Missings, The (27 page)

“She’s always loved you, you know.”

Something about the way Eddie said it. Did his son know what he had done all those years ago?

Aspen-Pitkin County Airport

Wednesday, September 26

Chase pulled up at the airport, and his father-in-law unlatched his seat belt. “Thank you for coming, Stuart. I know your visit meant a lot to Bond.” Hours of talking, touching and tears had begun the healing in his wife that should have happened decades ago.

“You love my daughter and for that I will always be grateful.”

The man had aged in just a couple of days. A shadow had fallen across his features—pulled them to a sad place. Chase understood. He’d seen it often in the faces of survivors. Hell, he’d seen it in the mirror.

Chase didn’t know if Stuart had spoken to Celeste since his arrival and didn’t feel comfortable asking. The relationship between Bond’s parents only affected him as it affected Bond. And for now his wife had received the time and attention she needed from her father. The rest could wait.

He retrieved Stuart’s overnighter from the trunk, then handed the wheeled luggage off to the older man and held his hand out for the customary clasp and shake. Instead Stuart pulled him into a tight and awkward hug. When they broke apart, Stuart’s eyes had pooled with tears. He blinked and when they spilled onto his cheeks he didn’t bother wiping them away.

Stuart Worthington walked toward his private plane, shoulders stooped, his overcoat dragging unnoticed on the ground.

Aspen Falls Police Department

Wednesday, September 26

“It’s ducks-in-a-row time, detectives. We need to make sure we’re all on the same page, have all of our bases covered, and… if I could think of one more crappy cliché, I’d puke it up now.” Chase hauled in extra donuts and muffins and three grandes—each geared toward the particular tastes of the recipient—from The Coffee Pod.

“I think we’re almost at the end of this thing.” He set the food and drink down, and hands appeared as if by magic. “Terri, when you’ve had a sip and a bite, would you take the board?”

“I’ve got it,” Daniel said. He pulled a fresh whiteboard on rollers from the storage closet and set it next to the others, prepared to write.

“We have a couple of different motives here,” Chase began.

“Money,” both Terri and Daniel said at once.

“And?” He paused. “Think about it. What would prompt someone to offer money—maybe a lot of money—for a body part?”

“Fear,” Terri said.

“Yeah, well… fear of loss maybe. Or death. But I submit one of the other motives is love,” Chase said. “Of course love doesn’t give us the same legal clout as money in this instance, but it bears thinking about.”

Daniel looked a little confused. “So it’s money, right?”

“Right.”

“Money for who?”

“Presley Adams. The Preston Clinic is named after his brother.” Chase got up to get another muffin, vaguely concerned he couldn’t remember having eaten the first one. “Adams has an extremely wealthy clientele around the world. Wealthy enough that they made him a millionaire in his own right a few hundred times over. And he would do anything to build up their loyalties, not to mention his bank accounts.”

“He fills a need,” Daniel offered.

“Exactly.”

“And in this case,” Daniel continued, “there is no way supply can ever exceed demand.”

“Bingo.”

Terri continued the familiar case wrap-up with the team while Daniel wrote madly on the whiteboard. “He needed a supply source who would be a match for a majority of his clients but who wouldn’t be in a position to seek help from the authorities if things went bad, or even if they didn’t.”

Daniel stopped for a moment and then in a soft voice—almost reverent—“Illegal immigrants. People who generally live well within all the laws of our country, except for one. But it’s a big enough one that they will stay underground at all costs.”

“I’m willing to bet that every mutilated corpse that has been found in our region in the last two years, especially if they’re Hispanic or Latino, is someone who lived under the radar. Whose family and loved ones could never come to us for help or answers. I’ve requested records from every jurisdiction contiguous to ours.” Chase checked his watch. They couldn’t even begin to apply for arrest warrants until they could convince a judge they had probable cause.

“And our tie-in to the Preston Clinic?” Terri asked.

“Aspen Falls Memorial Hospital,” Daniel said.

Terri shifted in her seat and pursed her lips.

