Signature: A David Wolf Mystery (David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series Book 9)

by Jeff Carson

  “We’re back again because he’s back again,” Wolf said.

  Mary nodded, flicking a glance at the deputy vehicle parked down the road. “I know. I heard.”

  “You’ve heard about your brother being in jail?” Wolf asked.

  She nodded.

  “You talked to him, didn’t you?”

  Mary Attakai wore baby blue shorts that hugged tightly on her trunk legs, a huge cell phone jutting out of the rear pocket. Unconsciously, she moved her hand to the phone and touched it, then, as if she realized what she was doing, she dropped her hand and folded her arms.

  “We know you’ve talked to him, Mary,” Wolf said. “Right now they’re holding your brother in jail because they suspect he might be connected. Don’t you want to help him?”

  “He called me when you guys found that girl dead by the river,” Mary said. “He wanted to make sure I was all right.”

  Hector turned his head an inch, giving Mary a sidelong glance.

  “And are you all right?” Wolf asked.

  “Yes.” She pointed toward the dirt road. “The sheriff has a guy parked here all the time.”

  “Mary,” Luke said, “yesterday on the phone you said you’d be willing to talk to us.”

  “Hector’s right,” Mary said. “I don’t have to talk to you. Not anymore.”

  Luke put up her hands. “We understand it’s difficult to talk about. It’s painful to remember, but we think he has another girl, and we think you could help.”

  Tilting her head back, Mary closed her eyes and exhaled. “My God.”

  “Fuck this,” Hector said. “You don’t gotta talk.”

  “What’s the problem, Hector?” Hannigan unbuttoned his jacket and took a step forward. “We’re not talking to you. So why don’t you walk away?”

  “Why don’t you take your meathead ass and get back in your car and—”

  “Enough!” Mary’s voice echoed off the cliffs. “Just … come inside. We can talk in the living room.”

  “Mary—”

  “I’ll be okay, Hector. Please, go play with the kids.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Hector made to follow her, but stopped when Mary turned around.

  “I’ll be all right.” Her eyes widened, and a secret communication shot between them. A warning? A reassurance?

  Hector and the other man turned and disappeared around the side of the house.

  “Please. Come in.”

  Mary held an aluminum screen door open for them and they stepped inside into the living room. It looked like a toy store had been hit by a tornado. There were two felt couches configured in an L shape, a beat up wooden coffee table, both of them covered in toys that spilled onto the blue carpet.

  Plastic crunched underneath Hannigan’s foot. “Sorry,” he said, kicking a LEGO piece aside.

  Wolf pushed aside a headless doll with his foot.

  Mary made no effort to apologize for the state of her house. Her dead gaze said take it or leave it.

  A continuous sizzle came from around the corner and bold smells of vegetables sautéing in spices hung in the air. Squealing children and a warm breeze floated in from an open window.

  “You okay, Bipa?” Mary gestured to the two couches for them to sit and leaned around the corner.

  “Oh yes. I’m fine,” a frail voice said.

  “No, you can stay in there. I’m just …”

  An old woman shuffled around the corner, wiping her hands on a bib that said “Over forty and feeling sexy” in bubble letters. Her hair was long silver, pulled back in a ponytail. Her face was a dried lake, all creases and the same earthen color as Mary’s. Her eyes twinkled and her lips stretched into a straight line. “Oh, hello. Who’s this?”

  “Some people, Bipa. Please. Go back in and we’ll be right there.”

  Bipa eyed Wolf’s badge, the stalk of Hannigan’s Sig Sauer poking out of his jacket from his shoulder holster, and her face creased even more. “This about that man? The man out in the desert?”

  “Bipa!” Mary was hissing now, pushing her out of the room. “Please.”

  Bipa slapped Mary’s hand away. “Woman. Be respectful of your grandmother.”

  Dropping her hands, Mary stood obediently while the elder berated her with flashing eyes. After a few seconds of thick silence, she left the room.

  “Sorry about that,” Mary said. “You can take a seat if you want.”

