by R.J. Ellory
“We don’t have to stay here, John. We can move wherever you want to.”
“What about federal?” he asked, and it came right out of the blue.
“Federal?”
“Sure. They don’t work the same way. You’re not restricted to one town, one city. Like those fellers today. They came from Anaheim in California, and now they’re all the way down here in Tucson. They get to investigate exactly the kinds of cases that I need to be investigating, Alice. They get to work with people who understand the kinds of things I’m talking about. There’s things that these people have in common. These murderers and rapists and whatever. There’s things that they have that are common denominators. I’m sure of this. If I could only get some more firsthand experience then I could show people exactly what I’ve been talking about these past few years.”
“And you think they’d listen?”
“Federal investigators, sure. They aren’t small-minded like Bob Powers and Mike Rousseau. I mean, they’re good people an’ all, but—”
“I know what you mean, John.”
“Too narrow a view, right? Too narrow to start thinking about anything beyond the immediate case, the immediate evidence. And sometimes they look so closely at these things they miss the entire picture—”
“Enough,” Alice said. “You need to sleep. This thing has gotten you all riled up. You need to get some rest. You can call whomever in the morning and start asking about a federal application, or you can go find out whatever else you can about what happened to Deidre Parselle.”
John Cassidy looked at his pregnant wife. He wondered what he’d done to deserve her. If he wanted to join the federal authorities she would back him all the way. If he traveled for his work she would make sandwiches and a flask. If he was gone for days at a time she would ask for nothing more than a call to let her know he was okay. If he asked her the question—What did I do to deserve you?—she would smile and tell him that she often asked herself the same thing.
“Some people just work better together,” she’d once said. “Some people just belong. Always have done, always will. It isn’t complicated.”
He didn’t fall asleep immediately. She did, however. She was sleeping for two. He lay next to her, the warmth of her body, the smell of her, the sense of inseparability he always felt at such moments, and he recalled her words and wondered if she was right. It isn’t complicated. Always thinking, always wrestling with things, finding himself agitated and dissatisfied whatever he was doing. This was his flaw. Wherever he was, he always believed that what he was looking for was someplace else. Only at times such as this, just the two of them, did he feel some sense of stability. She was his anchor. That’s why they worked.
This case? The indescribably brutal attack on the Parselle girl, and all that was now attached to it … was this the watershed, the point about which everything would revolve? Why this one? Why did this feel so important? Why had this raised the question of what he was doing with his career, of whether he should now leave the sheriff’s department and apply to the Federal Bureau? Because he could do more good there? Because the theories he had went unheard in Tucson? Even the most irrational mind had a rationale. Even the most deranged and insane killer had a modus operandi and a purpose behind what he was doing. Were there influential factors? Were there common denominators in education, family background, social interaction, income bracket, locale? Did these situations present some sort of dynamic that produced an Earl Sheridan, a Clarence Luckman? And if so, then what could be done to predict, inhibit, or prevent such outcomes? What could be done to help identify potential victims, for surely—if there were patterns in the makeup of killers—then there could also be aspects of certain individuals’ personalities and characters that made them victims? Or was he delusory? Was he imagining an ideal that could never be?
He drifted away finally, the last image he remembered was that of the photograph Deidre’s parents had shown him of how she’d looked as a child. It was almost as if he could hear her asking the question …
Why? Why me? Why did this have to happen to me?
It was a question he did not understand, a question for which he had no answer. But he was sure he was going to find out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Digger made it to El Paso just as Luna County Sheriff’s Department officers were cordoning off the burned-out ’58 Chevy outside of Deming. The registration number went into the system before midnight. It wouldn’t be until ten on Wednesday morning that they would identify the rental company that owned the car, not ’til eleven that they had official word back from Albuquerque regarding the possible identity of the man inside the car. One Marlon Juneau, driver’s license giving a Saskatchewan address, and what the hell he was doing way south in New Mexico, beyond that what had transpired that put him in a rented Chevy and burned to hell, was a different matter altogether. Sheriff of Luna County, Hoyt Candell, weathered and cynical and seen-everything-twice, was himself a little surprised. He’d seen a burned body before a couple of times, but bodies burned in house fires and suchlike. This boy was different. This boy looked like he had no head before he was set alight.
