The Laura Cardinal Novels (16 page)

As the hard needles of spray drilled into her skin, Laura thought of something Frank Entwistle used to say.

There are no accidents.

She took Old Spanish Trail, flooring it along the edge of the Rincon Mountains, knowing it was too late. Doglegged over to the Catalina Highway, turning right onto a single lane of blacktop that climbed along the base of the mountains to where Galaz’s house overlooked the city. No cars parked outside the closed decorative iron gate, the house dark.

Driving back, Laura was surprised how bad she felt. She sensed that this time, she’d done the unforgiveable. Victor always warned her that she needed to pay attention to what was going on with the brass. He’d told her on more than one occasion that she was impolitic. She’d always brushed it off, because in her opinion sucking up wasn’t important to the job she did every day.

The moon peeked over the shoulder of the Rincons, a laughing clown.

When she got home, Tom was gone. She was surprised, although she couldn’t expect him to stay. If they lived together it would be different. He’d be there all the time.

Too tired to think now anyway.

She got into bed, was asleep within minutes. Awakened not long after by a loud thump. Hallelujah—the bobcat kittens were back.

Laura sat up in bed, listening to them play on the roof, watching the moonlight and mesquite shadows tremble across the floor. Most ranch houses in the southwest had concrete floors. This one had been deep red for the majority of its eighty years, scuffed and chipped by generations of cowboy boots, spurs, dragged saddles and bridles. Laura had painted it hazelnut brown, a glossy finish. In the moonlight, though, it was hard to tell what color it was.

She wished Tom had waited. The lack of his presence prickled her, like the ghost pain from a severed limb.

She had not had this feeling since Billy—that heart-thumping, nerve-shattering, high-voltage infatuation. Like two electrical wires touching, igniting feelings both visceral and surprising.

Laura had spent some time thinking about it. She’d known sexier men, better-looking men, more powerful men. Maybe it was the forbidden nature of their relationship. The desire for the forbidden had probably been pummeled into her during catechism—kids being prone to absorb the opposite message as they were. By the time she was a teenager, forbidden pleasure as a concept was in full force. It fueled her poor choices in middle school, high school, and college. Beautiful boys who knew they were beautiful and had nothing else to occupy their minds except contempt for those who worship them.

Her mother wasn’t here to disapprove now. But Laura knew she’d adopted her prejudices. An itinerant former bull rider was not the right man for her. The end result was a relationship that tasted and felt illicit—and therefore delicious.

A train horn blared. The railroad tracks ran along the freeway, some five or six miles away as the crow flew. On sleepless nights, which lately had been all too many, she heard every big truck out on the highway and the mournful horn of the trains. Those sounds had been woven into the tapestry of her life, the lonely sounds of people going elsewhere, passing in the night.

If you lived together you’d
— Stop it.

The bobcats, snarling, scuffling, galloping back and forth across the roof. God bless them.

No more sleep tonight. She turned on the light. The chartreuse green walls of her bedroom looked like they had peeled and faded in the sun—she’d taken a course on distressing walls to look old. That and the mesquite mission bed—
hecho en Mexico—
made her room beautiful, to her eyes anyway.

Her gaze strayed to the photos on the wall opposite the bed, the focal point of the room. Most of them were of good times with her parents and her friends, eight-by-tens of her on her mare Calliope, showing off her ribbons from the Alamo Farm annual horse show. Two Ross Santee pen-and-ink drawings that she had found at a yard sale. A wedding picture of Frank Entwistle and his second wife, Pat.

No wedding pictures of her own, though. There hadn’t been any.

She liked looking at the wall of photos from a distance, the cumulative effect of them arrayed tastefully, the mellow finish of the gold frames catching the light, but the truth was she rarely got up close and looked right at them. She didn’t like how they made her feel.

That was then; this is now.

Those days were as old and faded as the photographs, a half-remembered dream. Someone else’s life. She was not the pretty, shy girl perched on the fifty-thousand-dollar Thoroughbred hunter, the teenager giggling with friends at places as diverse as Dairy Queens and rock concerts.

