The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Cop humor. Laura ignored him, bringing her focus down to the photograph. Shutting everything else out. Well, almost everything—she did notice the powdered sugar from Richie’s doughnut raining down on the sleeve of her navy jacket.

  She’d shared a squad room with him for three years, but suddenly the whole Safeway was too small for the two of them. Something about him—his body language, his jelly doughnut, his presence—distracted her. She ignored him harder.

  Richie was right about one thing: Kellee Taylor was a knockout. Fresh-faced and golden-skinned, her blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail under a ball cap, she wore an NAU baseball shirt with dark sleeves over denim shorts. She stood in front of Hoover Dam, radiating health and happiness.

  Her whole life ahead of her.

  Laura thought of Joshua Wingate’s Polaroids, the color and the life drained out, the vibrant cornsilk hair turned dull and greenish yellow from the flash, clotted with blood.

  Laura had no idea how long ago this picture had been taken; whether it had been from this trip or from an earlier one, but it could mean that Dan and Kellee had gone to Hoover Dam as recently as yesterday.

  With the next photograph, a puzzle piece clicked into place. The sign above the door read: FORGET ME NOT WEDDING CHAPEL.

  That explained the cake and the wine glasses.

  Dan and Kellee stood in bright sunshine, Cupid’s arrow lit up in green neon behind them. Kellee wore her cream-colored dress, and Dan looked uncomfortable in his suit. Kellee held a single red rose.

  Richie Lockhart wiped his hands with the little tissue that came with the doughnut and breathed over her shoulder.“What do you know? They tied the knot."

  “We’ve got the beginning of a timeline,” Laura said, thinking out loud. “That picture at Hoover Dam. What time do you think it is?”

  “Could be morning or afternoon.”

  “Well, let’s think about this.” She recognized the road and the way the dam curved—it was the facing the Arizona side. If her calculations were correct, the shadows were thrown by the eastern sun, not the west. “I’d say nine, ten in the morning at the latest.”

  “Could be.”

  “Look where the shadows are coming.”

  “Okay, sure, I can see that.”

  “And at the chapel, it could have been as late as one or two.”In her mind she let it play out. “They were killed sometime overnight … unless this picture was taken the day before, on Thursday.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  It occurred to her that she had one answer right here. She glanced at the sticker on the envelope. The date stamped there was: 9/15, 4:38 PM.

  September fifteenth. Yesterday.

  “Yesterday morning they drove to Vegas, got married, and made it to Williams before five.” She went through the snapshots again—a party at an apartment that Laura assumed belonged to either Dan or Kellee, and one or two of Dan that could have been on the Northern Arizona University campus. Only four photos of their wedding trip, including one outside the chapel, a group shot. People milling around. Many of them—including the bride and the groom—had their backs to the camera. A candid shot.

  Whoever the photographer was at the chapel, he wasn’t a pro.

  As Laura waited for Richie to pay for the jelly doughnut, she toyed with the timeline. If her calculations were correct, Dan and Kellee had left early yesterday morning to get married in Las Vegas, possibly on an impulse. They’d come back to Williams, left the roll of film at Safeway—probably bought the food for their celebration there—then settled in at the campground.

  Did they go by to see Dan’s parents?

  The celebration was for two, though: two wine glasses, two sandwich wrappers, a small cake.

  She wondered if they had kept their wedding a secret.

  Richie finished paying for the doughnut and motioned toward the restroom. Laura took the opportunity to talk to the three checkers. They were all extremely friendly and helpful, but none of them remembered the young couple. She got the name and number of the woman who had worked there yesterday, then went looking for Richie. He wasn’t in the store and he wasn’t outside.

  Probably still in the bathroom. She knew he had prostate problems—like everything else, the state of his urinary health was fair game. He was the squad practical joker. The good thing was, he didn’t mind laughing at himself.

