The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  “No.” Laura paused. She wanted to tell Mary Carmichael that it was possible that Jenny had been buried fully clothed, but that determination could only be made by the forensic anthropologist after the autopsy. Instead she said, “There was a book buried with her.”

  “A book?”

  “The Man in the Moon.”

  “She loved that book—all of them. The first one was her favorite, but she had all the books in the series. She must have been reading it. What do you think?”

  Once again, Laura had to say she didn't know. It was frustrating. The idea of a man meeting Jenny and offering to drive her back to camp—that could have happened. The idea of them walking over a mile away together, less likely, but still plausible. It was also possible he had killed her near the camp and took her far enough away to bury her where no one would find her.

  But why take the book?

  “I want to help you as much as I can,” Mary Carmichael said. “I wrote everything down—everything that happened. What the detectives told me. I have photos, too. Pictures from the camp, and my niece took photos on the grid search. You're free to look at everything. I gave copies of all this information to Detective Schiller, but I don't think he used it. I've got two boxes. Would you like to see them?”

  Laura realized that Mary Carmichael had been building up to this.

  She thought of the cut-and-dried case file. Detective Schiller had made no mention of the material Mary Carmichael had given him. Not in the original book, not in the half-dozen supplementary reports.

  “I absolutely want to see them,” Laura said.

  Chapter 15

  Back at DPS, Laura looked through Mary Carmichael's material. There were a few photos of Jenny at camp. She was such a pretty little girl, her gaze forthright and serious. But there were times when she smiled and laughed: a water fight, at a picnic, the day she won first prize in the archery competition.

  Someone—Mary Carmichael?—had written the names of the girls under their pictures. Most of the photos, though, showed Jenny with another girl, a sad-faced child battling baby fat, dark-haired and wan. This girl had to be Jenny's “best friend,” Dawn Sayles.

  Detective Artie Schiller had interviewed Dawn Sayles. Laura located the report.

  The day they'd gone to the lake, Dawn and Jenny had explored along the water. By lunch time, they’d split up; Dawn had gone back for the picnic and Jenny had continued to explore the area.

  After lunch, the thunderstorm had hit, and all the girls had been shepherded into the van.

  Laura remembered several interviews from the case file narrative that corroborated Dawn's story. It appeared Jenny had been a true explorer, as Laura herself had been as a child. Always going off by herself, always lured on by whatever lay beyond the bend in the road. Just the kind of girl who would be vulnerable to a predator.

  Laura went through the case file, looking for the camp counselor's statement: Sherri D'Agnostino was sure that Jenny had been on the van when they’d driven back to the camp.

  Which meant that Jenny could have gone off by herself later in the day. Laura would have to reinterview both Jenny's friend Dawn and Sherri D'Agnostino.

  She was leafing through photographs of the Mt. Lemmon grid search when her phone rang. It was Dave Toch. “I wanted to catch you up on the Grady investigation. We picked him up a block away from his house.”

  When a TPD patrol officer drove to the house, Grady's Hummer was out front. Sean Grady had gone straight home.

  The officer knocked, but got no answer. Toch ordered a surveillance unit to sit off the house. About five minutes after the patrol officer left, Grady came out and drove off. He was stopped and arrested before he got out of the neighborhood. “We searched Grady's vehicle for a knife, but didn't find it.”

  Laura had described the hunting knife in great detail yesterday. A big knife. Police were allowed to search any place that could conceal the knife, so when she described it for Toch yesterday, its dimensions might have increased a little. Okay, a lot.

  With probable cause to search Grady’s house, they’d found the knife stashed in a bedroom closet “along with some coke,” Toch said.

  Laura knew what this meant. They could get a new warrant to search any area large enough to conceal coke—which meant they would be allowed to search every corner of the house.

  “Turns out he had a nice little cottage industry going—dealing coke. The prosecutor likes that part of the case.”

  “Who's the prosecutor?”

  “Jimmy Rutan.”

  “What about the assault?”

  “He's more interested in working out a plea on the coke possession, see who else he can get.”