The girl looking out of those photographs seemed confident of her future happiness.

Laura, looking at it from the perspective of distance, thought that was sad.

She was getting ready for work the next morning when she heard the gate creak out front. She looked out the window and saw Mike Galaz standing just inside the hog wire fence, almost concealed by the large mesquites. He seemed to be looking at her roof.

She came out on the porch. His gaze still fixed on the clay barrel tiles, he said, “Is that a prickly pear growing out of your roof, or are you just happy to see me?”

He didn’t sound mad. In fact, he sounded friendlier than she’d ever heard him. “Like it?” she said. “It’s the latest in home design." And immediately wondered—was she being too flip? “About last night—“

“Don’t worry about it.”

A compulsion to explain. “I guess I was more tired then I thought. I fell asleep.”

“No problema. You missed a good time, but it’s no big deal.” He removed his coat jacket and folded it neatly over his arm. “You have air conditioning in that shack? I feel like I’m going to melt.”

“Maybe you should trade that black SUV for a white one.”

“Why is that?” He stepped up onto the worn brick paving of the portal and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

“Black attracts heat.”

He shrugged. “I’ve got good air conditioning. It’s just walking from the car to the house that kills me.”

He didn’t seem to know the basics about living in the desert. Like driving a white car or getting most of your outdoor work done before eight in the morning. She’d seen Galaz go out for a jog during his lunch hour in the middle of the summer.

The Galaz family had been around Tucson since the eighteen hundreds, but the lieutenant didn’t act like an native Tucsonan, except in one way. Tucson had a proud tradition of Hispanic politicos and wheeler-dealers.

She offered him coffee and he accepted while she went through the house closing windows and turning on the cooler.

He held his hand up toward the air vent, grimacing at the fishy smell. “You sure it works?”

“Swampbox,” she said. “It’ll take awhile.” She had no doubt that Mike Galaz had real air conditioning in his expensive home in the foothills.

A hundred years ago, he would probably have lived in a ranch house just like this one. He looked like he belonged here with his elegant Spanish features and aristocratic bearing. A man who would look good by candlelight.

He cradled the coffee mug in both hands. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this.”

“No, of course not." But she started to feel nervous again.

Galaz sipped his coffee. “A shame you couldn’t meet Jay.”

“Jay?”

“Head of Dynever Security. The main reason I had the party, for you and him to meet.”

He was mad after all. What she was about to say would make him a lot madder. “About that.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to get them involved.”

“Because of the chain of custody? Is that what’s bothering you?”

“You know what a defense attorney might do with that.”

He stared at her, his dark eyes inscrutable. “You’re a good detective, Laura. You always think ahead. I like that.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “But you’ve got to give me some credit. There’s no way I’d jeopardize this investigation. If you’re worried about the forensics on the computer, of course our crime lab does that. No way I’d farm that out. I’m just talking about the cyber stuff. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just air.”

Air that can kill, Laura thought.

Galaz leaned back, and the Mexican chair creaked. “I thought you had your doubts about it being Lehman.”

“I have questions.”

“I saw the autopsy report. That part about the frying pan. I find it hard to believe Lehman would walk up the road looking for those two kids.”

“I can’t speak for Victor, but I bet he’d say that Lehman killed Cary in his house and dragged him up to the cabin at night.”

At the mention of Victor, Galaz’s eyes turned stony. Something between them. She remembered what Victor had called him—a control freak.

He crossed one knee over the other and said, “What do you think?”

“I didn’t see any blood evidence of that, and there would have been a lot of blood. Even when you clean a place really well, there’s always some residual blood. Nothing came up when we used Luminol.”

“CRZYGRL12. That bothers me, too. You said yourself Detective Holland hasn’t done much.”

“To be fair, we’ve been kept pretty busy.”

“But bottom line, you’ve got your doubts.”

She nodded.

