Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (39 page)

Most people went for the familiar.

The roadblock at Oracle Junction had taken time to set up. Angela had a head start; she likely would have passed through before then. Laura called the Pinal County sheriffs office and asked them to go to Trinidad Ranch, the property where Clinton Purvis was caretaker. Then she got on the phone with the bank. This itself was time-consuming, even though she'd also dispatched a detective to the nearest branch. After a frustrating fifteen minutes, she had the information: Angela had hit two ATMs on Oracle Road.

It looked like she was on her way to Purvis's place.

Laura was going out the door when a call came in from the Oro Valley PD.

They had found the Navigator.

The Navigator sat at the far end of a Fry's parking lot near Saddlebrooke.

The back end was filled with bedding, ornaments, suitcases, clothes, and jewelry. Angela must have taken the laptop with her. She'd ditched the Navigator because she knew they'd be looking for it. She must have stolen another car.

Laura glanced around the parking lot, but saw nothing amiss. It was quite likely that Angela had found an unlocked car and stolen it. Laura wondered what the odds were that she would find a car with the keys in the ignition. She couldn't picture Angela hot-wiring a car, but then again, the girl had put together a calcium carbide bomb and managed not to blow herself up.

Laura's phone rang.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office had three of their cars at Clinton Purvis's trailer on the Trinidad Ranch property. According to the deputy she talked to, there was one civilian vehicle out front, a mid-nineties Toyota Camry registered to a Frances Goodenough.

Frances Goodenough lived in Saddlebrooke.

As Laura pulled out of the parking lot on her way to Trinidad Ranch, she glanced around once more. No one there, but the one Oro Valley PD car she’d rendezvoused with. No sign of anyone looking for their car, no one in distress.

Where was Frances Goodenough?

Laura reached the sheriff's deputy staking out Purvis's home. “Don't do anything until I get there,” she told him. “Just monitor what's happening at the house. We could have a hostage situation.” She described her own vehicle and asked him to relay the description to the sheriffs at the roadblock at Oracle Junction.

It seemed to take forever to get there. As she bumped down the ranch road she counted three Pinal County sheriff's vehicles and a Pima County patrol car in the clearing outside Purvis's trailer. The car doors were open and the deputies positioned behind the engine blocks of their cars.

Laura parked out of range and motioned to one of the deputies. He jogged over. His nametag said “Hernandez.” He briefed her on what had happened so far—nothing. No movement inside the trailer, although they had made repeated calls for the occupants to come out.

The sun was crushing in its intensity. Laura was able to hear the radio from here. A cicada buzzed nearby, loud and powerful. The old trailer gleamed dully in the hot bright light.

It would soon get miserably hot.

One of the sheriff's deputies had a bullhorn. He repeated his demand for the people inside to come out.

There was a flick of a curtain. A louvered window cranked out, and a halting voice said, “
Por favor no me mate; no he hecho nada; estoy rehén!”

A woman's voice.

The woman sounded much older than Angela. Laura wondered if Angela was good at impressions.

“Is there anyone else in there with you?” the deputy asked.

“No más el senor quien vive aquí. Creo que muere! Asístalo, por favor!”

Laura wanted to trust her ears. She didn't know if a twenty-six-year-old girl could make her voice sound like that. The heavier timbre, the obvious fear in the woman's voice.

Deputy Hernandez said, “She's asking us not to hurt her—says she didn't do anything wrong. She's worried about the man inside with her, thinks he might be dead or dying. You want me to talk to her?”

Laura nodded. Hernandez took over the bullhorn and spoke in Spanish. Laura understood most of what he was telling the woman; she needed to come out onto the front step and stay there with her hands out where they could see them.

For a long moment, there was no action. Then the knob turned, the metal door squeaked past the rubber insulation and shuddered. A short woman peered outside, then stepped onto the front stoop, blinking against the sunlight. Her hands straight out in front of her, palms out as if warding them away. Her eyes half-closed, tilted to the side, as if she didn't want to see them.

Laura recognized her. It was the Brashear's maid, Lourdes. She wore a blue knit shirt with the heart clinic logo, the white skirt, the white tennis shoes. Her hair, which had been up in a bun, was disheveled. She looked near tears.

Hernandez told her to walk down the steps and stop when she got to the bottom.

The woman did as she told. Her bruised-looking eyes still staring downward and to the side, as if she couldn't stand to look.

He talked her to within a few feet of the car, then had her turn around, her hands still raised.

“What do you think?”

Laura said, “I think she's one of the victims.”

Victim or not, caution dictated Lourdes be handcuffed and patted down before they escorted her to the ramada where Purvis painted his signs. Laura and Ray Hernandez questioned her while the deputies remained by their cars, aware that there might still be someone else inside. It was still a dangerous situation.

“Is Micaela in the trailer?” Laura asked, and Ray translated the question into Spanish. Laura used the name “Micaela” to avoid confusion.

The woman looked at her fearfully, then started speaking in Spanish.

Laura understood some of the words, but let Hernandez translate. “She's gone. She left in Mr. Purvis's truck.”

Laura had her describe the truck. It jived with the vehicle registered to Purvis—a pale green, mid-seventies Ford F-250.

“When did she leave?”

Fifteen to twenty minutes, Hernandez said.

There were many things Laura needed to know, and she was looking for short answers.

The woman's eyes pleading. Asking about “Dr. Colin.” Wanting to know if he was all right. She was also concerned for Clinton Purvis. Worried that he might be dead, that he needed help now. Hernandez said something in Spanish to Lourdes, nodding toward the trailer. The deputies were already on the doorstep.

