Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2)

by Sarah Lovett

  In the office parking lot, Sylvia ran her index finger along the Volvo's trunk. When she examined her hand, the tip of the dusty finger showed a perfectly defined print, an accidental whorl pattern. Ash from the Jemez fire had coated the city, and everything glowed with a faint orange hue. Sylvia rubbed thumb against finger just as a hand clamped down hard on her shoulder. She spun around. It took her a moment to recognize the F.B.I. agent's familiar features.

  MATT SENT THE Cock 'n' Bull's lady bartender a sleepy—and he hoped halfway sexy—smile. The Pojoaque watering hole was a down and dirty party spot for drug dealers, bikers, and your everyday working stiffs. The bartender looked like she could hoist her Harley overhead, one-handed. In contrast to her strapping body, she had a delicate, heart-shaped face.

  She reminded Matt of a bartender he'd known in Enid, Oklahoma, when he was a sheriff. More than twenty years ago. He kept his voice soft. "So Kiki . . . that's a pretty name. Kiki. What about yesterday?"

  Kiki lit a hand-rolled cigarette and inhaled so deep that the smoke went all the way to her toes. She washed down the nicotine with a shot of Black Jack. "I wasn't here. Got a day off for once." Her sweet mouth pulled into a smile. She set down the almost empty shot—but not the cigarette—and picked up a damp rag with her free hand. She began to wipe down the rough pine bar with a steady stroke.

  Matt thought about the stark contrast—this bar and the home of Flora Escudero and her family. He'd visited the Escudero residence on his way to the bar. Criminal Agent Terry Osuna had been there, too. They'd both had a long talk with Flora's mother and older brother. Their home was small, meticulously and lovingly kept, and filled with objects that symbolized their faith in God: paintings and statues of the Madonna, Jesus on the cross, and various saints; an ornate, leather-bound Bible.

  But it wasn't the religious effects that convinced the investigators that Flora's immediate family was not involved in Randall's murder. It was the fact that they had spent the night in a hospital waiting room while Flora Escudero had aspirin and Valium pumped from her stomach after a suicide attempt. Matt's heart went out to the girl and her family.

  Still, there were probably a hundred Escuderos who were more or less related to Flora's family, and they did not all have alibis to cover the hours of Randall's kidnapping and murder. Terry Osuna and Matt were both convinced the crime was one of revenge that could be traced back to la familia.

  Now Matt leaned closer, nosing the bar with his cowboy boots. "You ever take your bike out by Little Peaks?" He kept his breath shallow. The sour stink of rubber bar mats and margarita mix was close to lethal.

  "Yeah." This time Kiki's smile was shy. "You?"

  He nodded. "My buddy's got a three-fifty trail bike and I put her through her paces."

  Kiki gave up on wiping the bar. She raised a soda gun in her right hand. "You want something? Pepsi? Seven-Up? A beer?"

  "I'll take one of your smokes." He'd been able to lay off cigarettes a few years ago, but the inevitable replacement was a tin of Copenhagen. He was trying to break the habit. In a pinch, he still smoked the odd cigarette. Like now.

  Kiki shrugged, secretly pleased, and went to work with a little American Spirit shag and a rolling paper. When she sealed the cigarette by moistening the paper with her tongue, Matt said a silent prayer that her shots were in order. He slid the cigarette between his lips as Kiki struck a match. She held out the flame, and Matt sucked in smoke.

  Kiki drained the last of the Black Jack from her shot glass. "I liked him."

  "Randall?"

  She nodded. "Nobody else did. But we were friends, kinda. And I know he didn't rape that girl. He wasn't all bad like people say." Her hands pressed down on the bar. "I don't like cops."

  "Who does?" Matt tried a smile.

  "You guys have given me some rough times."

  "I'm sorry about that, Kiki." Matt pushed his tongue against one cheek.

  "But Robbie says you're different.''

  "Robbie's an okay guy." Robert Wiggits, owner of the Cock 'n' Bull, biker, speed freak. Occasional snitch. For some reason—which probably had something to do with Robbie's bisexual preferences—he'd taken a shine to Matt.

  "So. . ." Kiki picked up the bottle of Black Jack, tipped it until the metal pour spout clicked glass, and reached a decision when the gold liquid formed a soft dome at the top of the shot glass. "Yesterday, I wasn't here when Anthony came in." Her expression darkened. "I wish I had been. He'd still be alive."