Digger had left Marlon Juneau behind, though he would think of him often. However, what was done was done. El Paso was his destination now, and whatever he might find there for amusement. It was a straight run he guessed, and he thought less of where he was going and more of what he was going to find on the way. He did not think about being stopped or caught or arrested or anything else. He just thought how killing Marlon Juneau from Saskatchewan had made him feel. Like a god. That was how it was. Like a fucking god.
Digger kept on driving until he found a motel, a run-down crescent of cabins with a flickering neon light somewhere in the suburbs, and then he walked out to find a late-night diner serving hamburgers and fries and tepid root beer that tasted like antiseptic mouthwash. He would be asleep by midnight, laid on his back, fully clothed, exhausted from the excitement of it all.
Clay Luckman, soon to be a wanted fugitive in two states, and Bailey Redman, the girl who did not exist, ate three or four twenty-five-cent hotdogs apiece and then walked back the way they’d come. Without coats, without blankets, they hunkered down beneath a fall of straw in a barn near a farmhouse. A heap of windfall branches were stacked against the near wall, and they imbued the air with a woody rot that seemed potent, like something fermenting, something strong. Bailey slept almost immediately, but Clay lay awake—much the same as John Cassidy—and wondered about the nature of things. He felt as if he’d been born with nothing and had pretty much all of it left. The Patron Saint of Losers. He listened to the girl breathing, and he wondered what would become of them. They’d started out running away from Earl Sheridan and Digger, and now they were headed for someplace called Eldorado, and for no other reason than some dumb ad in a magazine. It was a foolish, crazy-headed thing to be doing, but what other choices were there? If he turned himself in to the authorities he would go right back to where he started. And the girl? An orphan now, fifteen years old—what would she have to look forward to? A ward of the state, three years of neglect and abuse and bad food? This was the way it had been for him, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. Save Digger perhaps. Yes, he would wish such a thing on Digger.
He wondered where they were now. Had they caught Sheridan? Was he dead? Or had they driven him right on down to wherever and finished the job they’d started? And Digger? Had he been caught too? Had the authorities tracked them both down and shot them dead? Or was Digger still on the loose, doing whatever he wanted and not giving a damn about anyone else? Clay tried to think about what had happened to his brother. He could not understand it. He tried to think of him dead on the highway, finally trapped by some police roadblock and riddled with bullets. He felt almost nothing.
He thought about the people that would be looking for him. He—Clay Luckman—was an escaped convict too, of course. Is that how it would end for him? Brought down by a single shot f
rom a marksman’s rifle even as he was trying to explain what had happened?
Clay looked up. There were gaps between the boards in the roof of the barn. He could see darkness there, and through the darkness the stars. Maybe he was right. Without a destination they were simply wandering or lost. Eldorado, the Golden One, the city of promise and fortune and good luck for all who reached it.
He smiled to himself. Dreamers, he thought. Pair of foolish dreamers. And he knew—somehow he just knew—that it had to get better from here.
DAY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“You’re the deputy sheriff there in Wellton?” John Cassidy asked.
“Well, I am, yes,” Lewis Petri said, “but not the same way you’d consider a deputy. There’s three of us, and we share the job so to speak. Two days a week, each of us covering the missing day on a rotational basis. It’s just the way it is down here, you know?”
“But you were there at the bank when Sheridan was killed?”
“Well, yes, but all three of us were there.”
“I thought—”
“Situation like that we all get a call-out.”
“I understand that you were with Sheridan when he died?”
“Yes, I was, sir.”
