Mortal Crimes 2

by Various Authors

  “What hiker?”

  “Some girl got herself lost in the Rincons. Been gone two days now. Tom’s out looking for her now.”

  “He is?” That was why his truck and trailer were gone. “How long has he been out?”

  “Since early this morning. They’ve got Search and Rescue all over the place. Ron Bransky? The sheriff’s deputy? He asked Tom to help. He knows the area like the back of his hand.”

  Mystery solved. So Tom was out looking for a lost hiker. Now all Laura wanted to do was drink her wine and enjoy the moonlight.

  But Mina stood there, implacable. Mina thought that every employee on the ranch needed to listen to her take on things. In her mind, they were all her children and she could tell them what to do. She dispensed advice freely, and her pronouncements rang with absolute conviction, giving you the impression that she knew more about you than you could ever hope to know about yourself. “What you need is a man,” she’d say. Or, “Your problem is, you’re too shy. You need to get out more, see some people.”

  Now she cocked her head at Laura. Movement behind her eyes; Laura could almost hear the gears grinding.

  “Thanks, Mina. I’ve had a long drive so think I’d like to just have this wine and—”

  “You look like hell,” Mina said flatly.

  “Well, thanks. I really like hearing that.”

  “You been sleeping well?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not. Something’s bothering you. Ever since that thing at the warehouse. It’s not natural to bounce back from something like that. Tom being good to you?”

  “Of course he is.”

  Mina looked dubious. “Well, something’s going on. I can tell from your aura.”

  “I’m okay,” Laura said. But the flickering candle in the cheap little net-covered bowl on the table seemed to intrude on her vision on the right side. Her eye felt watery, but when she reached up to wipe her eyes, there were no tears. Just a shimmering brightness wavering at the edge of her vision. Strange.

  Mina leaning forward, scrutinizing her. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Mina sniffed. “One of these days, you’re going to accept help when it’s offered.”Then she walked over to the other table.

  Lights blinking at the edge of her right eye. The strangest sensation. Laura closed her eyes, but the lights kept jiggling and flashing.

  Something like this had happened to her before. Once at a motel when she was investigating the Musicman case, and once on the plane back from Florida. But both times it went away, so she just forgot about it.

  She took a gulp of wine, felt its warmth coursing down—comfort. She closed her eyes against the watery light, and willed it to go away this time, too.

  *

  By the time she got back to her house, her vision was fine.

  Had to be stress-related.

  The wine made her drowsy. She fell asleep and woke up to an empty bed. Tom must still be out looking for the hiker. Now that she knew where he was, she was fine with it. He didn’t leave her a note because he didn’t know she was coming back. That simple.

  She walked into the alcove between the bedroom and kitchen where she kept her home computer, turned it on, then continued on to the kitchen and made herself some coffee and toast. On the Google homepage she typed, “+vision problems +lights.”

  A slew of articles came up. Laura felt a tightness in her chest as she read the descriptions—diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, detached retina, migraine, blindness, brain tumor.

  Scaring herself.

  She logged off. It was just stress. She’d had a scare with Jamie Cottle, the way he slipped into the car so fast, catching her off guard.

  Seeing her death just before he pulled out those papers.

  Something every cop lived with—every smart cop, anyway. You never knew when you left the house if you would be coming back.

  But Laura knew she was jumpier than usual, and Mina was right about her lack of sleep. When your job depended on alertness, that wasn’t good.

  Maybe Frank Entwistle was right. Maybe she did live in a glass house.

  She heard scuffling on the roof. The bobcat kittens, playing again. They were getting big. Hector, the guy who looked after the houses, was worried about the wiring, that the cats might be tearing it up.

  The wiring in the house is fine, she thought. It’s my wiring that’s out of whack.

  *

  Laura turned the local TV news on while she got ready for work. She had grown up with TV and was used to having it on in the background when she was doing something else—a habit. She hardly heard it.

  But today she was listening for news of the hiker. Ironing a pair of blue slacks—she had seven pairs of navy and black pantsuits hanging in her closet—she heard the promo, a blond female anchor with a perky voice: “The hiker lost in the Rincon mountains has been found.”

  Laura set the iron upright and sat down on the bed, watching the television.

  When the segment came up right after the break, she was surprised to see it was night. Harsh camera lights spotlighted a young woman, a bit scraped-up and dirty, walking with assistance. Tom Lightfoot holding her arm, his attention on her.

  She leaned on him. Exhausted, no doubt. The voice-over saying she had been located around ten o’clock last night.

  The camera seemed to linger on the girl, probably all of twenty-five years old. And drop-dead beautiful, despite the smudge on her chin and the glazed look in her eyes. She had wavy black hair that made Laura think of Polynesian dancers, and an exquisite face. And that face was tilted up at the hero of the day, Tom Lightfoot, capable and strong, his shoulders wide enough to carry the world, and he was looking back at her as if he’d discovered something rare and expensive in a handful of dirt. His hand guiding her, as he had guided Laura through doorways when they went places together.

  Then he looked into the camera and Laura saw a smile she had never seen before. As if he couldn’t believe his own good luck.

  Ten o’clock at night.

