The Associate (18 page)

“What murders?”

“Gene’s wife and the wife of our biggest client were kidnapped and murdered. It probably wasn’t a big deal out of state, but it was major news in Arizona.” Kellogg shook his head. “It was really horrible. First, Martin’s wife was killed, then Gene’s. Neither one of them ever really got over it.”

Kate leaned forward. “This is the first I’ve heard about these murders. Can you fill me in?”

“I don’t know much more than what I read. Like I said, this was before I moved to Desert Grove, about seven years ago. I didn’t know Gene then, or Martin Alvarez.”

“Who is Martin Alvarez?”

“He’s the wealthiest man in Laurel County. A year or so before I got here his wife was murdered during a bungled kidnapping attempt. Paul McCann, a local guy, was arrested. Then Gene’s wife was kidnapped and murdered. For a while Gene was a suspect in his wife’s murder, but they dropped the charges. It was a horrible time for Gene. He was still a mess during the first year I worked here.”

“Did they ever catch Mrs. Arnold’s killer?”

“No.”

“Can you give me any more details?”

“Not really. It was all over by the time I started working for Gene and he never talked about it.”

“Who would know more about the murders?”

Kellogg hesitated. “There’s Martin, but I’m not certain he’ll see you.”

“Why is that?”

“Martin worshiped his wife. He was devastated by her death. From what I hear he was very gregarious before she was killed. Everyone says that he threw the best parties; he was very active in the community and a great contributor to local charities. That all changed after his wife died. He’s very reclusive now. He rarely leaves his hacienda, even to conduct business.”

The Alvarez ranch was several miles out of town. There was no marker on the highway and Kate would have missed the turn onto the dirt track that led to the hacienda if Benjamin Kellogg had not given her precise directions. Kate drove on through a swirl of dust, but there was no sign of civilization. On both sides of the road clumps of desert plants clung to the arid and rocky ground and giant cacti stretched their arms toward a blue sky marred only by occasional wisps of clean white cloud. Kate was beginning to wonder if she’d made the right turn when an expanse of brown adobe walls materialized in the distance.

A guard inspected Kate’s identification before directing her to a parking area in front of a massive whitewashed Spanish-style house with a red tile roof. She noticed another armed guard as she walked up a flagstone path to a front door of carved oak, which opened before she could knock.

“Miss Ross?” asked a slender, light-boned woman of middle age dressed in a plain dress and comfortable shoes.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman smiled. “I’m Anna Cordova, Mr. Alvarez’s assistant. He’s out at the pool.”

Cordova inquired politely about Kate’s plane trip as she led the investigator across a tiled entryway, down four wide hardwood steps, and across a sunken living room. A blanket with an intricate American Indian design decorated one wall and an oil painting of a cattle drive decorated another; a glass case in a corner displayed pre-Columbian art. Kate walked by a stone fireplace and a painting that looked like a Georgia O’Keeffe.

Outside, into the heat again. But this time there was shade from a roof that overhung a wide patio of brownish-red Spanish tile. At the end of the patio was a pool wide enough for six lap lanes and deep enough at one end for a diving board. An armed guard stood in the shadows created by the high wall that surrounded the compound. His eyes followed Kate as she crossed the veranda, but Kate lost interest in him quickly. Her attention was drawn to a heavyset man in white cotton pants and a loose-fitting short-sleeve shirt who was seated under an umbrella at a circular glass table, staring toward the pool.

Martin Alvarez stood when he heard the women approach. Kate guessed that he was six two. A black eye patch covered his right eye and a scar ran across his temple, reddish white against his dark, pockmarked skin. There were streaks of gray in his jet-black hair. A bushy mustache covered his upper lip. Alvarez’s shoulders were thick and his forearms were heavily muscled. The investigator’s immediate impression was that he was a hard, unforgiving man.

“Martin, Miss Ross is here,” Anna Cordova said.

Alvarez crossed the pool deck with a determined stride.

“Gene is dead?” he asked without preliminaries.

Kate nodded.

