Last Light (21 page)

“Right here.” Tommy’s image filled the screen behind Wash. He didn’t look happy, rather a strange mix of excitement and confusion. “You should see what we found.”

Wash shushed him with a hand. “Me first.”

“Let me guess,” Lucy put in before the two could start squabbling. “The forfeitures are bogus, based on trumped-up charges, and mainly designed to siphon money into the sheriff’s coffers.”

“Maybe, we’re not sure. Still working on the money trail.”

“But that’s not what we found,” Tommy interrupted again. “Tell her.”

Wash continued, “It’s not easy tracking every item at auction back to their owner, much less proving that any charges were falsified. So I started with the big-ticket items. The cars.”

“Okay,” Lucy said. “Makes sense. Vehicles are easier to track with registration and VIN information.”

“Right. Except…” He trailed off, eyes wide with excitement.

“Except,” Tommy picked up the conversational baton, “we found a pattern. Cars reported as abandoned, impounded, tagged for forfeiture—”

“Normal procedure,” Lucy put in. “The last registered owners would have been notified, and if they didn’t claim the vehicle and pay any fees, the car would be auctioned by the county and re-titled in the new owner’s name.”

“Only these weren’t,” Wash said, his wheelchair bouncing as he did a mini-wheelie of triumph. “At first we thought maybe they were junkers, too old, so they were sent straight to scrap. But then I saw that a few were new, high-end models. They would have made good money if they had been sold at auction.”

“Maybe the county claimed them to use as unmarked vehicles? The FBI gets vehicles from the DEA for undercover ops all the time.”

Both men shook their heads. “Nope. They weren’t sent to auction, weren’t used by the county,” Tommy said. “They were sent to be scrapped.”

“We wouldn’t have found out who the owners were if the salvage yard the county contracts with didn’t have an owner who was particularly careful about keeping his own records, separate from the county’s, including VINs.”

“So while Wash tracked the vehicles, I tracked the owners.”

“And the owners were?” Lucy asked, getting a bit annoyed by their roundabout path to what mattered. “Who were these mysterious vehicles that were mysteriously destroyed registered to?”

Tommy and Wash exchanged glances. Wash nodded to Tommy, giving him permission to answer. “Women. All from other states. And all of them eventually reported missing.”

Lucy leaned forward. “You have my attention.”

The screen changed from their faces to an array of photos. All women, all in their mid-twenties to early thirties, all blonde. Lucy counted fourteen of them. “How long has this been going on?”

“Best we can tell,” Wash answered, “fifteen years or more.”

“So not just since Sheriff Blackwell instituted the new forfeiture system?” Didn’t mean the forfeitures weren’t still some kind of criminal enterprise. But fourteen women missing…

“What do you want us to do?” Tommy asked.

“Wash, keep tracking the forfeitures. And Tommy, you follow the women. Send me everything you have on them—where they were last sighted, their histories, any police reports.”

“Sure, we can coordinate with several missing persons’ groups. Families who haven’t given up, still searching for answers.”

“Don’t promise them anything,” Lucy warned. “It might be nothing—this part of Texas, a vehicle breaking down and being abandoned wouldn’t be that unusual.”

“But fourteen of them?” Tommy protested.

“Over fifteen years,” she reminded him. “But, there’s one thing that bothers me.”

“What?”

“It’s a hell of a lot easier to get rid of a body than it is a car.”

“Unless you have access to a scrap yard,” Wash finished for her.

“Exactly.”

“Which means it could be anyone at the sheriff’s department,” Wash said.

“Or even the county clerk’s office,” Tommy added. “All they’d have to do is change the paperwork, sending the cars straight to scrap instead of auction.”

Wash nodded. “But it probably has nothing to do with the Martin case. They were killed over a decade before the first victim we’ve found.”

“That’s okay. Keep working this.” A knock sounded on Lucy’s motel room door. “Hang on, guys,” she told the others as she edged off the bed to answer.

It was David. He looked drained after his day at the prison but carried a plastic shopping bag.

“Good, you got my text.”