  This had happened at ten o’clock at night and now it was morning and he still wasn’t here. Maybe he had gone to the hospital with her.

  It wasn’t her imagination. He had put her off, sexually. He was losing interest. Seeing the way he looked at that beautiful girl, she felt something dissolve in her chest.

  The something that replaced it was hard and it was cold.

  She wouldn’t let him reject her.

  She would be the one to do the rejecting.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Department of Public Safety building was located on a busy corner one long city block from the Tucson International Airport. A two-story, putty-colored edifice with three flagpoles out front, the building was a relic from the sixties. At the time it went up, DPS was brand new and considered the elite law enforcement agency in the state. Now they had to fight for money like everybody else—and were often on the losing end.

  Laura drove up to the parking area, produced her ID for the rolling gate, and drove through. Holding the hurt to her in that miserly, self-righteous way that imbued her with an odd serenity. On a logical level, she knew she was acting like a martyr. She understood, too, that she had gone into a different zone—a stubborn, hurt place that bore little resemblance to actual reality, but she was in it now and she was going to enjoy it. When she got back from Rocky Point she’d tell him to move out. He would ask her why, but she would just say, “It’s clear to me this isn’t working out.”

  She’d refrain from mentioning the girl with the Polynesian hair.

  It was over, done, kaput.

  She used her ID again to get into the building, taking one last look at the cerulean-blue desert sky. With any luck, she’d be on the road in an hour or so, heading for Rocky Point, and she’d get to see more of it.

  First, though, she wanted to check out the box marked YATES, RECORDS, from the evidence room. While she was at it, she signed for Dan Yates
’ laptop and took it over to Charlie Specter, their systems analyst and their chief computer guy, and waited while he turned it on.

  “That’s what I like to see,” he said, as the computer booted up to the desktop. “Nice and straightforward—just your regular home computer. I’ll bet it provides the password automatically to log on. Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

  Laura thought about it. “Bookmarks. I want to know if he’s been checking out ecoterrorism sites.”

  His fingers rattled over the keys. “Keywords?”

  Might as well. “Earth Warriors.”

  Laura detoured by Jerry’s office, but he wasn’t in. She’d check back in a little while; she was anxious to get at those phone records.

  As she entered the squad room, she saw all the detectives either on phones, computers, or rummaging through papers, looking up at her with harried smiles. Always busy, always going a hundred miles an hour. Home again. She checked her plant, gave it some water, and started right in on Dan’s phone records.

  Richie’s back to her, feet up on the desk, talking on the phone.

  Victor Celaya, the guy she partnered up with most often, hanging up his own phone and coming her way. Italian shoes, eight-hundred-dollar suits. His uncle’s clothing store for men had been going strong in Tucson for sixty years.

  “Long time no see,” Victor said.

  “I’ve been tripping the light-fantastic in Williams, Arizona.”

  He gave her awestruck. “You mean the Gateway to the Grand Canyon?”

  “The very same.”

  “How’s about breakfast in a little while? I’ll buy.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  He shrugged. “Just can’t get enough of your pretty face.”

  She liked the pretty face part, but didn’t believe it. Victor had his hands full with a wife and a mistress. “Wendy’s or McDonalds?”

  “Mickey D’s, unless you’re particular.”

  “Sounds good to me. Give me a half hour, okay?”

  She sat down at her desk and immediately became immersed in Dan Yates’s phone records. It didn’t take her long to see that Dan Yates had called one number more often than any other in the last few weeks. A couple of the calls lasted up to twenty minutes, but a lot more of them ended after a minute. She noticed that with some of these, he called the same number back again immediately.

  Somebody hanging up on him?

  Laura had a good idea who he was calling. She cross-referenced the number with the phone numbers she already had. Bingo—it was Shana. Dan had called Shana several times in the last few weeks, but he had called her rarely before that. And it looked as if Shana had hung up on him more than a few times.

  Laura didn’t like to leap to conclusions. But she did have a feeling, and that feeling was that Dan had somehow figured out that Shana was involved in the arson at Jimmy Davis Ford. It was a trail worth following.

  Now Shana had taken off. The question was, why?

  She’d taken off without Bobby Burdette. Did that mean she was running from him?

  Scared of him?

  Laura thought about this as she went through another box, this one holding all Dan’s correspondence and financial records. Maybe he had told someone what he suspected, but she doubted it. Shana was, after all, his sister.

  She spent the hour looking through the box: plenty of textbooks, photos of his family, some photos of Kellee, including a couple of her topless out in the boonies. Straight-laced Dan and Kellee had a wild side. She looked through the plastic file case holding his bills. He had the one credit card, carrying a zero balance—as Richie said, just not natural for a college kid. His car loan, his internet and cell phone bills all were neatly filed. Everything accounted for, each bill marked off paid in full.

  A responsible guy.

  Also among his possessions: a cigar box full of odds and ends. A cigar box. It was the kind of sappy relic Opie would keep his baseball cards in.

  Inside the cigar box were a few greeting cards, most of them romantic in nature, signed your beloved and your fair lady.