Hernandez got the layout of the trailer from her, the approximate position of Clinton Purvis, and relayed it to the deputies. Laura glanced up to see the paramedics driving into the yard. She had Hernandez ask what happened before Purvis was hurt, aware of time slipping away, but needing to know specifics—if Angela had a gun, for instance.

The story came out haltingly, Laura aware of the scene going on beyond them, the sheriff's deputies clearing the trailer, the paramedics going in. Laura hearing words and phrases she recognized, but concentrating on the full translation Hernandez gave her and writing it down. Lourdes telling them that Micaela had been acting strangely this morning, agitated. She seemed angry. It started when Mrs. Brashear left the house. Suddenly she began ordering Lourdes around, telling her to pull the bedding off the bed and get as many clothes and shoes as she could. Lourdes knew better than to argue with Micaela—she had a very mean temper.

Micaela directed Lourdes to put everything in the Navigator. As Lourdes and Micaela carried stuff into the kitchen, they were stopped by Dr. Brashear. Micaela calmly pulled a gun out of her purse and shot him.

Seeing her employer shot at point blank range, Lourdes was now terrified, but she did as Micaela told her, stuffing the clothing and shoes and bedding into the back of the SUV. Micaela was yelling, directing her to go upstairs and telling her which statuettes and ornaments to take. Micaela couldn't find her iPod. She looked all over, in a fury, while Dr. Brashear lay on the floor in a lake of blood.

Lourdes told Hernandez that Micaela said she was now a hostage. She told them how Micaela had approached a woman parked near them at the shopping center and forced her at gunpoint to drive them away. How she'd made Lourdes transfer the laptop and iPod and as many clothes as she could into the car. She told them that they drove out onto a side road, and Micaela forced the woman out of her car and waved the gun at her, told her not to report what had happened to the authorities.

Lourdes was clearly worried about Dr. Brashear. She asked if she could go to the hospital and be with Nina, so Laura sent her with a deputy.

Clinton Purvis had been shot twice, one in the shoulder and one in the side, but his vital signs were good, and the paramedics were reasonably certain he would survive. He was unconscious, but Laura hoped to talk to him later, if and when he was stable, to get his statement.

Laura had the deputies spread out and search the area, just in case Lourdes had been wrong. But Clinton Purvis's truck was gone, and she had a twenty-minute head start.

Laura thought the odds were good that one law enforcement agency or the other would spot the truck. She herself drove to Florence, scanning the desert on either side for any sign of the pickup. Thinking that Angela might have gone to ground for the time being.

If she made it as far as Apache Junction without being noticed, she would be that much harder to find. Purvis's truck would be one among thousands. And it was always possible she would carjack another vehicle.

A call came in as she was driving back; it was a sergeant with the Oro Valley PD. Frances Goodenough had been found walking along the road in the direction of Catalina; she was bruised, scraped, and thirsty—with a story to tell.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The man showed up around noon. Steve watched him from inside the cabin, using the zoom on his digital camera to snap photo after photo. A record of the man's actions.

He should go out to confront him. But every time he got onto the porch and looked at the picnic table, the man was gone. As long as he stayed in the cabin, he could watch the man.

The man had props. They had materialized along with him. A platter, navy-blue enameled, speckled with white. His grandfather had one of those. He had the cups, too. Enameled tin. On the platter was a steak still on the plastic-wrapped cardboard tray that came from the supermarket. Steve couldn't see very well from here, but he knew it would be dark red and juicy. There was a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce on the picnic table. There was a store-bought tub of what looked like potato salad. A stack of paper plates still in the cellophane. And a cooler filled with ice and beer.

The smell of charcoal and lighter fluid filled the air. Smoke hazed the pines. The man was having a high old time. He always had a bottle of beer in his hand. In fact, it seemed to Steve that as time went on, the man was getting increasingly drunk.

A drunken ghost.

Steve looked around for Jake. Predictably, he wasn't anywhere nearby. He walked into the bedroom and saw Jake sitting on the brown chenille bedspread. Jake looked up, then put his head back down on his paws and sighed.

For a moment, anger flared through him, hot and white. His own dog didn't like him. His own damn dog. He wanted to grab Jake by the collar, pull him into the front room with him, make him sit at his feet—

But of course he wouldn't do that. He wasn't cruel to animals. He wasn't like Bill Gardner, the man who hanged puppies.

Jake's eyebrows wrinkled as he looked up again, and this time, Steve saw fear in his own dog's golden eyes.

As white-hot as his anger, the despair that settled into him was cold and deep, like a toxic lake, sinking down into his vitals, seeping into his soul.

“I'm sorry,” he said. He walked back out to the side window.

The man was popping another bottle cap. It hit the ground, winking in the sunlight, and the man leaned down to pick it up and almost fell over.

Drunk as a skunk, as his father used to say.

The Man Without a Face sat down at the table. He seemed to be staring off into the woods, and Steve got the feeling that the man was deeply wounded.

It was hard to tell for sure. Just the feeling he got. The man was drunk, the man was losing control of his emotions, even though he was simply staring at the woods. He was like a walking nerve; he seemed lurid somehow, like fresh blood bubbling up or rented flesh still curling in on itself. These images slashed across Steve's mind, and he believed they were true. He was sure of it. This was what he felt, here, behind the glass, looking at the man, who simply sat staring into the woods.