Chase tipped his chair back and then let it pop back to the ground. He leaned forward. “Look Terri, Leslie James is not the head of the ER. More important, she not only doesn’t have anything to do with these murders, she helped us get a handle on them. She’ll survive whatever fallout occurs.”

Terri nodded but didn’t look any more comfortable.

Daniel kept writing. “We have evidence that a doctor, Armand Fyfe, accepted payments for his access code in order for blood tests to be requested. We know they were all ordered by Frank Dumont, a physician’s assistant who not only ordered the blood tests of uninsured Hispanics who came into the clinic, but also sent the test results directly to Presley Adams.”

Terri sat forward on her chair. “And Presley Adams then compared them to the current needs of his wealthy clients from all over the world. When he could make a match he moved ahead.”

“Enter the amazing Carlisle brothers,” Chase said. “Bobby and Sammy would do anything for a buck. If the donor target doesn’t go along with the cash-for-organs scheme, or if the body part required sustains life, they do a quick grab and the target is never seen again.”

“Unless they turn up in one of our dumpsters,” Terri said.

Chase crumpled a napkin. “Yeah, there’s that.”

“We have the Carlisle brothers offering money to Efraín and meeting with Adams. Right?” Daniel asked.

“That’s right. Hard to miss a guy in a Bugatti.”

“We also have them at the scene of the fire at the Benavides house,” Daniel added.

“Problem,” Terri said.

Daniel didn’t like the sound of that. “What?”

“The Benavides family is here legally.”

They fell silent. Chase cursed to himself. He couldn’t have been wrong about this case. He couldn’t have been. Did this put them back at square three? Or even square zero?

“I know the answer,” Daniel said.

“Well?”
This better be good.

“The Benavides family is an exception to the rule.”

“Rule? What rule?” Chase asked.

“If you’re Hispanic, live in that neighborhood, and have to use the ER when you’re sick, the rule says you’re undocumented. That means you’re fair game to Presley Adams.”

“Okay,” Chase said. “I can buy that. But why wouldn’t Adams at least hesitate? Consider the possibility that even though they were Hispanic, lived in that neighborhood, and went to the ER, they were also citizens who would raise a fuss?”

“Think of Mrs. Benavides. Left up to her, they never would have contacted us. We are not to be trusted, even by people who have lived here for generations. There’s too much negative lore. The authorities have proven time and time again that power corrupts, even on a small scale. The idea of ‘us versus them’ is so engrained, it wouldn’t matter if they lived in a mansion and your sister cleaned their toilets.” Daniel’s face turned that rusty color Chase had seen earlier. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. What you’re saying is that if it weren’t for —”

“If it weren’t for Elizabeth Benavides, we might not be here right now. Unlike the others, she was willing to come to us and speak up.”

“She’s an exceptional woman,” Chase said. “We need to put together arrest warrants, and I’m gonna tell you now we’re going to have a hard time convincing a judge that an ER employee, a doctor, and Presley Adams are responsible for the murders. And without them we can’t even get to the Carlisle brothers. They all need to come down together.”

“And if we can’t get them all at once?”

Aspen Falls Cemetery

Wednesday, September 26

Chase and Daniel stood on the perimeter of mourners gathered to say goodbye to Rachelle Benavides. Although the old oak tree next to them had lost most of its leaves, a few scudded over the patches of unmelted snow and still-green lawn. Clouds pushed and shoved across the sun, a giant mirror ball mottling the earth as the tears mottled the faces of the family and friends of the young woman.

The detectives didn’t try to hide the fact that they were examining and cataloguing every person in attendance. Chase didn’t expect to see anyone tied to the murder here. Not really. This was not the kind of killing done for narcissistic pleasure. But they were cops, and just as autopsies were revealing, memorial services could be as well.

“See anything?” Chase asked.

“Nope.”

“You’re carrying around those flowers like you thought there wouldn’t be any at a funeral.”

Daniel looked away but didn’t seem all that embarrassed about the bouquets he held in his hands.

Chase stiffened. “Black Mustang. Three o’clock.”