  Kellee must have been a true romantic. But weren’t most girls that age? Laura remembered how she used to send cards to Billy Linton on every occasion, or on no occasion at all. She’d see a card in the store and it would just grab her. Sometimes she’d give him two or three cards at once. Those were the days when she would write in beautiful handwriting, simple notes like “I love you,” and she would never sign them. At the time, that kind of minimalism was important to her, although now she could not recollect why.

  Laura thought that the cards people picked out to send usually reflected what kind of cards they themselves wanted. If that were true, Kellee saw herself as a medieval damsel. One of the cards showed Rapunzel in the tower, her long golden hair unfurling down to the knight below.

  Did Kellee look at Dan as her rescuer? Did she feel that she was locked in some kind of tower, waiting for her prince to save her? Maybe it had something to do with her cancer.

  And sometimes a cigar box is just a cigar box.

  *

  When she knocked Jerry Grimes’ open door, he looked up at her and smiled. There was something behind the smile, though, that she didn’t recognize. Fleeting, and it was gone. Then he was the same old same old, his fatherly self.

  “How are you doing on the Yates case?”

  She told him about Shana and her possible link to the Earth Warriors.

  “Rocky Point, huh?”Jerry sitting in the cheap red chair at his desk, rubbing his neck. Looking grizzled and sunburned and old, except for his lively Irish eyes.

  Laura shrugged, not wanting it to seem like it mattered that much to her. Even with Jerry, she had to play the game. “It’s the best thing I have so far.”

  “This guy, this Bobby Burdette? You think he killed them?”

  “It’s a theory. If Dan found out what was going on, you know he’d try to protect his little sister. The way things are these days, terrorism isn’t anything to fool around with—even ecoterrorism. Bobby’s already been to prison and he’s still on parole.”

  “Plus,” she added. “He met them in Vegas and drove Shana back. If anyone would know where they’d be, he would.”

  “You think Shana will admit to any of this?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  He sat back, regarding her with those bright blue eyes. At last he said, “You want your per diem in pesos?”

  She laughed at his joke, even though it was lame. “Hopefully, I’ll be back by tonight. All I need is a couple of bucks for lunch.”

  “You’re sure she’s there?”

  Laura thought about Jillian’s painfully contorted answers. “Oh yeah. Bet the farm on it.”

  Jerry clasped his hands behind his head. “You know the rules.”

  “No guns, no pepper spray, no—”

  “You got it.”

  Laura turned to go, but he said, “Wait a minute.”

  She turned back around.

  She had seen his concerned expression before. “Maybe after this case, you could take some time off. Get your sea legs again.”

  “You think I’m not doing this job right?”

  “No, you’re going by the book.”

  “So what am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He paused. “That’s the problem. You’re just going on with your business like nothing happened.”

  “Everything that happened—they said I did it right, remember? I was completely cleared of any wrongdoing.”

  “I know. But you could take some time to smell the roses. You know how this job can burn you out.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  “Good. That’s all I ask.”

  *

  “You look like the cat that got the canary,” Laura said to Victor as she tucked into her Egg McMuffin. Clearly he had something he wanted to tell her, something he could barely hold back. Victor loved to gossip.

  “We live in interesting times.”<
br />
  “What’s so interesting about them?”

  Victor sipped his coffee, made a face. Looked at her. “Why you drinking Coke with an Egg McMuffin?”

  “Judging from your face, the coffee’s not all that great. What do you mean about interesting times?”

  “I ran into Richie’s wife at the grocery store yesterday.”

  “So?”

  Victor leaned forward. “You know how Richie’s always talking about his family? Like we don’t all have families of our own—well, you and Todd Rees don’t, but the rest of us do. He acts like he’s living the Father-Knows-Best-Full-House kind of thing, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.” Thinking about her own relationship going down the tubes. Put a fork in it, it’s done.

  “Well, here’s the thing. Turns out they’ve been separated for three months.”

  “Separated?” That hit her in the gut. For a moment, all she could do was stare at Victor. Then she said, “You’re kidding. He just came down for his son’s birthday—”

  “He’s pretending they’re still together. He’s been pestering her, though, and when she saw me she told me all about it—I guess I must look like a priest or something. She wanted me to give him a subtle warning that if he doesn’t stop bothering her, she’s gonna get a restraining order.”

  Laura tried to absorb this. Richie had always been crazy about his family—one of the few things she’d admired about him. Their marriage had always seemed rock-solid.

  If Richie and his wife could split up, anyone could. “But they seemed so happy.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “He’s been lying all this time? Didn’t he know it would catch up with him sooner or later?”

  Victor shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. Gail’s pretty upset. If he’s not careful, it’s going to come back and bite him in the ass.”

  *

  Before she left for Rocky Point, Laura divested herself of her gun, her backup gun, her knife, and her Mace and locked them in the bottom drawer of her desk. She didn’t dare take them into Mexico; they had very strict laws about that. Then she went to the restroom to freshen up. Her mind on Richie, what lengths he’d gone to pretend his home life was hunky-dory. Understanding it, in a way. She didn’t want to let anyone know about her problems with Tom. It was tough admitting failure when it came to love. So many people seemed to get it right—all these happy couples and families all over the place—that when you were alone, you felt like the odd man out.