The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  “Tell you what,” Laura said. “I have to go to the bathroom—”

  “He didn't see Jenny,” Julie said.

  Laura stayed where she was.

  “He saw a manifestation of Jenny.”

  “A what?”

  “A manifestation. Most people would use the word ghost—”

  “Her ghost? He saw her ghost? What do you mean by that?”

  Julie swiped at a wavy strand of hair. “I knew you'd be skeptical. So was Steve. That's why he didn't tell you. Not that he believes in anything like that, because he doesn't . . . he didn't. But he's got so much pride. He's always had his feet on the ground—the only thing he believes in is science. In fact, that was one of our problems. He wouldn't even let the possibility of anything like that seep into his consciousness—”

  “Hold on,” Laura said. “You're telling me that Steve saw a . . . manifestation of Jenny Carmichael? When was this?”

  “You believe me?”

  “Not really.” Might as well go ahead and ask, though. “When did he see this, uh . . . manifestation?”

  Julie told her about the girl by the stream bed looking for her book, finding the book later that day, the girl appearing to him again after her bones had been found. About the collar and the puppy.

  “He lied to me,” Laura said. “He gave me some bullshit story about looking for granite.”

  Julie looked at her. “What would you do, if it was you this happened to?”

  Julie said, “Would you have believed him?”

  “I don't know that I believe you.” Laura sat down opposite Julie on the chair that came with the apartment. “Let's suppose what you are telling me—what he told you—is the truth. Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I'm scared for him.”

  “Scared?”

  “The other night, when I met you? We used the Ouija board. I think . . . I think that a base spirit must have taken over the board because—”

  “Base spirit?”

  “One of the lower spirits who like to cause trouble. They're mean-spirited and can be harmful. We should have never invited it in.”

  This was sounding more like a Stephen King novel with every new revelation. Laura's common sense was beginning to reassert itself. Bottom line: This was ridiculous.

  Julie said, “I've been warned about using the Ouija board. You had to be there, but Steve got very strange. He was talking to someone. The look on his face—you wouldn't believe he was the same person. He looked so hopeless, as if . . . I used to work on the Suicide Hotline. He sounded like the people who committed suicide did. That's why I came here. I'm afraid for him.”

  “What do you think I can do?”

  There must have been something in her tone, because Julie stood up suddenly. “I don't know,” she said. “This was probably not a good idea.”

  “You have to admit, this is a little hard to believe.”

  Julie stopped just inside the door. “No, I understand. It's not your problem. I'm sorry to bother you.”

  As she stepped out onto the landing, Laura said, “Do you know how Steve got that scar on his arm?”

  Julie looked at her. “When he was ten years old, his father came home drunk—that happened a lot. He was mad that his dinner was late, so he grabbed a steak knife and held it to Steve's mother's throat and threatened to kill her. Steve fought him for the knife, and that was how he got the scar.”

  Steve wasn't sure if he and Julie had conjured up another ghost or if there was a man living on his property.

  Ever since the incident with the Ouija board, a large part of which was a hole in his memory, he had been seeing the guy he first spotted by the stream bed.

  And it wasn't just Steve seeing things. Jake saw him, too.

  Usually, it was when Steve's thoughts were occupied by something else. Digging out from under his grandfather's possessions, loading them into boxes, deciding which of them should go to Goodwill and which he should keep—an endless job. Suddenly he'd look up and see the man outside the window, walking by—just a glimpse. Or he'd come around the corner of the house and see the guy standing under a tree. There was the time he was in the house, saw the man sitting at the picnic table, and ran outside. By the time he made it to the corner of the house, the man was gone.

  Every time Jake growled, Steve would look around and there the guy was. Just crossing his vision, moving away. Always at a distance, and always with his back turned. By his build, the guy looked to be in his early to mid-thirties, but Steve couldn't be sure because he never saw his face. He was about Steve's height and weight—maybe seven to ten pounds lighter. His hair was a little on the long side, just touching his collar.

