The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  “I heard about that little girl. Jenny?” Micaela asked, hooking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Is that why you're here?”

  She wore very dark, chic sunglasses. Too much base makeup, but girls did that these days. She looked as cool and beautiful as a young movie star in LA. Laura wondered how anyone could look so put-together in this wilting heat. “We want you to look at some photographs.”

  “Are they of Bill?”

  “No, they're not of Bill.”

  “Oh. What happened to your arm?”

  Laura said, “I banged it.”

  “Oh.”

  Laura thought Micaela would invite them in, but she didn't. They stood on the half-oval steps of the mini-mansion, wrapped in the heat. Jaime removed the six-pack of photos they had put together from the leather binder he carried. Micaela took the photos and looked at them for a good long time. “I don't recognize any of them. Did one of them kidnap the other girls?”

  “We don't know,” Laura said. “Could you look again?”

  Jaime shot her a look, but Laura ignored him.

  Micaela held the photo closer to her face, her lips moving as she studied the photographs. Shook her head.

  Laura was convinced that Heywood had something to do with this, that at some time or another, he'd crossed paths with Bill Smith. But there was no way she could tip her hand and let Micaela know which photo was Heywood's. Not if she wanted it to stand up in court.

  Micaela removed her sunglasses and looked at Laura with her beautiful, slightly strange eyes. “I wish I could say I knew him, but I don't.”

  “That's all right. I wouldn't want you to say something you don't believe. Did Bill Smith ever mention a man named Robert?”

  “Robert?” She looked confused.

  “Did he ever talk to you about other people?” Laura wondering what kind of conversations they would have over their chili dogs at night. Such a bizarre situation.

  She shook her head. “There might have been a Robert, but I never heard the name.”

  Jaime shifted his stance and stared up at the juniper branch above their heads. Laura knew Jaime was worried she was pushing too hard, trying to put words in Micaela's mouth. But she thought of Jenny's tiny bones and had to. She thought of The Missing Girl, Lily, and had to. “Have you ever heard the name Robert Heywood?”

  Jaime standing beside her like a lump of granite. A disapproving lump of granite.

  “Not that I know of,” Micaela said. Her eyes beseeching. “I wish I could help you, but I just can't.”

  Laura was disappointed, but tried not to show it. She thanked Micaela, and they started back to the car. Perspiration trickling down her armpits under the cotton blouse. Suddenly desperately thirsty. She said to Jaime, “Let's stop at eegee's and get a—”

  “Detective,” Micaela called after them.

  Laura and Jaime turned back.

  “One of those men,” she said. “Did he kill the other girls?”

  “We don't know.”

  “But he's a suspect? Where do you think I met him?”

  Laura didn't want to say. She didn't want to plant something in Micaela's mind. “He's just someone who came up during the investigation.”

  “Oh, okay. I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be sorry. If you don't know him, you don't know him.”

  Micaela Brashear stood there like a flamingo, her long legs flickering in the sun and shadow, one hand on the wall of the arched alcove. “Well, I don't.”

  Laura felt the urge to again reassure her that it was okay, but didn't.

  Jaime said, “Thanks, and I hope we didn't mess up your day.”

  Micaela laughed. “No way that could happen.” Then she turned and let herself into the house.

  For a moment, Laura felt a pang. She wished she were that young again. Worried only about how she looked.

  She remembered how innocent she had been at twenty.

  Then she realized that Micaela Brashear was anything but.

  Chapter 17

  Steve awoke to the late afternoon sun like a hot brand on his arm. He glanced at the radio clock.

  Almost four p.m.

  He'd slept all day.

  He sat up and the muscles in his arms, back, chest, and shoulders all shrieked at once. The pain was excruciating.

  Tags jingled. Jake appeared in the doorway, looking at him quizzically.

  “Hey, buddy. Long night.” Steve put his feet on the floor, wincing at the agony in his back. He'd always had a strong back and strong legs, could hunker down for hours following rock strata.

