by Brenda Novak
She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting him dead.
“It might not have been an enemy. Maybe he was killed because he saw something he shouldn’t have,” she said.
“You think he witnessed the UDA killer?”
“The shell casings, if they’re there, or the bullet, if it’s recoverable, should tell us more. But it’s entirely possible that there’s a connection between the two. He died the same way as the illegals, right? By gunshot. His body was discovered on the Simpsons’ ranch, out in the desert—a similar setting to where the UDAs were killed. And if he’s the one who trashed your motel room, he was okay midevening, which means he died after that. Murder in the middle of the night is also typical of the UDA killer’s work.” She glanced at him again. “Besides, Bordertown has only had one other murder in the past ten years, and even that was a domestic dispute. Nothing like this, ever. How many killers do you think we have running around here?”
“But we haven’t heard of any other murders occurring last night,” he said. “What could Stuart have seen?”
“Maybe the UDA killer shot some Mexicans first and their bodies haven’t been discovered. Or he interrupted a murder attempt and the illegals got away.”
There was a call on her radio—Officer Fitzer.
She removed the handset and pressed the button. “What do you have for me, Joe?”
“Just wanted to let you know that the ballistics report you’ve been waiting for came in.”
Sophia could feel Rod’s interest spike along with her own. “What does it say?”
“The casings you found at the Sanchez murders match the bullet lodged in the spine of victim number three, the unidentified male at the very first crime scene.”
That was good. That tied the murders together forensically—important if it ever came to prosecuting a defendant. But it didn’t bring her any closer to naming a suspect.
“Any word on the type of gun?”
“Yeah. Pretty specific, actually. Hang on, I’ll read you part of the report.”
She heard some paper shuffling as Joe searched for what he wanted to share with her. “‘Bulge in the web area…very distinctive…have seen this one before…’” He cleared his throat. “Here we go.” He began to read. “‘This type of deformity most often occurs in .40/10 mm and .45-caliber Glock pistols with higher than normal pressure ammunition, poor quality brass, or both.’”
“So the killer’s using a .45 Glock pistol and some cheap ammo.”
“Says here the ammo might’ve been reloaded or re-manufactured.”
Sophia wasn’t convinced that really meant anything. Could be. Might’ve been. Maybe it was just a bad box of ammo. “Have we heard anything from the coroner’s office about when the Sanchez autopsies will be done?” Among other things, she needed to know if they’d be able to recover any bullets from the bodies.
“Not yet. Vonnegut’s had the flu, at least that’s what my mother told me. She’s good friends with his wife.”
“Will you call over there and find out? The flu doesn’t usually last for days.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
She was about to hang up when he spoke again. “One more thing, Chief.”
“What is it?”
“Detective Lindstrom stopped by a few minutes ago.”
Sophia recalled Lindstrom’s anger at the FBI meeting yesterday. The detective wasn’t even making an effort to be civil anymore. Learning about that cigarette butt, and believing Sophia had purposely withheld the information regarding it, had proven to be the point where subtle signs of dislike and resentment transformed into outright hostility. “Did you tell her about Stuart Dunlap?”
“I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if you wanted her to know.”
At least her staff was loyal. At this point, they felt like the only ones who were willing to stick by her. “Thanks. I’ll give her a call.”
“She said something that struck me as odd,” he said.
“What?”
“It wasn’t to me. She got a call on her cell phone while I was making her a copy of the ballistics report. I have no idea who she was talking to, but she said, ‘I’m meeting Stuart for breakfast at Bailey’s. I’ll let you know what I find out after we’re through.’”
“Stuart,” she repeated.
“That’s right. Since I’d received the call about Stuart Dunlap’s death only a few minutes before she walked in, the name jumped out at me. You don’t suppose she meant him, do you?”
“It’s possible she knows some other Stuart.” But Bailey’s was a local restaurant. Sophia doubted there was another eating establishment with the same name in all of southern Arizona. And Stuart Dunlap was the only Stuart in Bordertown. “She say anything else?”
“Nope. She started to whisper as if she was afraid I was listening in, then said she had to go. That’s it. It may be nothing, but…I don’t know. It felt funny.”
Sophia could see why. As far as she was aware, Stuart and Lindstrom didn’t know each other. Lindstrom was at least six years older than he was, so even when she’d lived in Bordertown and attended Bordertown High they wouldn’t have gone to school together. What business could she and Stuart have had together? How had their paths crossed? “This just happened, Joe?”
“She walked out the door less than five minutes ago.”
They’d passed Bailey’s a mile or so back. Sophia was in a hurry to reach the crime scene, but this made her curious enough to turn the car around. It might be in some way related to Stuart’s death, or provide information that could help with the coming investigation.
Lindstrom was at Bailey’s, all right. Sophia spotted her car in the parking lot. And when she and Rod went inside, they found the detective sitting in a corner booth, wearing an orange sheath dress with her red hair pulled back in her typical tight fashion. She was alone and had her nose in a menu, but a second menu lay near the place setting across from her. She was obviously expecting another person.
