Flight 12: A Novella

by J. Carson Black

  No medical records at all.

  What was going on?

  It didn’t take Laura long to confirm that Payton Hatcher had indeed been hospitalized for cancer—she’d had melanoma, had been in remission for over a year, but it had metastasized to other organs.

  Laura remembered the girl as slender, not thin. She remembered that her skin was translucent and pale, as if she never went outdoors. She remembered the shadows under eyes. In fact, how big and beautiful her eyes were.

  But Laura had seen it as just the woman’s beauty.

  Laura had taken Payton Hatcher at face value, because that was how Payton had presented herself.

  And why had she presented herself in that light?

  Why did she mention Steve Lawson?

  Why did her diary make such a big deal of her unrequited love for Steve Lawson, when she was seeing the other man, the big man?

  Laura thought about the rosy scenarios, the breathless entries regarding Steve Lawson. And later, the rejection, the desperation, the need.

  Medical records missing.

  The neediness, the declarations of love and loss—

  Another man.

  Could the big guy be a friend? Her lover?

  Terminal cancer.

  It was beginning to feel like a setup.

  Laura and Anthony went through the diary.

  “Damn, she’s good,” Anthony said. “I’d hire her as a screenwriter, for sure.”

  “You’d hire someone?”

  “If I had the money, sure.” He looked again. “Look where she changes from blue ink to black.”

  Laura had to admit it was pretty smooth.

  “Kind of nice—just a journal with lines to write in. No dates stamped in the book, so she writes in her own dates. What d’ya think she just wrote in whatever date she felt like? You think she set him up?”

  “Looks like.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  Laura said nothing, because what she was thinking was ridiculous.

  Anthony said, “What I’m thinking, I couldn’t put in a screenplay. It’s just that much crazy.”

  Laura said, “Let’s just go down that road for a minute, pretend it’s the most crazy, outlandish screenplay you ever wrote. There’ve been some dumb ones, right?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “So what if she wanted revenge against Steve Lawson?”

  “Revenge?”

  “Yeah. She was dying anyway.”

  “We don’t know if she wouldn’t beat it.”

  “Okay, we’ll factor that in. Do you believe the stuff she wrote about him? Just tell me, yes or no.”

  He didn’t have to think about it. “No.”

  Laura gave herself a similar gut check.

  “This is crazy,” Anthony was saying. “Why would she set him up like that? Write all that bullshit about how much she loved him? What kind of mind would do something like that?”

  “A creative one?”

  “But why?”

  “Maybe they had a history.”

  It was a place to start.

  The best person to answer that question would be Steve Lawson, but he was gone. Laura tried his cell, and surprisingly, got an answer. “You picked up,” she said.

  “What do you want, Detective? If it’s about Payton, I have nothing else to say.”

  “What if I told you there is another suspect?”

  “Why would I believe you?”

  “Because I have never lied to you. Can you tell me where you are?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  A woman’s voice.

  “Is it the woman we met at your place?”

  “Not applicable.”

  Laura said, “I want to know if you met any of Payton’s friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “Did she mention anyone to you? Someone she was close to?”

  Another pause. Laura could hear voices in the background. He could be anywhere. Maybe he was in Mexico. “Mr. Lawson?”

  “Why are you asking me this? I thought I was the chief suspect.”

  “Mr. Lawson, please—”

  “You asked me a question and now I have a question for you. Did you plant that gun in my feed shed?”

  “No.”

  “No? Are you sure this isn’t some vigilante justice for . . . for what happened at my cabin?”

  Jenny Carmichael’s death.

  Laura said, “You were acquitted by a jury of your peers. This is another subject. The woman you were with, is she with you?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Laura had no answer for that.

  “Since you asked, no. She went back to Dan Sprecher.”

  “Who’s Dan Sprecher?”

  “He’s my former partner.”

  “Oh?”

  “Our business—the Desert Geological Institute. Apparently he’s still a better catch than me, despite the way he treated her.”

  He sounded bitter, and she didn’t blame him. “Look,” Laura said. “I could use your help. Since you knew—”

  “Have you listened to a word I said? I just lost the woman I love, and you were instrumental in making that happen! She was scared of me! She thought I was a killer! If I could sue you, I would.”

  Laura ignored that. He was a killer. He had killed Jenny Carmichael. “So you think somebody set you up.”

  “Yes, and thank you for that.”

  “Not me. Payton. Payton set you up.”

  “How? Just how did she do that?” Laura heard the surprise in his voice.

  “She had someone shoot her, and that person planted the gun he used in your feed bin.”

  Lawson was silent.

  It sounded outlandish. But Laura persisted, because she believed it. “They set you up. Payton and someone else. Did you ever meet any of her friends? Can you remember?”

  Lawson said nothing.

  “Payton needed help,” Laura said. “She had cancer. She wanted to kill you for some reason. Why?”

  “I never met her before we started seeing each other.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever meet her family?”

  “She said she had no family here. She said she was a transplant.”

  “Her friends?”

