“Rats leaving a sinking ship,” muttered the first officer at the scene.
They ignored him.
Laura waited a beat, then said to the first officer, “How about you? Did you see anybody come or go?”
“No, ma’am. The only thing I saw when I got here was a maid. She was down at the end, cleaning that room.”
“Did you interview her?”
“I tried to. She didn’t speak English.”
Laura said, “Where is she now?”
“I told her to stay in the room. Room Ten, down on the end.”
Barry Schubert said, “She’s not there now. By the time I got here, she’d flown the coop. Had to be an illegal.” He stood up, sighed. “She was probably our only witness.”
The young officer caught Schubert’s look and said with a trace of defiance, “I should have stayed with her, but I had to preserve the scene.”
________
Laura tagged along with Barry Schubert when he went to interview the motel manager. They walked down to one end of the horseshoe where the office was.
Of all the theories she’d had regarding Robert Heywood, Laura never would have expected this. Heywood was the predator, not the prey.
Who would kill a serial killer? Was it a drug deal gone bad? An altercation with one of the people in a neighboring room? How did a man like Heywood slip through time and space, killing when and where he wanted, his crimes going undetected for at least eleven years, and then meet a fate like this?
Or maybe that was the way with the bad guys. They hung with the lowest common denominator—they were the lowest common denominator—and sooner or later it caught up with them. There was a sweet justice to it, sordid as it was.
Schubert pushed down the latch to the office and they walked in, serenaded by a cowbell tied to the front door. Laura had been in a hundred motel offices just like it. Plate glass in the front. A chest-high counter, cheaply veneered walnut, delineating the clerk’s area. Cover, concealment, escape. To the right was a rack of brochures for fun things to do in the area: The Desert Museum, Discover Nogales! A revolving rack of postcards, most of them old and sun-faded. The same thin layer of mossy brown carpet stretched hard and threadbare across the floor.
At the sound of the cowbell, she heard small dogs yapping from behind the door on the right behind the counter.
The guy who came through the door wore a short-sleeved shirt of purple paisley material and dark blue trousers that made her think of filling stations. He had a comb-over, his spongy black hair longer on the sides. Late thirties. He smelled of cigarette smoke. When he spoke, he had an accent that Laura thought might be Eastern European. His name was Mike Kajo.
Schubert asked the questions.
Kajo was reluctant to talk. He doled out his sentences word by word. Mostly he said he had not seen or heard anything. His tiny eyes flickering sideways, as if he were expecting the soldiers to come for him any minute. What soldiers, Laura didn’t know.
“Could you give me the names and address of the maids who work here?” Schubert asked him.
“I have three maids come and go in two weeks. I have no phone numbers. No addresses. But I do everything by the law,” he added hastily. “I report everything, every job.”
“How many maids work for you right now?” Schubert asked.
“One.”
“What is her name?”
“Her name?” His eyes shiny. “Felicitas.”
It took some more veiled threats to get him to produce a worn card in his Rolodex: Felicitas’s phone number.
Laura copied it down in her notepad.
Mr. Kajo was grudging with other details, too, but gradually they got a picture of the kind of business he ran. He rented the majority of his rooms by the week or month, but rooms Six through Ten were regular motel rooms maintained by a maid. Laura thought the main customers would be prostitutes and their johns.
According to Kajo, Robert Heywood had checked in last night around eleven. “And that’s all I know.”
“Did you notice his truck?” Schubert asked.
“What truck?”
“The one he drove in here. A red Dodge Ram. Was it here all the time?”
“I didn’t see it.”
Laura turned and looked out the plate-glass window. The truck would be hard to miss.
Kajo followed her gaze. “I’m usually in back. Watching HBO.”
Schubert asked him a few more questions, but kept running into dead ends.
Out on the front walk, the TPD detective punched in Felicitas’s number, looked at Laura, and shook his head. “Fast food place. Why am I not surprised?”
