Flight 12: A Novella

by J. Carson Black

  He shrugged. “Up to you,” he said, “But it’s a long drive.”

  As she walked out to her vehicle, he called out behind her, “Do you still have Jake?”

  “Yes, I do.” The sun was in her eyes. She shaded them with one hand. “Why? Do you want him back?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “No way. I don’t want anything to do with that time.”

  He turned and went back inside the house.

  7

  Payton Hatcher lived in Winterhaven, a Tucson neighborhood built in the 1940s, known for its Christmas lights and decorations. Every year, one lane of Fort Lowell Road was rerouted into the neighborhood, off-duty cops in iridescent orange vests waving light wands and shepherding cars through. The lights and decorative displays were spectacular and elaborate. Visitors could drive or walk through, and until recently, they could even ride in a horse-drawn wagon.

  In another two weeks Winterhaven would start up again for the holiday, but now it was just a quiet neighborhood populated by red brick ranches and giant Aleppo pines. The kind of house the Cleavers in Leave it to Beaver would live in, only in color instead of in black and white.

  Payton didn’t actually live in one of the rambling post World War II houses. She lived in a guest house toward the back—a converted garage at the end of a concrete driveway.

  Yellow crime scene tape was the only decoration in evidence.

  Anthony checked the main house, but no one answered. He chinned toward the house on the other side, indicating he would talk to the resident there.

  Laura used her phone to photograph the two strips of concrete drive, the garage, and the house. She started out with a wider area, and circled her way in. Noting the wires and a DirecTV dish on the roof—apparently, Payton had television.

  A Crown Vic pulled up and a Pima County Sheriff’s detective rolled out. Laura was to meet him here: Gary Wiese. She had worked with him once before, and had pegged him as lazy; the kind who cut corners. He took his time walking over, every line of his body telling them he was perfectly happy to let DPS do the legwork.

  His first words said it all. “You need me here? If you want to be primary on this case, fine with me.”

  “Jesus,” Anthony muttered behind her.

  Laura said, “Can you give us a rundown on what you guys have done?”

  “Secured the scene last night. That’s what you asked for. I see the tape’s still up.”

  Laura realized it wasn’t that he was lazy. He was passive-aggressive. He might want the case, but not if it meant being a DPS lackey.

  “Let’s take a look and see what we’ve got,” Laura said.

  He fell into line with them without a word.

  Anthony had called the family who owned the apartment earlier in the day—they were out of the country, but gave them permission to enter the premises. The crime scene tape sealed the little house and ran to the property wall on one side and the main house on the right. The tape encompassed the area up to the street, from tree to tree.

  “You think we should widen the area?” Anthony asked.

  Wiese just folded his arms and looked from one to the other.

  Laura said, “I think we’re okay. This isn’t even a secondary crime scene.”

  All of them gloved up. Laura broke the seal on the door and they entered.

  It wasn’t a big place. Someone had built in a tiny kitchen, no bigger than you’d find in a travel trailer. There was a twin bed in one corner, and a nice little hooked rug on the linoleum floor, and a small bath.

  Wiese said, “According to the people who own the house and garage, they rented out their garage to Payton after their son moved out. Mr. and Mrs. Gates are on a trip to New Zealand and Australia and won’t be back for another couple of weeks. Gates told me they converted the garage into an apartment for their son, but that was probably ten years ago.”

  The bathroom was tiny and the shower was little more than a postage stamp. Everything was scaled down, except for a makeshift bookshelf—planks and bricks. Lots of books, most of them on relationships and work-related—like a massive tome called Create Your Own Job.

  Artwork covered the walls—all water colors, all Tucson-themed, all of them bright in color. Deep reds, deep greens, bright yellows, and a blue that would give you a headache. Laura leaned to look at the signature on one: “Payton.”

  “How old was she? Late twenties? It looks like a college student’s place,” Anthony said.

  They looked through her possessions, which consisted mostly of clothing and jewelry, equally divided between athletic and casual clothing. Some night-on-the-town stuff—flowing tops in colors that had no business going together, yellow ochre and bright turquoise and gouge-your-eyes-out pink. Feathered and beaded earrings, chokers, and shoes. Some of the shoes looked like torture devices.

  “Ross Dress for Less,” Anthony said.

  A few file folders were held upright by a brick in the bottom of a bookshelf. Laura looked through them. Taxes, bills, a file with the bill of sale and loan papers for the 2011 Honda Accord, including the brochure.

  According to what the landlord had told Wiese, Payton was employed by Big 5 Sporting Goods.

  Wiese left early, grumbling about his caseload. He was happy enough to sign the evidence over to the DPS lab, which was new and state-of-the-art.

  “Asshole,” Anthony said after he left.

  There was not a lot of written correspondence, but Laura did find a physical address book. Steve Lawson’s phone number and address had been entered in Payton’s tiny crabbed print. Laura bagged the address book along with her records, files, and some older photo albums.

  They also bagged Payton’s Toshiba laptop. Forensics would be able to access the files, but at the moment it was password protected.

  “Maybe they’ll get to it in a couple of years,” Anthony said.

  The answers would come from the computer and the phone.