  Matt watched the bartender closely. Some twist of her delicate mouth made him question her true feelings about Randall's death. Matt thought that maybe this large, rough woman had fallen for the man's pretty face and sociopathic charm, but now, the reality was starting to sink in about Anthony Randall.

  Or perhaps something more ominous was going on, something she wasn't talking about.

  Suddenly, Kiki yelled out, "Hey, Shoshone!" The shrill sound pierced Matt's ears.

  A few seconds later, another full-size Anglo woman—hair dyed black, late thirties—stuck her face between the saloon's swinging doors.

  Shoshone said, "What?" Then she stomped into the bar, kicking off a parade: two guys followed—one sporting worn Levi's, a faded T-shirt, work boots, and a billcap, the other in manure-spatted cowboy boots and duds.

  Matt thought they looked like they were buzzed on meth.

  Kiki set up beers for her friends. She told Matt, "These guys were here. They saw Anthony Randall, the whole thing."

  Matt's heartbeat revved as he stubbed out the last of Kiki's cigarette. He leaned casually against the bar. "Anybody see who he was with?"

  Shoshone had a rumbling voice, a deep bass. "He was looking for Kiki so I poured him a shot of tequila."

  Matt said, "You were a friend of his?"

  "That little shit?"

  Matt saw a sulking Kiki ease down to the end of the bar, where she began to roll another smoke. He said, "It must've been really busy in here."

  Shoshone stuck a finger into her mouth, and retrieved a wad of gum. "I know what Randall looked like. And I saw him yesterday."

  Matt believed that much was true.

  Billcap sniffed and wiped his nose. "I remember him, too, and he sat back by the pool table. A guy sat down with him—a black dude."

  "No way." Cowboy shook his head. "He sat over by the toilet. Him and a tiny Mexican chick—"

  Billcap shrugged, then chugged his beer.

  For an instant Matt's excitement level plummeted. These guys weren't going to tell him squat about Randall. Not if they could help it. They talked like Randall was drinking with a shape-shifter.

  But Matt's curiosity was piqued. Why all the bullshit? Just for his benefit? Just to mess with a cop?

  Shoshone growled in Matt's face: "I remember the guy Anthony Randall was drinking with. Tight body, you know? Guy was buff. But he was kinda short."

  She turned and chopped a hand halfway down Billcap's back to indicate height, or, more accurately, lack of height. "And I hate short guys. Short guys got—" Shoshone held up her little finger. Billcap and Cowboy snorted derisively.

  Shoshone took a slow pull on her beer. "This short guy had eyes like Charlie."

  "Charlie?"

  "Manson." She leaned close to Matt until he felt her breath like a small, hot wind. "I thought Manson was cool. I mean he was crazy and weird, but he had a philosophy. About war and society and shit. These days, nobody's got a philosophy."

  Kiki moved back along the bar until she was standing opposite Matt. She caught his eye, and emotions scuttled across her features. Anger, shame, disgust.

  Shoshone was caught up by her own words. She said, "Manson, he controlled those Manson girls . . . he willed them to kill. How many people you know have that much will?"

  Billcap looked suddenly worried. He mumbled, "It was all the acid they took."

  Shoshone shook her black hair. She smiled slyly. "I think Anthony Randall's killer has that Charlie Manson kind of will. Better watch out, Mr. Cop."
>
  "YOU SCARED ME, Dan!" Sylvia took in the familiar features of Special Agent Dan Chaney. He was an old law enforcement buddy of Matt's. Broad, muscular, and gray-blond—normally she would describe him as handsome. Not today. Today, he was hollow-eyed and haggard.

  She said, "Are you all right?" Then her brain caught up with her mouth. "I was so sorry to hear about Nina, Dan. I know she was a good friend."

  Special Agent Nina Valdez had been Dan Chaney's lover for more than a year. It had been one of those secret affairs that everyone seemed to know about—everyone except Chaney's wife and his supervisors. The F.B.I. morals code of conduct was so strict that agents were subject to discipline for extramarital affairs.

  Now, she tried to pull together recent details: Nina Valdez had been dead for almost two months—killed in Las Cruces. She, Dan Chaney, and other F.B.I. and D.E.A. agents had closed in on suspects just as an arms deal was going down. When the suspect warehouse exploded, Nina went with it.

