Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  “I’m so glad you could come, Amy.” Lara leaned back to get a better look at the girl. “Did you cut your hair?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, there’s something different about you. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Lara took the backpack and led the way out of the station, asking how the trip was. Amy told her about the cranky man who complained at length about how federal taxation was killing America.

  “Sounds brutal.”

  “I told him I was running away from home. Pregnant.”

  “Did that shut him up?”

  “No. He wanted to save me.”

  They turned up 2nd Street to a gravel parking lot.

  “Oh my God,” Amy said. “You still have the truck?”

  Lara unlocked the Cherokee and loaded in the backpack. “I should probably trade it in for something else but, I don’t know. I’m kind of attached to it now.”

  Amy bit her lip to stem the tide rising up in her. Seeing Lara after all this time, and now their old truck, brought it all back. When she climbed into the passenger side and closed the door, it hit her even more.

  Lara saw the girl struggling. “You okay?”

  “It’s just the truck. It smells like dad.”

  “I know.” Lara turned the ignition. “The dog too.”

  Amy laughed.

  Amy watched the streets roll past the window. The flat-topped buildings and dust-blown exteriors, all the signs in Spanish. “How do you like living here?”

  “It’s all right,” Lara shrugged. “It’s got good parts and bad parts, like any place. I’m settling in.”

  “What’s your place like?”

  “It’s small. But nice.” Lara turned off Third Street and headed west on Gold. “Have you heard from Charlene lately?”

  “She stopped by last week,” Amy said. “Not officially or anything. She just wanted to see how I was doing.”

  Before saying goodbye that last time in Portland, the two of them had discussed the police investigation that would follow. Amy would stick to the story she had initially told Detective Charlene Farbre; that her dad had located missing homicide detective Lara Mendes and the two of them appeared to be working some private investigation. As to Lara’s escape from police custody, Amy would claim total ignorance. She told Detective Farbre that, following her father’s abduction, she had stayed at a friend’s house for a few days.

  After dropping Amy off at her mother’s house, Lara had made one last stop before leaving Portland for good. At a payphone on Fremont, she called Charlene Farbre and told her that John Gallagher was dead. Sketching out few details, Lara told the detective how the suspect involved in her own disappearance had abducted Gallagher and she had gone after them but she had failed to bring him home. The suspect’s name was Edgar Grissom. Both the suspect and Gallagher had perished in her attempt to free her former partner. The detective had insisted that she turn herself in immediately but Lara appealed to Charlene, an old friend, for clemency. The phone call was the best she could do right now but asked that Charlene go easy when she questions Gallagher’s daughter. The girl knew nothing of this. Lara had said goodbye and ended the call.

  To her credit, Charlene had done what had been asked and kept Amy out of the investigation as much as possible.

  “I feel kinda bad for Charlene,” Amy said. “Left with all those questions, not knowing what really happened. Must be frustrating.”

  “That’s police work. She’s used to it.”

  The truck rumbled along and Amy sat back, listening to the familiar hum of the engine. She watched the buildings as Lara drove out of the core and she watched the people on the street go by. Everything seemed so flat here, the houses and the horizon.

  She chewed her lip trying to think of some polite way to broach what was on her mind. There wasn’t one. “What about you? How are you coping with, you know, your situation?”

  “I’m good.” Lara cracked the window down to let in some air. “I mean, it’s still there. It’s always there but it’s under control. It’s gotten a lot easier to manage, to tell you the truth.”

  “Have you had any, like, episodes?”

  “One. But that was my doing. I drove out to the desert one night and let it happen. I just wanted to see how much control I had.”

  “Oh.” Amy couldn’t help the surprise in her voice. “What happened?”

  “I ran the desert. But I was still there, you know? Still present. When the sun rose, the lobo came back to the truck and it was all over.” Lara wheeled onto another street. “I caught a cold from it.”