  Everything had changed drastically in recent years, what with social media. These days, most people were an open book. They shared on Facebook and Twitter, and a large percentage of the population was tied to their mobile devices every minute of the day. There was no mystery about them. You knew who their friends were, you knew where they lived, you knew how many pets they had, you knew their political leanings, their hobbies, and their sports teams.

  This made it both easier and harder. Cops these days were inundated by a tidal wave of information. If ever there was a need for triage, this was the time. You could very easily end up bolting down a rabbit hole and never find anything remotely helpful.

  Or—you could strike gold.

  Laura stuck with the book shelf while Anthony went through the bathroom. “What about this?” Anthony appeared in the doorway from the bedroom, holding up a digital picture frame in one gloved hand.

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “In the bathroom, on the sink.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  He set it on the bookshelf and they watched the pictures shift like a tiny movie screen, one photo to another. There were old photos of her as a child. Riding a horse, high school band, hanging with her friends. Recent photos, too. The used car she bought—a big smile wreathing her face. Friends at a party. The photo shifted again and Laura found herself looking at the same scene she’d seen last night.

  Laura paused the device. “You know that place?”

  “I know a pine tree when I see one. The cabin—I saw it on the news. Steve Lawson. Got off on a technicality, didn’t he?”

  “It wasn’t much of a case—a cold case,” Laura said. “A little girl named Jenny Carmichael had been missing for nine years. All they had was his confession. There was no evidence tying him to the crime, no witnesses, no way to link him at all.”

  “She was buried on his property.”

  “Yeah, but anyone could have buried her there. It was right near the road, and about equidistant from three cabins, including his.”

  “But he confessed.�
��

  “He had problems, real emotional problems. He retracted his confession and the lawyer made it look like he had some sort of personality disorder that made him take credit for stuff—some kind of complex.” Laura shrugged. The jury had acquitted—yesterday’s news.

  “Funny he should crop up again. With her being dead.”

  “Payton said he was a friend of hers.” Laura tried to remember exactly what Hatcher had said, but couldn’t. “Something about seeing me on a TV interview and she thought I would be . . . ” Laura shrugged. It was hard to grasp. The woman had kept it obscure. In fact, she’d been downright fuzzy. “But she said he was a friend of hers.”

  Laura stared at the cabin. It looked exactly the same as the cabin she’d gone to last night. It had the same pine needles on the roof, the same blank windows, the same FOR SALE sign planted in front of it. The windows dark and blank—no curtains. An empty house.

  In this photo the cabin was in the sun. Behind it were ponderosa pine boughs, dusty green against the deep blue sky. Their shadows dappled the roof.

  Anthony started the photographs scrolling again.

  “Stop!

  Anthony flicked the pause button.

  “What’s that look like to you?” Laura asked.

  “A selfie.”

  “Uh-huh. Where is that, anyway?”

  Laura saw people, tables in the sunshine and shadow, a building behind them—peeled pine log construction. But blotting out most of the background were two happy faces. Payton’s was one. And Steve Lawson’s was the other. “Looks like the new restaurant up in Summerhaven.”

  Laura punched in the number for Mike Sellis, who was in charge of the evidence locker. “Hey Mike,” she said. “Anthony and I are coming down to look at some evidence we sent in yesterday. It’s filed under “Payton Hatcher.”

  “So they were up on the mountain together,” Anthony said, as they drove across town. “But who knows how long ago that picture was taken? You said yourself that she told you they were friends.”

  “I know. She wanted me to contact him. She must have trusted him.”

  “Huh. A guy who killed a little girl, trustworthy?”

  “He was acquitted.”

  “They didn’t have enough for a trial, let alone a conviction—guy sure did lawyer up good. You testified. What do you think?”

  “Oh, he did it. He might not have been in his right mind—in fact I’m pretty sure he wasn’t—but he killed her.”

  “He told you the whole story, right?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. His lawyer almost blew a gasket.”

  At the time, Steve Lawson had thought confession was good for the soul. He’d changed his mind later.

  “So you think he’s a lady killer?”

  Laura thought about this. “I pegged him as a good guy, basically. He fooled me. The only way I could see that he fooled me was that he also fooled himself. I could have sworn he had a mental break. But now he’s . . . ” She fished around for the word. All she could come up with was: “Cold.”

  She told Anthony about her visit in Cascabel.

  Anthony whistled. “He’s hiding something.”

  “Yeah, but what? It could be nothing, although he sure didn’t think much of Payton Hatcher.”

  “That’s not against the law.”

  “No. But why would she send us to him?”

  “Maybe she wasn’t good at reading people. So what did you see that you wanna look at in Evidence?”

  “The directory on her phone listed the people she called the most. I’d like to know who ‘True Love’ is.”

  They didn’t even need to remove the phone from the plastic bag. Laura was able to scroll down the directory on Hatcher’s phone to “True Love.”

  Laura half-believed it would be Steve Lawson’s number. What she wanted—she wasn’t sure. If it was Lawson, Laura knew she would feel that satisfying click of a puzzle piece snapping into place—one more thing to send her toward the answer. Another part of her knew that it would shatter her last illusion about him.

