The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Suddenly, her legs felt weak. But Victor was right behind her, so she made sure she stood tall.

  Chapter 50

  The fixed-wing aircraft would refuel and come back, but it would take time to fly from Phoenix. They were losing the daylight, as well as their best chance to find Angela Santero. Laura and Victor decided to go back to the Trinidad Ranch and follow the tracks left by Purvis's truck.

  “What I don't get,” Victor said as he took the dirt road out past Purvis's trailer, “was why she didn't meet Lourdes at the steak house? She’d had a good enough head start.”

  The answer came three miles from ranch headquarters. They’d found the truck in a desert wash, stuck in the sand. There were signs that Angela had tried to dig herself out, but had given up and abandoned the vehicle.

  Laura glanced at the dirt two-rut lane ahead of them. “What do you think?”

  “I'm guessing she took the road.”

  The road was cut through a series of small, brushy hills—empty desert. They scanned the ground for footprints, but the dirt of the lane was hard and rocky.

  Laura looked up and down the wash. There were plenty of shallow impressions in the sand, but she couldn't tell if they were from horses, cows, or people. In the distance, she could make out a corrugated tin roof rising above the mesquite. “She could have gone that way, too.”

  They decided that Victor would take the road, and Laura would explore the wash on foot.

  It was slow going. Laura stayed to the center of the arroyo because the mesquite on either bank was impenetrable. Fifteen minutes later, she reached the building, which turned out to be an abandoned barn structure.

  Now what? Up ahead on the bank alongside the wash, she spotted a cow pen. When the cows saw her, they started bawling. She saw hay scattered by the wire fence. Laura decided to continue; there might be a ranch house nearby.

  She walked up out of the wash and along a narrow dirt lane, which flickered in and out of tree shadow. The sun was low in the sky now, and in another half hour, it would be dusk. She strained her eyes, looking for habitation.

  Her eye caught a sudden movement on the right—at the exact moment she heard the revving of an engine.

  A truck shot out of the trees.

  Laura saw the grill, felt the heat of the engine as she dove sideways, hitting the dirt. The sound of the engine was deafening, the big tires slicing up the ground inches from her ear.

  Shocked and bleeding, Laura lay still for a second. Only for a second. Then self-preservation kicked in, and she scuttled backwards into the trees, putting the trunk of one of the mesquite trees between her and the truck.

  Brake lights flared and the Chevy shuddered to a stop. Laura darted to a tree farther back as she heard the engine rev again. The truck shot backwards, sideswiping the mesquite tree she'd hidden behind.

  The driver's door shot open, and Angela Santero hopped out. She held a gun expertly in a double grip.

  Laura inched behind a thicker mesquite and pulled her Sig. Her heart was jumping, and the gun grip seemed to jiggle in her hand. Adrenaline. She braced her arm against the tree, willing her heart to slow down, listening as Angela tramped around in the tall grass.

  “I know who you are!” Angela shouted. “You're not gonna stop me, so you'd better get the fuck out of here!”

  A bullet whizzed by the mesquite trunk. More shots, hitting trees and going wild—all over the place. Angela was shooting, but not aiming. Trying to scare Laura away, but it was clear she didn't know Laura's exact location.

  The shooting stopped, and Laura heard Angela reloading. She tried to count the number of shots fired, but her mind wouldn't cooperate. She was too scared. Too scared to think beyond the mantra: cover, conceal, escape.

  “Fuck you!” Angela yelled, shooting twice more.

  Laura heard the truck door creak open, then slam shut. Angela gunned the engine and the truck shot forward, jouncing onto the rutted lane. It was an old ranch truck, probably stolen because the owner left the keys in it, as ranchers often did.

  Laura steadied enough to squeeze off a shot.

  The right back end of the truck dropped as she shot took out the tire.

  Angela's foot slammed hard on the accelerator, the truck's back end slewing, trying to gain purchase. Laura shot out the front tire and the truck tipped for a crazy moment, then righted itself, and the engine died.