“I wanted to know precisely what he said, the exact words.”
“Well, the exact words he said were the exact words I put in my report, Detective Cassidy. He said that this Clarence Luckman took the Tannahill girl. Then he went on and said that they killed the guy in Pinal County and the guys in Marana. He also said that Luckman raped and killed the girl in Twentynine Palms, this Bethany Olson, and that they had both killed the other hostage, Elliott Danziger.”
“You’re sure that’s what he said. That they killed the man in Pinal County and the other two in Marana, but he—meaning Clarence Luckman—raped and killed Bethany Olson and was also accomplice in the murder of Elliott Danziger?”
“Well, sir, you have to understand that it was a pretty tough situation we had up here, and things were going off left, right, and center, you know? We were all pretty much stressed to our limits with what was happening—”
“The best you can remember, this was what Earl Sheridan said before he died?”
“Yes, sir, as best as I remember.”
“And he didn’t say anything about where the other hostage had been killed, how he had been killed, where they’d put the body?”
“No, sir, not a word beyond what I already told you. He wasn’t alive more than a few seconds, and that was all he said.”
“Right, Deputy, that’s been very helpful,” Cassidy replied, fully aware of the fact that it had not been helpful at all. Individual and specific recollection of precisely what someone else had said during a moment of tremendous stress and pressure could not be considered reliable. Not at all. Sheridan could well have said the exact opposite, that he had raped and killed Bethany Olson, that he had murdered the men in Casa Grande and Marana, that … well, that anything at all had happened. Deputy Lewis Petri had heard what he believed Sheridan had said, and not a word of it could be sworn for sure.
Cassidy ended the call. He went through to see Rousseau, explained that the federal people had been at his house the night before.
“They were here too,” Rousseau said. “Me and Bob, we both spoke with them, told them about the Parselle girl before they came out to you. This is some deal, ain’t it?”
“They want me to get as much information on the assault on the Parselle girl and pass it on to the federal office so it can be relayed through to Anaheim.”
“They told me as much. So what’s your plan?”
“Go back there. Look at the scene again, see if there’s anything else that has been missed. Apparently there’s a vehicle team coming down from Mesa to go through the car with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Truth of the matter is he’s long gone,” Rousseau said. “Sick son of a bitch is more ’an likely over the border into Sonora or someplace. If it was me I sure as hell wouldn’t hang around to enjoy the scenery.”
“Sure you’re right,” Cassidy replied, “but I got to check everything and then check it again. Sure wouldn’t appreciate them coming back and telling us we’d missed something.”
“Hell, John, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Like they said, it’s a federal case now. People like us can’t be expected to do that kinda work for the money we get paid.”
Rousseau smiled. Cassidy smiled back. Cassidy didn’t feel that way at all, but there was not a great deal of point in saying so. Bob Powers had the same attitude, and that’s why the sheriff’s mantle would go to Mike Rousseau, and ten years from now Cassidy would be hearing the same speeches and wondering why he hadn’t gotten out when he could.
“I’ll be onto it, then,” Cassidy said. “You radio me if something else comes up I need to attend to.”
“For sure I will,” Rousseau said.
Cassidy left, a healthy degree of uncertainty in his mind as he walked to his car out behind the building. He had viewed the Parselle crime scene every which way he could think of. He had questioned friends, colleagues, family members. He really didn’t see there was anything else that could help him or the federal people. They were right—it was Luckman, a crazy boy with a head full of fury set to make his mark on the landscape any which way he could. And he was headed east by all accounts, perhaps to New Mexico, on to Texas, even south into Mexico to see if he couldn’t evade the law that way. If there was a worse mess than this someplace, well, Cassidy was sure as hell glad it wasn’t his.