  The man always wore the same thing: blue jeans, a plain navy T-shirt, and work boots.

  Maybe it wasn't the Ouija board that had conjured him up. Steve could have picked him up on the way back from Camp Aratauk. He was getting used to the fact that he saw ghosts, but he couldn't figure out if the guy was trying to tell him something or if he was just there. He figured the man was manifestation of somebody who had been around here before. From contemporary times obviously—maybe someone who had known his grandfather. Maybe he was a hiker. If he really was a ghost, maybe he had died around here somewhere, like Jenny Carmichael did.

  It might even be that the man was Jenny's killer.

  Steve was almost done cleaning out his grandfather's cabin. Mostly there was just the furniture, which he would keep. It was ugly, but it belonged to the cabin, so Steve would let it stay. He went down to his own house periodically, but for some reason he didn't feel that it was home anymore.

  Up here, in this rustic old cabin, he felt at home. He was coming to the understanding that this was the place where he was meant to be. Come right down to it, he could sell his house and live up here. It would make for a hell of a commute working for the USGS, but he could probably work it out.

  And if it didn't work out, he had savings. Savings and investments. He could live for five or six years off his savings alone. Comfortably. He could do consultant work, he could hire himself out for a few months at a time on some project or another, then come back here.

  The thing was, he wanted to figure out what happened to Jenny Carmichael. He'd need time to do that. He knew the answer was here on the mountain, and he had an advantage that detective Laura Cardinal didn't have. He had his secret weapon. Jenny.

  It had finally occurred to him that Jenny could tell him herself what happened. He just needed to conjure her up again, and she would tell him.

  And so he sent thoughts in her direction, asking her to appear. Asking her to not be so damn oblique about things and stop hinting. Come right out and tell him what happened.

  But the thing was, she didn't appear to him. All he saw was the man. The Man Without a Face. The Man Without a Front Side.

  Steve wondered if he could summon Jennie back with the Ouija board. He'd need to enlist someone to help him out because the Ouija board needed two people. The only person he could trust was Julie.

  He didn't want to get involved with her again, not romantically, but he didn't see any other way.

  Chapter 38

  After Julie left, Laura went for a walk. It wasn't a nice area to walk, but she wasn't looking at the scenery.

  As she walked, she thought about Mrs. Molina, what she'd said. Laura had been so caught up in self-pity, she'd given up. She'd let whoever it was get the upper hand. What Ana Molina had said was right; even though Jaime was in the hospital, he was still her partner—-her new partner. She owed it to him to find out who had tried to kill him and who had killed his niece.

  She couldn't turn her back on him. Someone had come for them. Someone had tried to kill them both. Maybe right now she didn't care all that much that someone had tried to kill her, but they had also tried to kill her partner. How could she stand by and let this person get away?

  She couldn't.

  Victor Celaya, the detective she most often partnered wit
h, had been assigned to the cold cases. Victor had the case files, all her notes.

  She walked back to the apartment, took a shower, and for the first time in a week, dressed in her work clothes.

  Twenty minutes later, she was in Jerry Grimes's office, asking if she could be put back on the case.

  Jerry looked away. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

  “This is important to me,” Laura said. “Jaime is my partner.”

  “You know Victor. He'll do a good job.”

  Laura tried to keep her voice calm. “It's not about the job he's doing. It's the fact that Jaime is my partner, and it's up to me to find out who tried to kill us.”

  “That's right,” Jerry said. “Someone tried to kill you. You can't investigate an attempt on your own life. My suggestion to you is you go home and take off a couple of weeks, try and make some sense of all this.”

  “How am I going to do that?” Laura asked. “Do you know what it's like to live in that apartment? It's not living. I'm going stir-crazy. Let me at least work some aspect of the case. If you want, I'll steer clear of what happened to Jaime.” She could see from his body language that Jerry was warming to the idea. DPS criminal investigations was always short-handed, and her absence had created a void. “I promise, I'll steer clear of the murder investigation—I'll leave that to Victor. But there's still Jenny Carmichael. And I'm close.”

