Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (38 page)

Hiking clothes on a chair. Medium-expensive, she thought.

No Samsung Galaxy S III phone.

They would subpoena Sean Perrin’s phone records, which would give them access to every call he made or received. Even if the killer removed the SIM card or turned the GPS off and the phone was lying in a landfill somewhere, the calls would still be listed up to that point. They might not find everything, but it was a good place to start.

Anthony had already put a call in to the Las Vegas Metro PD to get the ball rolling. It would take a few days, but they would get the information in the long run.

Three framed photographs sat on a side table; a beautiful woman and two beautiful children.

Absolutely beautiful children. A stunning woman. Model-stunning. They could have been in Lands' End ads.

The photos were sunny. The faces were happy. Healthy. Scrubbed faces, American as Madison Avenue could make them. But they still looked like real people.

He’d caught them unawares, almost. Like he’d said, “Hey! Look here!” and his wife had turned to look at him. A quick smile.

The kids on the grass, watching ducks in a lake. Beautiful, beautiful kids. A boy and a girl.

Sean Perrin had quite a family, and quite a resume. Special Forces. Financial consultant. Whistleblower.

Maybe that was the key. He’d crossed the wrong person and now he was on the run.

He’d told Barbara Sheehey that he was married to a Ford model from LA. He’d told Cody Sheehey he had an estranged sister in Tucson.

His car was a rental.

Lots of undercurrents there. Lots of things that stood out, and piqued her interest.

Laura thought he’d been sitting in his car in the hours between eight and eleven, although she’d need confirmation on that from the M.E. She thought he was there after dark, because it would be more likely no one else would be there.

He’d sat there in the car and for some reason, closed his eyes. And then someone came along and shot him execution-style.

Laura said to the empty room, “Whoever you were running from, looks like they caught you.”

CHAPTER SIX
The Canvass

Fresh from his helicopter adventure, Anthony joined Laura at the cabin. Laura stood back and watched him look at the contents of the room. She wanted to see what caught his eye.

He went for the luggage.

“Nice clothes. Not too expensive, but nice.” He looked at Tess. “His watch was a knockoff made to look expensive. You know where he worked?”

“Mrs. Sheehey’s son, Cody, said he was a financial advisor.”

“In Vegas?” He answered for himself. “Probably. You want me to do that part? See where he worked and what was going on with him?”

Laura knew he liked that aspect of police work best. Back at the squad bay, kicked back in his swiveling chair, on the phone. Romancing people into telling him their darkest secrets.

“He has a sister in Tucson,” Laura said. “Apparently they’re estranged. We’re gonna have to run her down, too.”

Anthony had his phone out, checked it. “Shoot, no cell phone service.” He pocketed his phone. “I’ll go back to the farm and see what I can find. Insurance card, stuff he had to enter for Enterprise.”

“Why’d he rent a car?” Laura asked. “Why not drive his own?”

“Got me. You want me to help you here?”

“I’ve got it covered.” She believed in people doing what they did best. Anthony was good at everything, but he excelled at data collecting and doing his legwork back at the squad bay. She suspected that in down times, he was coming up with movie pitches and treatment ideas, but he was the best talker she’d ever seen on the phone. He could tease answers out of anybody. In person, though, he came off as overbearing. He towered over people, and some folks—most of them older—were intimidated by his bald head. This, she knew, was the reason he often adopted a porkpie hat. It made him look slightly goofy, but it took away the edge.

Just then tires crunched on gravel.

They went to the open doorway. A young woman dressed in skimpy running shorts and a clingy top emerged from a metallic yellow Ford Focus hatchback. She bent gracefully into the back for a bag of groceries, and stepped up onto the low porch to her cabin.

Anthony said, “On second thought, maybe I should stick around and give you a hand.”

Her name was Madison Neville.

Laura couldn’t ever remember looking that good. She felt a moment of regret, and then layered it over with her sterling career as a homicide detective, her superior sharpshooting skills, her interrogation chops, and her fiancé of three-and-a-half years.

Anthony stood back from the girl, porkpie hat cocked over one eye, looking casual, but Laura could tell he was in love.

“Sean? He’s dead? Really?” Madison asked after setting her groceries down on the small table in the pocket kitchenette. She stared at them both, her eyes like amethyst jewels.

“Did you know him to talk to?” Laura asked her.

“Yeah. I thought he was pretty nice.” From the look on her face, she might as well have said, “for an old guy.”

Embarrassed that they might think there was anything romantic between this twenty-something girl and a forty-three-year-old man?

At the age of thirty-seven, forty-three didn’t seem as old to Laura as it used to.

Madison offered them fruit juice—a weird concoction of papaya, grapefruit, and blueberry, and they sat outside on the porch.

Anthony took one sip and blanched. He swallowed a couple of times, then regarded Madison from under the camouflage of his cocked porkpie hat. “So what was your impression of him?”

