A Hero in Her Eyes

by Marie Ferrarella

  The drive to Yuma was taxing, but they made good time. They drove as quickly as they could, exceeding speed limits when the road was open. To facilitate matters, and because Eliza felt they needed a base of operations should finding Allen take some time, she and Walker checked into a hotel as soon as they arrived in Yuma.

  “Will that be one room or two?” the clerk behind the registration desk asked.

  Walker spared Eliza a look, then made a judgment call. “One.” He raised his brow as he looked at her again. Maybe he had assumed too much. He didn’t want to pressure her. “Unless you’d rather—”

  “One’s fine,” she assured him. She knew she had only a limited amount of time to savor being with Walker and she was going to do exactly that.

  The bellhop who insisted on accompanying them to their room talked nonstop, wanting to know if they were on vacation and what had brought them to Yuma. Once inside, he deposited Eliza’s suitcase, opened the drapes, and gave all indications that he was going to become their own personal guide.

  Walker took out a twenty and held it out to him, making sure he was standing by the door when he did so. The bellhop took the cue and the money. Quiet was restored within the room.

  “Nice trick,” Eliza commented, kicking off her high heels.

  She did that whenever she planned to remain in a room. It was a habit she had, he noticed, surprised at the way he picked up on the small things that made her what she was, even at a time like this.

  “I learned a long time ago,” he told her, “that most annoyances and problems go away if you just throw money at them.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She’d never had much money to throw.

  Eliza sat down on the bed, pulling the telephone to her.

  He leaned against the bureau, watching her, too restless to sit. “Calling Redhawk?”

  She nodded, taking out the number Ben had given to Savannah.

  Graham Redhawk was waiting for her call. On the Phoenix police force, he had access to the Arizona police force’s infrastructure, and placed it all at Eliza’s disposal. Everyone in the department considered recovering a missing child safely the most rewarding experience of all.

  “Do you have a license number for the car?” he asked.

  She gave it to him, along with Allen’s driver’s license information. “I don’t know where his mother’s house is in Yuma,” she began.

  “No problem,” Graham assured her. “The answer’s just a phone call away.”

  Eliza paused for a moment. She didn’t know Redhawk and didn’t know how he might take her request. “The girl’s father and I need to check it out ourselves before anyone actually gets involved.”

  “That could prove to be pretty risky. You don’t know who you’re dealing with—”

  “But I do,” she interrupted. “I have an entire psychological profile on the man.” She knew Allen, she felt, probably better than his wife, certainly better than his great-uncle.

  “The real thing tends to be a lot more dangerous than something written down on a piece of paper, Ms. Eldridge,” Graham told her amicably.

  She understood his reasoning, but she had hers, as well. “We’re aware of that, which is why we want the police for backup. But I don’t want to stir up everyone on the outside chance that this doesn’t pan out.”

  “Understood. Why don’t you let me make a few preliminary phone calls,” Graham suggested, “and then I’ll get back to you.”

  It was a compromise. She agreed that they would wait in the hotel for Redhawk’s return call.

  When she hung up, she saw a look she couldn’t interpret in Walker’s eyes. “What?”

  The expression So near and yet so far had occurred to him more than once on the drive to Yuma, undermining his newfound faith. Hearing her just now only added to that uneasiness.

  “What did you mean just now, ‘on the outside chance that this doesn’t pan out’? I thought you were convinced you were right.”

  How did she put this without losing him? “I am convinced—but I’m also human.”

  His eyes narrowed. Was she going to go back on what she’d told him? “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, I’m fallible. Maybe I am interpreting this wrong, maybe I missed something. Maybe—” She blew out a breath, dragging her hand through her hair, feeling frustrated.

  “I would have thought that you’d built up more faith in yourself than this,” Walker said.

  “Ordinarily, so would I.” She shook her head, turning away. “Maybe I want this too much.” She pressed her lips together. “Sometimes I get in my own way.”

  He came up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I haven’t seen you trip yet.”

  Chapter 15

  “Are you sure this was his mother’s property?” Walker asked the tall, gregarious man who had led the way into the small, crammed house that smelled of death and neglect. The afternoon sun remained standing just outside the doorway, refusing to enter.

  The homicide police detective whom Graham Redhawk had gotten in contact with on the Yuma police force, Buddy Bear, was also a member in good standing of the Navajo tribe and a personal friend of Graham’s. He’d bent the rules slightly and accompanied them here, after having familiarized himself not with their case, but with the woman to whom the house was still deeded.

  “Still is, according to the country records, until the paperwork goes through. Maude Allen’s only living direct descendent is Wallace Allen, whereabouts presently unknown,” Buddy recited. He passed the Stetson he’d removed on entry from hand to hand. “There’re some distant cousins and such, but nobody seems to know where they are, either. If Maude’s friend hadn’t come looking for her, no telling how long that poor lady would have gone undiscovered, lying in her bed like that.”

  Walker looked around, his frustration mounting. He realized that Eliza wasn’t in the living room with them. “Eliza?”

  “In here.”