He handed her the bag. “Had to improvise a bit. The only store I came across was a small general store.”

Lucy dumped out the contents: tape, Magic Markers, and rolls of wrapping paper covered with toothy grinning clowns who resembled serial killers she’d caught. And the last item, the most important: an old-fashioned cassette recorder. “This will do just fine. Help me cover the walls. How did it go with your father?”

“Fine.” He sidestepped her question, eying her beds. “What the heck did you do?”

“There was a scorpion in the bathroom and I wasn’t sure if they could climb.” She ignored his raised eyebrow and skeptical grin; taped one edge of the paper to the wall, turned backwards so she had a white surface to write on; and gestured to him to unspool the roll as she followed with more tape.

“Where’s TK?” he asked as they worked. “I thought she’d be here.”

“So did I. She’s gone radio silent.”

“Do you think she’s okay?”

Lucy had wondered the same thing. If she’d been working with her team back at the FBI, she wouldn’t think twice about an agent following a lead independently as long as they kept her updated. But with civilians like TK, she wasn’t sure if she should interpret the younger woman’s silence as a commitment to her work or as sullen protest over being assigned to records’ duty. “What kind of trouble could she get into from the basement of the sheriff’s department?”

He frowned.

“Tommy,” she called over her shoulder to the computer, “did you have a chance to go over the blood analysis I asked you about?”

“Yes, and I think you’re right.” She turned the laptop around and adjusted it so he and Wash faced the paper-covered wall.

“Walk me through it.”

“The state crime lab found two blood types on the revolver. One matched the father, Peter Martin. The other matched the baby.”

David crouched down so he could face the computer. “We already knew that.”

“Right,” Lucy said, making notes on the papered wall, “but no one was looking at the blood types the way we are. They just wanted to be able to tie your father’s fingerprints in blood to the murder victims. Tell him the rest, Tommy.”

“Since they didn’t use DNA back in 1987, they used blood types as a crude identification method. The sent it to the lab for confirmation with HLA typing, but it takes much longer. Months back then. Since all the state attorney wanted was to verify that the blood belonged to their victims, they never forwarded the final results to the defense—it wasn’t exculpatory, the Mannings had already been sentenced by then, plus it’s pretty technical, they may not have even realized what it meant. I’m guessing they probably filed it without even looking at the report.”

“But we
are
looking at the report,” Lucy said as a knock came on her motel room door. “Thanks to TK and her scavenger hunt.”

“Okay,” David said, “so?”

“So,” Tommy leaned forward into the camera, “Peter Martin was not Glory Martin’s father.”

<><><>

TK AND CALEB
drove away from the Martin house in silence. He was visibly shaken by their visit to the crime scene and she felt awful stirring up the old memories. Not to mention the bizarre lunch with his mother. She couldn’t imagine living with
that
every day.

“Do you want me to keep looking?” she finally asked.

His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes. I’ve been avoiding it for far too long, but now I think it’s time. I need to know the truth.” He turned to look at her, ignoring the road. “Wherever it leads.”

She nodded back, the weight of responsibility settling over her. “I’ll need to tell the others about your father.”

“I know.” He blew out his breath as if relieved by his decision to trust her. “What do you need from me? How can I help?”

The offer stunned her. After all, he was pretty much giving her
carte blanche
to pry into the deepest corners of his family’s past. She thought about it, hesitated, then finally asked, “Your father. How did he—”

“Pills. Mixed with his most expensive bottle of bourbon. Mom and I were out, picking up my birthday present.”

Right. When Roscoe Blackwell chose the anniversary of Lily Martin’s death as the day to kill himself, he’d also chosen the eve of his son’s birthday. “Oh, Caleb. I’m so sorry—”

His one-shoulder shrug was more protective defense than acknowledgment of her words. “It was a four-wheeler. Roscoe didn’t want me to have it, had forbidden it. Ever since the Martins, he kept me close, didn’t like me to go anywhere unsupervised.”

“He was trying to protect you.”

“Or control me. Or keep me from finding the truth—back then I was obsessed with the case, like everyone in the county. Who knows?” He turned into the motel parking lot. They parked in front of her room, the engine running.