He started the engine and drove back out to Peridot Street. The door was still taped, the balcony and stairwell still marked as a crime scene. He sat in his car and just looked at it. This was where she lived. This was where Clarence Luckman had followed her to, and this was where her life had suddenly changed direction. And to do that to a girl? To invade her home, to stab her and choke her? What kind of a thing would drive somebody to such actions? What possible rationale could someone possess for such brutality? It was definitely not something that could be understood within any acceptable context. But then, wasn’t it the case that all people believed they were rational? What they were doing in their minds and what they were doing with their hands were never the same thing. Clarence Luckman was terrorizing and hurting a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. That was in reality. In his mind he was … well, he was what? Avenging a betrayal? Punishing a rejection, a crime, a mortal sin? What was he doing as he kneeled beside her and plunged that blade into her breast? Did he talk to her as he did it? Did he explain to her what he was going to do, and why? And why now? Why—all of a sudden—has this thing been unleashed inside of him? What was it that had lain dormant all these years, only to find release in such circumstances? Impulsive. Intoxicating. Something possessive of such power that it overrode all censorship, ethics, morals, social restraints, any slightest sense of what would be considered right in the eyes of the majority.
And did he feel guilty? Was Clarence Luckman even now weeping quietly somewhere, aware of what he’d done, regretful, filled with self-loathing, reassuring himself that he wasn’t completely responsible, that he had been taken over, convinced that next time—if there was a next time—he could manage it, control it, subjugate it? Or had he now a taste for the thing? Was he now planning or committing or walking away from another heinous crime?
It was a remarkable case to be involved in, even on the fringes, but he was involved, some part of it did belong to him, and he felt the need to be as engaged and contributory as he could be.
John Cassidy closed his eyes. He breathed deeply for a little while, and then he exited the car and crossed the street to the stairwell. What better place to contemplate his next step than the crime scene itself? He made his way up slowly, looking at each riser, trying to see everything it was possible to see, and with each step he felt more and more certain that Clarence Luckman’s killing spree would be a defining path for them both.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Having left Detective John Cassidy’s house the night before, federal agents Ronald Koenig and Garth Nixon telephoned the field office in Anaheim to ensure that every county sheriff’s department between Tucson, Arizona, and San Antonio, Texas, had been kept up to speed on the case. Photographs of Clarence Luckman had been distributed widely, and more were being printed. As Koenig told Cassidy, soon every gas station and highway-side diner would know what Luckman looked like. His name would be on the wireless, his face would be on the TV. The I-10 went on through Houston, Baton Rouge, Pensacola, Tallahassee, and finally wound up in Jacksonville, Florida, where it stopped merely because the earth did. For now Koenig believed that San Antonio was far enough, and thus the sheriff’s offices for the counties of Pima, Cochise, Luna, Doña Ana, El Paso, Lincoln, Otero, Pecos, Sutton, Kerr, Bexar, and everywhere in between received a teletype cable from the federal authorities. Clarence Luckman was armed, dangerous, unpredictable, and on the way. A roadblock schedule was drawn up. At first they would cover the interstate and the secondary highways, and then—within a further twenty-four hours—they would have the men and resources to extend roadblocks to the primary routes between the towns. This served not only to cover the possibility that they would in fact stop Clarence Luckman in a stolen car, but also to show his picture to travelers who may have seen him.
One of those counties was Hoyt Candell’s, and a little after one that Wednesday afternoon he took it upon himself to call the federal office in Las Cruces and inform them of the burned-out car and the semi-decapitated man that had been found outside Deming the night before. Las Cruces got very interested very quickly, and as Koenig and Nixon were still in Tucson they went out there themselves to take a look-see. Koenig and Nixon took what details they could from Candell. Marlon Juneau’s name, the details of the rental firm, his home address, his place of work, and when they got there they were already working on the basis that this incident might be the work of Clarence Luckman. Why? Simply because it was downright odd. It was Luckman’s anticipated route, the I-10 itself, and he had last been in Tucson and Luna County was about two hundred miles east. For something that made no sense at all, it seemed to make a great deal of sense.