  The media had christened the incident "Blowout at Las Cruces."

  Sylvia reconsidered the man standing next to her: Dan Chaney looked just the way a burned-out federal agent burdened by grief should look.

  "I've got to talk to you." His voice was a hoarse whisper. He still gripped her shoulder. She looked into his eyes—they were light blue with pinprick pupils. They were the eyes of someone who suffered from sleep deprivation, caffeine overload, and maybe something more ominous. Sylvia had seen speed freaks more relaxed than Special Agent Dan Chaney.

  "What's this about?"

  "We can't talk here." Abruptly, he let go of her shoulder.

  Sylvia felt infected by the federal agent's profound unease. His anxiety was palpable. "Have you seen Matt? We heard you were—"

  "I know about last night," Chaney interrupted sharply.

  "You were up at the crime scene, where Anthony Randall was murdered. . . ." Sylvia's voice trailed off.

  Chaney nodded once. He said, "Sylvia, I know what's going on. I know who assaulted you." For an instant, his face softened, and the old Dan Chaney appeared like a ghost. Curious, diligent, oddly gentle. Then he was gone, buried under this taut mask.

  "You know who broke into Matt's trailer?" Sylvia surrendered to Dan Chaney's urgency. Her instinct to help Matt's old friend was shoved aside by the pressing need to hear what he had to say about her attacker. Chaney might be functioning on emotional overload, but he had always been an excellent federal agent.

  "Sylvia, you've got yourself a problem." He gestured to a tan Lincoln Town Car double-parked on the street. "Follow me."

  Sylvia was two cars behind Dan Chaney's Lincoln, driving south on Cerrillos. They were headed to his motel instead of the Santa Fe office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Chaney had insisted on an informal meeting. Sylvia guessed he was working a stakeout.

  As she passed Siler Road, a cloud cleared the sun, and the light became brilliant. Luminous. This was the high desert's familiar and legendary summer light: crystal clear and achingly beautiful. For the past few weeks, the sky had been hazed by smog and the residue of wildfires.

  Sylvia braked at a red light. Forty years earlier, Cerrillos Road had been a dirt lane fronting farms and orchards. Now, because it connected downtown with the interstate, a hodgepodge of fast-food joints, franchises, and minimarts lined its shoulders. The light went green, and traffic crept forward. Just ahead Sylvia saw Chaney turn off to the right. She followed and parked in the lot of the Rode Inn.

  Elbowed between Burger King and Carpet World, the Rode Inn rented by the week or the month. The interior hallway smelled of cigarettes and soiled laundry. The frayed carpet was a sorry clash of orange and red. Sylvia took a shallow breath. Special Agent Dan Chaney was definitely living on the fringe these days.

  Uneasy, she followed him down the hall. He kept his body erect and butt flat; Sylvia noticed the right shoulder canted slightly. She hoped he hadn't been trying to bust through doors. When he reached Number 222, he used a key.

  Inside, Sylvia squeezed past Chaney. The odor of sweat and apprehension hit her dead on. She stepped over a T-shirt, between stacks of what seemed to be files, newspaper clippings, official reports. A map of the Western states lay open on the bed.

  The only window in the room was curtained. Straight ahead, the television was on, humming softly, but the screen glowed blue. The agent had placed a framed photograph of Nina Valdez on top of the TV. Sylvia felt wooed by the high cheekbones, deepset eyes, and wide mouth; she knew how the woman's lovely face must haunt Dan Chaney.

  Now Sylvia was also certain that Dan Chaney wasn't working a case—at least not officially.

  And that made her feel worse. Her heart sank. She paced the room, glanced out the curtained window for a view of the parking lot, Chaney's Lincoln, and her Volvo. The motel windowpane was cracked. In the tiny open closet, one shirt hung limply over a hanger. The bathroom's fluorescent lights revealed cheap tile and fixtures. Chaney fit right in.

  She turned to face him now. "How did you know about last night?"

  He ran a thick hand over his stub-cut hair and shrugged. "Shit, Sylvia, I'm an agent. It was all over the scanner." In the next room, a door slammed and the plywood and plaster motel walls vibrated. Chaney's body went rigid.

  Sylvia fought her own instinct to tighten up. The man was behaving like a crazed alcoholic coming off a binge, not a law enforcement professional.