Felicitas was probably an illegal. Laura wondered if Mr. Kajo had written the phone number in himself, when she wasn’t looking.
Laura and Jaime stayed all day. The day getting hot, oppressive, and still no rain. The clouds were staying far away. At least the doorway funneled air from the back window out to the walkway.
By five in the afternoon, the body had been removed, the scene measured, evidence gathered, and the last moments of Heywood’s worthless life documented as best they could be. All day, Laura had taken notes and stayed out of the way of Detective Schubert and his associate, Detective Baines. Detective Baines resented her presence, but seemed to get along okay with Jaime. Laura decided it was best if she made herself invisible. When people were no longer aware you were looking at them, that was when they showed their true selves.
Baines left early. Not too long after, Jaime left to pick up Waddell at the airport. Now it was just Laura and Schubert.
Since the body had been removed, Laura could get inside the room. There was the TV bolted to a veneered plank nailed to the wall, two lamps, a bed, and one end table. A bathroom with hexagonal tiles the size of quarters, a couple of small white towels. A double bed, the olive green bedspread stretched across it. The pillows propped against the headboard on one side, dents where the late Robert Heywood had lain, possibly watching television. A hunting knife in a leather scabbard lay by the bedside, next to a pile of change. When Laura saw the knife, she felt an unpleasant tingle in her gut. She flashed on Grady coming at her on the end of one of those.
In the closet was a duffle with a few changes of clothes. Boots lined up neatly beside the duffle—cowboy boots and work boots. A few articles of personal hygiene rested on the sloped apron of the sink.
“No cell phone,” Schubert said.
“Do you think whoever shot him took it?”
“If he had it on him. Otherwise, it would be hard to get past the puddle.” He nodded toward the pool of blood. “I’m thinking whoever did this didn’t stay around very long.”
He had already processed the wallet, bagged and marked it. Laura had watched him remove the contents. There had been two driver’s licenses: Robert H. Wood and Gene Woodman. He had one credit card and a Blockbuster card, both under the name Wood, a phone card, a hole-punched card—buy ten breakfasts and get one free—from the Griddle ‘n Egg. Nothing else. The wallet was new and still smelled like leather. In fact, the clothes in his duffle were new: two shirts from Banana Republic that still had the tags on them, one bag each of Jockey underwear and Hanes undershirts, both torn open and missing one of each. It was as if he’d decided to start over.
“We’ll check the calls to and from this phone,” said Schubert, thinking aloud. “But if he had a cell phone, that would be what he’d most likely use.”
Laura told him about Heywood’s visit to Clinton Purvis’s place. “I think he wanted to stay there, but he couldn’t.”
She told him about Sandy Heywood’s belief that Heywood was working some kind of deal. “He told her he was going to make a lot of money.”
“Well if he did, he could have done better than this place,” Schubert said.
Jaime and Peter Waddell showed up. Waddell was wired, happy to be here. He listened intently as Schubert brought him up to speed, and they compared notes. As they were preparing to leave, Waddell looked at the
blood soaking into the carpet for a long time, then nodded in satisfaction. He said, “I think a celebration is in order.”
________
They met at a Mexican restaurant on South 12th called Prieta Linda, which, loosely translated, meant “pretty dark one.” Jaime’s niece, Christine, came in just as they were being led to a table. She still wore her sling.
Jaime looked from one to the other and lamented, “Now I can tell you apart. The Broken Wing Sisters are no more.”
Flattering. Laura was at least ten years older than Chris.
Jaime touched Laura’s shoulder. “Want to show you something.” He led her into the other room, where a young man sat at a back table working on a pencil drawing from a photograph.
The drawing was of Jaime at his daughter’s quinceañera, gently strapping the high-heeled shoe around her ankle. The drawing was half-finished—exquisite, intricate work.
“Gabriel is doing this as a surprise for my wife, for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
“It’s beautiful.”
