Leighton Jones Mysteries Box Set

by N. M. Brown

  That was fine. Leighton smiled and began to drum along on the steering wheel in time to the music. He felt confident he was on the verge of giving Vicki her life back.

  As the car curved along the smooth road, it moved out of the warm sunshine and into the relative shade of the National Park. The fragrance of desert lavender wafted through the air conditioner. Within a kilometre or so of entering the park, Leighton noticed a Highway Patrol motorcycle parked in a lay-by on the opposite side of the road.

  He glanced for a moment at the bike parked at the side of the road, and slowed down long enough to confirm there was no visible officer or another vehicle nearby. For a moment, Leighton considered turning around to check out the situation, but then he shook the thought away. The biker would be taking a piss or having a smoke. In either case, he wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion of some paranoid ex-detective stalking him through the trees.

  He smiled a crooked smile and thought to himself, seeing danger on every highway was simply a sign he had spent too much time with Vicki.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was one of those fresh early mornings where a bright haze gave the air a cool quality with the promise of certain heat to come. The moisture, which was still rising like a phantom from the sandy earth, would probably burn off by noon, leaving a clear blue sky over Nevada.

  At 5.45am, Jennifer Sanchez stood on a dry footpath in the Mojave National Park, and peered intently in all directions. The area surrounding her was full of silent cacti, and moments earlier, her dog had vanished amongst them. She wasn’t sure of the exact moment he had vanished, because once off the lead, Rasputin would race off in crazy loops – darting ahead, then swooping into the boulders and shrubs, only to appear moments later behind her. She had thrown a couple of arid sticks for him, which he had obediently retrieved, but Jen could tell he was more interested in burning off some energy speeding around beneath the trees. So, she had let him go. It had been a bad move. The excited dog thundered into the tangle of bushes five minutes earlier, but then failed to reappear again.

  Sighing in frustration, Jen felt a sudden dip in the early morning temperature and zipped up her red Nike top. Stamping her feet impatiently, she peered around but found no sign of her dog.

  ‘Ra!’ she called loudly. The eruption of sound startled a cloud of birds from a nearby bush.

  Still nothing.

  The walk through the park was a journey Jen would make every morning. Usually she would feel utterly safe as she wandered the dusty, desolate paths which sliced through the rocky landscape National Park. This was because she was always accompanied by Rasputin – a fourteen-year-old German shepherd.

  Each morning, Jen would leave her Jeep in the westerly parking lot, which was really nothing more than a large clearing hemmed in by rough wooden fences. There were rarely any other vehicles there, other than the odd people-carrier with a bike rack, or the previous day when a random old bus had appeared in one shadowy corner of the clearing.

  At that end of the car park, almost touching the fence, was a small roofed shelter. One side of this structure featured a laminated map of the various walking routes, which was fastened with brass tacks to the wooden wall; the opposite wall was lined with a rack of fire brushes – the old broom style made from tied twigs. This feature always freaked out Jen’s inner child a little. Even now, at the age of forty-three, she clearly remembered seeing these shelters as a young girl when her parents had taken the family for fresh air and summer picnics. She recalled stepping out of her father’s stifling car into the bustling excitement of the National Park, where she would creep up on whirring crickets and chase butterflies in the dappled light. When she had asked her older sister what the shelters were, she had told Jen in a conspiratorial whisper that the ragged structures were where desert witches would park their broomsticks before creeping amongst the boulders to gather snakes and lizards, or – if they were particularly lucky – lost children.

  After that, Jen would only go into the park if she held her mother’s hand, and picnics became more about scanning the shadows between the rocks and cacti than enjoying the food. Thankfully, the fear of dark witches dissolved as she grew older, and it was not until Jen bought the retired police dog from the shelter and began frequenting the park again that she even thought about it.