“Anyway, Mother was always of the mind that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, so she took me to pick out my ATV. To me it meant independence, a chance to escape Roscoe. To her, I think it meant a chance to snap Roscoe out of his funk. They weren’t talking, weren’t even fighting, and she was frustrated with him—more so than usual.”

“You found him?”

He nodded. “I think he planned it that way—no, that’s not fair. It could have been either of us walking in on him in his study. I ran in, wearing my new helmet that Mother insisted on, and he was in his big chair, facing away from the door, staring out the windows that overlooked the first land the Blackwells had ever owned.

“At least that’s what I thought.” His voice dropped low and his hand slipped from the gearshift to rest close to TK’s arm. She slid her own hand over his and gave him a comforting squeeze. “I ran around the desk and spun his chair around only to see he was covered in vomit. The stench—to this day I can’t stand the smell of bourbon, never touch the stuff. The coroner was kind enough to call it an accidental overdose, but we all knew the truth.”

Truth. It impressed her that he was willing to open these old wounds to find the truth. But with it, maybe would come some peace.

“Thank you, TK,” he whispered, not looking at her, his gaze unfocused, still caught up in memories. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Never been able to—”

“You’re welcome. I promise, I’ll do the best I can.”

“I appreciate that—you have no idea how much it means to me.” He shook himself and turned to her, his expression lightening. “Are you free for dinner?”

The question startled her. She pulled back from him. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she stammered.

“No, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant going somewhere where we can talk more, about the case, no prying eyes.”

“Oh. Of course.” David and Lucy could fend for themselves for a night. “That sounds good.”

“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven. Nothing fancy—there’s a steak house over in San Angelo that you’ll love.”

“All right. See you then.” She opened her car door and got out.

“TK?” he called across the seats before she closed the door. “Thanks again.”

She smiled. It had been a long time since anyone had placed their faith in her like Caleb had. “You are very welcome.”

She closed the SUV door and went to drop her bag in her room. Then she went over to Lucy’s room and knocked on the door. Lucy opened it and ushered her in just as she heard Tommy Worth say, “Peter Martin was not Glory Martin’s father.”

AS TK ENTERED
the room and waved to Tommy and Wash via the computer, Ruiz paced the space between the two beds while Lucy scribbled lists on paper taped to the wall opposite the window.

“So what if she wasn’t Peter Martin’s daughter?” Ruiz said. “That means someone else might have wanted Lily dead, but it doesn’t clear my father. It’s a motive, not evidence.”

“Plus, we don’t know who the real father is and if they had opportunity,” Wash put in.

“I might be able to help with that,” TK said. All eyes turned to her.

“Where were you?” Lucy asked. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

“It died.” TK noticed the bag of food sitting near the TV; maybe Lucy hadn’t forgotten her after all. “I was having lunch with Caleb Blackwell. And his mother—who is a total narcissist, but that didn’t stop her from sharing gossip about the case.”

“How is gossip going to help my father?” Ruiz asked. “It’s not evidence.”

He seemed much more invested in clearing his father’s name than he had last night. She wondered what had happened at the prison. “No, but it might open up new lines of inquiry. For example, one tidbit that Carole Blackwell let slip was that her husband, Roscoe, was one of Lily Martin’s lovers. He might have been the father of her child.”

She relished the moment of silence that followed her pronouncement.

Ruiz wove his way between TK and Lucy, his body vibrating with energy as he searched for room to pace. “If the Blackwells were involved, that would explain everything. They run this county, are untouchable. They own the sheriff and the county commissioners, could cover up Roscoe’s involvement, no problem.” He made it to the bathroom door then spun back. “They framed my father and uncle, sent them to jail. I know it.”

“Be careful,” Lucy cautioned. “We’re just speculating here. Like you said, none of this is evidence.” She turned to the computer. “Do we have any record of Roscoe Blackwell’s DNA or blood type?”

“Not in the information I have,” Tommy answered.

“TK, do you think you could convince the sheriff to get his father to volunteer a sample?”