  Her voice was coming from the rear of the small house. Hoping she’d discovered something, Walker made his way to the back. He found her in the bedroom, her hands on the sheets where, a little more than a week ago, Maude Allen had been discovered.

  A feeling of discord had met her when they’d walked into the living room, but as far as Eliza could determine, it didn’t seem to reach into this room.

  Eliza looked at Walker as he entered. “She died peacefully,” she murmured. “In her sleep.”

  He knew it was callous of him, but right now he wasn’t interested in the passing of a woman he didn’t know, only in the whereabouts of her son. The son who was holding his daughter prisoner.

  “Where is he, Eliza? Has he been here?”

  She shook her head, answering his last question first. “No.”

  “Neighbor said she hadn’t seen the son around for over two years,” Buddy informed them. “Not since the little girl died.”

  Walker felt the knife rake across his heart. He looked at the other man sharply. “What little girl?”

  “The granddaughter.” The detective looked over toward the opposite wall where a massive bureau stood. It appeared completely out of place in the room full of cheap furniture. “Mousy little thing, like her mother.” He crossed to the bureau where dust and photographs dressed in dime-store wooden frames had collected. “This is her.” He held up a photograph, obviously taken in front of the house. It represented three generations of Allen women. “One sadder looking than the last, if you ask me.”

  Eliza took the frame from him and looked at the child. She appeared to be the same age and general coloring as Bonnie had been at the time of her kidnapping. But the police detective was right; there was a sadness to the little girl, a sadness that wasn’t evident in any of the photographs she’d seen of Bonnie.

  She handed the frame to Walker. “What happened to the little girl?” she asked Buddy.

  “We never did get the straight of it,” he confessed. “Girl’s father claimed he woke up one morning to find her in her bed, not b
reathing. Said she’d taken a bad fall from the swing the day before.”

  Eliza could see that the detective had his doubts about the truth of the story. He was moving his fingers around the edge of his hat again.

  “They buried her before anyone even knew she was dead. I came around to ask him a few questions, but he was already gone. Took off with his wife. Maude wouldn’t say anything against him.”

  Walker’s frown deepened. He didn’t like the sound of this. If Allen had killed his own little girl for some reason, how would the man treat Bonnie? He’d allowed himself to be placated by the thought that whoever had taken her was desperate to replace a lost child and therefore would love his daughter and treat her well. But if they’d killed the first child, then Bonnie could be in imminent danger.

  “Did you exhume the body?” Walker asked.

  Buddy shook his head. “Maude said he had the little girl cremated.”

  Eliza shivered, running her hands over her arms. The image of a little girl being lowered into a grave ricocheted through her brain. The room darkened even more, finally disappearing altogether.

  She heard Wallace yelling.

  “Damn it, I ain’t drunk no more. Let me outta this place. Get my wife to bail me out and get me outta here, you hear me?”

  “Eliza?”

  The scene broke apart into a million pieces. Blinking, she focused as light began filling in the spaces. She saw the concerned look on Walker’s face. Eliza took a deep breath to steady herself.

  “Allen’s in jail. Or was. I’m not sure.” She looked at Walker apologetically, wishing she could be more help. “But he hasn’t gotten here yet.”

  “In jail?” The first thing he thought of was Bonnie. Had Allen harmed her? Was she all right? “Why? What’s he done?”

  Steepling her fingers before her, Eliza covered her face with her hands, trying to summon a thought, a feeling. Something. Only fragments came.

  “Drunk and disorderly. A fight.” She looked at Walker. “I don’t know where or with whom, but it isn’t anything major.”

  He wasn’t satisfied. Walker gripped her wrist. “And Bonnie?”

  “Nothing.” She saw the stricken look on his face. “No, that’s good. If anything had happened to her, I would have felt it.”

  Nerves frayed, exhausted from the emotional roller coaster he kept boarding, only to be disappointed at the end of each ride, he challenged her. “How do you know that? How do you know for sure? You said yourself that your ‘channels’ are down most of the time.”

  She knew his anger wasn’t really directed at her, but it stung, anyway. “I just know. I can’t put it any plainer than that, not even for myself. I just know.”

  Eliza became aware that the tall police detective had been silently taking in this exchange. She flushed. “I—”

  Buddy held up a hand. “No need to explain. Gray told me all about it. I grew up listening to the elders repeat legends about people like you.”

  She ran a hand through her hair, feeling just as frustrated as Walker. “I’m not exactly the stuff that legends are made of.”

  It was suddenly too close for her in the small bedroom. The walls felt as if they were closing in. Eliza walked out, searching for something that might trigger another connection for her.

  But nothing came.

  Turning on her heel, she discovered that Buddy had followed her.

  “Can you put out an APB on Allen’s car? He is a kidnapping suspect,” she added, in case there was some argument against doing so.

  Buddy hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans. “We can’t do it officially because of some legal red tape about initial jurisdiction, but let me put some feelers out and see what I can do.” Taking out his cell phone, he turned away to make his calls.

  “And in the meantime, we wait,” Walker said in disgust, coming up behind her.

  She could feel his frustration. “There isn’t anything else we can do.”