  As an adult, Jen had rediscovered the pleasure of the wild outdoors as part of her recovery. After spending ten years of miserable marriage in a claustrophobic little house, she had somehow found the strength to get divorced and take back her life. The anti-depressants she had swallowed nightly during her marriage were poured down the sink and replaced with early morning walks, carrot juice, and fifteen minutes of nightly meditation. Whether it was being rid of her sulky husband, or simply her new routine, Jen had felt less anxious and much happier than she had in months, possibly even years.

  Usually, she loved starting her day with fresh air and a bit of easy exercise. However, today the woods felt different somehow. Perhaps, Jen thought, it was simply a little quieter than usual.

  ‘Ra, come on boy!’ she called again.

  There was an excited bark from somewhere nearby. Jen turned around to see the big dog leaping through the long needle grass like a dolphin breaking through a yellow sea.

  ‘Come on, you silly old mutt,’ Jen laughed.

  At a point about ten metres along the path, Rasputin burst out of the undergrowth. Jen felt her shoulders slump with relief. The dog looked in her direction and began to wag his tail from side to side. But still he did not move towards his owner, so Jen called again.

  ‘Come on Ra, come on!’ she shouted and patted her leg.

  In response to this, the big dog came running excitedly along the path towards her. As he grew nearer, something bizarre caught Jen’s eye. At first glance, she thought the limp grey object dangling from Rasputin’s mouth was a glove or perhaps a Halloween prop, but then he reached her and dropped the object at her feet.

  The bittersweet stink of decay from the mottled hand caused Jen to instinctively turn away and retch on the edge of the dusty trail. She waved a flapping hand back towards the dog, who promptly picked up the hand again then proudly dropped it even closer to her. Jen moaned again and forced her eyes away from it. Rasputin, who believed his mistress was pleased, barked excitedly and rushed back into the undergrowth to retrieve more body parts.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vicki exited the cab and slung her bag over her shoulder. The last couple of days had taken its toll on her, but she wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet. If anything, the trip to Barstow had given her a new resolve to uncover the truth. However cathartic the incident had been, her tantrum outside the diner had also been the quickest way she could retrieve the SATA hard drive from the laptop. As she had cleaned up the debris from the street, she had slipped the thin metal case into her bag. If she had in any way believed Laurie was safe and well, Vicki would not have destroyed her property. As it was, she had little doubt about the tragic nature of her friend’s absence.

  The initial shock and pain of Laurie going missing had strangely been put on pause, replaced by frustration and a burning commitment to uncover the truth. Leighton’s dismissive attitude was only a blip. Vicki knew she had the technical expertise to investigate what happened. It just required access. Now she had the hard drive, Vicki would be able to locate the precise host of the bus website. More importantly, she could run a bloodhound programme to tear through any encryption and discover the name of the web author who maintained the site.

  As she struggled to turn her key in the lock, she could hear the telephone ringing from the other side of the door. Fumbling, she opened the door, stepped inside and closed it with her foot. She then punched a four-digit code into a small touchpad panel in the hallway. In response to this, the flashing red light on the display settled to a cheery yellow.

  However, by the time Vicki had deactivated the alarm, the phone had fallen silent.

  Vicki wandered down the hal
lway and into her bedroom where she dumped her bag on her bed. Sitting down upon the mattress, she reached across to where her laptop sat on the nightstand.

  As Vicki opened up the device, it hummed and flickered to life.

  Swiping her fingers across the glowing screen, she opened an electronic folder entitled “Laurie”. This was the location in which she had saved copies of the all the information she had gathered. Taking Laurie’s computer drive from her bag, she placed it next to her own laptop and then clambered off the bed. Kneeling upon the cream carpeted floor, Vicki reached into the dark space beneath the bed. This gesture always unsettled her a little, in case some hidden danger lurking in the shadows might sink its long teeth into her exposed hand. Fortunately, her grasping hand eventually made contact and she pulled out a plastic box of computer cables and connectors. For a moment Vicki rummaged through the nest of cables before finally pulling on the one she required. As the black cable slid free from the others, the phone in the hallway began ringing again. Vicki sighed and levered herself up from the bedroom floor. The phone continued to ring insistently until Vicki stumbled towards it and picked up the handset.