  “Shit.”

  “That's not gospel. I'm just warning you. Besides, it's not looking all that cut-and-dried.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just interrogated this guy, and he's good. He almost convinced me.”

  Laura's pulse sped up. “What'd he say?”

  “All sorts of bullshit. He was just messing around, trying to get a rise out of you. Thought he'd show you the knife and see if he could freak you out. That kind of thing. Said you cut your finger yourself.”

  “How'd I do that?”

  “He said, and I quote, 'she fucking wigged out.’ All he did was take the knife out to show it to you like he'd show it to anybody, and you panicked. He said you tried to grab the knife and that was how you hurt yourself. He really freaked out when you went for your gun for no reason.”

  “You believe any of that?”

  “Of course not—“

  “Who hacked that door to bits?”

  “It's not what I think. It's what Jimmy Rutan thinks. Jimmy loves drug busts, the flashier the better. I think he's going to bag the ag assault and go for the drugs.”

  Jaime called from Mt. Lemmon and suggested they meet at the Cowboy Corral for breakfast. Sounded good to her; she was in the mood for Eggs Benedict. Bad news made her hungry.

  On the way over, she told herself she'd have to come to grips with the fact that Sean Grady's assault on her would probably go away. She could forget about her fraud case, too.

  Dave said Grady had almost convinced him his side of the story was true. Interviewing a sociopath could be an out-of-body experience. People like Sean Grady were believable, no matter what line of bullshit they were peddling. Laura had found herself being pulled in by Grady herself even though she knew better.

  It felt different when the sociopath was coming after you. And that was what this felt like—Grady coming after her. Trying to make her look bad to the people she worked with and probably succeeding.

  Trivializing his attack on her.

  And Jimmy Rutan would help him do it.

  Laura didn't know what she could do, so she did what she always did when she didn't want to think about something: stuffed it down the basement and slammed the trapdoor shut.

  Jaime pulled into the parking lot of the Cowboy Corral just as Laura locked her car. Someone with him, a young Hispanic woman in a brown tunic and slacks—a Cowboy Corral waitress uniform. The girl's brown hair was caught up in a ponytail. Her arm was in a cast and sling.

  Jaime said, “This is my niece Christine. She's taking the Academy exam next month.” He looked from Christine to Laura, her own brown hair in a ponytail and her arm in a sling, and added, “Hey, you two could be twins. The Broken Wing Sisters.”

  “If I was still in my twenties,” Laura said.

  Christine smiled shyly.

  Jaime said, “Christine broke her arm playing soccer. You should see her—she's the reigning queen of Las Estrellas.”

  Christine asked Laura, “What happened to you?”

  “My chair fell over. I hit my elbow—it's nothing serious.”

  “That's the short version,” Jaime said. He looked like a draft horse next to a Thoroughbred. “Cause for a celebration, here. This is Chris's last week as a Cowboy Corral employee.”

  Christine glanced at
her watch. “I've got to go, Tio. ” She flashed Laura a shy grin. “Nice to meet you.” She went inside.

  “Good kid,” Jaime said. “She wanted to meet a real live female detective in the flesh—I'm glad you obliged. Wanted to be a sheriff's detective ever since she was this high. Esther—my wife's sister—tried to steer her away from it, but she's determined.” He held the door for her as they walked inside. “Esther's old-fashioned. Doesn't think that's the right thing for a young lady to do. But times, they are a'changing. Kid's been at me to go on a ride along forever. Told her she didn't want to go with me—all she'd see was paper-shuffling—so last month I set her up with one of the deputies. It was all she ever talked about. She decided then and there to go to the Academy.” They picked a booth by the window. “What happened with Mrs. Carmichael?”

  Laura ran it down for him and supplied him with her notes. For a while, they tried to puzzle out the idea that Jenny might have been driven back to camp and been killed there. Jaime didn't see the transporting of the book as an issue. “My guess is he lured her down there. If she wanted to bring along her book, I don't think he'd make a big deal of it.

