Black Forest, Denver Cereal Volume 5 (21 page)

Seth nodded. Not wanting a display of
affection in front of the policewoman, he took Ava’s hand and
squeezed it. She smiled. With a nod to the policewoman, he left the
office.

“
I think he likes you,”
the policewoman said.

“
I like him,” Ava
said.

“
God, Amelie, you should
go for it,” the policewoman said. “I mean, he’s a little old but
he’s cute, funny, rich… I’ve heard he’s amazing in the sack. He
treats women like…”

Ava was looking up at the woman’s face when
the woman’s right eye exploded. Blood and brain matter showered
onto Ava. Screaming, Ava jumped to her feet and fumbled for her
gun. The policewoman fell forward onto the chair Ava had been
sitting in. Dr. James appeared in the doorway.

“
Oh my God,” Ava said.
“Dr. James! Someone’s killed... I…”

“
Yes, I know.” Dr. James
held up a silenced handgun. “I hated to do it but she was in the
way.”

Ava held her handgun out in front of her.
Without hesitation, Ava pulled the trigger. The gun clicked and Dr.
James laughed. She pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked
again.

“
Empty clip? Oh no,” Dr.
James mocked her. “How was that symphony last night? Too bad your
handgun didn’t match that lovely dress.”

He gestured with the weapon in his hands.
Ava lowered her weapon.

“
Why?” Ava asked. “Why
Beth?”

“
I need those files,” Dr.
James said. “Please.”

Ava gave him the evidence bag with the files
in them. He walked over to Beth’s shredder and shredded the papers,
folders and stuffed the bag in his pocket. He took the pieces of
shredded paper and set them on fire in the Welcome to Vegas ashtray
Beth used to hold paperclips.

“
Thank you,” he said. “We
have somewhere we have to be.”

“
I’m not going with you
anywhere,” Ava said. “You want to kill me. You have to do it
here.”

Dr. James laughed off her bravery. He made
the slightest movement with his hand and she felt a prick on her
arm from an autoinjector. She blinked as his smiling face blurred.
Her resistance waned.

“
That’s a good girl,” Dr.
James said.

He grabbed her arms and negotiated her
through the suite. Using Beth’s key, he locked the suite door. She
tried to speak to the uniformed police officer at the door but
couldn’t make her voice work. He laughed at something Dr. James
said. Ava blinked and she was sitting in the passenger seat of his
BMW sedan.

“
Why don’t you rest a
little?” Dr. James’s voice was kind and sickly sweet. “We have
quite a drive.”

Unable to fight it, Ava slumped against the
passenger door. Her mind screamed. Her soul wanted to jerk out of
her body. But she could do nothing over the drug induced calm. What
was this drug? What had the Coroner said? In the back of her mind,
she heard the Coroner’s voice say, ‘Sodium Pentothal. It’s a
barbiturate that calms the subject and defeats all resistance. They
used it for lethal injections.’ Crap.

She felt the car move through the stop and
go traffic of downtown Denver and then the steady, fast motion of
the highway. Desperate, tears streamed down her face as the Denver
landscape shifted north.

They were going to the barn. She was going
to hang for her mitochondrial DNA.

And there was nothing she could do about
it.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY-FIVE

Gone

Tuesday afternoon — 3:05 P.M.

“
Sorry I’m late,” Seth
said. “I was delayed.”

He gestured to the women standing behind
him. One woman was wearing a full dress Marine uniform. The other
woman was round with pregnancy. Sandy waved to the Coroner.

“
My daughters…” Seth said.
“They want to hear what happened to Bonita and the
children.”

He turned to Maresol, his housekeeper and
Bonita’s mother, and her four adult sons.

“
Is that all right?” Seth
asked.

Maresol stood to hug Seth’s daughters. For a
moment, the room took on an almost festive feel as Maresol and her
children greeted his daughters.

“
This is my daughter,
Lizzie,” Seth said to the Coroner.

“
Elizabethe,” the pregnant
woman reached forward to shake the Coroner’s hand. “Nice to meet
you again.”