  ‘Hello?’ she panted.

  ‘Victoria. It’s your mother.’

  ‘Hi, sorry, I was just along in the bedroom.’

  ‘Are you sitting down?’

  ‘No. Why?’ Vicki felt a sudden rush of adrenaline flood her body.

  ‘I have some rather unpleasant news for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your father’s dead,’ her mother said.

  Vicki felt the ground soften then melt beneath her feet. ‘What did you say?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘He was found this morning.’

  ‘What happened?’ Vicki was speaking, but she was not thinking about anything; all her thoughts had simply stopped.

  ‘Apparently, he had taken to gathering herbs from around the cabin and infusing his own tea. We won’t know for certain until the toxicology report is completed, but it looks like he included belladonna amongst his mint and nettles.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘Yes, honey – he’s dead. I’m sorry.’

  Vicki’s mother continued speaking, twittering on indifferently about the lack of funeral plans, but her daughter had slipped silently to the floor. She let the telephone fall from her hand. Her mind was consumed by a distant memory from the first summer they had moved to Oceanside. Back then, her mother was already perpetually lost to her career. Her father – who perhaps in some cosmic way sensed his limited time – was more content to collect his daughter from kindergarten and spend afternoons on the beach digging for treasure with plastic spades and wooden spoons. Now, two decades later, Vicki sat – half a kilometre from the spot where she and her father had gathered angel wing shells and followed each other’s spiralling footsteps– and she wept.

  Her father was lost to eternity.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On the afternoon Leighton had returned from Barstow, he stopped in at the police station. The place was busy following a botched robbery of a jeweller’s shop, so Leighton had left a message for dispatch with Lenny at the reception. He heard nothing back for two days and consequently assumed he was now of little significance to the people in the station.

  Later that evening, Leighton had been frying off some chopped garlic with cubes of pancetta to make a pasta sauce whilst listening to a hissing Rolling Stones vinyl album on his stereo, when he heard the dull buzz of the doorbell. He turned off the gas, turned down the music, and walked through the apartment to the front door.

  Wiping his hands on a tea towel, he partly hoped to find Vicki standing there, but it wasn’t.

  ‘Hi, Jonesy.’

  ‘Wendy.’ Leighton smiled warmly. ‘In you come. Now, if the boss has sent you to woo me back to work, don’t expect me to go for it.’

  The dispatch officer laughed heartily at the idea as she entered the house. As she moved by him, Leighton noticed she was clutching a manila envelope.

  ‘I think if the boss knew I was here passing on information, we’d both be spending the night in the cells for insubordination.’

  ‘Too true. Now, you grab a seat and I’ll fix you a drink.’

  ‘No need, Jonesy,’ Wendy said as she sat on the coffee-coloured sofa, ‘I’ve got two teenagers in the car, and both of them are itching to get to Taco Bell for supper.’

  ‘Sounds good.’ Leighton smiled to conceal his lie.

  ‘Judging by the yummy smell in here, you’ll be eating better than us.’

  ‘I’m not sure. My creations can often go either way.’

  Leighton sat opposite the woman who bore the troubled expression of someone carrying bad news to pass on. It was an expression he knew well.

  ‘Listen, Jonesy. That note you left the other day about checking out that bus…’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, the chief picked it up at reception and went crazy. He told Lenny that, following your retirement, you are now a member of the public and you can’t make demands on police time. He even ripped up your note and tossed it in the trash behind reception.’

  Leighton rolled his eyes. ‘Guess I should have shown up for his goddamn party.’

  Wendy smiled. ‘You know him too well.’

  ‘Hey, it’s fine.’ Leighton shrugged. ‘I didn’t want anyone getting into bother on account of me. I’ll manage to check out the bus myself.’

