The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  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.

  21

  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?”

  S
he 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.”

  “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.

  It made Richie seem more human to her.

  Looking in the mirror of the ladies’ room, she saw what Mina and Jerry and everyone else had been seeing: dark circles under her eyes. Her skin puffy under the fluorescents.

  She’d taken the paper Coke cup with her, now down now to a rattle of brown ice. Now she took two of the cubes and, holding them with paper towels, pressed one under each eye. Kept them there until the upper part of her face was numb. She wished she had concealer, but she had never used it before, had never bought any because she had her doubts about how natural that stuff looked. The ice would make the swelling go down; it had worked before.

  On her way out, she ran into Richie.

  “Heard you’re on your way to find Shana.”

  “Hope she’s there,” Laura said in the warmest tone she could muster. No sense in kicking a man when he was down.

  “I’ve got the Hector Lopez case pretty well wrapped up, so I can go back to working this case.”

  “That’s okay, Rich. I’m doing fine on my own. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of loose ends to tie up.”

  Her warm feelings turning to annoyance.

  He dug his hands in his pockets. “I told you, I’ve got it covered. Plus, I’m hot on this Luke Jessup thing. I think he’s the answer to this whole case.”

  “Maybe you should go back to Williams then.”

  He looked as he usually did—an Oxford shirt with white collar, wide plain-colored tie, jeans, and desert boots. Laura wondered how he could tell such tall tales about his marriage, how he could lie with such aplomb. Cops were good liars—they had to be, to get confessions—but the fact that he had used that ability on her and everyone in the squad was a jolt to the system.

  “That’s what I’m planning. Jerry wants me to go up there.”

  “The more the merrier,” Laura said, although she didn’t mean it. She already thought of this case as hers and hers alone. Walking to the car, she wondered why Jerry wanted Richie up in Williams. Because he thought she couldn’t do it on her own?

  Or maybe to get Richie out of town and away from his wife.

  From the Department of Public Safety, she backtracked to I-10 and worked her way over to Ajo Road. Ajo Road turned into State Route 86, which crossed the Tohono O’odham nation. When she was a kid, the Tohono O’odham people had been called the Papagos—another Indian tribe’s deprecatory word for “bean eaters.” Now the “bean eaters” had changed their name and ran three lucrative casinos.

  It was a beautiful drive—lots of desert and mountains and few signs of civilization, except for the crosses.

  The last time Laura had been out this way, she’d counted over a hundred roadside crosses between Tucson and the town of Why, Arizona. Most deaths were due to alcohol or speeding or both—the road shared by illegal aliens, pot smugglers, Border Patrol, tribal members, and college students driving down to Rocky Point for spring break.
At the trading post in Gu Achi, besides the rack of potato chips and shelves of condiments and cold cases of drinks, there were shelves upon shelves of wreaths, crosses, and flower arrangements.

  A cottage industry.

  22

  Laura didn’t make it as far as Why, though. She ended up in a Chevron station somewhere in the sticks, staring at the cracked mirror in a tiny bathroom that smelled of cleanser. A high sash window cut into the white-washed brick was open, and a navy curtain blew inward along with the sound of tires on pavement outside.

  Laura heard the noise, but her attention was on the mirror because—

  Half her face was gone.

  That wasn’t exactly true. One side of her face looked normal, but the other was like smooth, flesh-colored clay. If she squinted hard she could see faint etchings in the clay where her left eye should be.

  The watery light was back, bouncing around the edge of her vision. Closing her eyes didn’t do her any good.

  What was going on? She’d managed to push down her worry last night at the Spanish Moon, and it had gone away. She’d ridden it out. But now half her face was a featureless mask.

  Take a deep breath. Don’t panic. It had gone away before; it would go away again.

  She walked into the bathroom stall, closed the toilet seat lid and sat down. Kept her eyes closed. The lights, blinking on and off like a neon sign, hammering brightly, a curved shape, like a salamander.

  The words running through her mind: macular degeneration, detached retina, blindness, brain tumor.

  Somebody outside, jiggling the door handle.

  The lights blinking.

  She got back up and stared at the mirror. It looked the same. Her features wiped away; half her face like flesh-colored plastic.

  The person outside knocked on the door.

  “Somebody’s in here!” Laura yelled. Thinking how incongruous it was, saying somebody was in here, when she was the somebody. Talking in third person as if she were watching herself from above.