The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Shana turned in her seat and shoved her hand out. “See this? This is an engagement ring! We’re going to get married, we love each other.” And she started crying again.

  Laura said, “You know that’s not true, don’t you?”

  “It is true!”

  “He’s never going to marry you. You know that. You’re not a stupid person. He might not have meant to kill you, but you know the score. You said yourself he was never coming back.”

  “Maybe that’s why he made it easy enough for you to escape. So he didn’t have to face the fact that he was a killer. If you got out, great. If you didn’t it was your fault. Either way, though, you lose. If he gets away with whatever he’s doing, if he’s using you as a hostage and this is something really bad, guess who’s going to end up holding the bag?”

  “Me,” Shana said, her breath hitching.

  “Bingo.”

  She could feel Shana turning toward her. She could feel Shana wanting her protection, wanting her comfort. There was a time in interrogations that this happened, and it was magic. Laura felt the thrill course through her, a top-of-the-world high. She was on the horse now and riding it for all it was worth. “I’m looking at this from the outside, Shana. And I want to ask you something. When do you think he dug that little grave? When do you think he salted in the supplies? Before he bought your engagement ring?”

  Shana didn’t say anything, but she was still crying.

  “When did he plan that? When you called him and told him where you were? When he went to the store and bought your ring? When he came to pick you up?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “What did he say to you when you were driving up here? When did he tell you about the pot?”

  “Right before we got there.”

  “And then he shoved you in that hole. Like you were a pile of garbage. He shoved you into that hole, pushed on your feet, boarded it up behind you. Took a shovel and buried you, Shana. Does that sound like someone who wants to marry you? Someone who loves you?”

  No answer. But Laura knew she had won this round.

  “But what I want to know even more than that is: How much did Dan know? If Bobby was willing to bury you alive, what would he do to someone he didn’t like so much?”

  She caught Shana’s gaze, held it.

  “What would he do to Dan?”

  By the time Laura reached the Kachina Village-Mountainaire turnoff, Shana was asleep. She’d been through hell the last couple of days, and crying jags generally made people sleepy.

  She awoke just as I-17 turned into Milton Road and the traffic slowed. She looked at Laura, startled. “You missed the turn-off.”

  “I’m hungry,” Laura said. “Aren’t you?”

  She saw she’d struck a chord. But Shana said, “Troy and I are going out for dinner.”

  “There’s a Wendy’s.” Laura turned in to the drive-through. Shana didn’t object, and ordered a double with everything and onion rings. She attacked the food as if she hadn’t eaten in days, which was pretty close. Laura kept going, backtracked on the 40 Business Route past some cheap new motels and some older, seedy ones. Before Shana was through eating they were driving through the rolling gate to the DPS District 2 office on Kaibab Lane.

  “What’re we doing here?” Shana asked.

  “I have to go in for a minute. You want to come along?”

  Shana shook her head. “I’ll stay here.”

  “You’ve got a better bladder than I do.” Laura got out and started toward the pale yellow mobile home on far side of the enclosed area, where the Flagstaff DPS worked.

  She heard the car door open and Shana’s footsteps behind her. “Wait.”

  They walked up the steps and went inside. Desks were ranged along the opposite wall, delineated in some cases by short partitions, but mostly just by personal possessions—a cowboy calendar, a poster of an American flag, family photos. All the desks empty—it was past five and everybody had either gone home or was out working cases. Laura picked the one with the least clutter. The name tag said Z. BROWNING. She hoped he wouldn’t mind her commandeering his space for a few minutes. She led Shana to where the bathroom was, making sure she got a good look at the last chair, face-out from the wall, complete with handcuffs and leg irons. She nodded toward Z. Browning’s desk. “I’ll be right here, okay?”

  Shana nodded wearily.

  Laura pushed a couple of files to the side so she had a good area to work, took some papers out of her briefcase, and set them right in front of the chair. The door to the outside opened and a young, redheaded Highway Patrol officer stuck his head in. “Can I help you?”