“There is no mistake?” Alvarez asked. His face betrayed no emotions.

“No.”

“The details, please. And do not spare my feelings. I am hardened to violence. Nothing you tell me will be worse than what I’ve already experienced.”

“Mr. Arnold was killed with a sharp instrument, probably a knife. He didn’t suffer. His death would have been quick.”

“Why did it take you so long to identify him? Kellogg reported him missing weeks ago.”

“His body was found in the ruins of a laboratory in the woods, several miles from downtown Portland. Mr. Arnold’s body had to be identified through dental records because the body burned with the building.”

There was a quick intake of breath.

“He was dead before the fire was set,” Kate added quickly to put Alvarez’s mind at ease.

“Why don’t you continue your conversation by the pool.” Cordova pointed to the glass-topped table. “I’ll have Miguel bring you some refreshments. Would you like an iced tea?” she asked Kate.

“That would be fine, thank you.”

Alvarez walked back to the table. Kate sat across from him under the shade of a large umbrella.

“Do you have any suspects?” Alvarez asked.

“No. The police don’t even know what Mr. Arnold was doing in Oregon.”

“I don’t either. Gene was in New York to obtain financing for one of my business ventures. I expected him back as soon as he was finished.”

“So he wasn’t supposed to go to Portland after he was through in New York?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had any dealings with the Geller Pharmaceutical Company?”

“No.”

“Can you think of any reason why Mr. Arnold would be interested in primate research?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

Kate gave Alvarez a brief explanation of the Insufort case. Alvarez blanched when she mentioned Aaron Flynn’s name.

“Is something wrong?” Kate asked.

“Seven years ago a man named Paul McCann murdered my wife. Aaron Flynn was his attorney.”

“Was Flynn a big man with red hair?”

“Yes.”

Kate told Alvarez about the Bernier photograph.

“My best guess is that Mr. Arnold came to Oregon to talk to one of the people in the picture. Maybe Flynn is in it. Do you know why that would have been such a shock?”

Alvarez’s brow furrowed and Kate thought that he looked genuinely perplexed.

“I can only guess that seeing Flynn brought back memories of his wife’s murder,” Alvarez answered after some thought.

“Were the murders of your wife and Mr. Arnold’s related?”

“Yes.”

Kate let that rest for a moment.

“How did Mr. Arnold get along with Flynn when they were living in Desert Grove?”

“I don’t think they saw much of each other outside of professional meetings,” Alvarez answered stiffly. Then he paused, lost in thought, before shaking his head. “None of this makes sense.”

“It might help me to make sense of it if I knew more about what happened here, seven years ago.”

Alvarez hesitated. Kate could only guess at how painful his memories must be. After a moment he fingered his scar.

“If you think it would help . . . ?”

“I don’t know if it will, but we have nothing to go on now.”

“I’ve spent seven years thinking about the murder of my wife, trying to piece together what happened. I’ll tell you what I know and what I learned from others if it will help you catch the person who murdered Gene.” He pointed at his sightless eye. “He may be the same person who did this to me.”

It was morning in the desert. As Patty Alvarez rode Conquistador toward the red-rock canyons to the east, a crimson tinge appeared along the horizon. Then the sun began to grow huge, displaying thick waves of red-hot gas and yellow flares so bright that she couldn’t gaze directly at them.

Patty liked to ride first thing in the morning because it was still cool. In an hour rivulets of sweat would be running between her breasts and her blouse would stick to her hot skin. That’s when she would turn for home.

Conquistador was a King-bred quarter horse, a reddish-brown bay with a black mane and tail who had once been a champion. Martin Alvarez had presented Conquistador to his wife on her thirty-second birthday and he was Patty’s favorite. As they raced across the narrow valley, she felt the muscular bay moving between her legs, reminding her of the things Martin had done to her that morning before she left the hacienda. There were two stallions in her life. Patty smiled at the thought.