The car moved slowly down the crowded driving lane but didn’t stop. When it disappeared around a curve, Chase and Daniel gave one another a nod and moved into action. Daniel dropped the bouquets and with as little fanfare as possible the two men moved through the crowd to stand at either end of the Benavides family. They were ready.

The priest continued in a mesmerizing combination of Latin, Spanish and English—enough of each language where each listener could get the gist of what he was saying. No translators required. It was a special kind of
pochismo
, something that extended beyond a blend of just Spanish and English.

Elizabeth seemed aware of their presence. Her parents were too wrapped up in grief to see beyond their pain. Their son, Robert, sat stiffly between the older couple. He’d been able to get leave for an immediate family member’s death even though he served in a combat zone. He looked dazed. Chase imagined that if the soldier had considered his family sitting around a gravesite, he thought it would be his rather than his youngest sister’s. The young man had probably been more shocked by this violence than by anything he’d encountered so far in his military experience. Very few war casualties were carved up so completely by the enemy.

Chase was about ready to relax when he saw a figure. Daniel drew to attention as well. The man didn’t stop at any of the graves but bisected them to come to a halt directly in Elizabeth’s view. There he stopped. Spread his legs and placed hands on hips as if he were willing Elizabeth to look in his direction.

At the same moment Elizabeth looked up, both Chase and Daniel began walking around the final resting place of Rachelle Benavides to approach the man who had challenged the sanctity of a funeral. Who was only there to threaten. By the time they’d rounded the gravesite and mourners, the brazen interloper became aware of their approach. He looked in turn at both detectives, flagged them with his middle finger and walked away. No harm, no foul, he seemed to say.

Bullshit.

Chase and Daniel returned to their positions. The priest, to his credit, had not missed a beat in his multilingual ceremony. Then it was over, and time for the family members to pay their last respects over their departed loved one.

Mr. Benavides took a shovel full of earth and turned it into the grave. Ramona Benavides did this same thing, visibly working to keep her shoulders back and her body from crumpling. Robert took his turn and remained true to both Catholic and military tradition. Then it was Elizabeth’s turn.

The woman rose from her chair next to the grave and reached for the shovel handle her brother passed to her. Rather than digging a bit of the piled earth to pour on top of her sister’s coffin as her father had, as her mother had and as her brother had, she raised the shovel over her head and turned to look at the people standing in silent expectation of custom.

She seemed to look each person in the eye. “You loved my sister. You know this isn’t right. We should not be here today burying what’s left of her body.” Her voice was strong even though tears streamed down her face. She looked in the direction the threatening man had slithered away to and then turned her face to look directly in Chase’s eyes. “These people have gotten away with
unspeakable
things because they’ve done them to people who
will not
speak
. No more. It is over.” Her face crumpled and she folded to the ground using the shovel as a pole to slide down. Her brother and Daniel were each at her side in an instant, helping her up and guiding her to her chair.

The priest made some closing comments and said a prayer. This time all in Spanish. When several people began tossing single flowers into the grave, Daniel went back to the old oak and retrieved his bouquets. He waited until most of the mourners had paid their respects and quietly took his place at the end of the line. As he passed Elizabeth, he gave her a bouquet. The second went to her mother. The third one he offered as a sign of respect and loss to Rachelle.

Aspen Falls Police Department

Wednesday, September 26

This was the part of police work they never show on television. The hours of boredom where nothing happens. The wait. Whether you’re a traffic cop or on surveillance or getting arrest warrants to bring down some truly bad guys, the wait makes you want to scream.

Chase had left the team meeting that morning and gone directly to Whit. For this next step he knew they’d need the backing of the Chief of Police. The big guns. Terri had worked a minor miracle to get the warrant for the ER’s computer and server, but this—requesting warrants to arrest several people including one of the wealthiest men in Aspen Falls—could make the most assured cop feel like a rookie. Careers were on the line. Nobody rushed to help.

Now it was just a waiting game, hoping for a judge to grant them the warrant. Daniel and Terri were throwing crumpled bits of paper at each other, both detectives even more quiet than usual.