by Brenda Novak
“Provided your estimate is accurate, he died around four.” Lindstrom stated the obvious.
Wondering where Vonnegut could be, Sophia turned to James. Maybe the M.E. felt no sense of urgency to respond quickly to the deaths of illegal aliens, but now they were dealing with the murder of a prominent citizen. “Have you heard from Dr. Vonnegut?”
He checked his watch. “After Dad called Mom and I reported this, Officer Fitzer contacted us to say he’d notified you and Dr. Vonnegut. I guess he’s been sick. A day he’d spend golfing in Tucson with some old college buddies.”
“I hope we caught him before he could leave,” Lindstrom cut in.
“I was told he was going to turn around,” James said. “He’s on his way. I’m sure it won’t take much longer. My mother will call me on the radio once he arrives, and I’ll go back for him.”
“How will we get the body out?” Lindstrom asked.
“That won’t be as hard as you might think,” Kevin told her. “We can hook a trailer to one of these ATVs. That’s how we deliver food to the cattle.”
“Makes sense.” Sophia pulled her digital camera from the case hanging around her neck. Now that she’d had a few minutes to deal with the shock and the upset, she needed to get down to business. She had to photograph and take a video of the scene before she could touch it. And then she planned to search for any scrap of evidence. She wasn’t going to miss a cigarette butt this time. She wasn’t going to miss anything ever again. She didn’t expect to find the murder weapon, but hoped she’d at least recover a shell casing.
And if that shell casing had the familiar bulge she’d seen in the casings from the Sanchez murders, this was the work of the same person.
If that bulge wasn’t there… She didn’t even want to think about that.
Sophia had just snapped her first picture when Rod spoke up. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” She turned to face him.
He was standing behind her, keeping out of the way so she could do her job. He pointed. “That silver thing in the ashtray.”
How had he even seen that?
Careful not to brush against anything, she leaned in. “It’s a memory stick.”
“Can you read the logo?”
“Looks like…Department 6.” Recognizing the significance of that, she gaped at him.
“With my computer broken in pieces on the floor, I didn’t even think to check for it,” he said. “But why would he take something like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it was the only personal thing you brought with you.” Or it had been planted by the killer….
“What would he want with my work files?”
“I doubt it was the work files that interested him. It was the possibility of more personal stuff. Which goes to show you that he was as curious about you as he was frightened.”
That evening Rod sat in a booth at the Rockin’ Rooster Drive-in. He had the bag of toiletries and clothing he’d just purchased on the seat beside him, and his Hummer was parked where he could see it through the window. But he didn’t have a room yet. The Sundowner had been full, as he’d expected. Before Stuart’s death, he’d hoped the news crews would leave soon, that they’d do a story on the UDA killings, maybe shoot some footage of the border fence with the patrol officers at work, then go on their way—at least until a break in the case or some new development brought them back. It wasn’t cheap to keep these people on location, and there had to be bigger news breaking someplace else. But that all changed when Stuart was killed. Now the whole town was buzzing like a hornet’s nest, and the newspeople wouldn’t leave. They’d stay for another day or two, make the most of the drama involved in other people’s pain.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed back the tray that’d held his double cheeseburger and stretched out his legs. A few reporters had even shown up at the Simpsons’ as the boys from the morgue were loading Stuart’s body. Fortunately, the ranch was a big place, the crime scene remote. They hadn’t been able to pinpoint its exact location any earlier from what they’d heard on the police radio.
Rod was glad he and Sophia had left about then. Any later, and he would’ve bumped into Bruce, who’d figured out where his boy had been killed and come out to defend whatever he felt was there to defend. Rod had heard Sophia talking on the phone with him the whole time they were driving to the towing company to get the Hummer. Bruce was furious that she hadn’t checked in with him sooner. He seemed to think he was entitled to know what was happening every step of the way. But she’d told him in no uncertain terms that he had no right to interrupt her when she needed to focus, that she’d been doing her job, and if he wanted his son’s killer caught, he had to respect that.
Already full, Rod picked at the remaining fries and finished his shake. He wasn’t in any hurry to leave the drive-in. This little spot was more popular for lunch than dinner, and today it seemed to be overlooked completely, which gave him time to adjust to what had happened and what it might mean.
The two teenage girls working the counter giggled, momentarily drawing his attention. But they were only talking to each other, so he lapsed back into his own thoughts.
Stuart had been shot twice in the head. One bullet had penetrated his temple and exited on the other side, where it had struck the window, without shattering it, oddly enough, and fallen to the floor. The other had gone in through his jaw. There didn’t seem to be an exit wound for that one. Both entrance wounds were round, about four-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and there wasn’t any soot or stippling to suggest the gun had been fired right up against the skin.
The killer must have been a few feet away, which led Rod to believe he might not have been sitting in the cab, as Detective Lindstrom had initially surmised. If the killer had ridden with Stuart, he’d gotten out before turning and shooting him. And he’d collected his shell casings, just like the perpetrator of the UDA murders when he’d shot his first ten victims.