“You waiting for someone?” Sophia asked as soon as Lindstrom noticed them.
A scowl creased her forehead as she glanced from Sophia to Rod and back again. “I’m having breakfast with a friend. What does that matter to the two of you?”
“It doesn’t,” Rod said. “Unless that friend happens to be Stuart Dunlap.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s none of your business.”
Sophia blinked innocently. “You don’t want to tell us?”
“No.”
“Then you can continue to wait, and we’ll leave you in peace.” With a shrug, she turned to Rod and they began to walk out. But Lindstrom seemed to catch on that it might be in her best interest to find out why they’d asked.
“What if I am meeting Stuart? What would you say then?” she called after them.
Sophia pivoted, returned to the table and lowered her voice so she wouldn’t be making the shocking announcement to the whole restaurant. “I’d say that you might as well go ahead and eat without him. Stuart Dunlap is dead.”
22
Kevin, the older Simpson, had found Stuart. He was waiting for them when James drove her, Rod and Detective Lindstrom to the site via ATVs. Sophia rode behind James, Lindstrom behind Rod. Although Fitzer confirmed that Dr. Vonnegut had been called—and that he was fully recovered—he hadn’t arrived. It was just the five of them. Bruce would’ve been there and probably Edna, too, except that Sophia had refused to tell them where their son had died or even who had discovered him. She couldn’t risk having him get involved this early. She needed time to process the scene and gather any evidence she could. She’d told Bruce to go home and break the news to the rest of the family before they heard it from someone else and promised she’d be in touch as soon as she had some answers.
But, so far, she knew very little. According to what James had told her when she met him at the house, Kevin had gotten up early to drive the perimeter of the property and had come upon Stuart’s truck in a washed-out gulley. One
tire was flat, suggesting it’d been driven over quite a bit of rough terrain. The truck would’ve had to traverse a lot of rough terrain to get where it was. They weren’t anywhere close to a road.
“This is exactly how you found him?” Lindstrom asked when Rod came to a stop and she was able to get off the ATV.
Sophia thought it was obvious that the body hadn’t been disturbed but didn’t say so. The last thing she needed was an argument with Lindstrom. She climbed off the all-terrain vehicle she’d been riding, and walked to within three feet of the cab door, which stood open.
Kevin spat on the ground before answering. “I opened the door, but that’s it.”
Sophia’s arms and legs felt rubbery as she caught her first glimpse of Stuart. James cursed; apparently, this was his first glimpse, too. And Rod stood close by but said nothing. He revealed no outward sign of distress, yet she could sense the negative emotions churning inside him.
Stuart sat slumped over the steering wheel. Blood ran down the door and brain matter speckled the window. Thanks to the recent heat wave, relentless even at night, his corpse was giving off a pungent odor that turned Sophia’s weakened stomach. Blowflies crawled over the corpse, attracted to the moist areas of the eyes, mouth and nose, where they liked to lay their eggs. Sophia was afraid to look too closely for fear she’d already find maggots. According to what she’d learned about entomology, the eggs could hatch within hours, especially in warm conditions like this.
“So you didn’t touch him, try to revive him?” Lindstrom was doing her best to appear unaffected and professional, but the strain in her voice was unmistakable.
“Hell, no,” Kevin said. “One look at him, and I knew he was dead.”
Sophia told herself it was fortunate that Kevin hadn’t disturbed the body. They’d have a better chance of reconstructing the crime, and any evidence the killer had left behind wouldn’t be compromised. Sophia had heard Locard’s Exchange Principle a million times. “Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him.” But that principle only seemed to apply on TV.
“Whoever did this took him by surprise,” Rod said.
“He didn’t see it coming, didn’t attempt to get out,” Sophia agreed. “But what brought him here in the first place? Why would anyone drive for several miles over rock, cactus, even a few broken bottles, to reach such a remote location? To do that kind of damage, he had to be driving fast.”
“Maybe he was meeting someone,” James said.
Lindstrom shook her head. “There’re no other tracks.”
“It’s hard to see tracks in this kind of soil.”
Sophia gestured to the plants around them. “There is smashed vegetation.”
“But, with the illegals constantly tramping through here, there’s always smashed vegetation,” Kevin said. “That’s part of my complaint against what’s going on. It’s ruining my property.”
“I think he was drunk and patrolling for illegal aliens to harass, and he ran afoul of a drug deal,” James said. “This feels almost like an execution.”
Or it could be the retaliation they’d all feared—the Mexicans striking back—but Sophia didn’t say it.
Rod shoved his hands in his pockets. “He could’ve been participating in a drug deal.”
Sophia thought of Jamie Skotto, a white girl who was raped in Douglas. At first, Jamie had claimed the culprit was a Mexican national, which incited the whole area. White men from all over Cochise County headed into the desert to avenge her attack on whatever UDAs they could find. When she admitted that she’d actually been beaten and raped by her own uncle, the vigilantes slunk back to their regular lives, but the rise in racism never really receded. Falling back on the recent murder of the rancher near Portal, some people still came out here to harass UDAs. Although they tried to put a patriotic slant on it—“Those sons of bitches have no right to come into our country!”—it often boiled down to basic cruelty. “As much as I don’t want to believe this, he could even be the UDA killer. Until we know more, we can’t rule out any possibility.”
