The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Steve wondered if he had really met Jenny's ghost or if she was a figment of his imagination. Was she real or was she Memorex? The detective, Laura Cardinal, had asked him why his grandfather had crammed that particular newspaper page up into the rafters.

  Maybe he did it.

  Maybe he did it to prove his guilt to himself.

  And the collar. The collar in the shed. Did he put it there? Did he bury the book? Did he break into his own shed in a fugue state?

  What was real? What wasn't?

  He flashed on the strange phone call he'd retrieved the day he saw Jenny. Had that been him, too? Calling himself?

  What else had he done?

  Steve couldn't remember how he found Jake. He knew what he told people. That he had found him “under the house.” But which house? Whose house?

  Had Jake been the puppy Jenny tried to rescue?

  Did he find Jake under the cabin up here on Mt. Lemmon?

  As hard as he tried to retrieve these memories, he couldn't access them.

  So he sits in the room, unaware of time going by. Light and shadow flickering on the wooden floor, moving with the afternoon sun. The room cooling, growing darker.

  What he's thinking, once he's faced up to his culpability, is this: atonement. He has to get this taken care of, done, before he loses his courage. It is a stain, and even though the stain will never wash away, he has to pay for it. He's ready to pay for it.

  He is ready to confess.

  He feels around in the dark and turns on the lamp and picks up the phone, suddenly shaking with adrenaline, stabbing in the number, the number he now knows by heart, Laura Cardinal's cell phone.

  One ring, two rings. Three. As he waits, so desperate to shift the load, to share the psychic pain, another thought crowds its way into his mind:

  Wait a minute.

  I can't wait, he tells himself impatiently. I have to clear this up now. But somewhere inside him the tide is already going out, as it did when he was a kid on the beach and the water pulled the sand out from under his feet.

  When he gets her voice mail, the phone he's holding becomes a hot potato. He hits END.

  It's been eleven years. What difference will a few minutes make?

  Yes, he'll turn himself in. That's settled. But he needs to think about it. He needs to do this right.

  For one thing, he's not entirely sure that he actually killed her. The whole thing seemed more like a dream. He can't say for sure if it was a dream or a memory.

  And besides, I spent most of that time in a blackout.

  Not that this mitigates his guilt. He doesn't believe in that. But even the worst kind of criminal has someone on his side, someone there to make sure the proceedings are fair. He's far from the worst kind of criminal. He's never broken a law in his life.

  He should have a lawyer. He'd be a fool if he didn't protect himself.

  The phone rings in his hand. He sees the number flash on the screen.

  It's her.

  His resolve hardens. He thinks: Not until I talk to a lawyer.

  Outside, thunder grumbles. It may rain. It may be a real gully-washer, as his grandfather used to say.

  The light seems to pool around the bronze statue, the cowboy roping the devil.

  Steve knows that when he calls the lawyer, it will be tantamount to roping the devil. From that moment on, it will all be out of his hands. He thinks about how imprudent it was for the cowboy to mess with the devil at all. What did he think would happen then?

  Steve's not even sure what transpired between the time he had his picnic and the time he woke up with a hangover. It's like a vivid dream. At the time you're in the dream, you tell yourself you will never forget. You even focus on a particular word or image and pledge to remember it. Then you wake up and it's gone. But in his heart, he knows there was at least a space of time that belonged to the devil—his own, personal, private devil's hour.

  He has to call his lawyer. He has to find a lawyer. A good one. Call people he trusts, some of them friends of his grandfather, and find a lawyer who will look after his interests. He's ready to atone for his sin, but he isn't about to give anything away.

  He knows a good person to call. Someone who's deeply embedded in the political infrastructure of Tucson. Someone who will be able to direct him to the right person. He picks up the phone, puts it to his ear. Hears the dial tone.

  His heart almost stops in his chest. He can feel it, the dizzying fear, climbing up into his throat. He is almost physically sick.

  If he does this now, it is out of his hands. He will have roped the devil, and after that, who knows what will happen?

  He hears a jingle. Jake appears in the hallway, looking at him.

  “Do you believe in me?” he asks Jake.

  The dog says nothing.

  Chapter 53

  It's late in the morning when Laura drives up the mountain. Beautiful, the sun touching the pine tops as she drives through Bear Canyon. But she doesn't feel the beauty. What she feels is regret.

  No, it's deeper than that. More like she's been anticipating something so good, so wonderful, she is already sold on it—and suddenly it turns out she can't have it after all. Not only that, but now she has to destroy the very thing she wants.

  Far worse than a letdown.

  She knows now that Steve Lawson killed Jenny Carmichael. It is not a fact, not yet. But she knows. She knows, but she can't fathom it. He is not that kind of person. How could she be so wrong about him? What does that say for her judgment? Jaime always suspected him. All she ever did was give lip service to that theory: “Of course he's a suspect. He lives right there. We have to look at him.”

  We have to look at him. But the truth is, she didn't look at him. The truth is, she looked everywhere else except at him. Because she was sure in her heart he was the good guy.