  “Tell you what, I'll see if I can hunt down the Camp Aratauk staff—what's left of them.” Jaime took a bite of his omelette, talking with his mouth full. “What do you think of Steve Lawson?”

  “It's possible he could have picked her up by the lake and driven her up there.”

  Jaime nodded. “It would explain how she ended up so close to the cabin.”

  Laura knew they had to look at it. Steve Lawson's story barely hung together. Laura had to separate her first impressions of the man from the facts. He didn't act like a man with a guilty conscience, but that meant less than nothing. Neither had Sean Grady.

  “More I think of it, the more I'm sure he's the one,” Jaime said. LA's only twelve hours away. He could've driven out here, stayed at his grandfather's cabin. He goes for a drive in his grandfather's car, spots her by the road, offers to take her back to the camp, but he takes her to the cabin instead.”

  “And digs her up for us to find eleven years later?”

  Jaime leaned back, pushed his plate away. “People have done a lot weirder things.”

  There was a While You Were Out note stuck on the spindle on her desk. It was from Helen Desormeaux, the HR person at Behr Family Amusements, calling to tell her she had gone through their files and had no record of Bill Smith ever working for them.

  Feeling awkward in her sling, Laura crooked the phone under her left ear to call her back. She didn't hear as well from that side. She knew it was only because she was used to hearing with her right ear.

  When Laura reached Helen Desormeaux, she asked her if BFA had ever employed a man named Robert Heywood.

  “I remember that name,” Helen Desormeaux said. “Let me look it up.”

  She came back a few minutes later. “Yes, he worked here from January 1997 to June of 1999.”

  Laura asked Helen to fax the information, and “Do you have a picture?”

  “This was awhile ago, so I'm going to have to go through our files. I'll fax you what I have.”

  “Thanks.”

  Laura set down the phone. Bill Smith wasn't an employee, but Robert Heywood had been at both carnivals; he had been with G&H Kiddieland and Shows at the time of Micaela's disappearance and with Behr Family Amusements when Kristy went missing.

  Laura tapped her pencil against the blotter.

  If Heywood was around in July of 1997, he could have been here for all three abductions.

  She ran Heywood on NCIC, the National Crime information Center. It didn't take long for the answer to come back. The dot matrix started up with a clank, squeaking like a garbage truck back-up horn as it fed the paper out.

  THIS INTERSTATE IDENTIFICATION INDEX RESPONSE IS THE RESULT OF YOUR RECORD REQUEST FOR FBI.

  Trudy was right; Heywood did have a criminal record. He had a drug charge, a probation violation, a misdemeanor lewd and lascivious. Sex with a minor.

  Exposing himself, escalating to kidnapping. From the information she had before her now, she knew exactly what kind of man Heywood was. Heywood was a sexual predator.

  She contacted Heywood's parole officer in LA, a man named Chuck Dumphy. Dumphy told Laura that Heywood had successfully completed his parole a few months ago and that they had not spoken since. He gave her the address where he was currently living in Fullerton, California.

  “By current, I mean to the end of his parole. He can go anywhere now,.” Dumphy said.

  “You know him. What do you think?”

  “He's got a wife, and the apartment is in her name. He gave me the impression that he's happily married, but you know how it is.”

  He agreed to fax her a photo of Heywood. “If we're lucky, it should come through in a few minutes. Never know with the equipment we've got here.”

  The fax started up just as Jaime came in. He motioned to an extra chair by Victor Celaya's empty desk and Laura nodded.

  He rolled the chair up beside her, peered down at the photo coming through. “Who's that?”

  Laura told him, saw the flicker of surprise in his eyes. Jaime stared at the photo. “You're thinking he's the guy was the one Patsy saw with Kristy Groves?”

  “Could be.”

  Jaime leaned forward, squinted. “Looks like a child molester.”

  The photo was actually two mug shots, front and side. Heywood's age was listed as thirty-four, but he looked older—he could have been in his mid-forties. His gaunt face was bisected by a thick mustache that straddled his mouth like a large moth. His cheeks were like angular apples, hard and shiny. Dark bushy hair, parted at the side. He had the deep tan of someone who worked outdoors. Cleft chin. Spindly neck. White T-shirt.