  Wolf and Luke sagged toward one another as they sat on the over-soft couch. The fabric felt like an old velvet painting of a black lab Wolf’s father had hung in the barn when he was a kid.

  Hannigan took up the entire other couch.

  “Well?” Mary shrugged and looked down at them.

  “Please,” Luke said, pointing to a chair against the other wall. “Sit down.”

  Mary did as she was asked. “What do you want?”

  “You know what’s going on up north,” Wolf said. “At the moment, it seems that he’s back.”

  Mary closed her eyes.

  “We’d like to talk to you about what happened that night, Mary.” Wolf leaned forward. “It might give us a clue, now that things are active again. Something might help.”

  Mary was blinking rapidly, calculating something. “How do you guys know it’s the killer from two years ago?”

  “Mary.” A voice came from the entryway to the kitchen. Hector was back.

  She looked up at her cousin and then at Luke. “Well? How do you know?”

  “Okay,” Luke said. “The sheriff’s office pulled up a vehicle that matches the description you gave on the night of your attack. Inside of it we found Rose’s blood, and some hair that matched your DNA profile. It was his truck.”

  Mary narrowed her eyes. “Okay. And … you think he’s back in Rocky Points now?”

  Luke shrugged. “We’re not sure, Mary. It’s complicated, and we can’t really talk about the details of the case.”

  Mary went back to staring at the coffee table. Thinking.

  Hector shook his head. “You don’t have to talk.”

  “Hector’s right,” Luke said. “You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to tell us about what happened that night again. But … it could help us. Because maybe we’ll ask different questions than the men who talked to you back then. And maybe your answers can help us find this guy.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?” Mary asked.

  Wolf watched Hector’s eyes dart to Mary.

  “We’re not sure,” Luke said slowly. “That’s part of the investigation, which we can’t really talk about.”

  They sat in silence, listening to sizzling vegetables and squealing children.

  “Please,” Luke said.

  Mary closed her eyes and nodded. Took a breath and started talking.

  “I had a late shift at the restaurant, and Jeremy was supposed to come pick me up, but I called him and he was out having beers and was too wasted to come get me. So I called Rose.” Mary’s eyes started dripping, but she made no effort to wipe them. “So she drove over to get me, and called me when she got there, and I told her I’d be right out, cause I had to do my silverware. She said she was gonna have a smoke so she would see me outside. Said ‘Okay, see you when I see you.’ Those were the last words she ever said to me.”

  Hector’s eyes turned to sparkling orbs.

  “When I came outside, I went to her car. But it was weird, cause she wasn’t there. And I remember thinking, ‘that’s weird’, and then something didn’t look right. I saw her door wasn’t closed all the way. And then I saw the truck next to hers moving real fast back and forth. Like somebody was inside screwing or something. I remember thinking ‘What the hell? Is she with some dude getting it on in the truck next to her?’ So I walked up and the movement stopped. It was like they saw me coming, or at least that’s what I was thinking at the time. I called out Rose’s name, and nobody said nothing. And I started getting a weird feeling, so I backed off, and then this guy came charging at me out of the dark.


  “He was big and hairy, but real fast. Strong as shit. And he had me in a headlock in like two seconds. I couldn’t scream, cause he had a hand over my mouth. And then I remember feeling a sting in the back of my neck, and then … and then the next thing I know I woke up on the ground, stars all around me.” Mary wiped her eyes and looked at Luke. “Then I heard …”

  “Shit,” Hector said, covering his mouth. “Why the hell you gotta ask about this?”

  They said nothing, just watched Mary’s eyelids slide down a fraction of an inch. “I heard him … with her. And I looked over, and I saw …” She sucked in a breath, “I saw what he’d done to her. She was limp, eyes open. Bleeding.”

  Wolf swallowed and glared out at the blue sky through the windows of the doublewide.

  “And no, I don’t remember what he looks like, if you’re going to ask that. He was wearing this mask. Like an ancestral Puebloan mask, and I remember being so tired, so groggy, and wondering if it was all a dream? And then I started coming to. And I felt the pain in my foot.”