  The clouds are floating over fast, like film sped up. The clouds are tearing up the spaces in between, chewing up the bright blue sky. No rain in the valley, but there will be plenty up here.

  Suddenly, she is thinking about Camp Aratauk. The fun she’d had when she went there as a girl. She hadn’t wanted to go the first time, and yet three weeks later, she hadn’t wanted to come home. She’d thought she'd made friends for life. That wasn't true, but it had felt that way at the time. She pictured Jenny and her best friend Dawn, plotting how to rescue the puppy.

  Laura didn't know for sure, but she guessed that Jenny had followed the puppy right down the mountain to Steve Lawson.

  The lawyer's name is Martin Schlessinger. He is supposed to be the best. Steve contacted him early this morning, and he drove up right away.

  Steve tells him his story. He leaves nothing out. Neither the good nor the bad. True, he knows he killed Jenny Carmichael. Also true, he was in an alcoholic blackout at the time.

  Marty, as Martin Schlessinger likes to be called, listens carefully, the wheels spinning behind his eyes. His eyes make Steve think of a slot machine just before you pull the handle. There's a tiny, psychic jiggle there. But Marty Schlessinger's slot machine wants all the cherries to line up evenly. He wants them all in place. So he listens quietly, but he's working it out in his head how to make the cherries line up. He is a tall, square-faced man with wavy, iron gray hair a little on the long side, and he wears a western-cut, camel-colored jacket and a bolo tie and cowboy boots. It's part of his persona. Steve has seen him on TV a few times, so he knows he's good.

  What Marty's thinking about is mitigating circumstances. The blackout. The rage at Steve's girlfriend. The fact that it might not have happened at all.

  “But it did,” Steve says. “I know it happened.”

  “You have no memory of it.”

  Steve tries to explain. I did remember, but it slipped away. I just can't access it now.

  “How did you kill her?”

  Steve knows, but now he can't remember.

  “Did you shoot her?”

  “No. I don't think so.”

  “Did
you bludgeon her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you strangle her?”

  That sounds familiar. He almost hears the words. Don't. Don't you ever! He sees the back of his hand. “I don't know,” he says.

  “Did you molest her?”

  “No.”

  “You're certain of that.”

  “Yes.” He knows he would never do something like that.

  Steve nods. His memories are like bits of confetti blown by the wind, images skittering by. Bacon cooking. The hangover. The muddy patch outside in the rain. He remembers the cookout. He remembers looking at his hand, the act of shoving his palm forward forcefully, that juncture between his thumb and forefinger, but why, he doesn't know. He had the whole memory once, but it is gone.

  “The thing is,” Marty says. “You don't remember anything. From the time you had the barbecue to the time you woke up with the hangover.”

  Steve opens his mouth to argue the point, but then he closes it again. This man is trying to help him.

  “Frankly,” his new lawyer tells him, “I don't think there's any evidence that you killed this little girl. It could be you're imagining it, or you want to make up for something wrong in your life, or maybe you just dreamed it. You could confess, but I doubt the County Attorney would even think about prosecuting. All you'd succeed in doing would be to get a reputation for being unhinged or a sensationalist. I just don't see a case here.”

  Just then Steve hears car tires on gravel. It is Detective Cardinal's Yukon. Behind her is a sheriff's car.

  Steve says to the lawyer: “It looks like somebody has a case.”

  Laura asks the sheriff's deputies to wait outside. She recognizes the Jaguar sitting in the driveway. She doesn't know the car itself, but she knows what kind of person drives it: a high-powered attorney.

  The lawyer answers the door. It's Marty Schlessinger. Steve stands behind him, in shadow.

  Laura tells the lawyer she would like to speak to Steve Lawson. The lawyer says that his client doesn't choose to speak to anyone at this time, and by the way, is his client under arrest?

  Laura looks at Steve, standing there in the shadow of the tiny, cramped cabin. He looks at her. They are talking, but they aren't saying anything. What she is communicating to him is this: You know what you did. I know what you did. You also know what you have to do.

  That's what she relays to him in her mind. She has no idea if he is hearing her or if he will take the bait.

  She does know that nine times out of ten, people ignore the advice of their lawyers. Guilty people, but innocent people, too. They feel that if they can just explain themselves, everything will be all right. This is absolutely the wrong choice, because the lawyer is right: they should not talk. But they do. Nine times out of ten. They have to unburden themselves. The more honest they are, the more upstanding the citizen, the more likely he will talk against the advice of his lawyer.

  “Steve?” Laura says at last. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I know you are not a bad person.”

  “My lawyer,” he says.

  “Your lawyer doesn't have to live with what he's done. You know that, don't you? Whether you talk to me or not, whether you are arrested now or not, you will pay. And what you will pay will be a lot worse if you don't do the right thing.”

  She lets that hang in the air.