  He saw the badge clipped to her belt and said, “Oh. Sorry.” Ducked back out.

  Laura moved the chair slightly to the left, so that anyone coming in would be able to see over her shoulder. She placed the diagram of Dan and Kellee’s tent on the desk along with the list of shots the couple had taken and the damage that had been done to flesh, bone and sinew.

  She sensed rather than heard Shana come back into the room.

  “What’s that?” Shana asked.

  Laura put her arm across the paper in a half-assed attempt to hide it. “Are you ready to go?”

  “That’s the tent, isn’t it? Danny’s tent.”

  Laura cleared her throat. “Yes, it is.”

  Shana leaned over her. “What are those numbers on the left?”

  Then she gasped.

  Laura stood up hastily, picking up the papers and stacking them. “I’m sorry, Shana, you shouldn’t have seen that.”

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s not pleasant.”

  “Let me see.” Her voice like steel.

  Laura sighed and put the page back on the table.

  Shana stared at it a long time. Then she sat down in the chair and covered her face. “Shit,” she said.

  Laura gave her time.

  Shana started to cry. “He obliterated them!”

  “It’s my fault. You shouldn’t have seen that.”

  Shana’s voice shook. “How could he do that?”

  Laura said, “I don’t know.”

  Shana looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Did they know what was happening?”

  All the times Laura had interviewed Shana over the last couple of weeks, and finally, now, she was asking this question. Finally, it had come home to her. For the first time, Shana wasn’t concerned about herself or her feelings. She was thinking of her brother.

  “Dan tried to protect Kellee,” Laura said carefully picking her words. “The second round came so fast, I don’t think he had time to think. Either one of them.”

  “That was the shot that killed them,” Shana said.

  “Yes.”

  They sat in silence.

  Finally, Shana said, “You think it was Bobby.”

  Laura said nothing, but continued to hold Shana’s gaze.

  “You do, you think Bobby did this.” She crossed her arms, rubbing them with her fingers.

  “It’s important to know what you think.”

  “He couldn’t do that, he loves me. He wouldn’t …” She trailed off, staring at the desk. The page was gone, but she was looking at something. Perhaps it was her own bleak interior landscape.

  Laura said gently, “He buried you alive, Shana. He’s capable of anything.”

  “Maybe.”

  Laura thought she would finally get Shana to talk—really talk. She could feel it, they were on the brink, the way an Olympic diver feels at the moment they’re about to leave the board, toes on the edge of the high dive, tensed for the spring. That was where Shana was.

  And then, like that, it was gone. Shana blundered to her feet, her eyes angry. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  “Fine. But do you mind if I give you some advice?” She didn’t wait for the girl’s answer, but stepped close to her so they were face to face, getting into her personal space. “If I were you, I’d get as good a lawyer as I can find.
”

  Shana stared at her, her sullen expression turned to shock.

  “Come on, Shana. You and I both know you’re tied up with the Earth Warriors. I told you before, this is post 9/11. It’s a different time. Terrorism can get you put away for a long time. If you’re smart, you’ll work out some kind of deal. It’s the only way you’re not going to spend your best years in prison.”

  Shana’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Can I use your phone? I need to call Troy and have him pick me up.”

  “Absolutely.”

  After Shana left, Laura put in a call to the US attorney in Flagstaff, but got his voice mail. She left a message, tracked down his administrative assistant, and got his home phone. She reached his voice mail and left the same message—that she wanted him to call her back as soon as possible.

  Laura thought, by using the carrot and the stick, she could get Shana to give up the Earth Warriors in exchange for no charges being brought. Shana was never forthcoming, but she did have a healthy sense of self preservation. She would tell what she knew, because despite her protestations to the contrary, Shana always came first.

  Laura was pretty sure the prosecutor would agree with her request. But time was slipping away, and Laura had no idea where Bobby Burdette was.