One way to cut the heat was to race through the gaps between the stone monuments that spread out before her. In the canyons, the narrow rock walls shot up to the sky and cast cooling shadows over the trail. Conquistador knew the route of their morning run by heart, so Patty could concentrate on the view. Patty believed that the mesas had been painted by nature and sculpted by God. She never tired of looking at them. They were red or brown or yellow, depending on the light, and she imagined that she saw the faces of Indians or the bodies of muscular warriors in the rock.

The land in front of the canyon was flat and the huge boulders that marked both sides of the entrance were big enough for a man to hide behind. Conquistador was drawing alongside the massive stone pile on the right when two men appeared abruptly from behind the boulders to the left. They wore navy-blue ski masks, jeans, and jackets that were zipped to the neck, a bizarre outfit to wear in a land where the heat of the day was over one hundred degrees. As the man in front raised his hand toward Patty, palm outstretched, the other man leveled a rifle at her horse.

Patty knew instantly what was happening. Martin was rich, very rich, and he loved Patty past caring. Everyone knew this, and Patty was certain that these men knew it, too. They would use Martin’s love to make him pay a fortune in ransom for her. And once he paid she was certain that she would die.

Patty dropped her body forward, hugging Conquistador as she kicked her heels into his flanks. The bay sprang forward. Wind like a freight train barreled past the quarter horse. Hooves beat against the parched ground, dust flew. The men jumped aside. Patty saw a swirl of light and shadow in the canyon, and freedom. Then a shot rang out in the still desert air.

There were seventy thousand people living in Laurel County, Arizona, but there was no debate over who among them was the richest and most powerful. Martin Alvarez was a bear of a man with a broad flat face the color of tanned leather. He wore his hair in a ponytail, had diamond studs in his ears, and wore buckskin jackets, hand-tooled cowboy boots, and bolo ties. Martin had started with one used-car lot on the outskirts of town and now owned car dealerships all over the state, as well as a statewide chain of retail stores and profitable land holdings. But Martin’s proudest possession was his wife, the redheaded, green-eyed former Miss Laurel County.

Patty Alvarez was fifteen years Martin’s junior. When the most powerful man in Laurel County started courting her she had been scared to death, but she knew that marrying Martin meant security. And there was the prestige of being Mrs. Martin Alvarez. She would go from being a name scratched into the stalls in the high-school boys’ room to the top of Laurel County society. So she had said yes when Martin proposed and had been happily surprised to find that she had grown to love the husband who doted on her.

The Martin Alvarez seated behind the large oak desk in the hacienda’s home office was a man on the verge of violence. The only thing keeping him civilized was the absence of a target. Seated on the other side of the desk were FBI Agent Thomas Chandler, Detective Norman Chisholm of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office, and Ramon Quiroz, the Laurel County district attorney. Several other law enforcement officers were also crowded into the room. Two FBI technicians were working on Martin’s phone.

“I know you’ve told Mr. Quiroz and several others what happened today, but I’d like to hear it firsthand, if you don’t mind,” Chandler said.

Martin looked ready to explode. He was tired of talking, he wanted action, but he restrained himself and recounted the day’s events to the FBI agent.

“Patty rides every morning. Sometimes we ride together, but I had a conference call at seven, so she rode alone. She usually takes the same route and she’s usually back between eight and nine. When she didn’t return by ten I grew worried. I brought one of the men and we went looking for her.”

Martin paused. Chandler watched him control his anguish and anger.

“We found Conquistador near the entrance to a canyon roughly four miles east of here.”

“Conquistador is her horse?”

“Was. He’s dead,” Martin replied bitterly.

“And your wife was missing?”

Martin nodded. “But there was blood on the rocks where Conquistador fell.”

“I’ve got my forensic people out there now,” Chandler said. “They’ll analyze the blood to see if it’s from the horse.”

He did not mention the other, obvious possibility.

“What did you do after you found Conquistador?”

“I called Ramon from my cell phone. Then we waited by the horse.”

“Tell me about the call from the kidnappers.”

“As soon as Norm arrived he told me to go home. He was worried it was a kidnapping and they’d call while I was out. They did, about two hours ago. They said no cops, but Ramon and Norm insisted that I bring you in.”