  She tapped on the name “True Love” and put the phone on “speaker.”

  A canned voice said, “You have reached Desert Geological Institute. Please listen to the following choices as our directory has changed.”

  Laura listened. Three people were listed—she assumed they were geologists or had something to do with the institute’s administration.

  Not one of them was Steve Lawson.

  “Maybe Lawson’s choices have changed,” Anthony said.

  The Desert Geological Institute was located in a strip mall on Broadway near Tucson Boulevard.

  Correction: it had been located on Broadway near Tucson Boulevard in a strip mall. Now the plate glass windows were lined with brown paper and the tan façade above showed faint shadows where the letters once were. And those were unreadable.

  Laura had the number and tried again. No ringing came from inside the storefront. The answering machine kicked on and gave the same canned response.

  “Well that’s that,” Anthony said. “Moved?”

  Laura shrugged. “I wonder if it even exists anymore—if it ever did at all. Looks like this place has been out of business for a while.”

  “Try ‘directory.’ ”

  Laura did. She tried reverse directories, Tucson Chamber of Commerce, everything she could think of. Nothing.

  “It’s geology, though,” Anthony said. “That’s Lawson’s thing. How is that for a coincidence?”

  They went back to Payton’s place for one final sweep. Laura tried to approach it with new eyes.

  “What are we looking for again?” Anthony asked.

  “Something.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’ll come to me.”

  “Yeah, sure it will.”

  “Maybe she wrote stuff down.”

  “Like what, a diary?”

  Laura shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  They gloved up and looked around again. Anthony went through the bookshelf twice.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Nightstand,” Laura said.

  But there was nothing there. Not a notepad, or a notebook, or a journal.

  One last thing to try. “Give me a hand.” Laura lifted one end of the mattress and Anthony took the other. They pulled the mattress down onto the floor—

  “Bingo!” She picked up the book.

  It was clothbound, 6 inches by 4 inches, balloons on the cover, in every jellybean color. JOURNAL had been stamped into the cloth in gold.

  “How about that? Her deepest secrets!” Anthony said.

  “You know what women be like,” Laura replied.

  “Yeah, women be like, ‘I write everything down.”

  Laura sat on the bed’s box spring and opened the journal, Anthony peering over her shoulder. But he was tall and lanky and didn’t like to stoop, so after a few minutes of that he sat down beside her.

  Anthony said, “How old is she? Sixteen?”

  “The hearts are a little much.”

  “And the arrow is way over the top.”

  “This is bothering me,” she said. “It’s her secret diary.”

  “Her super-duper secret diary.”

  Laura remembered again why she hadn’t written a diary since she was a boot at the Academy. You never knew what might happen to you and who would read your most secret thoughts. She definitely didn’t want her laundry—dirty or otherwise—strewn all over the page for anyone to see. She’d stopped chronicling her life and her relationships a long time ago.

  Internalized it instead.

  Payton’s prose was breathless. It was also in block print—painstakingly small. She talked about other things, how broke she was, what kinds of jobs she was either interviewing for or had been passed over for, but mostly how she had finally met the right man—The One.

  The One warranted a new color ink—blue.

  Payton chronicled how they met (at the Community Fair in Cascabel last year—s
he’d gone with a girlfriend) and how their relationship grew (lots of lovemaking—she would drive out and stay with him for days on end) a trip to Cabo, how fine a lover he was, how terrible that he had been railroaded regarding that little girl’s death.

  Her lover was Steve Lawson.

  The newness of the relationship was plain to see. Laura had been there many times herself.

  Payton was rhapsodic. Every color was brighter. They went to the 4th Avenue Street Fair, then to dinner. Wine tastings. The theatre. Movies. Concerts. Flea markets. University of Arizona football games. They spent lazy days and romantic nights way out there in Cascabel, or drove up into the mountains and slept under the stars. He bought her jewelry and gave her greeting cards and celebrated her birthday. They had breakfast together and shared the newspaper. They kissed in the rain. They looked at the stars.

  She’d even sketched Steve Lawson in several poses.

  “Damn, she’s good,” Anthony said. “Was good.”

  Laura felt like a ghoul.

  Anthony said, “‘He’s such a considerate lover.’ Wow. Wonder if my wife ever said that about me.”

  “You’ll have to read her diary to find out.”

  “Diary? Shit, no. I’ll just go on Facebook. Girl has no secrets.”

  The diary went on and on, with long, overblown descriptions. Like the day they drove up to Mt. Lemmon to enjoy Rose Canyon Lake and later, their lunch in Summerhaven. She’d asked to see his cabin, the one that was still up for sale, and he’d driven her there.

  “That’s when they were there,” Laura said. The photos had been date-stamped, so there would be corroboration.

  “Let’s skip ahead,” Anthony said. “My wading boots are filling up.”

  Everything was great up to approximately four-fifths of the way through. Then, trouble in paradise.

  “This does not look good,” Anthony said.

  First came the doubts. The time he said he would drive to Tucson to see her and then called to say he couldn’t make it.

  A few weeks later, when she decided to surprise him in Cascabel, she described his annoyance with her in painful detail.