  She checked her e-mail before going to dinner. There was one that stuck out, a post from Pete Sage, the blogger who had mentioned the Earth Warriors. He gave her Janet Weir’s e-mail address. Janet Weir was the woman who had sold a house in Ojai for the man named John, leader of the long-defunct Earth Warriors.

  Laura ordered a dinner salad at the motel coffee shop, her mind still on her interview with Shana, and what it might mean to her investigation. Was there really a link, or was she trying too hard to make one? She had just speared her last leaf of iceberg lettuce when she remembered to check her phone, which she’d turned off during dinner. There was a message from a lawyer named Marty Gaar, who represented Shana Yates. She wanted to meet Laura at the US attorney’s office in Flagstaff tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.

  Shana’s self preservation had indeed kicked in. She had worked it out all by herself.

  31

  Laura started the next morning already at a deficit. The clock radio failed to come on, and she hadn’t slept well, waking at midnight and drifting off around three a.m. Looked awful from the lack of sleep, so she got some ice from the ice bucket and applied it under her eyes with a washcloth while she downloaded her e-mail. One e-mail she had to read, from Janet Weir, the artist and real estate agent who had sold a house for the head of the Earth Warriors. Janet Weir supplied Laura with a name: John J. Traywick. Janet had lost track of him a long time ago, but was sure he had moved to Arizona.

  Laura arrived at the US attorney’s office five minutes late, her hair still wet. Chuck and Louise Yates sat beside a sullen Shana Yates, who seemed scrawny and haunted next to the colorful Marty Gaar. Marty Gaar favored chiffon and color, and wore shoulder pads that made her look like a linebacker—a five-foot tall linebacker. Reading glasses hung from beaded chains on her ample breast.

  Jon Service, a Flagstaff resident and FBI special agent Laura knew from Tucson when he’d worked down there, sat opposite Shana. He stood when Laura entered the room and gave her a flicker of a smile. His eyes were clear and blue, but carried the burden of the job in the fleshy bags underneath.

  Laura liked Jon; he seemed easygoing, but missed little, and there was something comforting about his stolid bulk. What she liked best about him was the fact that he didn’t act superior. Laura had no doubt that somewhere deep inside, hard-wired into him from Quantico, there was the belief that all other law enforcement agencies—and their officers—were inferior, but to his credit, Jon didn’t show it. She understood that because she had the same mindset regarding the local agencies she worked with, and she strived not to show it either.

  Jeremy Sharp, the US attorney, joined them. Short, balding, and young, he had soft features, pale skin, and startling black hair. In his call to her last night, Jon Service explained that Jeremy Sharp and Marty Gaar were good friends who shared a love of antiques—for a couple of years they’d worked together as prosecutors for the Coconino County Attorney’s office. Their friendship had apparently played out last night, and had helped expedite this deal.

  From the moment Sharp first spoke, it was clear that both the US attorney and Marty Gaar had done all their homework and were already in agreement. Apparently, there had been a flurry of faxes and phones calls last night, clearing the way for Shana to tell her story.

  Foregoing the preliminaries, Shana’s lawyer announced that Shana wanted to bring Dan Yates's killer to justice and had decided to tell them everything she knew to achieve that end.

  Laura was now allowed by Marty Gaar to ask her questions. Shana answered in a monotone, but she didn’t evade. Every time she got that stubborn look on her face, Marty Gaar would nudge her.

  She spoke as if she were reciting a memorized piece for a high school class. Yes, she was a member of the Earth Warriors. Yes, she had participated in the burning of the SUVs and Jimmy Davis Ford.

  Yes, she did think that Bobby Burdette killed Dan and Kellee.

  “Why do you think that?” Laura asked her.

  “Because Dan figured it out about the SUVs. Bobby was worried he’d find out about—”

  Marty Gaar stopped her by placing her plump, freckled hand on the girl’s skinny, brown one. She looked at Sharp.