  Laura's training kicked in. She came up on the right side—as close to the blind spot as possible. Angela gunned the engine again. The truck went nowhere; the shift lever was in Park. Laura yanked the door open, her gun aimed at Angela's head.

  “Both hands on the wheel! Do it now!” Laura's gun fixed on Angela's angry face.

  “You won't shoot me,” Angela said, her hand going down to her right side.

  “Right hand! On the wheel! Now!”

  Angela laughing. Her arm wriggling. Reaching for her gun.

  Laura's left hand shot out. She grabbed the girl's hair and knocked her head against the steering wheel. Holding her nose-down against the wheel with one hand, Laura pulled hard on the girl's wrist with the other, bending it back until she heard the crack.

  Angela cried out and went limp. Laura used her temporary shock to haul her out of the truck and shove her stomach-down on the ground, pinning her with a knee while she cuffed her.

  She pulled Angela to her feet and pushed her up against the truck.

  “My wrist!” Angela screamed. “You broke my wrist! You can't do that!”

  Seems to me I already did.

  Laura knew better than to say that. But God, she wanted to.

  Angela screamed every obscenity in the book. She sounded just like a howler monkey Laura had seen at the zoo.

  As Laura spread the girl's legs with one foot, she said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you—”

  “I'll be out in a couple of hours. You think Nina Brashear is going to let this happen to me? She loves me!”

  Laura continued to read her her rights, then radioed their location to Victor.

  As Laura placed Angela into the patrol car, she asked, “What did you do to Lily?”

  Angela smirked. “Nothing. I made her up.”

  Laura nodded. It was the answer she'd expected.

  Chapter 51

  Laura was bone-tired. It was going on four in the morning at the excavation site outside the farm machinery building on Trinidad Ranch, and her body ached from standing around.

  Only one human skeleton had been found so far. Dental records confirmed that the bones in the grave belonged to Micaela Brashear. Heywood and Angela had probably tortured the girl here in the farm building, then buried her when they she was of no more use.

  According to his wife, Clinton Purvis was hard of hearing and stayed close to his trailer and his dogs. But Tom Purvis must have figured it out. Tom Purvis might have planned to blackmail them or might have wanted to join in. Either way, Heywood and Santero had different plans for him.

  All of the bones, all of the burial sites, were beginning to blur for Laura. She was sleepy. The heavy-duty lights lit the area like a stadium. She stifled a yawn, felt the breeze pick up. At four in the morning in late July, the heat only abated about this time and only for a little while. Usually any relief came in the form of a breeze.

  This breeze was dry and redolent of death. She tried to smell autumn in it, but of course that was too far away.

  Although Angela had told them nothing about what she had done between the time she took Purvis's truck and her encounter with Laura, they were able to piece it together by talking to the witnesses: the elderly couple who owned the truck Angela had stolen. When Angela couldn't dig herself out, she'd walked up the wash, just as Laura did. Unlike Laura, Angela had found the ranch house. She’d told the rancher and his wife that her truck was stranded in the wash, and she needed to call someone to pick her up. Once inside, Angela had shot the man in the knee, pistol-whipped him, and tied him up with the pho
ne cord. Then she’d forced the woman to drive her to an ATM, and there, used the couple's credit card to get more money.

  The way to the ATM machine had taken Angela and the woman past Hennessy's Steak House. When Angela saw the cop cars out front, her plans changed. She went back to the ranch house, tied the woman up along with her husband, then ransacked the place for money and jewelry. She'd been on her way out to the highway when she saw Laura walking up the wash.

  Laura would always wonder why Angela didn't just take the road in the other direction. If she had, she'd be in Phoenix by now, impossible to find.

  Instead, she'd tried to run Laura down. That impulse had cost Angela her freedom.

  When the FA signaled the techs to pack up the bones, Laura drove home to her apartment at the Village Square, home to the $95-down move-in special.

  For the first time since she had moved into the Village Square, Laura felt glad to be home.