“He was okay.” She rested her chin on her hand, supported both by leaning forward, elbow on her knee.

Anthony shifted nervously. Trying not to eat up those perfect thighs, knees and calves with a spoon.

“But,” Madison said, swiping at a gold sheaf of hair. “He was always trying to impress me.”

No doubt
.

“How did he try to impress you?”

“Oh, lots of ways. Like his job.”

“What kind of job?”

“He told me about some of the missions when he was on the Las Vegas Police SWAT Team.”

“SWAT? He was on SWAT?”

“Uh-huh. The guys that wear body armor and break down doors and stuff, like that? He was telling me about breaking down the door of a known felon, some guy who was mobbed up. I’m not real clear on it except that it sounded really hairy. Violent stuff like you’d see on NCIS.”

“This was in Las Vegas? As in Las Vegas Metropolitan PD?”

“Uh-huh.”

Anthony rose to his feet and walked outside, looking at his phone. She saw his thumbs moving, so he must have bars.

“So this was some guy with organized crime?”

“He was mobbed up. A really big name. Lorenzo or something like that. Why? Do you think that’s what happened to Sean? The mob got to him?”

“We’re just at the beginning here,” Laura said. “All we’re doing right now is collecting information.” She glanced out the window at Anthony, who had his phone to his ear. He was pacing, talking.

“How long ago was this?”

“He said it was years ago. He said it was a tough job, that his wife at the time didn’t like it. And I guess, who’d blame her? He said he never knew when he left the house if he’d be coming home, and she couldn’t stand it. So at one point, he said, he just walked away. To save his marriage. I think it was after he was shot.”

“Shot? Where was he shot? What part of his body?”

“I think he said the leg. The, um, ephemeral—”

“Femoral artery?”

“Yeah, he said the bullet came that close. He said if it had nicked the-—that artery, he would have bled to death right there. You think it was the mob that killed him? Could they be after me?”

“Go after you? Why?”

“He told me he’d seen something in Vegas.”

“What did he see?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was better if he didn’t bring me into it. But now I wish he had told me, so at least I’d be prepared. But I’m out of here tomorrow, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m flying out to L.A. to spend some time with a friend. You don’t think I’m in danger, do you? Maybe I should leave today.”

“You have to make your own decision about that.”

“I guess I’m paranoid. I’m going through a divorce myself and I’m half-scared my ex—well, that’s another story.”

“You worried about your ex?”

She shrugged. “Depends on how I’m feeling. I think I’m going to be all right. Especially when I get to California.”

Laura asked Madison where she was the evening before, and the girl replied that she’d gone down to “hang out” with her friend who lived in Continental. “We cooked spaghetti, drank wine, and bitched about how crappy our lives turned out to be.” She told Laura she’d had too much to drink—both of them did—so she’d elected to stay overnight and came back up here this morning.

“What time was that?”

“When you saw me come in. I had to stop for the roadblock and that was when I knew something was up.”

Laura nodded. There was only one way in and one way out of Madera Canyon, and one of the first things DPS had done was set up a roadblock to check vehicles. “May I have your friend’s phone number?”

“Sure.” Madison rattled off the number. “Her name’s Alex Williams.”

“Thanks—you’ve been very helpful.”

On the porch, Laura called Alex Williams. She got her voicemail, left a message for Alex to call her back. Then she went looking for Anthony. She found him sitting on the porch opposite, talking to Barbara Sheehey, who was in the process of filling the bird feeders on the porch.

Barbara Sheehey was less flustered, and more resigned. She was mostly worried about the affect this murder would have on her bottom line. “Thank God it happened up at the trailhead,” she was saying as Laura approached.

Anthony looked up. “We were talking about how long Perrin stayed here. A day short of two weeks.”

“He was trying for that girl across the way, Madison,” Sheehey said. “It was obvious.”

Laura said, “I get the impression it was a non-starter.”

“I don’t know if she told you, but that girl is in the middle of a nasty divorce. She came out here to hide, basically. Get away from ‘all the negativity’ as she put it.”

“Bad?” Laura asked.

“She said he beat her.”

Laura hadn’t seen anything like that, but bruises could be covered. “How long has Madison been staying here?”

“Five days? Five days and four nights. You should have seen her when she came. Always looking over her shoulder. And so
sad
. Now she’s more herself again.”

Madison seemed self-possessed now. “She from around here?”

“Phoenix. She has an old school friend in Continental her husband doesn’t know about, so she came here to hide out. Such a nice kid. Wholesome, like girls were back in the old days.” She shook her head. “Let me tell you, I didn’t like the way Mr. Perrin was sniffing around her. After all she’s been through.”

“So they weren’t seeing each other?”

“God, no. There’s something about him. I dunno. Maybe all that boasting.”

“But Cody liked him?” Laura said.

“Cody’s a sensitive kid. Always aims to please. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I wasn’t happy that Cody was spending so much time with him. It didn’t seem natural.”