  From the parking lot, Laura took another look at the old motels on Main Street. Parked along the street were plenty of beat-up old trucks, the kind construction workers drove. Hammering rang in the clear air, punctuated by the whine of a circular saw. This part of town was as busy as a beehive, even though it was after Labor Day and Laura hadn't seen many tourists. Despite the Indian-summer heat, the area felt closed-up to her, fall in the high country, which made for a strange juxtaposition with the frenetic noise down the street. The town was in the throes of a renovation boom, lots of old motels getting makeovers, but keeping the same neon nostalgic glow of their glory days.

  Laura wondered how much of that activity a small tourist town could support. Whoever was building wasn’t worried.

  The shadows were beginning to slant across the parking lot, the light turning the houses, trees, and cars the color of apple cider. She watched the cars cruising Route 66, absorbing the beauty of this late-summer day. A nice quiet town, lots of old houses, small yards, picket fences, and tall trees. But many of the houses had seen their best days, and most of the vehicles she saw were old and beat-up.

  “That’s a relief,” Richie said at her elbow. “You could say it made a vas deferens in my life.”

  Laura’s laugh was obligatory; she’d heard him say that at least a dozen times before. Her mind was still on Kellee by the dam. The girl, looking confidently into her future, unaware that she would be dead in less than twenty-four hours. That for a few terrifying moments between one shot and the next, she would be huddled against the side of the tent, her heart chugging like a runaway train, the man she had married trying—and failing—to protect her.

  6

  Chuck Yates’s house was the last in a grid of streets dead-ending at vacant land opposite the Holiday Inn. Across a field of meadow grass and sunflowers, Laura could see the big trucks on I-40, moving like items on a conveyer belt. Seeing the last rays of the sun sparking off the tractor-trailer rigs, Laura felt a yearning to go with them. Even though she had been a Highway Patrol officer for several years, she had never gotten to the bottom of her love of the road. Which was why, so often, she volunteered for out-of-town assignments.

  The Yates’s house—blue with gray trim—looked cramped and forlorn despite a new roof. On the left side, a paddock took up the equivalent of one lot, a buckskin gelding inside. Small but well-put-together, a quarter horse. In the open land across the street from the Yates’s house, someone had set up a barrel pattern—three oil drums forming a triangle. From the looks of the hard dry ground, no one had run the pattern in a long time.

  The unkempt front yard of the Yates’s house was dominated by a tall apple tree. Fallen apples, not much bigger than golf balls, littered the walkway and the patch of grass in the front yard. The yard was enclosed by a waist-high, chain-link fence matted with morning glories. A GMC work truck was parked face-out in the driveway, a horse trailer backed up next to the carport.

  A little boy, couldn’t be more than three years old, pedaled a Big Wheel over the cracked front walk. A toddler stood in a yellow playpen, alternately chortling and shrieking at the older boy’s antics.

  At the sound of Richie’s loud engine cutting off, Laura saw a figure materialize behind the screen door, then dash outside.

  For a minute, Laura thought she was looking at Kellee Taylor come to life. But the hair was a shade darker, the features different, although they held a similar girl-next-door quality. This must be Dan’s sister Shana. According to Josh Wingate, Shana and Dan were twins.

  The girl reached down into the playpen and picked up the baby boy. She looked at them with open c
uriosity.

  This was the part of the job Laura hated most, where you walked into someone’s life and with a few words blew that life to smithereens.

  Every time she did it, she was yanked back to the time and place where she had received news just like it. Sometimes she wondered what it was about her, what perverse part of her nature made her revisit this hideous ritual over and over again.

  The girl, Shana, sensed something. Laura could tell by the protective way she held her little boy.

  “Are you Shana Yates?”

  The girl nodded, plainly wary.

  Laura introduced herself and Richie. “May we come in?”

  The girl looked diffidently from the baby to Richie, then nodded. She led the way into the house, holding the screen door for them. As Laura passed her, she sensed the girl knew something was wrong. Could feel it, suspended on a taut wire of tension.