  “A cold?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how cold the desert gets at night. And there I am, in my birthday suit and sweating like you wouldn’t believe. Hurrying to get my clothes back on. I’m lucky I didn’t catch pneumonia.”

  Amy smirked and Lara slowed the vehicle. She swung the Cherokee into the driveway of a modest ranch style home. A rabbitbrush hedge framed the yard. “Is this your place?” she asked. “It’s nice.”

  “This is my sister’s house.” Lara swung out of the cab. “Come on, I want you to meet her.”

  Amy blinked. “Your sister?”

  Marisol Sparks was a few years younger and looked nothing like her older sister. Five foot nothing with a big smile, her hair cut short in a bob. Marisol came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel and threw her arms around Amy. Kisses on both cheeks. “Finally I get to meet the famous Amy,” the woman said. “I’ve heard so much about you. Come in, come in.” Amy took another step inside the door when Marisol suddenly hugged her again. “Honey, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve said prayers for you and your dad.”

  Caught off guard, Amy glanced at Lara but her friend just beamed like a proud aunt. Marisol chased them inside and shouted into the living room. “Jackson, come say hello to tia’s friend!”

  A small boy with big eyes peeked around the corner and studied the guest but came no further. Marisol said something to him in Spanish but the boy clung to the wall. A quick wave was all he offered as a greeting.

  “He’s shy around strangers,” Lara said. “Give him a few minutes, he’ll warm up to you.”

  While Marisol hurried back into the kitchen, Amy took Lara’s arm. “Is this safe? I mean, staying with your sister?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

  “What did you tell her? About your disappearance and stuff?”

  “I told her everything. Are you hungry?” Lara shrugged out of her coat and hurried for the little boy watching from the doorway. Amy watched her go, unsure she had heard Lara correctly.

  Marisol had prepared dinner, something special for her sister’s friend. Amy had never had chile rellenos before and helped herself to thirds. Jackson warmed up to her over desert and had brought out his favorite toy, a Spiderman figure, and showed Amy all the tricks it could do. Marisol asked after Amy’s mom and how school was going, her plans for the future. So warm and welcoming, she seemed to Amy like an aunt she had never met before. Amy asked if Marisol’s husband, who was serving overseas, was coming home any time soon.

  “They’re supposed to rotate him back home in April.” Marisol ruffled her son’s hair. “We’re counting the days. Right, honey?”

  “Seventy-two,” Jackson said loudly.

  Lara beamed. “Can you believe how smart he is?”

  Amy wanted to help with the dishes but Marisol would hear nothing of the sort, insisting that she and Lara catch up. Amy rubbed her belly, regretting having thirds. Lara leaned and squeezed Amy’s hand. “How about you? How are you coping?”

  Amy shrugged. “I dunno. It still doesn’t seem real, you know? That he’s gone. Sometimes I forget that he’s not here. I’ll think of something to tell him, something funny I heard, and then I’ll remember that he’s gone.”

  Noise tumbled from the other room. Jackson playing Spiderman. Amy flushed, went on. “It doesn’t seem to get any easier. I mean, you here people talk about closure and stuff. I keep waiting for that
to happen or at least not hurt so bad when it comes but…”

  “Closure’s a myth,” Lara said. “I don’t why people talk about it like you can put your grief in a box and be done with it. It doesn’t go away, it just hurts less each day.” She nodded towards the kitchen, the sound of dishes clanking in a sink of water. “We lost our dad when we were kids. I was twelve, Marisol nine. I still miss him.”

  “Do you still think about him?”

  “All the time.”

  Amy spun her teacup around with one finger. “Maybe it would have been easier if there’d been a funeral. Something to mark the occasion. But we had nothing to bury.”

  “Maybe.” Lara pushed her chair back and rose up. “Grab your coat. We’ll get going.”

  “Where to?”

  “We’ll drop your gear at my place, then take a ride. There’s something I want to show you.”