“We can rule that out,” Lindstrom said.
Sophia eyed her thoughtfully. “Why were you meeting him this morning?”
“He called me last night around eleven,” she said. “Told me he had some information on the murders. If he was guilty, I doubt he’d do that.”
Why hadn’t he called her? Sophia wondered. Because he was angry? Because he hadn’t been able to find her? That would’ve been while she was looking out for Rod over at the safe house. But she’d had her phone with her. No call had come in…. “Did he give you any idea what he had?”
“No. None. He was acting a little paranoid. Said he didn’t want to go into it over the phone.”
“And then he was killed.”
“From what I’m seeing.”
Kevin spat again, hitting the dirt not far from his boot. “He wasn’t out here just for kicks. Tormenting UDAs isn’t something he’d do alone, not unless he was seriously planning to hurt someone, which I highly doubt. And if he was with friends, we would’ve heard from them by now. You don’t see your buddy get shot and not say anything.”
“Was the car running when you found it?” Lindstrom asked.
Kevin’s hand scraped over his beard growth. “No. And there was no other vehicle in the area.”
Rod stepped closer to the body. “How’d you spot him?”
“I caught a glimpse of red from the ridge up there—” he pointed to his left “—just as the sun was coming up. I used my binoculars, so I wouldn’t walk into anything dangerous. Maybe this is my land, but I know not to interrupt the wrong people out here,” he explained. “And this is what I saw.” He took the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Since there are no cell phone towers out here, we use these around the ranch. First thing I did was notify my wife that we had a problem.”
A problem. Sophia already had a problem. This made it worse. “I hope the Feds will come in on this one, too,” she muttered to Rod. To start with, they needed someone who knew more about blood spatter analysis than she did. A blood-spray expert would be able to determine the angle of fire and how far the gun had been from Stuart’s head when it went off. It appeared that the shooter pulled the trigger from inside the truck, which meant they might be able to glean some of his DNA—if the Locard principle held true.
Edging closer, she peered into the cab. A piece of flesh hung from an exit wound above Stuart’s left ear. Sophia didn’t want to fixate on that morbid detail, didn’t want to acknowledge that she was seeing someone she’d dated a few times in a state like this. And yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Suddenly, her vision dimmed. Afraid she might pass out, she closed her eyes and took some deep breaths, and when she opened them again, she tried to convince herself that none of this was real. It was merely a puzzle that needed to be solved, and she needed to do the solving. But in the past several weeks, she’d seen everything from skeletalized remains to this. It didn’t matter. Death was something she could never get used to.
“Look at his eyes,” she said.
“What about them?” Rod leaned around her. “Are you talking about the bruising?”
“Yeah. You think he got in a fight before he came here?”
His face more masklike than ever, Rod shook his head. Sophia guessed he, too, was struggling to distance himself from the fact that he’d known this person. It had to be even harder for him. Stuart was—had been—his half brother. Maybe they’d never been close but in some ways the animosity between them only complicated matters. Now they’d never have the chance to put their differences aside. “Raccoon eyes are typical with a gunshot wound to the head,” he said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“What are you talking about?” Lindstrom tried to squeeze between them.
Careful not to touch the truck, Sophia stepped out of her way. She found it difficult enough to hold herself together without having to tolerate
Lindstrom. “I didn’t notice it on Benita Sanchez,” she murmured to Rod.
His gaze remained fixed on the bruising. “Doesn’t happen every time. Depends on the damage. Besides, it wouldn’t have shown up so clearly against darker skin.”
“So something’s wrong with his eyes?” Lindstrom asked.
Rod also stepped back. “The bruising. It’s normal for this type of death.”
He seemed to know a fair amount about murder. How many other cases had Rod worked? Sophia wondered. What had they been like? He’d become so distant this morning she could hardly believe he was the same man she’d slept with last night.
“What’s your guess on time of death?” Sophia asked.
A muscle twitched in his cheek, the only outward sign—besides his general reticence—that this was difficult for him. “Without an M.E. here to get a body temp, it’s hard to say. But…I’d guess maybe three hours.”
Lindstrom inserted herself into their conversation once again. “Why not longer?”
He gestured toward Stuart’s corpse. “Rigor’s just setting in.”
Sophia knew rigor mortis was caused by a chemical reaction involving the loss of adenosine triphosphate, which made the muscles contract and hold rigid. She also knew that it typically started with the small muscles in the face, neck and hands and that it set in about two hours after death. She’d read a lot of forensics books since the UDA murders had begun, hoping for insights. But she’d never actually seen rigor before. In her first murder case—the domestic dispute that had ended so badly—she’d been called to the scene immediately. And all the illegal immigrants who’d been killed since then had been discovered either before or after the thirty-six-hour period when rigor became a factor.