  After the bright late-afternoon light, the house was gloomy. Laura’s eyes adjusted quickly, though, drawn to the eight-by-ten framed photographs cluttering the wall near the brick fireplace: Shana on the buckskin horse. In most of them, Shana posed on the horse with ribbons, belt buckles, even a saddle. Some showed Shana and the horse—Mighty Mouse, according to the plaque—leaning deep into a barrel in a rooster tail of dust.

  Now, in her early twenties, she was the mother of two children. Too busy to run the barrel pattern across the street?

  Laura took a deep breath. “Are your parents here?”

  Shana set the child down on the couch and sat beside him, holding on to his wriggling body. “They’re in Flag for the day. What’s going on?” She looked at Richie, who was transfixed by the fish tank underneath the photographs.

  Richie looked at Shana. “Did you know that your brother was in town yesterday?” Richie asked. “Did you talk to him at all?”

  “My brother? What about my brother?” Looking from one to the other, her nervousness quickly turning to panic. “What’s going on?”

  Experience had taught Laura that the sooner she told Shana, the better it would be for her. She knew it was no mercy to draw it out. She had to be clear, so there was no room for doubt. She walked over to Shana and squatted on her heels, looked her in the eye. “Shana, it’s important you listen to me. Your brother Dan was shot and killed last night. Dan and Kellee both, they’re gone.”

  Shana stared at her, her mouth moving. Looked at Richie. She stood up abruptly, letting go of the little boy. “Omigod. What hospital—?”

  Laura caught her hands. Steady. “He’s gone, Shana. He was killed. Kellee was killed, too. Is there someone you can call?”

  Shana breathed through her mouth, tiny little gulps of air. Staring at nothing, or some dreary inner landscape. Then she transferred her gaze to Laura.

  “My brother’s dead?”

  “I’m afraid he is.”

  “What happened? Was it a car accident?”

  Shana was still trying to absorb what she’d been told. Her whole world had been blown to bits, and she was still feeling her way toward the truth. In many of Laura’s death notifications, families asked about car accidents, even though they had already been told their loved one had succumbed to a homicide. A car accident was something anyone could assimilate.

  Laura said, “They were shot to death. Is there any way you can get in touch with your parents? Maybe you should call them so they can be here.”

  “I can’t tell them—”

  “No, you don’t have to tell them. You could just ask them to come home. Or if you want, I could call them.”

  Shana was starting to shake. Her eyes red-rimmed, tears getting ready to fall. “No, they’d know the minute you—Oh no!”

  She collapsed onto the couch, grabbing at her hair which had been caught up in a barrette at the back of her smooth neck. Pulling on it, wrangling it back and forth. “I can’t get this thing out of my hair!”

  “Do you need anything? We could get you a glass of water.”

  “Water? Sure, why not?” Her voice rising. With one last wrench, the barrette came out.

  “If you don’t want to talk to your parents, is there somebody else?”

  She opened her mouth, almost said something. Then she started to cry. Just leaned her head on Laura’s shoulder and sobbed.

  The little boy was standing on the couch now, leaning against the back. He knew something was wrong. He slipped, fell to his knees, and clamped on to Shana’s thigh, his faced screwed up, ready to cry. Which he did with a burst—long, braying sobs.

  Richie said, “It’s not fair to let your parents—”

  “Richie, could you go get Shana some water?” She said it politely, as Shana’s warm tears seeped into her jacket.

  “Sure.” He disappeared into the kitchen, and Laura heard him slamming around the cupboards, pouring water.

  Just then a truck pulled into the driveway. Laura saw it through the window, out of the corner of her eye as she continued to hold Shana.

  Laura heard truck doors slam, voices, a little boy’s shout. “Is that your parents’ truck?” she asked Shana.

  Shana looked at her numbly, nodded.

  Richie appeared in the doorway with the water, looking toward the door.

  A key turned in the lock and the door opened.

  They sat around the kitchen table: Chuck Yates, his wife Louise, Laura, and Richie. Shana leaned in the doorway of the kitchen, arms folded, watching and listening. Looking as if someone had slapped her face raw. Occasionally shouting at the little boy, Justin, to “quit running around and for God’s sake stop screaming!” The baby, Adam, had been put down to sleep.