He set his coffee mug down. “I think we should try this. Before he gets another girl. Victor and Buddy can work the Lehman angle.” He saw her expression and added, “I promise you, there won’t be any repercussions.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Yes, I can. I’ll take the blame if it goes wrong, but it won’t go wrong. This guy is good. You’ll like him.”

She noticed his word tenses. Past the negotiation phase. As far as he was concerned, it was a done deal. It would have been a done deal last night, but she’d messed that up by not showing.

She realized that if she had gone last night, this conversation wouldn’t be taking place. He would have asked her in front of this man Jay, and she would have had to agree. In the DPS—as in any law enforcement agency— you never made your boss look weak. Never.

Maybe Victor was right about the lieutenant’s need for control. He certainly had it now. Might as well get it over with. She could make a token effort, talk to the guy, then tell Galaz it didn’t work out. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

“Good." Galaz reached into his wallet and removed a card, set it on the table.

The card said
Dynever Security — Michael J. Ramsey II, CEO
.

She stared down at the pale gray velum, the embossed letters. Heat suffused her face and her heart started to pound.

“Jay Ramsey?” she said. Her tongue felt stiff.

“You know him,” Galaz said. Not a question.

“No, not really. I only met him once.”

“Met” wasn’t strictly accurate. She’d noticed him plenty.

Watching him whack tennis balls at the Ramseys’ tennis court down the road from the stables. Watching him go from the house to his Range Rover, hanging with his friends, driving by in a cloud of dust.

“He asked about you,” Galaz said. “He thinks of you often.”

Occasionally, he’d look her way and nod.

“But of course that goes without saying,” Galaz added.

Galaz left soon after. Feeling as if she’d been whacked by a two-by-four, Laura walked out onto the porch, wondering what this all meant.

She had no particular objection to seeing Jay Ramsey. She didn’t know the man. But it had been eleven years since she had been in that part of town. There were so many memories …

Mrs. Ramsey, handing her the papers: We wanted you to have her. As a thank you.

A fifty-thousand-dollar thank you.

The phone rang and she jumped.

It was Barry Endicott, the sheriff’s detective from Indio. “Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you,” he said. “I’ve been working a case that’s taken all my time.”

“That’s okay.” Aware of her own breathing.

“I heard you had a girl,” he said. “Dressed up and posed, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“So did we, five months ago. Girl named Alison Burns.”

“What was she wearing?”

“She was dressed up like a flower girl and posed on a bed at a motel slated for demolition. It was pure luck we found her at all. It was kind of opportunistic—guy that found her was taking pictures of abandoned buildings. He said he had his eye on the place and as soon as they cleared out, he went in before it could be boarded up. He was our main suspect for a while, but turns out he was in Monterey around the time the girl was killed—at a photographer’s workshop.”

“How old was she?”

“Twelve. How old was yours?”

“Fourteen.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, probably pondering the disparity in their ages. Laura pressed him for details.

“She was left there after they officially closed the place, but before they removed the beds. The fact the guy found her that early gave us a better fix on time of death.”

According to Endicott, Alison Burns had been smothered. She had traces of Rohypnol, the date rape drug, in her system.

“We figured the guy gave her the Rohypnol, then soft-smothered her, but that’s only a theory. We think from the stomach contents that he held a little party for her.”

Laura said, “What?”

“We think he took her to McDonalds. Happy Meal, soft drink, Baskin Robbins after that. There were balloons in the room and a new teddy bear.”

Stranger and stranger. “Like a birthday celebration?”

“Like one. Her birthday wasn’t anywhere around that time. We think he made her last day a good one.”

Laura was aware how tightly she gripped the phone.

“That’s conjecture on our part, though.”

“He soft-smothered her?”

“We think he wanted to quote unquote ‘ease her into sleep.’”

“Was she molested?”

“Oh yeah. For days.”

“Days? He didn’t kill her right away?”

“We think he had her four days, maybe five.”

Jessica’s killer had kept her only a few hours tops, and raped her postmortem. Maybe this wasn’t the same guy. “Could I see the evidence list?”