“
This is my younger
daughter, Julie Ann Barth,” Seth remembered to use her
step-father’s last name.

“
Private First Class Julie
Ann O’Malley, ma’am,” Seth’s daughter said.

Seth hesitated at the name change.

“
What a pleasure to see
you again,” the Coroner said.

“
We changed our names
back, Dad,” Elizabethe said to Seth.

He nodded to her.

“
You know Sandy,” Seth
said.

“
How is Rachel?” the
Coroner asked.

“
She’s doing well,” Sandy
said. “We think she may be able to go home soon.”

“
We hope so,” Seth
beamed.

Sandy nodded.

“
Please,” the Coroner
said. “We know how difficult this is for all of you.”

“
We want to know what
happened to our brothers and step-mother, ma’am,” Julie Ann said.
“We were told there was new information.”

The Coroner smiled at Julie Ann. Even as a
young child, she had always taken charge.

“
Why don’t you have a
seat?” the Coroner said. A uniformed officer brought in a few more
chairs. Sandy sat next to Maresol. Maresol immediately took Sandy’s
hand. They braced themselves for what was sure to be a gruesome
conversation.

“
I believe Detective
O’Malley informed you about the man we call Saint Jude and the
presence of his DNA on the car,” the Coroner said.

“
I don’t really get that,”
Maresol’s oldest son said. “How did the son of a bitch’s DNA get on
the car? Seth said something about custody or
something.”

“
We don’t know when the
DNA got on the car,” the Coroner said. “When Bonita and the kids
were killed, we didn’t do the kind of DNA testing we do now. Our
forensics team believes the DNA they found was from his
sweat.”

“
This dude sweated on
little sis’s car?” another son asked.

“
Yes,” the Coroner said.
“We checked the weather data for that year. It was a very hot
summer and the car didn’t have air conditioning.”

“
You’re saying he drove
Bonita’s car that summer,” Sandy said. “Was he driving when the
accident…?”

“
We don’t believe so,” the
Coroner said.

“
Dude knew little sis,”
Maresol’s son sitting on the end said. The brothers looked at each
other. Maresol shook her head at them. The men’s faces shifted to
neutral expressions.

“
What were you able to
find out about the accident?” Seth asked. He shot a glance down the
row of brothers. The men gave him knowing shakes of their
heads.

“
We found the same drug in
Bonita and her son’s systems,” the Coroner said.

“
The same as the boys
Razor and Jeffy?” Seth asked.

“
Yes,” the Coroner said.
“As you know, Detective O’Malley, we’ve identified the drug as
Sodium Pentothal.”

“
Truth serum?” Elizabethe
asked.

“
It’s a barbiturate,” the
Coroner said. “It’s known to weaken the victim’s resolve. In high
enough doses, there’s almost nothing a person can do to stop the
perpetrator. It’s also the drug of choice for lethal
injections.”

“
I knew my Bonita would
never drive in that snow,” Maresol said. “Never risk her babies. If
she needed to go somewhere, she would have called me or the
boys.”

“
You were right,” the
Coroner said. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long to confirm what you
already knew.”

Maresol sniffed at the Coroner. Sandy put
her arm around the woman for comfort.

“
There’s more,” the
Coroner said. “We’ve been able to confirm the man we call Saint
Jude was the father of Bonita O’Malley’s unborn child.”

Bonita’s brothers stiffened and snuck
glances at Seth. Maresol dropped her head in her hands and Seth
stared off into space.

“
She was inebriated,” the
Coroner said. “But we cannot determine if Bonita was in that
condition before she was given the… truth serum.”

“
And the truck driver?”
Seth asked.

“
Yes, thank you,” the
Coroner said. “We also exhumed the truck driver’s body. As you
know, it’s highly unusual for such a large truck hauling such a
heavy load to be in the center of the city. The detectives at the
time couldn’t determine why he was in town or where he was going,
or why he was driving at eighty miles an hour. There was a lot of
construction downtown at that time. They assumed that he was
lost.”