  She faced him, and her dark eyes explored his limpid blues for a moment, but that particular entrance to his soul was closed. Her voice was gentle when she said, "Dan, does anybody know you're here? Can I call someone?"

  He ignored her questions, hunkered on the edge of the bed, and eased a photograph from a dog-eared file. "See if this reminds you of anything?"

  The photo was an enlargement. The subject was a corpse. The victim had been bound and burned, just like Anthony Randall. Sylvia said, "Where did you get this?"

  When Chaney saw the fear in her eyes he gave a quick nod of approval. "California law enforcement raided a ranch south of Mojave earlier this year. They found Polaroids of two other victims—both adult males—and they found home movies of the murders."

  She sat wearily on the bed. "So are we talking about a serial killer? Vigilantes? I don't understand what's going on."

  Chaney leaned toward Sylvia, took the photograph from her fingers, and lowered his voice until it was sensual in its intensity. "The dead man in this particular photograph was a child molester until he met up with our mutual friend Dupont White."

  Although the name sounded only vaguely familiar, Sylvia knew that Dupont White must be Chaney's enemy—the man responsible for Nina Valdez's death. Then instinct was bluntly shoved aside by facts.

  "Dan, this man—this Dupont White—he was the gunrunner who was killed in Las Cruces. In the warehouse blowout. I remember now."

  Without moving a muscle, Chaney pulled himself back, reined in his emotions—almost invisibly, but Sylvia saw the transition.

  "Dupont White's death"—Chaney stood and cocked fingers to sign quotations around "death"—"his death is an official lie. The Bureau has no proof. All the evidence went up with the warehouse."

  Dread ran through Sylvia's body like a chemical. She didn't know if Chaney was delusional or a whistle-blower. The mattress springs dug into her buttocks. She was hot and sweaty. And she wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. But she also wanted to hear what proof Dan Chaney had—if any.

  It was a hard sell, and Chaney sensed his narrow window of opportunity. He paced a few steps andcontinued quietly. "Dupont White hawks black-market hardware to skinheads in Idaho, the Aryan Nation in California, and Lone Star Nazis. It's all part of his paranoid mission to fuck over the cops, the feds, his daddy—everyone who fucked him over first." Chaney stopped moving, rubbed his neck with short, thick fingers, and studied Sylvia for an uncomfortably long time. She refused to veer her eyes under his gaze. Finally he sat down next to her, and his lips turned up into a crooked smile. "For your own s
afety, you really should believe me, Sylvia."

  "Believe you? Jesus, Dan, you're talking about a dead man." She took a breath and set her palms on her thighs, fingers spread. Apprehension pushed her to act, to get out of this room, this motel. She didn't move.

  In a quieter voice, she said, "It's been two months since the warehouse blowout. Hasn't the F.B.I. completed DNA tests? Don't they have proof of Dupont White's death?"

  Wearily, Chaney ran a hand across his temple to ease a throbbing pain. "It's more complicated than that. The Bureau won't release their findings. They don't want any of this made public."

  "Oh, come on, why the hell not? Are you suggesting this is a federal conspiracy?"

  "Don't forget, I was there," he answered quietly. Sylvia was startled when an image appeared suddenly on the television screen.

  "When they raided the ranch in California, they found this footage." Chaney nodded toward the screen.

  The camera panned, jumped, and a grainy image pulled into focus: a desert moonscape.

  Sylvia glanced at the agent. His mouth hung open—eyes glommed on film he'd seen a hundred times—his hand gripped the remote. Sylvia's attention was drawn back to the video. The quality was poor, black-and-white and grainy, but watchable.

  The camera's eye slid to the ground and closed in on something long and white. Rope. Sylvia swallowed uncomfortably as the camera moved again, jerked along, as if it were a hound following a ripe scent.

  The camera stopped on a man's face. Eyes stared blindly out at the viewer. His mouth was open, he was breathing hard and fast. Then there was blurred motion as if the camera had been dropped. For what seemed an interminably long time, the screen was gray. When the camera finally pulled roughly back to reveal the captive's naked body, Sylvia heard herself groan. He was on his back, arms and legs outstretched, lashed between four metal stakes. His skin was wet.

  She could hear Chaney's drawn breath; but it wasn't Chaney, it was her own quick inhalation. Nothing else. There was no soundtrack to the homemade video as it became a montage of horrific images: a hand gripping a burning flare, an arm extending over the man's naked body, the flare dropped.