  She wasn't actually close at all, but it didn't hurt to say she was.

  They wrangled back and forth awhile longer, but Laura knew Jerry's heart wasn't in it. There was a backlog of cases, more every day, and the Jenny Carmichael story was big news. They needed to make some headway on it. Finally he said, “You could wear down a diamond, you know that?”

  Laura stood there, waiting. Hoping.

  Jerry sighed. “Go talk to Victor. If he doesn't mind you working the Carmichael case along with him, that's fine with me.”

  She wanted to reach across the cluttered desk and hug him. Of course she didn't.

  She caught Victor in the squad room. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Victor swiveled his chair around and leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head. “Sure,” he said. His voice was as wary as his casual way of sitting was studied.

  “In the hallway?”

  “Okay.” He grunted as he got up. Victor was in good shape—late forties, but he played tennis and golf. He didn't need to grunt when he stood up. He was doing it to show his displeasure.

  They stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall. Victor staring straight ahead, not looking at her.

  “I want to help you with the cold case.”

  “I don't think Jerry—”

  “He already said I could ask you.”

  Victor said, “I don't think it's a good idea.”

  “Your main focus is what happened to Christine Lujan and Jaime Molina, right? You've got a lot to do.”

  “I'm in touch with a detective from the sheriff's office.”

  “In touch with?”

  He shrugged. Victor was the best shrugger in the business. It was an elegant, negligent shrug, which went with his beautifully tailored clothing, which he got at cost because his uncle ran a famous men's clothing shop here in town.

  “Be honest, Victor.”

  “Okay. I have a call into him. He hasn't called me back.”

  “Doesn't sound like he's interested.”

  Victor was looking at his nails. His nails, like the rest of him, were perfect.

  “Victor.”

  He looked at her. “Okay. You can work the Jenny Carmichael case. But that's it.”

  Victor and Laura decided together that Laura didn't need to be at DPS. Even though her leave had been rescinded, her presence might be a distraction. On his lunch hour, Victor boxed up everything to do with the Jenny Carmichael case and took it over to Laura's, stopping to pick up sandwiches from eegee's on the way.

  “Jerry knows we're doing it this way, right?” Laura asked, as they sat at the kitchen counter and unwrapped their sandwiches.

  “Uh-huh. He thinks I'm nuts to agree to it, by the way.”

  Laura said, “What kind of progress are you making on the bombing?”

  He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. “I don't think it's a good idea for me to say.”

  “Come on, Victor. I could have been in that car.”

  “All we have right now are the numbers Jaime called on his cell.”

  “The cell wasn't damaged?” Laura vaguely remembered seeing it on the porch near Jaime, but she had been so absorbed in keeping him from going into shock, she had let that detail slip. “Who'd he call?”

  Victor sighed. He knew it was pointless; she'd get it out of him. Victor always took the easy way, which was why Laura had been sure she could get him to let her back on the case. He liked to share the workload.

  “Think about it, Victor. Jaime and I worked these cases. I might actually be of some help.”

  “The Pinal County sheriff's office. He talked to one of their detectives. Guy named Franklin.”

  “This was after our dinner at Prieta Linda?”

  “That's right.”

  “Don't make me pull it out of you word by word, Victor. What did they talk about?”

  “According to Franklin, Jaime was just touching base with him, getting his facts together. But Franklin had a bombshell for him.”

  Laura remembered the night of the explosion, how sound always carried in the boonies. Jaime saying: She's gonna want to know about this.

  “What was it?”

  “You know the meth lab explosion that killed Tom Purvis? Apparently, it wasn't an accident. Somebody used a homemade calcium carbide bomb, wiped the guy right off the face of the earth.”

  “Calcium carbide? That was what blew up Jaime's car, wasn't it?”