As they walked back to their table, Jaime said, “Gabriel’s father owns this place. You hear the Spanish classical guitar?” He motioned to a loudspeaker on the wall. “That’s Gabriel, too. Remember the name, Gabriel Francisco Romo. He’s going to be famous one of these days.”
Laura had a margarita and Jaime, a Bohemia. The food was fantastic and the company great. There was a good feeling in the group. It would have been preferable to arrest Heywood, but this was okay, too. At least there would be no other trophies. Waddell had a funny side, too: a dry, incisive wit. By the time Laura got up to leave, she was glowing with good cheer.
She left before the others. She wanted to get a good sleep. Normally, she would be buzzing from a day like this, but tonight she only felt a small, almost grim, satisfaction. As she walked out into the fading heat of sunset, she permitted herself a little smile. Life was good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Laura blinked at the digital numbers on her clock: ten thirty. Something had awakened her.
Her first thought was of Frank Entwistle. For a year or so after he died, she’d felt his presence. Even in death, he was still her mentor, her guide. There were times—when she was under extreme stress in her job—that Laura found herself talking to him. And sometimes, he talked back.
She had never believed in ghosts until then.
Laura had not felt his presence in the last six months or so. She thought he had finally gone on to where souls finally rested. But tonight she felt strongly that it was Frank Entwistle who had awakened her. She saw it as a warning.
The night was hot and still. Laura got up and got herself some water, realized she didn’t feel easy in her skin. The best way to describe it was a snowy TV screen, as if there were tiny pinheads of friction up and down her arms—a bad feeling.
The premonition that she was up against something evil persisted. Something going on, something she was not privy to, and it felt as if she were living from one tenuous breath to another, waiting for what would come next.
The feeling was so strong she went to look out the window. Her bedroom looked out on a small brick yard surrounded by a high stuccoed wall. The courtyard was bleached white from the moonlight. In the center was a tile fountain.
Something out there, moving beyond the wall: a dark shape.
She didn’t turn on the lights, but pulled on some shoes and went to the door opening onto the patio. The narrow door, a ranch house afterthought, stuck badly in the summer humidity. It took some muscle to push it open—maddening, how long it took. Then she was out on the worn bricks, next to the large pots of vinca and bougainvillea, her heart thumping.
Although the house was built in the twenties, the wall had been added in the 1980s. Whoever built it had wanted to make it a traditional zaguan, a courtyard gate. The gate was set into the wall, and the wall rose into a sloping arch above it. Laura could see between the lightning-shaped spindles of the double-doored gate out to the desert beyond.
Straining her eyes against the darkness, Laura picked out a darker shape among the mesquite trees. Adrenaline quicksilvered through her veins. Was it Frank? Then she realized the shape wasn’t human, it was equine. She squinted, trying to see if the horse was in front of or behind the corral fence.
Then the horse moved and the metal pipes of the corral disappeared. Calliope’s Music.
Laura wondered how the mare had gotten out—and immediately thought of Sean Grady.
Straining her eyes against the darkness, Laura walked down to the corral and past it to the tack room, sliding the heavy door open and grabbing a halter and lead rope.
The gate to that pen was open. Laura wondered if Grady was out here, waiting for her. Straining her eyes in the moonlight, looking for any movement that might signal an attack, she went back to the tack room and filled a half bucket full of horse pellets. She walked out into the desert and shook the bucket, but remained watchful.
Thinking that if anyone did come at her, she could use Calliope’s bulk to her advantage. Horses were big and unpredictable when spooked. People who were not used to horses would be intimidated by their size, the proximity of their feet and teeth.
She had to remind herself, though, that Grady wasn’t an average person. His fear threshold was much higher.
As she haltered Calliope and led her to the pen, Laura heard the sound of tires on gravel even before she heard a car engine. Two cars drove onto the ranch in the space of a few minutes. The first one went straight up to the main house an eighth of a mile away, where the Spanish Moon Cantina was—probably ranch guests coming in after a night in Tucson.