  They climbed back into the truck after saying goodbye. Marisol made Amy promise they’d be here for dinner tomorrow night. She was planning something special. Amy demurred, said “Don’t go out of your way for me, Marisol. Please.”

  “Who do I have to cook for?” Marisol replied. “Please. Just be here at four tomorrow. On the dot.”

  Five blocks west, Lara pulled up before a small Santa Fe with vigas extended from the façade. The interior was small and barely furnished. “It’s not much to look at, is it?” Lara said. “I kind of like it Spartan like this.”

  “It’s cute,” Amy said as she got the tour.

  Two bedrooms off the back. Lara showed her into the smaller of the two and laid her backpack on the bed. “This is the guest room. Again, not much to look at.” The bed pushed against the wall was small, the dresser secondhand.

  “Stop apologizing.” Amy looked out the window. “I love it.”

  Lara ended the tour in the backyard, “This is the nicest part of the house.” In contrast to the interior, the yard was a riot of cactus and shrubs, ironwork furniture and ornaments hung from branches. A clay chiminea bookended by two log benches.

  “It’s beautiful,” Amy said, trying out a chair. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

  “Most of it was left here by the previous tenant. Kinda hippyish but I like it.” Lara crossed the yard and leaned over the fence and called to someone on the other side. “Hey Nestor, come say hello.”

  An older man appeared from the neighboring yard. Grey moustache and deeply etched lines in his face. He propped an arm over the fence. “You must be Amy,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Nestor.”

  Amy shook the man’s hand, feeling his callused palm.

  Lara patted the man’s arm. “Nestor’s a master woodworker. He’s done some work for me. His stuff is amazing.”

  The old man looked at Lara. “Have you shown her the piece?”

  “Not yet.”

  Nestor nodded and turned to Amy again. “Let me know what you think after you see it. If it doesn’t meet your approval, I can do another.”

  “I’m sorry,” Amy said, cocking a brow at Lara. “See what?”

  Lara frowned. “It’s supposed to be a secret, Nestor.”

  “It is?” Nestor shrugged and tottered away. “Whoops.”

  “What’s he talking about?”

  Lara shooed her back inside. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Back in the truck, Lara steered out of the neighborhood and drove for open country. Amy watched the houses flit by, giving way to vehicle yards and empty lots and then these too vanished until all there was to see was the flatland of the desert. The blacktop before them a postcard of a high lonesome highway vanishing against the horizon.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Amy said. “It’s wild.”

  Lara propped an elbow on the window sill. “It’s big. All that sky. Keeps you humble.”

  “So what’s this big secret?” Amy couldn’t stop grinning.

  “Patience, young Jedi.”

  “Ah come on.”

  Lara pointed towards the arid land to the west. “See that foothill over there? The one closest to us. It’s there.”

  The Cherokee slowed and Lara swung off the main road onto a dusty track, the truck dipping as it rode over a downed cattle guard. The track led up the incline of a low hill, bouncing over dips and bare rock until they pulled onto a plateau. Dust wafted from the tires and Lara asked her to wait for it to disperse before opening the doors.

  They went on foot from there, Amy’s shoes gritting over the sandy rock face. From atop the hill, she beheld a vista of the Chihuahuan scrub below and beyond that the sprawl of the city. It was colder up here, the wind sharper.

  “Watch your step.” Lara jumped down an edge where the rock face dropped. A bench of flat rock led out to where the hill inclined steeply below them. “There it is,” she said.

  At the far edge of the bench was a cairn of stones piled into a mound like the forgotten resting place of some lost pioneer. Jutting up from the mound of stones stood an archaic-looking headstone, some dark plank of hardwood framed up against that big sky and flat landscape. The edges of the milled wood were already pumiced raw from the windblown grit.

  Amy squinted at it, thinking Lara had taken her to some odd tourist spot. “What is it?”

  “Go see.” Lara shooed the girl forward.