  Jake padded over to him and shoved his nose under Steve's hand. Steve rubbed his head, but even his fingers ached—every bone, every knuckle. His head ached, too—it felt like a massive hangover.

  He'd never been much of a drinker, but there had been a time—what, over a decade ago? A time when he had drunk a little too much. This had been after his fiancée had broken it off with him, when he’d been still living in California. He'd decided pretty quickly he was heading down the wrong road and made the decision to give up alcohol entirely. It had been a simple thing to do, because he hadn't been invested in it all that much. Looking back, those few bad months had been little more than an insignificant blip in a relatively uneventful and sober life.

  Gradually over the years, he'd loosened the rules a bit. Every once in a while, he’d have a beer after work with his coworkers or a glass of wine if he was invited to a party. But parties were few and far between, and he never had more than one, and he never kept liquor in the house.

  Amazing, after all these years, how vividly he remembered the few hangovers of his life. And how much this felt like one.

  He sat there in his misery, staring at the oblong of sunlight on the floor, finding new pains. His neck. The pain shrilling if he moved his head even a little, branching up into his skull.

  All that digging.

  All that digging, and then spending most of the night watching the medical examiner's crew remove bits and pieces of that little girl. Jenny. He tipped his head up, stared out the window at the sky. The sky was a deep afternoon blue, light shimmering off the pine needles of the ponderosa on the right. He saw the window, the sky, the tree, but superimposed over it all, he saw the girl, staring up from the river bed.

  I'm looking for my book.

  He couldn't believe that he had been right. That he'd seen her—my God—he had seen her and that had spurred him to dig her up. It was surreal. It was crazy.

  But it had happened.

  Steve took a deep breath and stood up. The movement made him queasy, and when he turned his head, it felt like something had cloven his skull with a meat cleaver.

  Steve was an early riser. The idea of waking up at four in the afternoon was repugnant to him. Besides, he had to at least fill Jake's food and water bowls.

  After a little breakfast, Steve felt better. He'd let Jake out and Jake had gone straight up the hill to the excavation, sniffing around, lifting his leg on the tree that formed one post for the blue tarp awning. Although the crime scene tape was still up, the place had an abandoned feel. The disturbed earth drying into clods, turning a paler brown.

  Steve dumped the pan in the sink and ran soapy water, then hobbled outside. He felt as if he were his grandfather's age the last time he'd seen him.

  The site drew him. He walked up the stream bed and stood over the oblong hole, the yellow grid strings pulled taut. Still amazed that Jenny Carmichael's ghost had come to him. Why now? Why him? Because he lived here?

  The detectives had been skeptical. They'd asked him about his grandfather's car. He'd read that Jenny Carmichael had been seen with a man and a white car not far from Rose Canyon Lake. He tried to think if he knew anyone around here who had a white car. The cabins out here were few and far between, though, and he didn't really know anyone.

  Steve did know he was the number one suspect. He couldn't blame them; his story didn't make much sense. But he couldn't tell them he'd seen a ghost. He
barely believed that himself.

  It would make them suspect him more.

  The female detective, Laura Cardinal. He'd seen her name somewhere before. In the papers. On the news—investigating cold cases. She looked young for that kind of coverage. But then he supposed that the media zeroed in on the young and good-looking.

  He stared at the empty hole where Jenny's bones had been interred all this time.

  Wondered if Jenny's ghost had appeared to his grandfather.

  His grandfather had been in a retirement home the last year of his life, but his Alzheimer's would have started a long time before that. That marvelous mind, breaking up like ice floes in a vast ocean of increasing emptiness. The man who knew five languages, the man who had written eleven books, eight of them published. Sportswriter for the Boston Globe in the 1930s. War correspondent in the Second World War.

  More than that, he had been the man Steve most related to in his own life. His grandfather had been the person most like himself. All the times Steve came out here to clear his head, to get over some disappointment or another—especially when he was in his twenties—his grandfather's cabin was his sanctuary.