The other set of headlights turned in the direction of Laura’s house. She doubted anyone was coming by her place. Pete, the ranch manager, lived just beyond her on that road, and his girlfriend often came by around this time.
The car that had gone to the main house reappeared and followed the lane around by Laura’s place. All the ranch roads looped in together, connecting the main house, guest ranch casitas, and the older outbuildings that had been built when the place was a working ranch early in the last century. The car slowed at the dogleg near Laura’s house, the red taillights hazy by dust and distance, and then was screened from sight by trees near the wash.
Then it was quiet. Laura could hear a cricket somewhere. It had cooled a little, and a soft breeze brushed her cheek. The moonlight clad everything in pale grey-white. She looked in the direction of her house, which gleamed white as a bone beyond the thicket of mesquites in the front yard. The big trees at the left side. Moonlight pooling off something white just outside the dark mass of the trees’ shade.
She heard a car door close, then another. Sounds carried out here.
Laura was still looking at her house, and as her eyes became adjusted to what she was looking at, a shape materialized under the tree. A car. From the shape of it, a cop car, plain-wrapped. Who would come out here at this time of night? Jaime?
She squinted, but couldn’t see into the porch; it was too dark. She assumed someone was there. She heard a knock, the iron door rattling in the frame.
As Laura walked briskly in the direction of her house, her ears registered the muted sound of another car door closing. She heard Jaime’s voice saying, “Can … me a piece of paper? … on the seat. I’m gonna leave her a note. She’s gonna want … about this.”
A figure left the shadow of the porch, walking down the steps and out the creaky gate to the sheriff’s car. Not Jaime. Someone smaller, slimmer. Disappearing into the darkness, the shade of the big trees. Hard to see anything, but Laura thought that the person who was not Jaime was almost to the car when she heard it—a big whomp!
Transfixed, Laura’s unbelieving eyes saw parts of Jaime Molina’s car shoot skyward in a spout of flame.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Getting there took an eternity. She could not look away. The big pine was dangerously close to her house. If it ignited, the house would go up, too. An
d then she realized that one whole side of her house was missing, the kitchen and the living room and the roof—gone.
The image crowded out thought. All she could do was run in that direction as fast as she could. As she ran, information began squeezing through the panicked bottleneck of her brain, recording what she saw briefly before escaping into the ether.
Objects burning, everywhere.
The car chassis in the dirt, tires burned away.
People she knew, tossed on the ground like broken dolls.
Questions clamoring: Was Jaime dead? Would the gas tank go?
She couldn’t think about the gas tank. Her mind already shutting down on itself again, so she burned herself up running. Breath burning, legs burning. Her thoughts once again turning to stuttering impulses blinking on and off before her eyes.
Until she was there.
Fires burning themselves out. Jaime, lying facedown on her front porch. Scorched. Avulsions on his naked, blackened back. Looming above him, part of the porch roof was canted sideways, the rest of it seeming to have slid off the supports, red clay tiles everywhere.
The car a charred, twisted wreck, a body lying by the passenger side door.
A body.
Dead. She could tell that from here. How she knew Jaime was living and the other one was dead, she wouldn’t have been able to say.
The dead one was Chris. Jaime’s niece. They’d been laughing over Mexican food only a few hours ago, Laura thinking she’d make a good cop. She could tell it was Chris by the clothing and the sling and the ponytail. The clothing mostly ripped from her body, her scorched flesh.
Dead. Nothing to animate her, nothing there at all.
Laura couldn’t do anything for her. She saw a flicker in her side vision. The mesquite tree a few yards from the porch was on fire. She couldn’t stop to fight it now. She had to get Jaime out of there.
He moved. He was alive. Laura ran to him and tried pulling on his arm. “Jaime! Jaime! Can you hear me? You have to get up!”
He moaned, turned his scorched face to look at her. She didn’t think he saw her, though. She would have to get him down the steps, roll him—use his gravity to get him farther away from the house. She pushed and pulled him to the steps and then over.
Mortal Crimes 1 Page 20