  Victor took a bite of his Reuben. “Looks to me like somebody has a pattern.”

  Laura stared out the window at the walkway out front and the patch of grass beyond it. “Who, though?”

  “That's the sixty-four-million-dollar question.”

  Laura took Victor's pickle. He always let her take his pickle. “You know what the link is.”

  “Heywood, but he's dead.”

  “Heywood must have had a partner.” Laura thought about Bill Smith, Micaela's abductor.

  “Maybe,” Victor said. “Or somebody who hated both him and Tom Purvis.”

  “The meth lab explosion was eight years ago. Seems like a long time to hold a grudge.” She thought about it. “There has to be some connection, though. It can't be coincidence. Any other calls Jaime made?”

  “He called Mary Carmichael, left a message. And he called you.”

  “That night? After we ate?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Laura remembered she had turned off both her phones, wanting a good night's sleep. That hadn't panned out, though.

  Victor crumpled up the butcher paper the sandwich came in and threw it in the trash can beneath the sink. “Gotta get back to the salt mine.”

  Laura, thinking. Heywood killed girls. Maybe Tom Purvis helped him. Or Bill Smith. Or both.

  Victor said, “You know? This apartment isn't so bad.”

  “It's hell on earth.”

  Laura had to drag her mind away from Robert Heywood's death and the fact that a calcium carbide bomb had been used both on Tom Purvis and on Jaime Molina. She wanted to know who had tried to kill them and what that person's link was to Tom Purvis, but she knew that she'd have to tread carefully. She had one small piece of the case and that was the death of Jenny Carmichael. She needed to concentrate on that.

  The one person Laura had not yet talked to was Dawn Sayles, Jenny's best friend at camp.

  When she tried the number from eleven years ago, she got a dry cleaner. She called twice to make sure, then went through the reverse phone book and found three numbers: one for a James Sayles at the same address listed in Jenny's case file, another for a Dr. Martin Sayles, and the last,
a D. Sayles.

  Laura called D. Sayles and, when a woman answered, asked for Dawn.

  “This is Dawn.”

  Laura realized why the Peppertree Apartments looked familiar; they were a carbon copy of her own apartment, the Village Green.

  Dawn Sayles lived in an upstairs apartment, 12C. Laura was surprised to see a young woman standing at the top of the steps, the door behind her slightly ajar. Hand clutching the doorknob, her expression diffident.

  Dawn Sayles was slimmer than in the photos, but with the same pale skin and dark, wounded eyes. Listless dark brown hair pulled back by a clip, a grimy-looking T-shirt stretched over a pot belly, and skin-tight bicycle shorts. She wore cheap purple flip-flops. She pulled the door shut all the way, keeping her voice low. “My husband’s still sleeping, but I'm going to have to get back in there soon.” She led Laura down to the part of the steps that was in the shade of a massive pepper tree, one of several that gave the apartment its name. Laura could hear someone vacuuming on the floor above.

  Dawn sat down on the concrete step and hunched over her knees, arms holding them close. “I saw on the news they found her,” she said. “I wondered if you were going to come.”

  Laura sat down next to her. The shade was deep and dark, but the heat still clung to them, bouncing whitely off the steps. Laura handed Dawn the photograph she’d copied at One Hour Photo. It was the picture of Dawn and Jenny.

  Dawn took it, stared at it. Her lips moving. “Can I keep this?” she asked, hope lingering between the words. Hope with every expectation of defeat.

  “I brought it for you.”

  She tucked it into the waistband of her shorts. “Thanks.”

  Laura said, “Could you tell me what happened that day?”

  Dawn Sayles looked away. “I told the detective at the time.”

  “I know, but I'd like to hear it firsthand. It could really help.”

  “He died, didn't he? The detective?”

  “Yes.”

  Dawn leaned down and pulled her ponytail around her neck, moving the strands between her fingers like worry beads. Her head almost between her knees. “I called him,” she mumbled.