  Mary slipped off her shoe and sock, and then displayed the fleshy stump on her left foot where her big toe had been.

  Unconsciously Wolf ran a finger across the web of scar tissue on his own hand.

  She slipped back on the sock, and then the shoe, and then she continued. “I sat up, and I remember he said, ‘I’ll get to you in a bit.’ And I remember being so confused. Wondering, is he helping me with something? What’s he going to help me with? And then my mind just started working again. Just like that. And I started freaking out. I realized I had no pants on. No underwear. A bleeding foot that hurt with every heartbeat.

  “And then I looked at what the guy was doing again. He was having sex with Rose.” Mary opened her mouth and nothing came out.

  “Then what happened?” Wolf asked quietly, trying to nudge her past the horrific moment.

  “I … I got up and ran. And then I fell because of the pain in my foot. And he started yelling at me. ‘Stop, bitch! Stop!’ And I just ran. I didn’t care about the pain no more. I heard his footsteps thumping on the dirt behind me, and then I was falling all of a sudden. I didn’t even know, but we were right next to a cliff, and I ran straight off the edge. I remember the wind, and then pine needles, and branches, and twisting and tumbling. It was like a car accident or something …” She said nothing for a few moments and blinked. “And then I remember hitting the ground, and then not being able to suck in a breath.

  “And then waking up again.” She smiled like she was saying something so absurd it deserved a laugh. “And then I heard him again. ‘Yeah bitch. Yeah! Woohoo!’ He was yelling over the cliff. I got up, and at that point I was so numb, I just started walking. Nothing even hurt. I just walked, and walked. And then I was out of the trees. And then I followed distant lights, which was highway 550 they told me later.” She wiped her eyes and blinked, and she was done crying. “I remember shivering. I remember the road. And then the trucker who picked me up, and then …”

  With a shrug Mary turned to them.

  “And then you woke up in the hospital?” Luke asked.

  Mary nodded.

  “And then what?” Wolf asked.

  She took a breath. “My brother and his boys … the deputies … were all there the next morning, and I told them what happened. And they said they found Rose in town.”

  Hector was watching Mary closely. His lips were parted and he was holding his breath while he watched Mary talk.

  Waiting for something. For what? Hoping? It looked like a mother watching her child at a school play, willing the child to remember the script.

  The thought was like a punch. Was this a well-rehearsed story? If that had been a made up lie, then that had been the best acting he’d ever seen. Which would also make it one of the sickest things he’d ever seen. Nobody makes up a lie like that. So why was Hector in here? Why was he so concerned with what she said?

  “Then what?” Wolf asked, looking at Hector as he said it.

  Hector met his gaze and looked away.

  “Then … my brother and his boys looked for the killer. Never did find him. The trucker showed them where he picked me up, and I went there with them. But I couldn’t tell which direction I’d walked to the highway from. Couldn’t remember how long I’d been going, or how long I’d been out when the guy took me and Rose. There were a couple different valleys I could have come out of, but I just don’t remember.”

  “And your brother?” Wolf asked.

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “He protected you after that, right?” Wolf asked.

  Mary nodded. “Yes.”

  “How?” Wolf asked.

  “He followed me to work, watched the place during the day, followed me home at night. Slept in his car outside. Or on the couch right here. He thought the guy was coming after me, you know?”

  Wolf nodded. “Because you were the only survivor. The only one who’d ever seen this guy and lived.”

  “Right.” Mary’s voice was a whisper.

  “So … your brother wanted to protect you at all costs. He slept in his car, on the couch. Followed you to work, staked out your work.”

  “That’s what she just said, de-tec-tive,” Hector said. “You guys finished yet?”

  Wolf held his gaze on Mary. “So why did he move north?”

  Mary froze. The sizzling was done in the kitchen, and all that remained was the sounds of the game of soccer out back.

  “Why would he protect you for … what? Two weeks? Three weeks?”

  Mary said nothing.

  “And then just up and move north?”