  The inscription was hand carved. What she read there took her breath away.

  JOHN WILLIAM GALLAGER

  Father

  Friend

  Lawman

  Amy blinked at the tombstone in its berm of rocks. The air felt thinner than ever as she read the inscription a third time.

  Lara came up alongside. “Well? Do you hate it?”

  It was a minute before Amy found her voice. “You did this?”

  “Nestor carved the headstone. I planted it here.” Lara looked down the slope. “Your dad had said, on more than a few occasions, that he loved Clint Eastwood movies and stuff. So, mira.” Lara glanced up, tension wrinkling her eyes. “So, do you hate it?”

  “I love it.” Amy threaded her arm around the woman’s elbow. “He would too.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “This is a beautiful spot. How did you find it?”

  “That night I tested myself, I came up here. Or the lobo did. Somehow I remembered it. I drove the truck up here afterwards and hunted around until I found it. And then, without really thinking about it, I just started collecting rocks and piled them up.”

  “And the headstone?”

  “That didn’t occur to me until later. I kept coming back here, just to sit and be alone. But the pile of rocks never felt like it was enough. So I had Nestor carve up an old-fashioned gravestone.”

  The wind kicked up. Icy gusts finding the gaps in their clothing. “It gets pretty cold up here.” Lara cinched up her coat. “Whenever you want to go, just say so.”

  “Can we stay a bit longer? I just want to sit awhile.”

  “Of course.” They sat on the bare rock. Amy tucked her feet under her and Lara studied the clouds in the sky.

  “It really is a beautiful view,” Amy said. “Do you come out here a lot?”

  “I do. That’s why I placed the headstone facing east.”

  Amy tilted her head, not following. Lara nodded at the skyline before them. “That’s due west. And up here, the sunset is spectacular.”

  Amy smiled and settled in. After a while, she huddled closer to Lara for warmth and they watched the sun slant towards the earth, burning the undersides of the clouds a soft shade of pink.

  “How long were you planning on staying?”

  Amy tilted her head. “Dunno. A week. If that’s okay with you?”

  “Make it two. I could use the company.”

  Copyright © 2014 Tim McGregor

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons is purely co
incidental.

  In 2009, a Californian man died after being attacked by the jaguar he had acquired illegally. In the investigation that followed, the victim’s brother-in-law told police that he had warned the man repeatedly about his choice of pet. “You can’t keep a wild animal,” he had said. “Any fool knows that.”

  1

  LARA MENDES JOSTLED IN the bucket seat as the truck dipped and bounced over the uneven terrain of New Mexico scrub. A mile off the nearest blacktop, the truck rambled over a broken cattle guard tread by javelinas. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she wished she had taken another aspirin. Her head was throbbing and her teammate’s endless chit-chatter was making it worse.

  “She said she needed space,” said the young man behind the wheel. Mason Linardo was twenty-six years old. He had a buzzed head and a knack for falling for the wrong kind of girl. Alongside the latter, he had a fondness for blathering his woes onto Lara’s lap whenever he had the chance. “That means she’s dumping me.”

  Lara shot a glance at her colleague before returning her eyes to the open pan of the desert before them. Of all the members of the team, she didn’t mind partnering up with Mason. He was a good kid. He was just clueless when it came to women and felt a compulsion to tell her every time he got his heart stomped. She guessed that he was hoping for some insight into women. She had little to offer.

  “Maybe you’re reading too much into it,” Lara said. “Give her some room. Maybe she feels smothered.”

  “I’m not smothering her. I just wanna hang out.”

  “You go overboard every time you meet a new girl, Mason. Don’t overshare. Leave some mystery for her to ponder.”

  Mason fired a look her way. “Mystery? I’m not some player, Lara. I’m honest and—”

  “Watch the road,” she interrupted. “By all means be honest. It’s just, you don’t have to move in with the girl on the second date, you know? Take it slow. Don’t give away all your power.”