“
And?” Julie Ann
asked.

“
He was also drugged with
the sodium pentothal,” the Coroner said. “The company he worked for
demolished his truck so we don’t have it for testing. We only have
his body plus the forensics taken at the time.”

“
What does that mean?”
Maresol’s oldest son asked.

“
We can’t determine if
Saint Jude was there,” Seth said.

“
My team has reconstructed
the accident using a computer simulation program,” the Coroner
said. “We’ve determined that the truck driver wasn’t alive when the
accident happened. The vehicle was in cruise control.

“
At the time, our vehicle
team determined that the cruise control had been modified,” the
Coroner continued. “We found the cruise control in an evidence
warehouse last night. We’ll test the device for DNA when it gets
here tomorrow morning. But we feel confident we’ll find the
perpetrator’s DNA on the cruise control.”

The family sat in stunned silence.

“
You’re saying that this
man not only drugged Bonita and got her drunk, but also arranged
for the truck to kill her,” Sandy’s shaky voice broke the silence.
“And his child.”

“
And Pablo,” Seth said.
His voice was soft, caressing the words. “And Gabriel. My
babies.”

The family and the Coroner turned to look at
Seth.

“
I knew about the affair,”
Seth said. “I knew about the baby. We all did. Bonita was a lot of
things but she was no liar. I didn’t care who the father was. We
were working through it. We were…”

Elizabethe choked back a sob.

“
Why?” Seth asked. “Why
would he…?”

Sandy got up. She put her arms around his
shoulders to hold him. Maresol’s oldest son hugged his mother.

“
Is there anything else,
ma’am?” Julie Ann asked.

“
No,” the Coroner
said.

“
We’re going home,”
Maresol’s oldest son said.

He helped his mother to her feet. Maresol
touched Seth’s back. He looked up at her. She kissed his cheek and
left the room with her sons.

Seth stood to shake the Coroner’s hand and
they left the building. At Seth’s insistence, they went back to his
home for tea and pie. Even with the gruesome news, Elizabethe and
Julie Ann were excited to see their father. But after an hour, the
mini-reunion stalled. The Coroner’s information was too dark to
keep at bay. Julie Ann needed to return to her unit and Elizabethe
offered to take her.

“
I guess I understand why
you were avoiding us,” Sandy hugged Elizabethe.

“
My step-dad threw me
out,” Elizabethe said. “Illegitimate child and all. After he threw
Julie Ann out, I figured there was no way…”

“
You and the child are
always welcome here,” Seth said.

“
Thanks Dad,” Elizabethe
said. “I…”

“
Yes, let’s find some time
to get to know each other,” Seth said.

“
Yeah,” Elizabethe
said.

“
Me too?” Julie Ann
asked.

“
Of course,” Seth
said.

Julie Ann and Elizabethe hugged Seth
good-bye. Sandy and Seth stood in the doorway until their car was
out of sight. Seth sagged and Sandy guided him inside.

Seth checked his phone and found no
messages. He wondered if he should call Ava, but decided to let her
rest. She would call him when she was ready.

“
Why don’t you go for a
swim?” Sandy asked. “It will give you time to think.”

Without responding, Seth nodded and made his
way to the lap pool.

~~~~~~~~

Tuesday afternoon — 3:55 P.M.

The cold wind woke her. Naked, Ava lay on
the floor of the frigid pole barn. Her arms were trapped behind her
back in her own handcuffs. She rolled over to throw up.

She heaved until her stomach was empty.

She tried to control her breath so she could
listen for him. Blowing out a breath, she closed her mouth and
listened.

Nothing. She gasped a full breath.

The wind blew through the wretched barn. She
tucked her knees into her chest against the cold.

She realized she was wet. Her nose picked up
the distinctive smell of the industrial cleaner.

And she had been shaven.

Her long hair was gone. Her arms stung from
razor burn. She’d had her public hair, legs and arm pits waxed for
the event, and Seth. She was completely hair free.