  Laura still wanted to tie Heywood and Santero to the murder of Jenny Carmichael, so later that morning, she faxed the trophy list to Mary Carmichael. Mary called her back ten minutes later.

  “I'm sorry,” she said, “But none of the pictures you sent me looks familiar. None of those things belonged to Jenny.”

  Laura set the phone down, feeling deep disappointment. Perhaps there was no definitive way to link Angela to Jenny's murder. She wished she could add Jenny's name, get her her own measure of justice, but that seemed impossible at the moment. She stared at her kitchen table, which had become her desk. Jerry said she could come back to work, but since she hadn't had any sleep for almost two days, she'd decided to work from here.

  Laura was sad about Jenny, but realized she'd just have to let that one go. There was more than enough evidence to put Angela and her mother away for a very long time, probably for life. And Laura would never forget Jenny, never forget what had happened to her.

  She realized she still had Mary Carmichael's boxes of photos and articles documenting Jenny's disappearance. It was time to give them back.

  She went down to the car to make sure she had all three boxes. She'd left them there because, up until now, she hadn't had time to look at them. Laura supposed she owed Jenny's mother some consideration for what had happened, a look through the material Mrs. Carmichael had painstakingly compiled. And so, one by one, she brought the boxes up to the apartment and looked at them.

  By early afternoon, her eyes were glazing over, but she decided to look at the photo album Mary had put together of the search. A big blue loose-leaf notebook full of newspaper articles and photos Mary Carmichael had taken of the searchers walking the grid.

  One photo stopped her. She'd already turned the page, but there was something familiar about a man in the snapshot that nagged her. She turned back.

  The man's body was turned slightly away, and he was ten years younger, but Laura knew it was him.

  Steve Lawson had participated in the search for Jenny Carmichael eleven years ago.

  The Devil's Hour

  Chapter 52

  Summerhaven

  The Day Before

  He remembers it all now. Like a glacier calving. First the tiny cracks, then the fissures widening, one piece dropping off and then another, and all of a sudden an avalanche caving in on itself, down into the water, thudding downward into the milky water.

  He remembers mostly his rage. It has a color: black with dots of red flickering on and off like the snow of a TV screen. He hardly sees through the rage, through the rain, as he runs across the space between himself and the girl, a few strides is all it takes, fueled by alcohol and rage and grief. A few quick strides.

  The girl's fingers tightening on the collar, dragging the whimpering, terrified puppy, and he grabs her arm, her shocked face white and hurt and tearful, but behind her face there's Bill Gardner the Dog Trainer, Snickering Bill, and he's too fucking shit-faced to know the difference.

  It happens so quickly. She's cowering against a tree, and he's making his point. That's all he's doing, making a point. Don't. Ever. Do. That. Again.

  That's all. Making a point.

  That's all.

  He doesn't know his own strength. Isn't aware of the dynamics involved, how little it takes, or he wouldn't do it, no way would he do a thing like that.

  Just his palm. His open palm, his palm and the juncture between his thumb and forefinger. He's not strangling her. He's not smothering her. He's just making his point. How does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot? he demands. You tried to hang that puppy, you puppy-hanging sonofabitch, so now how does it feel?

  Don't. Ever. Do. That. Again.

  Five words.

  Pushing the palm of his hand into her throat for emphasis. That's all, really, all he is doing. It's just for emphasis.

  Emphasis.

  Steve sat in the living room of his grandfather's cabin. It was late afternoon. The dog was in the other room. The man was gone, if he had ever existed. It was just Steve, alone in the dark, trying to make sense of what he had seen and heard.

  Had it been a dream? Was he still dreaming?

  He did not believe he had it in himself to kill someone, least of all a little girl. It couldn't be true.

  But on some deep level, like batter pouring slowly onto a flat surface, the realization spread across the breadth of his soul, until in fact he really did believe it.