  “What is this? I don’t know, I might have. I can’t remember.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  “I don’t know! California, maybe. What are you getting at?”

  “So you never met any of her friends?”

  “I met her at a bar one night downtown. She was talking to some guy. She didn’t introduce us. When he saw me, he left.”

  “You didn’t ask who he was?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was big. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”

  “What things?”

  “It’s none of your business, unless you have something to charge me with. But I’ll tell you anyway. I am going on a trip—a long one.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes, business.”

  “If you’re —”

  He disconnected.

  Almost immediately, her phone buzzed. It was Anthony. “Hey, I’m on my way in. I spent some time on the phone this morning and guess what I found?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I found out where Payton Hatcher went to school. White Tank Elementary.”

  “Here in town?” Laura asked. “I thought she was a transplant.”

  “Apparently not.”

  Laura said, “White Tank Elementary. Why does that sound so familiar?”

  “White Tank Elementary is the school Jenny Carmichael went to. They were best friends.”

  Payton Hatcher lived two doors down from her best friend, Jenny Carmichael. This was before Jenny’s parents moved to another district. But in second and third grade, they were inseparable. Payton Hatcher’s best friend d
isappeared when they were nine years old.

  Nine years later, her body was discovered, buried in a shallow grave not a stone’s throw from Steve Lawson’s cabin.

  Laura was betting that Payton never forgot her best friend. Never forgot the pain she’d experienced when her friend disappeared, and was presumed dead. Like everyone else, she knew about Steve Lawson’s part in her friend’s disappearance.

  Then Lawson was arrested, tried—

  And acquitted.

  What would that do to Payton Hatcher?

  Anthony took off early—it was his wife’s birthday. Laura remained in the squad bay, trying to put together the rest of the puzzle. She went out and picked up an Italian sub and a Dasani water from Jimmy John’s, and went back in to her desk. Sometimes being at her desk, with another shift working around her, helped her think. Laura didn’t know why that was. She was the kind of kid who grew up with the television on—white noise. She hardly ever watched television, but she often had it on in the background. Being here meant she was working, even if all she was doing was doodling on paper and surfing the net, waiting for that one piece to come.

  Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.

  It was going on eleven p.m. and she was about ready to pack it up when it came to her.

  Or rather, Frank came to her.

  Most of the homicide detectives were out on cases or had gone home. There was just Jim Schaeffer on the other side of the room, kicked back on the phone working a case. Laura knew it was a bad one—a woman who starved a four-year-old child to death. The neighbors, the family, didn’t know about it. No one even knew she had a child. Jim suspected that was what happened, but was getting virtually no cooperation from the family.

  Laura hated homicides involving children. Like Jenny Carmichael.

  Jenny’s death had scarred her.

  She sneezed—the sub had jalapenos on it—and that was when she became aware of Frank Entwistle, sitting by her desk.

  He was less substantial than usual. She could see the other desks and the bank of fluorescents and computers right through him. He smelled like spiced meatballs and, of course, gin.

  “Don’t know why you summoned me up, Kiddo.” His eyes were bleary, his nose like a cauliflower. He wore a blue dress shirt frayed at the cuffs and the Sansabelts. This time they were peat moss brown—tenting up in his lap, as usual. Not because there was anything sexual going on. She could not imagine Frank having sex, except he did have a wife—er, widow.

  Laura realized her mind was wandering big time.

  “What do you know?” he asked her.

  Laura ran it down for him. She mumbled, pretending to look at the screen, like she was Skyping, hoping Jim wouldn’t look up and see her talking to herself.

  Frank’s voice sounded in her ear. “Payton had an accomplice. So the question is, who was the guy?”

  And it came to her like that. The conversation with Bill Hart, the detective in the restaurant in Pinetop.

  “He was a big guy,” Laura said. “That’s what Bill said. He said, ‘the big guy was Jenny Carmichael’s step brother.’ ”

  “Looks like you’re good to go.” Frank Entwistle flicked an ash onto the floor of the squad bay. “Gotta go, Kiddo,” he said, “Nice enough digs, but it ain’t got the ambiance the old place had.”

  And he melted away.

  11

  Laura and Anthony drove out to the scene of Payton Hatcher’s death. It was another nice day on the mountain, the tree shadows deep and dark and the sun glistening on the grass. Diamonds of broken glass—all that was left from the two wrecks—winked in the sun.

  “I don’t know why we came up here,” Anthony said. “Other than it’s a nice day. There’s nothing left to look at. We diagrammed the scene and that gave us nothing.”

  He was right. There had been rain, even snow, and new grass springing up. Not that many people drove this way, but tire marks left on the road that day would have been obliterated by now.

  “Let’s drive down a ways,” Laura said.

  “What are we looking for again?”

  “Beats me.” But she’d know it when she saw it.

  They followed the road as it snaked downwards. Two point six miles down, there was a pullout on the right. Just a spot to park a vehicle. Tire ruts in old dry mud, most of it under a mat of pine needles.

  Laura had seen it before, had photographed it before.