  The notification had not gone easier with her parents. Mrs. Yates stubbornly refused to believe that her son Dan was dead. She resisted quietly, with dignity. She didn’t argue, just refused to believe it—would not even let the possibility in. The police had made a mistake.

  That meant that, after a while, Laura had to address all her questions to Chuck Yates.

  If Louise Yates refused to hear, Chuck Yates saw it coming and met it head on. She saw him as an aging knight, tall as a redwood, facing the enemy and taking the blows—the killing blows.

  “I guess I have to go identify him.”

  “We don’t require that anymore,” Richie said. “We have more than enough for identification.”

  “What are you saying?” Rubbed his grizzled forehead with one ham hand.

  “You don’t want to see him,” Richie said.

  His words took the air out of the room.

  Laura glanced at Louise Yates. Her mouth was grim, her chin stubbornly set. Holding the line.

  Laura said to Mr. Yates, “Do you know anybody who would want to do this to your son?”

  He stared down at the yellow cheesecloth covering the round oak table, shook his head.

  Shana said from the doorway, “What about Ray Simms?”

  “Ray Simms?”

  Shana shoved her fist under one red eye to catch more tears. “He used to be on the football team with Danny. He had it in for him because Danny was starting quarterback. He hated him.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  She took a deep ragged breath. “Five years ago.”

  Laura dutifully wrote down Simms’s name. “He still lives in Williams?”

  “I think so.” She tightened her arms around her chest, not letting anything in or out. Defiant.

  “Did you see them yesterday?”

  “I didn’t even know they were in town,” Chuck Yates said.

  “That’s not like Dan,” Louise said. “If he was in town, he would have called.”

  Richie said, “Did you know about the wedding?”

  He might as well have lobbed a bomb. Stunned silence radiated throughout the room.

  At last Louise said, “Wedding? Whose wedding?”

  Laura said, “Dan and Kellee got married yesterday. In Las Vegas.”

  Louise’s face clamped down. “That can’t be.”

  “It’s true,” Rich
ie said. He handed her the photographs.

  She glanced at the top photo, Kellee and Dan in front of the chapel, then put the stack face down on the table. “I don’t believe it.”

  Richie said, “Why’s she in a dress like that? Why’s she holding that rose?”

  Laura looked at Richie and cleared her throat.

  Richie saw her expression and hiked his shoulders: What are you going to do?

  “I’ll bet it was a play,” Louise Yates said. “Kellee has a drama class.”

  Richie opened his mouth to say something, but Laura gave him another look.

  Chuck Yates reached over and touched his wife’s hand. She jerked back as if he had dashed boiling water on her instead. The look in her eyes as she regarded her husband—Laura could swear there was loathing there.

  “Louise—”

  “Don’t you say a word. Dan would tell us. He wouldn’t go behind our backs like that. It’s just not true.”

  “Why would they tell us this if it wasn’t true?” Chuck asked.

  “They made a mistake, is all.”

  Richie mouthed to Laura: Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

  She ignored him. Her gaze strayed to Shana. The girl had straightened up against the doorjamb, and Laura could swear she saw alarm in her eyes.

  “Shana?” Laura asked her. “Did you know Dan and Kellee were getting married?”

  The shutters came down. “Huh-uh.”

  “Dan didn’t say anything? A hint, maybe, something you might have misinterpreted?”

  She shook her head and recrossed her arms. “Nope.”

  Louise stood up. “Would you like coffee?”

  Laura smiled at her. “That would be nice.”

  She smiled back. “Dan got me a coffee grinder for Christmas. I have a macadamia nut—”

  “That would be fine.”

  Richie turned to Chuck. “Anyone else you’d consider an enemy?”

  “Dan mentioned some kid had a crush on Kellee.”

  “Oh?”

  “He didn’t think much about it, but the kid was pretty obvious.” She thought he was going to say something else, but he only stared at the refrigerator.