  Wendy shook her head. ‘Don’t worry – we backroom rebels in dispatch don’t pay too much attention to the chief. I just want you to be careful. You can’t just show up the station without the chief trying to run you out of town.’

  ‘Thanks, Wendy.’

  ‘Anyway, the thing is, Lenny fished out the note and brought it to me, and I did a bit of digging – off the record.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I mean it, Jonesy, you’re a charming old bastard, but this never came from me.’

  ‘You have my word,’ Leighton said and held a hand to his heart.

  ‘This gets out, and you’ll have my family to feed, and they take some feeding.’

  Wendy leaned across and handed Leighton the manila envelope.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I spoke to Kevin Harris over at the Traffic Control Centre – our kids used to play in the little league together, and I’d often pick up his two along with my own brats, so he owes me a favour or two.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Leighton said.

  ‘I gave him the details and locations and he emailed me the camera views from the bus depot and the major roads through the city.’

  Leighton opened the envelope, withdrawing a bundle of black and white prints of areas of the city. Each image featured details of time and location in neat white letters on the bottom right corner.

  ‘They’re in order,’ Wendy continued. ‘If you look at the first one, taken at Escondido, you can see the bus entering the depot. The next photograph shows it leaving the depot, sixty-six seconds later.’

  Leighton nodded and then flicked through several more pictures. ‘I don’t see it in any of the other prints.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Wendy leaned forward. ‘Your bus left that depot but didn’t show up on any of the major routes. I don’t know where the hell it went after that, but it certainly didn’t come through Oceanside after leaving the terminal.’

  ‘You sure?’ Leighton frowned.

  ‘The camera doesn’t lie, Jonesy. That bus just vanished.’

  ‘How weird?’

  ‘Yeah, talking of weird, I have two ravenous teenagers in a car who will be drooling on my leather trim by now.’

  As she stood up, Wendy glanced around. ‘Hey, the place looks nice, Jonesy. You expecting company and tidied up?’

  ‘No,’ Leighton chuckled. ‘I like tidy.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Wendy sighed. ‘You must be the only man on the West Coast who does.’

  Leighton walked her to the door and as she turned to leave his doorstep, he took
Wendy’s hand.

  ‘Thank you for doing this.’

  Wendy brushed her other hand dismissively in the air.

  ‘I mean it,’ Leighton said softly. ‘I never made many friends at the precinct, but you’ve always been good to me.’

  ‘Ah, you’re better than you think, Jonesy. Just take care of yourself.’ She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried to the car. Halfway there, she turned around, just as Leighton was about to close his door.

  ‘Hey,’ she called, ‘I almost forgot something.’

  ‘What – to ask for gas money?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing, but an internal bulletin came through this evening from Highway Patrol. Apparently one of their bikers failed to return to the station at the end of his shift. They’re asking all emergency services to be vigilant. Whatever that means.’

  ‘Thanks, I’m always vigilant,’ Leighton said.

  ‘I think you mean virginal,’ Wendy said with a laugh and then hurried into her car.

  After Wendy had left, Leighton did not return to the stove to complete preparing the rest of his dinner. Instead, he went to the refrigerator poured a tall glass of rum and ice and returned to his sofa. He then spent almost an hour looking through the twelve grainy photographs. Leaving his drink untouched, he eventually went to a kitchen drawer and returned with a phonebook. He sat beside the scattered photographs as he flicked through the white pages before he eventually stopped at the Asian Restaurant section.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There were three initial stages to Charlie Thomson’s terror. The first was his physical situation. He awoke to find himself weak-limbed and lying on his back in a dark structure. A throbbing pain deep in his head seemed strong enough to temporarily obliterate any memory of how he had arrived at this location. The fact he had been wrapped in plastic sheeting, like a slaughtered pig, and placed in the bowels of the rumbling bus as it travelled miles into the hills was, perhaps, fortunately, unknown to him.