That wasn’t how he and Sophia had wanted it. A couple of shell casings could’ve tied Stuart’s case to the UDA murders quite neatly, but at least they had the bullet found on the floor of the truck and should have the one in Stuart’s jaw. An X-ray would locate it and enable Vonnegut to extract it during the autopsy—
Rod glanced up when the door opened. Then he froze. Edna and Patrick had walked in. And it didn’t look as if they’d come to order a burger.
23
“Did you do it?” Edna’s eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot, were riveted on him as she shuffled closer. She appeared ten years older than when he’d seen her at the drugstore—old and shrunken and weak, as if she couldn’t manage without the help of her oldest son.
Patrick allowed his mother to lean on his arm but avoided Rod’s gaze. He, too, seemed like a shadow of his former self. The shock of his brother’s death had apparently leeched all the fight out of him.
Rod sat up straight. “What are you asking me?”
Tilting her head, she glared down her nose at him. “You know what I’m asking you!” Her voice shook, but not with the threat of tears.
Mesmerized by the scene unfolding before them, the drive-in employees had fallen silent as soon as she spoke. Everyone in Bordertown knew Edna. Normally, she was dressed to the nines, smiling and waving like some sort of prom queen riding on a float. Tonight, however, she looked as if she’d been dragged off the street after being hit by a car. But there was no question that the girls who’d made his burger recognized Bordertown’s first lady.
“I have no clue.” Rod refused to be the first to mention murder in connection with his own name. He figured he’d be smarter to make her spell it out, and she instantly accommodated him. “Did you kill him? Did you kill my son?”
A muscle began to tick in Rod’s cheek; he could feel it jump. He’d known that if he stayed, things would go this way. But leaving hadn’t really been an option. It still wasn’t. He had to face this down or it would only follow him. “Of course not. You don’t know wh
at you’re talking about.”
“You were jealous of him.”
The venom in those words made Rod uneasy, but he couldn’t deny it. He had been jealous of Stuart—and Patrick—from the day he was born. They’d had it all and had taken great pleasure in flaunting it in front of him. “Go home to your husband, Edna, and let the police do their job,” he said wearily.
“The police?” she echoed. “You mean Sophia?”
“She is the chief.”
“As if she’d ever look at you as a suspect.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. Sliding out of the booth, he stood. “Calm down. There’s no need to drag other people into this.”
“Calm down?” she shrieked. “My boy is dead! Someone killed him. Everyone’s up in arms, ready to blame the Mexicans, but I think that someone was you. And I’ll never get justice as long as the chief of police is so eager to warm your bed.”
Rod caught his breath. How did she know he’d been intimate with Sophia? They’d been seen around town quite a bit since he arrived, but they hadn’t touched in any way that would make it obvious. Not in public. “What I do in my private life is none of your business.”
“It is now,” she snapped. “Stuart told me himself. He said you were here to take the girl he wanted, just to show him you could.”
Was that what he’d done? He hoped not, but the way he was feeling today—out of touch with everything he thought he’d become—he couldn’t be sure. “I’ve only been in town a few days,” he said, instead of giving her an absolute denial. “Sophia and I have barely become reacquainted.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I didn’t kill Stuart.” He’d promised Sophia discretion. And she’d trusted him. The last thing he wanted was to leave her worse off than she’d been before he came. “That’s what you say. But I’m going to prove otherwise. You wait and see if I don’t.” Edna gave Patrick’s arm an emphatic jerk. “Tell him. Tell him what you told me.”
Patrick shoved his free hand through his hair, making it stand up, which added to his look of harried bewilderment. While his mother had aged since hearing the news about Stuart, he seemed to have regressed into boyhood. “I told her you came by searching for Stuart last night.”
Rod scowled. “So what if I did? He wasn’t there and I left. Did you tell her that?”
Edna didn’t let Patrick respond. “What did you want from him?”
“Someone trashed my motel room. Cut up my clothes, wrote obscenities on the wall, broke my computer. I wanted to know if it was him.”
Her lips pursed as she shook her head. “He would never do anything like that. My boy was a good man, an up-standing citizen. He wouldn’t waste his time with such…such petty actions.”
Rod knew it was just the opposite, but what was the point of arguing with her? The family was going through enough. So he simply stuck with the facts. “Dick, the pastor, saw him leaving the Mother Lode not long before I came home. That’s why I dropped by to talk with him. Do you know of any other reason he’d have to visit the motel?”
She didn’t seem capable of taking it all in, but refused to be forced on to the defensive. “Where did you go after you left Patrick’s?” she demanded without answering.
“To the Firelight. But Stuart wasn’t there, either. I never did find him.”
“You expect me to believe that? You chased him into the desert, and you shot him!”
He glanced at the two girls who were standing behind the counter, their eyes round as silver dollars. “No, I didn’t.”
“Then where did you go after you left the Firelight? Where were you last night?”
He’d been at the safe house and then Sophia’s. She was his alibi. But he couldn’t say so or it would cost Sophia her job. Edna would settle for no less. Not if she learned they’d been together, as she already suspected. “I was asleep.”