  He'd seen the act he had committed—seen it clearly—but now it was going, almost gone. He knew it had happened. It was like looking at the wing of an airplane and knowing that the air flowed over and under, creating lift, even if you could see nothing but the wing and the sky.

  I was drunk.

  Not just drunk, he amended. Blacked out. All these years, I had no real memory of what happened.

  There were fragments. The cookout. The beer. If his memory was reliable as to the details, he remembered the girl and the puppy. But the other things—the things The Man Without a Face had shown him—those kept slipping through the sieve of his memory. They were hard to grasp. They were evaporating like mist burned off by the sun.

  He could articulate what he did. He had pushed on the girl's throat and cut off her air. He assumed she had collapsed and died. He assumed he had buried her. He didn't know when that happened. He didn't know if he had debated burying her. If he had debated calling the sheriff. If he had tried to revive her. What he had felt.

  All of that was gone.

  There were just the flickering images of her grabbing the puppy and his outsized anger. And his hand to her throat.

  He didn't know if The Man Without a Face—the younger version of himself—had told him the truth. He didn't know if he had said those words: Don't. Ever. Do. That. Again.

  Not for sure.

  And after that—

  It was all blank until he had awakened with a hangover. That, he remembered. The pain in his head excruciating. Movement excruciating. As it had been the day after he dug for her, the day after he had found her up here on the mountain. A bloated pulsing ache all over his body, drenching him in sour-smelling sweat.

  Suddenly, he remembered the vision he'd had on his most recent walk up to Camp Aratauk. The image of a hotter, drier hike, the heavy backpack, the trail up from Sabino Canyon.

  I never hiked up here.

  But that wasn't true, was it? He had hiked up here, eleven years ago. He'd hiked up here because he’d been angry.

  How had he forgotten that?

  He had parked his car in a Sabino Canyon parking lot and hiked all the way up from the valley floor. He'd hiked because he was angry, and he'd hoped it would take the edge off. Because of Linda and that prick Gardner.

  You were so angry you left your car down below, and you hiked up a whole mountain. Hiked up Sabino Canyon, all the way to the cabin.

  Now he remembered. He remembered it clearly.

  Your anger was like fuel. That was what got you through that punishing hike in one-hundred-degree temperatures, the water running out halfway up. But you
knew there would be plenty to drink up on top, all you had to do was get to your grandfather's cabin,there would be plenty to drink—

  So much to drink, he had blacked out.

  The morning following his hike, he had walked into town for picnic supplies. Steak, beer, potato salad. He'd intended to have himself what his mother used to call a “pity party,” a barbecue for one. He remembered getting pleasantly snockered—again. Maybe he'd even started to feel sorry for himself, maybe he had begun to feel the full weight of the tragedy, that the woman he loved had cheated on him with that puppy-killer Bill Gardner—

  After that, though—except for a brief image of the girl, the puppy, his palm pushing at her throat—it was a blank. A blank until he woke up hurting. Going in and out of a drunken sleep throughout the day and night. Waking to thunder and lightning.

  The next morning, he'd felt fine. Cooking bacon and eggs, he’d seen on the television that a little girl had gone missing from an outing at Rose Canyon Lake. And still he hadn’t remembered a thing.

  How could he have forgotten a whole long weekend? How could he have forgotten driving from LA to Tucson and hiking up to the cabin in the woods?

  Because if I remembered any of it, I would have to remember it all. Coming up here was a thread in the fabric. You pulled that one thread, and everything would unravel. Everything would come apart, and he would know what he had done.

  He closed his eyes. More thoughts straying into range. Walking near Rose Canyon Lake. With other people. Trucks and search-and-rescue vehicles and awnings and ice chests full of bottled water, people holding hands as they walked the grid—

  He had helped them search, completely unaware that he had been the man who had killed that little girl and buried her up the hill from his cabin. All that time—

  I didn't know.

  But he knew now, didn't he? It was like the wing of that airplane, shuddering slightly in the air. You couldn't see the drawn arrows above and below it, but it didn't mean they weren't there.