  But now she’d been actively looking for it, at every bend in the road.

  “What do you think?” she said, as they parked a little further up and walked down to the pullout.

  The pullout was just a short single lane, two car lengths long, diverging from the road and screened from view by tall grass, bushes, and the stand of pines. Right now the pullout was deep in shadow.

  “You mean he parked his vehicle here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So he shoots her, then he hightails it down the road to pick up his car. Right?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Then he backs out, drives down to Oracle, and he’s gone.”

  “Jeff Carmichael?”

  “No,” Laura said. “His name is Jeff Owen. He kept his late father’s name.”

  “Owen. Huh.”

  “That’s what Bill Hart said.” Her counterpart in Pinetop had given her the last-known domicile for Owen.

  “You get a lot done late at night,” Anthony said.

  They spent a lot of time in the little pullout in the mountain glade, photographing tire marks (even though there were several different ones, overlapping) and looking for anything. A candy wrapper, a cigarette, anything.

  But there was nothing.

  “All we’ve got is conjecture,” Anthony said.

  “I know.” Laura squinted up through the pines into the blue sky. Hoping to find something.

  But there was nothing.

  They talked to the sheriff’s deputy who knew the area, and also to one of the rangers who regularly drove up the backside of the mountain.

  “Seen plenty of cars and trucks there,” the Ranger, Sam Matheson, told them.

  “What kind were they, usually?”

  “Four wheel drive. Trucks, SUVs. Not a whole lot of cars.”

  Laura had a photo of the kind of vehicle the Gates had described. A white GMC truck with an extended cab.

  “I’ve seen a lot of those. All over. I can’t say for sure I saw that particular one down there.”

  Walking back to the car, Anthony said. “What now?”

  “You think a visit to Jeff Owen would be a good idea?”

  Anthony shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  But he was wrong about that.

  Jeff Owen worked at his father’s used appliances store, Old Pueblo Appliances, on West Grant Road.

  The storefront took up an old strip mall—two small storefronts. It wasn’t all that different from the strip mall store front for The Desert Geology Institute, except there were a couple of older washing machines and refrigerators out front—one of those old tub wringers, painted Pepto-Bismol pink, and a round-shouldered refrigerator from the Fifties painted a startling turquoise.

  “Cool,” Anthony said. “Weird how those colors go together.”

  Pansies and petunias grew out of the washtub.

  They pushed through the door and a bell rang up top.

  Laura had already found a couple of photos of Jeff Owen, Jenny Carmichael’s stepbrother. One, a mugshot when he was a teenager and had been caught vandalizing an abandoned building, and his high school graduation picture. He looked pretty much the same, except that he’d shaved his head. He still had the same wispy ginger mustache and beard and gigantic arms, but now he sported face jewelry that glinted under the overhead lights. He was massive. His thick arms poked out of a navy tee—the sleeves shorn.

  “Help you?” he asked in a soft Arizona tenor.

  Laura thought the tongue stud was a nice touch.

  Despite all the hardware, he looked mild. Not
tough military at all. Maybe it was all the fat. Young fat, packaged in soft tan—his arms reminded her of Oscar Mayer wieners.

  But as simple as he looked, Laura could feel a dissonant vibe. There was something going on beneath the mild face and soft voice.

  Maybe it was his eyes. They seemed fixed in his head. She let her arms drop to her sides, inching her right hand back to the grip of her SIG. She caught Anthony’s nod to her left—he wanted her to speak.

  Laura had a way of calming people down—something in her demeanor or the idea that a woman wasn’t as dangerous.

  “Mr. Owen?” she said. “We’re with the Department of Public Safety and we’d like to ask you about a friend of yours, Payton Hatcher.”

  He swiped at his nose, which made Laura flinch. He’d run his hand right across one of those fish hooks.

  Then he coughed. “Payton?”

  Dang, he sounded dumb. Either that, or he was playing dumb.

  “Yes, Payton Hatcher. Did you know her?”

  “Uh, yes. I did—she was good peeps. Heard somebody shot her, like a road rage thing, right? . . . Is that true?”

  Laura nodded gravely. “We’re talking to people who might have known her, to see if they can shed light on what happened to her. Did you know her well?”

  Again with the swiping of his nose. Maybe he had allergies. “Um, not really. Used to hang with her older brother. He was KIA in Afghanistan a long time ago, so I, um, haven’t talked to her for a while. Didn’t talk to her. I was shocked when I heard she died.”

  “Were you aware she had cancer?”

  “Uh, no.” He looked confused.

  The phone rang.

  “Hey, can you let me take this? It’s one of our suppliers.” He took the phone outside with him.

  Laura and Anthony waited for a minute or so, looked at each other, and went out to see where he was.

  Anthony whistled. “Wow, looks like a village, if you could make a village out of washing machines and refrigerators.”

  There had to be one to two acres of old appliances outside, in rows, like cars in a junkyard.

  The big kid was walking to a building made of metal siding, all the while jabbering on the phone.