  Sharp nodded.

  Gaar said, “Go on.”

  Suddenly, Laura light wavered at the edge of her right eye. She concentrated on the air right next to Shana’s face, which shimmered in and out of the light. Made herself focus.

  Shana took a deep breath. “You want me to tell them about the trucks?”

  “You have to,” her lawyer told her.

  Shana started twisting her ring again. Lights blinking. Concentrate.

  “Bobby told me about this plan they had.” She looked at Marty, and Marty nodded.

  “Who had?”

  “Bobby, Jack, and Glenn. They weren’t going to do anything dangerous,” she added quickly. “They just wanted it to look that way.”

  Laura glanced at Jon Service, nodded. Let him do the questioning.

  “Who are Jack and Glenn?” he asked Shana.

  “They run the Earth Warriors.”

  “Do you know their last names?”

  “Jack Taylor and Glenn Traywick.”

  The name Jack Taylor was maddeningly familiar—someone important, someone she had met, but she couldn’t remember when or where she had met him. The damn bling-blinging at the edge of her vision was making it hard for her to think. The name Traywick, though—that she had seen in an e-mail just this morning. John J. Traywick.

  John, not Glenn.

  Brothers?

  She wrote down the three names: Jack Taylor, Glenn Traywick, and John J. Traywick. Looked at each name in turn, the lights flashing like shining salamanders, wrapping their tails around her vision. Laura ignored them as best she could, trying for a connection. When it wouldn’t come, she looked at Shana. “What were they going to do?”

  “Have you ever heard of the WIPP project?”

  “No.”

  “It stands for Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. It’s that place down in New Mexico, near Carlsbad? Where they bury nuclear waste? They truck low-grade plutonium from the Nevada Test Site to WIPP all the time.”

  Plutonium. Laura was aware of the smile frozen to her face.

  Laura knew where this was going, even as Shana’s voice droned on. It fit the kind of guy Bobby Burdette was. A creep who drove a lime-green Dodge Challenger and who buried his girlfriend with bottles of Dansani and Luna bars.

  He planned to hijack one of the trucks.

  And do what?

  Laura’s mind kept darting ahead and circling back. Shana was speaking too slowly for her racing mind. But she assimilated it.

  Bobby Burdette and some other Earth Warriors had
managed to work their way into the Nevada Test Site, which contracted out the trucking of the transuranic waste they shipped to New Mexico.

  That was news to her: The NTS contracted out the transporting of nuclear waste. Had the world gone crazy?

  The plan was harebrained: steal a truck carrying the waste and drive it to some place in the boonies, abandon it there and then call in the media—

  Film at eleven.

  The way Shana laid it out, it seemed so simple. Too simple. Laura didn’t see how they could pull it off. Not unless they had someone on the inside. But Laura always looked at the worst-case scenario. That was part of what made her a cop.

  She leaned forward, the lights at the corner of her eye just an annoyance now.

  Jon said to Shana. “When are they planning to do this?”

  “I don’t know. Soon. But it’s not that big a deal.”

  “Not that big a deal? What do you mean?”

  “They weren’t going to do anything with it. They just wanted to take it to some remote place and the media would show up … it’s for a good cause. People need to know how dangerous this stuff is.”

  Laura wanted to say something, but didn’t want to step on Jon’s toes. It was his interview.

  “What if something happened?” Service asked. “Something Bobby didn’t plan on?”

  Shana looked at him. “Those things are indestructible.”

  Laura wanted to shout, then what’s the goddamn point? But she didn’t.

  Jon said, “The Earth Warriors are driving these nuclear waste trucks for the government?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, technically for Fleet Trucking”

  “And these trucks carry plutonium?”

  “It’s called transuranic waste,” Shana said. The expert. “Technically it’s plutonium, but it’s not real bad stuff—mostly just by-products like rubber gloves and clothing that’s been contaminated, you know, beakers and stuff.”