  She sees herself from up above. She sees two people. The woman who, it seems on very little evidence, is starting to fall in love with this man. Despite herself. But she also sees the cop. The cop who is trying to trick him into talking, who does not have his best interests at heart at all. The cop who knows how to persuade, to shade the truth, to lie, to cajole, to finesse confessions out of people. She's doing her job. Right is on her side. But she doesn't like herself right now.

  She can see it in his eyes. He is guilty. Culpable. He knows he killed Jenny. And Laura sees what she has missed up until now: there is a big difference between a conscienceless predator like Angela Santero, a sociopath who thrives on the terror and agony of others, and Steve Lawson. Steve Lawson, she is sure, made a mistake. It was a grave mistake, but she is certain, in her heart, he is not a killer.

  But he has killed.

  Kristy Groves and Micaela Brashear were killed with unspeakable cruelty by two sociopaths. But Jenny Carmichael was killed, too. They are, all three of them, dead. Jenny will never get to feel the fresh air on her bare arms again. She will never go to a movie, or puzzle over her homework, or feel that rush of excitement when she encounters a boy she likes.

  Laura says, “Steve, don't make this any worse than it is. I know you didn't mean to do it. The best thing you can do is tell me what happened.”

  Something seems to crumble inside him. She sees it. She has seen it many times, this moment of capitulation. Usually, she feels exhilaration, feels like the king of the world. This time, she feels a tiny despair deep inside her chest, right underneath her solar plexus.

  It's like the hanky-pank, the game where you put out a lot more than you win.

  “I'm not sure what happened,” Steve says, and there's the first crack in the dam.

  Marty Schlessinger says, “Steve, do not say anything more. Do not say anything.” He looks at Laura. “Are you arresting him?”

  “No.”

  “Then we'll be in touch.” He hands her his card.

  Steve puts his hand on his lawyer's arm. “It's okay,” he says. “I want to talk.”

  Bingo! one part of her shouts in exultation.

  The other part can only look on in shock and sadness.

  Laura is drained. She is too tired to move. It has been hours. Steve telling her what he knows, which isn't much. Mostly, the two of them participating in exploratory surgery. Laura probing at the edges of his memory, Steve trying to supply the answers. His tortured explanations, wandering off into alien territory about the girl and The Man Without a Face, who turned out to be himself. He has tried very hard. He has cooperated fully, trying to nail down a case against himself, but it is hard going. The fact that he is sure he killed Jenny Carmichael, added to the fact that he was up here on the day she disappeared, to the fact that he found and kept the puppy she was looking for, to the fact that he does remember looking outside at the place where he buried her—it's enough—barely enough—for probable cause.

  Laura doubts the CA will prosecute. But that's not up to her.

  She reaches for her handcuffs.

  Marty Schlessinger shakes his head. “You don't need to do that.”

  Steve puts his hands together in front of him.

  Laura gently pulls one arm behind his back, cuffs one wrist, and follows suit with the other. She takes him by the elbow, and they start out the door. It is a lot like the time he took her by the elbow the last time they walked out of the cabin, except now there is no flirtation, or good feelings, or beginnings. This is the end, she thinks, no matter how this turns out. This case will probably never go to court; Steve will get off. But he won't get away with it. He will not let himself get away with it. His life is now irretrievably broken.

  She wishes she knew what made him kill the little girl. Maybe he will find out. She hopes that when he does, he will share it with her.

  They step onto the wooden front porch. The clouds have gone without ever giving them the soaking she was expecting. The sun is a nimbus through the trees, a halo. It looks like hope, but Laura's not seeing any, not in this situation.

  Behind her, she hears the jingle of tags on a dog collar. The sound hurts her way down deep. Steve halts. Laura stops as well.

  He says, “Will you take my dog?”

  Laura is torn. Steve has killed a child, whatever the excuse. She wants nothing to tie him to her, not even a dog. But she doesn't like the thought of Jake going to the pound. As in any homicide, there are always innocent victims. The dog is an innocent victim, just as Jenny was. Justice is blind.

  She opens her mouth to tell him that, but what comes out is the only answer she can possibly
give.

  “Yes,” she says.

  _________________

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There are so many people who have helped with the Laura Cardinal Series, I could fill ten pages. But in particular, I’d like to thank:

  John Cheek, police consultant, Cops ‘n Writers; Laura Fulginiti, forensic anthropologist; Robert Johnson of Outdoor Association BA; Terry Johnson, Det., Arizona DPS; Connie Kazal; Lee Lofland, Det. (retired), author, and speaker; Carol Davis Luce; Susan Cummins Miller, author and geologist; Michael Prescott; Barbara Schiller and Darrel Harvey; and Phil Uhall, Det., TPD

  Special thanks to Glenn McCreedy: first reader and front man!

  About the Author

  J. Carson Black is the bestselling author of THE DESERT WAITS, and the Laura Cardinal crime fiction series: DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, and THE DEVIL'S HOUR.

  A Tucson Arizona native, Black writes about the New West.

  Visit J. Carson Black’s web site at www.jcarsonblack.com

  Nook Editions published by Breakaway Media