Without anything else?”
“Just a hand.”
Kate shook her head again.
“The possibilities are too numerous to count.”
Jake decided to try another tack.
“Could you determine how the guy lost his hand?”
“Maybe,” Kate said, thinking back to the skeletal remains of a leg she’d uncovered in Guatemala.
“If the bones were cleanly severed, it would indicate the amputation was done with a sword or ax. That would suggest the hand belonged to a warrior or soldier. Less likely possibilities are that the hand was surgically removed or amputated as a form of punishment.”
Joanna said, “The big bones in our hand were ragged and splintered.”
“Then it was crushed or ripped off.”
“By C-four,” Jake said, coming to another dead end.
“But where’s the rest of him?” Kate asked. Jake gestured.
“Blown to bits, I guess.”
“Wait a minute,” Kate said quickly.
�
�You found a lot of body parts at the Hollywood bomb site, along with some clothes and shoes. Yet you find only a hand here. That doesn’t make sense.”
Jake smiled.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“So you think there’s more?” Joanna asked at once.
“There’s got to be,” Jake said.
“There’s got to be something left out there.”
“But I was told the area where the hand was discovered had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”
“And they didn’t find a damn thing,” Jake grumbled.
“They came up with zilch.
Not a shred of clothing, not even a fragment of another body part.”
“We’re running around in circles,” Joanna said.
Kate sipped her beer, absently licking the foam from her lips.
“Did you look underground?”
Jake thought for a moment.
“Why under the ground?”
“Why not?” Kate asked.
“When we find an isolated part of a skeleton in the field, the first thing we do is dig around and look for the remaining pieces. We usually find something.”
“But why would ” Jake stopped in mid-sentence and slammed his fist into his open palm.
“Son of a bitch! They blew him up and buried what was left.”
“And that hand had animal chew marks on it,” Joanna recalled.
“I’ll bet a coyote or some other scavenger dug it up.”
“You’d better get out your shovels,” Kate advised.
Jake got up and started pacing from front door to wet bar, mumbling under his breath.
“We’ve been going down the wrong track, chasing our own tails. We’ve been working under the assumption that the West Hollywood blast was a work accident, an unintentional detonation. Now I’m not so sure. The guy in the woods wasn’t blown up by some work accident, I’ll tell you that. Somebody blew him up with the same C-four that was used to blow up those Mexicans in that West Hollywood house.”
Joanna gave Jake a puzzled look.
“Are you saying those Mexicans weren’t terrorists?”
“I’m saying I’m not sure.”
Joanna’s eyes suddenly narrowed.
“I didn’t tell you about the job Jose Hernandez was given just before he disappeared.”
“I thought he was dying from widespread cancer,” Jake said.
“He was,” Joanna continued. “And that’s what makes the story so screwy. According to his mother-in-law, two young Americans offered Jose a job modeling hunting clothes.”
Lethal Measures Page 14