  The best times of his life had been here in this cabin. When he and his sisters had the run of the place. His grandfather had been a big part of that. Teaching them about the mountain—its history, plants, and animals. The geology.

  He wished he could talk to his grandfather now.

  Steve walked back to the cabin. As he stepped up onto the screened back porch, he knocked one of the open boxes with his hip. Loose papers and manila envelopes spilled over the lip of the box and landed on the floor: more writings by his grandfather. He'd been meaning to go through them, but he'd been distracted.

  Distraction doesn't begin to describe this situation.

  Feeling like an old man, he bent down to pick up the papers and the envelopes. One of the manila envelopes slid from his hand and photographs spilled out onto the floor. They were from one of this grandfather's albums, the kind where you pressed the photograph onto adhesive cardboard, then smoothed a transparent sheet over it. Steve had found several albums like that, the adhesive long gone and the photographs sliding to the bottom. He'd ditched the albums and put the pictures in manila envelopes.

  He picked the photos up and shoved them back into the envelope, but one escaped, fluttering down and landing face up. It was of Steve and his former fiancée, Linda, at the Pine Creek picnic area near Pine Valley, California.

  He remembered that day. They'd gone to a wedding in El Cajon the day before and decided to have a picnic at Pine Creek before heading home. A man at a neighboring picnic table had offered to take their picture. They’d stood together, Steve's arm around Linda's shoulders, the two of them smiling for the camera. Linda sleek and beautiful.

  Steve didn't know his grandfather had this picture, but he wasn't surprised. His grandfather had always liked Linda.

  Which was one reason why Steve never told him the true story about their breakup. To spare his grandfather's feelings, to avoid seeing the shock in the old man's eyes.

  And of course, there was the matter of pride.

  Chapter 18

  Laura was working up a request to go to California when fate interceded in the form of Fullerton PD detective Peter Waddell.

  She'd just gotten back from Micaela Brashear's house when the phone rang. Waddell introduced himself, telling her he'd gotten her number from Chuck Dumphy, Heywood's PO.

  “I'm looking at Heywood for a child abduction,” he said. “Thought we could exchange information.”

  Laura told him about her theory that both Micaela Brashear and Kristy Groves had gone to carnivals where Heywood worked.

  “Micaela Brashear,” he said. “That's the girl who was on the news awhile back, right? In Arizona?” He paused. “She's lucky to be alive.”

  He told her about his own case. A ten-year-old girl had disappeared from her bedroom in Fullerton, California, three months ago. “At first we looked at the parents. We looked hard, but there were things about the case that didn't fit. They had two other children, and there were no signs of abuse. The father was confined to a wheelchair. A screen to the little girl's bedroom had been cut from the outside—they had old-fashioned sash windows that they left open because they had no air conditioning. Not only that, but a registered sex offender lived across the street.”

  “Robert Heywood,” Laura said.

  “Uh-huh. I'm sure Dumphy told you about him. He's had a history—peeping, masturbating outside schools. It escalated to a kidnapping, although that was pled down. That was in 2001. He had picked up a thirteen-year-old girl and had her with him for almost a week. She’d said she was with him voluntarily and that they’d planned to get married. Apparently he'd groomed her pretty well, used the Internet to get to know her. The charges were reduced to sex with a minor. He got probation.”

  “What did he go to prison for?”

  “Assault. Nearly killed a guy. Heywood had cocaine on him, so they were able to put him away for a while. The guy he beat up? The father of the girl he was with. Heywood pleaded extenuating circumstances, claimed the father was stalking him.”

  “Was he?”

  “Shit yes. Wouldn't you?”

  “So they were unable to charge him for the kidnapping.”

  “Girl wouldn't testify.”

  Jerry Grimes finished Laura's report and squared it neatly on his desk. “You know our budget situation.”

  Laura said, “I know.”

  “This could be nothing. Micaela Brashear didn't recognize him.”

  “But Patsy Groves did.”

  He sighed, leaned back. “It was a long time ago. She could want to recognize him. You know that. The kid who was taken in Fullerton. Detective Waddell is pretty sure about this? That this is the guy?”