  His eyes, like so many eyes she'd seen looking out of mug shots, were dead.

  Laura plucked the photo out of the tray and stood up. “Patsy Groves hasn't flown out yet, has she?”

  They found Patsy Groves baking herself on a chaise by the pool. She wore a navy swimsuit with a flowered skirt and white sunglasses. A tropical drink on the table next to her.

  Laura remained a pace or two behind Jaime, aware that Patsy liked Jaime and didn't seem to like her.

  “Mrs. Groves?” Jaime asked.

  Patsy Groves cupped one palm over her sunglasses and smiled at him. “Jaime? That's your name, right? Or do you prefer to be called ‘detective’?”

  Jaime cleared his throat. “Either way is fine. Mrs. Groves—Pat—we have something we'd like you to take a look at.”

  She sat up, careful to keep her legs together. In the flat bright sunlight, her varicose veins didn't look so bad, but Laura thought they would look a lot worse anywhere else. All that time spent working on her feet at the deli, she thought.

  Jaime handed her the sheet they had put together. It contained the photograph of Robert Heywood along with headshots of five other men.

  She looked at it briefly and pointed at the photo in the left-hand bottom corner. “That's him.”

  Laura's heart quickened.

  Jaime said, “This is the man you saw talking to your daughter at the Pima County Fair?”

  “I'd know him anywhere.”

  “Could you look again just to make sure?”

  “I don't have to. I remember it like it was yesterday. He was that close.” She motioned to the glass doors opening onto the hotel bar area thirty feet away. “It was outside one of the restrooms. He was leaning against the wall, you know, in the shade, talking to Kristy.”

  Jaime said, “How old would you say he was?”

  Patsy looked at him suspiciously. “Is this a trick question?”

  “No, ma'am. I'm just—“

  “Let me look at it again.”

  He handed it to her, and this time she looked at it for a long time. At last she said, “He's older in this picture, but other than that, he looks exactly the same.”

  How much older? Laura had to stop herself from asking. It wa
s best to let Jaime handle Patsy Groves.

  Jaime asked the question instead.

  “I'd say he's at least ten to fifteen years older than the guy I saw. But the thing is, he hasn't changed.”

  “You only saw him for a few minutes. How can you be sure?”

  Patsy said, “Because when I called to Kristy, he looked at me. Took off his sunglasses and stared a hole right through me. Like he wanted me to die.”

  Chapter 16

  “How many times are we going to bother these people?” Jaime said as they turned off Broadway into the Colonia Solana neighborhood.

  “Until we get it right.”

  Jaime shook his head. Laura noticed that when he was upset, his Brylcreem seemed to smell more. Or maybe it was being in an enclosed vehicle with him.

  “Bill Smith was the guy who took her,” Jaime added.

  “I know.”

  “You think he and Heywood worked together? Why didn't the Brashear kid mention him?” Jaime stared out the passenger side window. “Maybe these crimes aren't related.”

  “We talked about that.”

  “Yeah, coincidence. Can you give me one link between these three cases?”

  Laura slowed at an intersection. The streets meandered through thickets of cactus, mesquite, and palo verde trees. Every corner was blind. “The only link is Heywood and the carnival.”

  She'd just started to crawl forward when a red car zoomed past, nearly wiping them out.

  Laura hit the brakes. “Dammit!”

  The car disappeared behind a wall of trees.

  Jaime said, “Who'd think a paradise like this would be dangerous?”

  When they reached the Brashear house, they got a surprise. The red Pontiac Solstice that had nearly wiped them out was parked in the driveway near the front door.

  Laura stopped the car on the road and watched as Micaela Brashear, wearing tiny shorts and a camisole top, emerged from the sporty little car. Her legs were a mile long. She saw them and waved. Waited for them to approach.

  As they reached the house, beads of sweat popping out on Jaime's face. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.