“Where?”
He stretched his neck. “Look, you’re wrong, okay? It wasn’t me.”
“Where were you last night?”
“It wasn’t me.”
She stepped up as if she’d strike him, but Patrick pulled her away. “Mom, let’s go. He’s not worth it.”
“The police will handle it,” Rod said. “I’ll be questioned and the investigation will go from there.”
“You think you’re so smart!” she ground out.
When he didn’t respond, her eyes shifted to the bruises on his cheek and the cut on his lip. “Where’d you get those injuries to your face?”
“I ran into a brick wall.”
“Sure you did. You were up to something last night. You attacked my boy.”
He refused to flinch as she glared at him.
“I hate you,” she breathed.
They were just words and yet their malevolence settled over him as oppressively as a thick fog. He’d sensed her animosity from the very beginning, experienced it almost as a tangible force. But, until now, she’d never actually expressed it, at least to him.
“I know you do,” he said. “You always have.”
Patrick began trying to drag her out. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go. If he killed Stuart, we’ll hire whoever we have to hire to get the evidence and prove it. But we’re not going to solve this right now.”
“I want him to know,” she said. “I want him to know that I won’t rest until I see him six feet under, like my boy.”
Patrick straightened his shirt, obviously uncomfortable. “Don’t talk like that.”
“I want him to know,” she repeated, and allowed her son to lead her out.
The girls behind the counter didn’t move even after she left. They continued to gape at Rod as if they believed the accusations she’d flung and were afraid he’d hurt them next.
Muttering a curse for letting his father talk him into returning to Bordertown in the first place, he piled his trash on the plastic tray. But before he could reach the garbage can, the bell jingled over the door again.
This time it was Sophia. No longer in uniform, she wore a pretty blouse, a skirt and some sandals. But her eyes were wide with worry and her face was pale as bleached bone.
“What is it?” he asked.
Sophia held the paper she’d found on her nightstand tightly in her right hand. She had no idea who’d written the numbers on it if not Rod. She certainly hadn’t.
“Did you write this?” Pulling him outside, where they couldn’t be overheard, she uncurled her fingers. The crumpled sheet of paper she’d ripped from the notepad by her phone rested in her palm.
Lines creased his forehead as he took it and smoothed it out. “Yes. Last night. I didn’t want to forget it.” He glanced up as if he couldn’t believe this was any kind of problem. “Why?”
“What business do you have with my stepfather?”
“Your what?”
“My stepfather. Why do you have his number?”
Confusion clouded his expression. “I don’t— Wait a second. You’re telling me this number belongs to your stepfather? I don’t see how that can be.”
“Why not? You didn’t get it from him?”
“No. I’ve never even met him.”
“Then how—”
“I saw it on a wipe board attached to the fridge at the safe house,” he broke in. “There was no name, but the way it was written gave me the impression that it was significant to the people inside. There was no area code, either, so I assumed it was local. I memorized it just in case it turned into a lead of some sort.”
Sophia struggled to make the connection. Could her stepfather be involved with the people who’d beaten Rod? Involved in smuggling illegal aliens? He was the absolute last person she’d ever suspect of such a thing. There had to be another answer. But she couldn’t think of one single reason his number would be inside that safe house. “My stepfather has never stated an opinion on the immigration issue one way or another.”
“People who get involved
in human trafficking don’t do it for political purposes,” Rod said. “They do it for the money, Sophia. You know that.”
Of course she did. But…her stepfather? Where would he have made the contacts? Why would he take the risk?
An image of the mansion in which her mother lived appeared in Sophia’s mind. Then she thought about the feed store and the article in the paper praising Gary O’Conner for his business prowess. Did he really earn such a great living from selling hay and other animal supplies and renting farm equipment? Or was that merely a front for a much more lucrative business?
“Oh, God.”
“You’ve thought of something?”
“Just growing suspicious. But we can’t tip him off. I need to talk to my mom, see what I can get out of her before they realize he might be at risk and clam up.” She knew instinctively that Anne would protect Gary. Anne would refuse to believe he could be involved in human smuggling just as she’d refused to believe he could be slipping into her teenage daughter’s bedroom at night. Anything short of complete denial threatened life as Anne knew it.
“I won’t say a word to anyone,” Rod said.
Taking the paper, she turned to head to her cruiser, but Rod caught her by the elbow.
“I don’t have anywhere to stay tonight.”
She blinked up at him. “And you think that’s my problem? That I’ll let you stay with me again?” He’d made it clear that last night hadn’t meant anything to him. Why would she be so foolish as to welcome him back?
His gaze dropped to the sidewalk before lifting again. He studied her, looking extremely unhappy, but he didn’t speak. She sensed that he wanted her to understand what was in his head but couldn’t sort out his own feelings enough to explain them.
“Are you going to answer?”
“I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”
“Sorry doesn’t change anything, Rod.”
Nodding, he drew a deep breath. “I had no right to even ask. It’s just… I thought once would do the trick, that once would be enough, you know?”