  “He was starting to piss me off,” she shrugged. “I told him to get the hell out of here and I didn’t want to see him. I might have mentioned that it was all his fault.” She stared unblinkingly at Wolf.

  Now that was a prepared story.

  “And why did you talk to your brother the other day? He gets taken in for questioning about the murder of his girlfriend, and he calls you?”

  Mary frowned. “Yeah. He knew it was the guy. So he was worried.”

  Hannigan chuckled to himself.

  Mary glared at him. “What?”

  A woman with the same hereditary traits as Mary and her cousin came into the room. She locked eyes with Mary and said, “The food is ready, Mary. It’s time to come eat now.” She stood with her hands on her hips.

  Hector pushed off from the wall and walked to the door. Pushing it open, he eyed them expectantly. “Thanks for coming by.”

  They left, and the door clacked shut after hitting Hannigan’s heel on the way out.

  Chapter 21

  They drove back into downtown Durango in their respective vehicles to Fred Wilcox’s only known place of residence.

  The front yard was weeds and dirt, and it was at least a hundred degrees in the midday sun.

  “Another place fit for a king.” Hannigan had his hands on his hips.

  “Okay … see you.” Luke stepped out of the Tahoe and pocketed her phone. “He’s almost here.”

  An octagon with a lipstick-cone shaped roof, the house in front of them reached two stories tall. At one time, perhaps fifty years ago, it would have been futuristic looking, now nothing could mask its datedness. The light blue paint was flaking off, the concrete of the walkway to the front door cracked and growing weeds.

  The yard clearly had no irrigation system, nor did it look like it was mowed more than once a semester. An empty keg of beer laid on its side next to it a half-gone sleeve of red plastic cups. Just in case it wasn’t obvious that college students lived inside, there was a Durango Brewery sticker on the porthole window on the front door.

  Crackling tires pulled their gaze to the approaching BMW sedan, which parked in front of Luke’s Tahoe. A man stepped out in mid-sentence, having a conversation to the Bluetooth headset jammed in his ear. He was thin and fit, wearing gray slacks. His sleeves were rolled up on tanned arms, a thick watch reflecting the sunli
ght in golden swirls.

  When he reached them he said, “I gotta go,” and pushed a button on his earpiece. Lifting his sunglasses, he revealed beady blue eyes and shoved a hand at Luke. “Hello. I’m Kendall. But you can call me Ken.”

  “Right.” Luke shook his hand.

  Wolf and Hannigan introduced themselves, never getting eye contact from Ken, who was still laser fixed on the lower half of Luke.

  “Here to talk about Freddy Wilcox, eh?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “We’d like to see his place, if you don’t mind.”

  Ken studied them for a second. “Can I see those badges?”

  Luke pulled hers off her belt and held it in front of the man.

  He ignored Wolf’s and Hannigan’s. “You need a warrant to go inside, right?”

  “Does he live there anymore?” Luke asked.

  “No.”

  “Who does?”

  “Nobody. Changed it to a storage unit after he left for the tenants who live up front.” Ken pulled out a piece of gum and shoved it in his mouth.

  “Then what’s the problem?” She lifted her sunglasses. “How about you just do us a favor and show us the storage unit?”

  “Might be a problem to the students who have their stuff in there.” Ken broke into a grin, showing off his corn kernel teeth. Chomping his gum, he shook his head, looked Luke up and down again and began walking at a no-nonsense pace. Fishing for a key on a large ring filled with at least fifty of them, he said, “It’s around back.”

  They passed four sides of the octagon.

  When they past the keg Ken said, “These college kids.” Then he raised his eyebrows at Luke and said, “They pay a pretty penny though.”

  Luke jammed a gag-me finger in her mouth when he turned around.

  They were at 568 10th street in downtown Durango, and the research had shown Fred Wilcox living at 568-½ 10th street, but by the looks of it, it was decidedly less than half a residence. There were two steps down to a sunken doorway. Grass spilled over the crumbling concrete, and a huge cobweb had enveloped the upper half of the door.