  She was right and he knew it. Knew that he was being unfair to her, that she was doing everything she could. That she had managed to get him farther than the FBI had when they were handling the case.

  He didn’t do apologies well, but she deserved one. “Look, I’m sorry I lost it back there. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

  All it took was one “I’m sorry” and the hurt feelings melted away. She didn’t want him to dwell on it. “Don’t worry about it. Like I told you, that kind of thing doesn’t faze me. My father was a lot better at it than you in his day.”

  “Who did he take things out on?” He placed his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to look at him. “You?”

  She shrugged. She shouldn’t have said anything. All it did was dig things up that were best left alone. “It was hard on him, having a spook for a daughter. And I don’t think he ever really forgave himself for not believing me.”

  The two didn’t seem to go together. “Forgave himself?”

  She didn’t like retelling the story, didn’t like reliving it. But Walker needed to be comforted and distracted, so, for his sake, she opened up old wounds that had never managed to heal.

  Eliza stared straight ahead at the peeling wallpaper in the faded living room. “I had a premonition about my mother’s death. Actually, I guess it was a vision.” The label didn’t matter. The result was the same. “I saw her at home, choking on an almond she’d accidentally inhaled. My father and I were away from the house at the time, getting something from the hardware store—my mother had made him take me with him, hoping that spending time together might make him feel closer to me.”

  If only she’d known before she left, she would never have gone. But she couldn’t control things like that. They controlled her.

  “I knew something was wrong even before the vision actually came. I pleaded with my father to hurry back, that she was choking, but he got so angry at me for making a scene that he hit me. Not hard,” she added quickly, seeing the look on Walker’s face. “He just didn’t know how to make me stop. He finally left everything in the store and took me home, saying my mother would know what to do with me. When we got there, she was dead. He went all to pieces.” She looked at Walker, her expression softening. “He really did love her a great deal. It was hard for him to look at me after that.”

  He wanted to hold her, but he wasn’t sure if he should. “But you’d tried to get him to go home.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. And looking at me reminded him that he hadn’t listened. That if he had…” There was no point in repeating the obvious. The past couldn’t be changed no matter how often it was relived in memory. “Like I said, you’re a piker.”

  “Good news,” Buddy told them, pocketing his phone as he came back into the room. “The car was already spotted. A car matching the description you gave us was used in a getaway after a convenience store robbery. Someone got a partial number plate down—the numbers match Allen’s Mustang.”

  Walker didn’t see it as good news. “If he robbed a store, he could go anywhere.”

  “He’ll come here.” With each word Eliza uttered, she felt more certain. “It’s his home base. He doesn’t think anyone knows who he is or where he’s from. He’ll come here,” she repeated with certainty. “Where and when did the robbery occur?”

  “An hour ago,” Buddy told her. “Just outside of Carson City.”

  “Carson City.” The details jibed. She did a quick calculation in her head. “That means, unless he drives straight through, he’ll probably be here in the morning.”

  Buddy glanced at his watch. It was three in the afternoon now. “I get off duty at eight. I can be here within the half-hour, watch the house. I’ll give you a call if Allen shows up.”

  “Oh, he’ll show all right,” Eliza promised him.

  The police detective seemed to be forgetting one thing, Walker thought. He was the father. “Shouldn’t we be the ones—?”

  The look on the other man’s face was understanding and, he was soft-spoken as he made his p
oint. “If I do it, it’s unofficial police business. If you do it and anyone sees you, it could be taken as stalking, or harassment—” He directed his attention toward Eliza. “In case you’re wrong.”

  “She’s not wrong.”

  The certainty in Walker’s voice had Eliza looking at him in surprise. The fence he’d been sitting on had come down. For a moment, she was speechless.

  “Okay, then keep your phones open.” Buddy led the way out of the house, shutting the door behind Eliza. The lock clicked into place. “I’ll be calling you. For now, why don’t the two of you go back to the hotel and get something to eat? Rest if you can.”

  Eliza exchanged looks with Walker. They were both thinking the same thing: Easier said than done.

  “I think we’ll just stick around in the vicinity, in case Allen makes better time than we anticipate,” Walker told him.

  The detective began to protest, then thought better of it. “Fair enough. Anyone asks, you never said anything to me. I’ll be back by eight-thirty.”

  “I never realized sitting in one place could be so tiring.” Walking into the hotel room five hours later, Walker dropped the entry card onto the bureau. Every bone in his body felt stiff.

  “It’s not the sitting, it’s the anticipating that does it.”

  Following him in, Eliza rotated her shoulders as she spoke. She took out her cell phone, placed it on the bureau in plain sight. If Buddy called, she didn’t want to waste precious seconds hunting for it in her purse.

  Empathy had her touching Walker’s shoulder. He was going through hell, and there was nothing she could do to shorten his stint. “It’ll be over soon.”

  He covered her hand with his own, knowing she only meant to comfort him. There was still part of him that doubted, part of him that felt he was forever doomed to this limbo he’d already resided in for two endless years. Bringing her hand to his lips, he kissed it.

  “I just want you to know that if it’s not, I don’t blame you.”