  “He's looking at him hard.”

  “What about Detective Molina? Couldn't the sheriff's department send him? Instead of you?”

  Laura knew what he was thinking: They've got more money than we do.

  “Detective Molina's not going. He has to be in court this afternoon.”

  Jerry sighed again, rubbed his broad face with both hands. Left some of his wiry gray hair standing straight up.

  “Try not to spend too much time there. The lieutenant is a bean counter, in case you haven't heard.”

  She'd heard, all right. “If I leave now, I could be back by late tonight.”

  “Or tomorrow. Use your own judgment.”

  Chapter 19

  Laura's flight got her into John Wayne Airport in Orange County by two in the afternoon. On approach, the plane dropped down under cloud cover. Laura saw what she always did when she flew into LA: a gray, sprawling grid of freeways, shopping centers, industrial parks, and swimming pools.

  She recognized Detective Waddell right away. Tall in shirtsleeves and a tie, he wore a gold shield on his belt. He had a long rectangular face, brown hair graying at the temples, and a serious expression.

  “Good to meet you,” he said formally, taking her hand in his giant one. “Also good timing. Sandy Heywood's shift starts at three.”

  Laura fell into step beside him. They bypassed the carousel and headed for the front doors of the terminal, past the statue of John Wayne, out into cool, slightly misty air, redolent of exhaust. The smog finally burning off. “Where are we headed?” she asked.

  “Train station. Sandy's a waitress at The Spaghetti Company. She usually has her breakfast at the train station café before her shift starts. She likes to watch the trains come in.”

  Detective Waddell drove a brown Chevy Caprice with plenty of miles on it. He didn't make small talk as he drove. They took surface streets to I-5, cut through Pomona on California 57. Other than the air quality, strip-mall LA was identical to the newer parts of Tucson, but on an infinitely larger scale. Laura spotted an In and Out Burger, felt a pang of hunger. Everything gleaming dully under a gun-metal blue sky.

  Waddell turned
right on Santa Fe Avenue and drove all the way to the end of the street, which terminated at the Santa Fe train station. He parked near The Spaghetti Company and stared out the windshield, making no move to get out. “I've been in communication with Sandy Heywood a few times, especially since Heywood took off. I've got my own opinion, but I'd like yours.”

  Laura knew that underneath this request was the not-so-subtle implication that he would be the one to interview her. He expected Laura to observe Sandy Heywood's reactions and develop her own impression of her.

  Laura unbuckled her seat belt, and it slithered back to its home on the door. “I think it's right that you take the lead. I will have questions, though. What's the best way for us to work it?”

  “You could take over after a while. We'll play it by ear.”

  That was fair.

  They left the car and walked toward the train station. The depot must have been built in the twenties or thirties. The long building was Spanish in style: stuccoed walls, arches, rough-hewn wood porch supports, and window sashes painted brown. Red-tile, gabled roofs. The depot retained the feel of a time Laura did not know, but remembered from old movies—that gracious, garden Los Angeles of Bogey's day. Two of her favorite movies were the 1946 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. She wondered if the railway scenes in Postman had been filmed here.

  They walked through the lobby of the train station and out to the back deck, which fronted the railroad tracks. Passengers were disembarking from an Amtrak train—Waddell told her it was a Surfliner, taking people up and down the coast. The passengers trooped over to a bridge spanning the tracks, disappeared inside stairwells on either side. Reemerged on the track apron down below, headed their way.

  “That's her,” Waddell said, nodding in the direction of the umbrella-shaded tables set up alongside the depot under a sign that said The Santa Fe Express Café.

  A woman sat by herself, watching people disembark. She had a thin, boyish body and short, black hair that made her look like an elf. She wore black slacks, a white blouse, and black, lace-up shoes, probably the uniform for her job at The Spaghetti Company. One ankle rested on the opposite knee, if you could call it resting. Her foot jiggled frenetically as she fiddled with the straw from her drink.