Dance of the Bones

by J. A. Jance

  Since Brandon had been the first officer summoned to the crime scene, that meant the homicide investigation was assigned to him from the start. At Sheriff DuShane’s insistence, Brandon worked the case solo. He understood from the outset that this wasn’t a favor. The Amos Warren investigation started out as a ten-­year-­old case. No doubt DuShane assumed that the homicide would never be solved. By assigning the case to Brandon, the sheriff could be sure that it would count against Brandon’s closure rates and no one else’s.

  DuShane’s automatic expectation of failure made Brandon all the more determined to succeed. Knowing that the best he could hope for would be to build a circumstantial case, he went looking into Amos Warren’s circumstances.

  Over time the victim’s history came into focus. He was an ex-­con who had gone to prison for killing someone in a bar fight on the night of his twenty-­first birthday. After serving his time and being released, he’d been a loner, earning a somewhat sketchy living doing some kind of prospecting rather than having a regular job. Somewhere along the way, he had taken in a young kid from the neighborhood, a neglected boy named John Lassiter.

  Since Brandon knew John Lassiter was the one who had filed the missing persons report after Amos Warren disappeared, that’s where Brandon started his investigation. Their first meeting went about as well as could be expected.

  According to county records, John Lassiter lived in a house on Lee Street in Tucson, a few houses east of Park. It was a modest place, two bedrooms or so, with a screened-­in front porch. Because of the neighborhood’s proximity to the University of Arizona campus, most of the other houses served as student rentals, but this one seemed to be an exception to that rule. The bearded, burly man who opened the door looked too old and shopworn to be a college student. Brandon estimated the guy was six-­foot-­six if he was an inch. Already, at nine o’clock in the morning, there was a distinct odor of beer on his breath.

  “John Lassiter?” Brandon asked, pulling out his ID.

  “That’s who I am. Who are you?”

  “I’m Detective Brandon Walker with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. May I come in?”

  Rather than opening the door, Lassiter stepped outside onto a concrete walkway, pulling the door shut behind him. Folding his arms tightly across his chest, he stood there surly and glowering. “What’s this all about?” he demanded.

  “It’s about a friend of yours—­Amos Warren.”

  “Friend?” he snorted back. “Some friend. What about him?”

  “I’m afraid he’s dead,” Brandon answered. “His recently identified remains were found some time ago on the far side of the Rincons. We’ve been unable to locate any next of kin. Since you were the one who filed the missing persons report, I thought you might be able to offer us some direction about a next of kin.”

  Brandon watched Lassiter’s face as he delivered the bad news. The two men had once been friends. There was a pause, but no visible reaction crossed Lassiter’s face when he heard the news.

  “Good riddance then,” John said at last. “And he didn’t have any next of kin—­no wife, no kids, no nothing. So what happened to him?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say at this time. What I can tell you is that Mr. Warren’s death is being investigated as a possible homicide.”

  “All right then,” Lassiter said with a shrug. “Nothing to do with me. I haven’t seen him in years. Where did this happen, down in Mexico?”

  “No,” Brandon answered. “It happened right here in the States. What made you think he might have died in Mexico?”

  “He used to talk about going there someday and being able to live on the cheap. And when he took off the way he did, that’s where I thought he went. A ­couple of years ago, when they finally got around to declaring him dead, I went along with the program, and why not? But I still didn’t believe he was dead, not really.”

  Brandon was caught off guard. “Are you saying Amos Warren has already been declared dead in a court of law?”

  Brandon’s obvious consternation seemed to amuse Lassiter. “You didn’t know about that?” he asked with a grin. “But that’s exactly what happened. Three years ago or so and seven years after Amos took off, his attorney, a guy named Ralph Roundtree, initiated proceedings to have him declared dead. The first time I knew anything about it was when Ralph let me know that I was the only beneficiary under Amos’s will. That was news to me. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

  “What do you mean, it was news to you?”

  “After the way he played me? I didn’t care if I ever saw the snake in the grass again, and yet he left me everything—­like nothing had ever gone wrong between us.”

  “What exactly did go wrong?” Brandon asked.

  Lassiter didn’t answer immediately.

  “What did he do to you?” Brandon pressed.

  Lassiter took a deep breath. “He knocked me flat on my ass, for one thing. In public. In front of our friends. Then there was the supposed partnership thing. That rotten SOB cheated me out of what was rightfully mine. Then, seven years later, I find out he’s named me in his will? Big deal. I wasn’t exactly impressed. It didn’t come close to making up for what he’d done. It may have been ten years after the fact, but friends who cheat friends are lower than low.”

  Lassiter’s voice broke. He turned away and swiped at his eye with the sleeve of his shirt. It was clear that the passage of time had done nothing to diminish the man’s hurt at being betrayed by a trusted friend.

  “You said you were partners,” Brandon interjected after giving Lassiter a moment. “Partners in what?”

  “We’d go out into the desert and find stuff—­mineral samples, geodes, artifacts, whatever,” Lassiter answered. “We’d drag it all into town and sell it. At the time Amos took off, we had a whole storage unit full of stuff set aside and ready to take to market. He made off with all of it. Cleaned out everything and sold it, most likely. Probably made a killing. Half those proceeds should have been mine.”

  “You said Amos named you in his will,” Brandon said. “What exactly did he leave you?”

  “An almost worthless piece of property—­five acres out in the middle of nowhere on the far side of Catalina,” Lassiter answered. “That’s where Amos was living when he pulled up stakes. The land came with a little house that wasn’t much more than a one-­room shack. He called it a cabin and claimed that it used to be a stage stop, but that could have been so much BS.”

  “After Amos disappeared, did you ever go up to his place to check it out?”

  “Of course I did. I went up there to see if maybe he had tried to sneak into town behind my back, but the place was emptied out, too, slicker’n snot—­just like the storage unit. I should have figured. Amos had some valuable stuff of his own that he kept there—­stuff he wouldn’t sell. That was most likely a lie, too. Anyway, I left the place just like I found it, with the door unlocked and everything. The next time I went back—­years later as the supposedly new owner—­the house had been burned to the ground. There was nothing left but a ­couple of walls and a foundation.”

  “Do you still own the property?”

  “Hell, no,” Lassiter exclaimed. “Why would I? I never asked for it and didn’t want it in the first place. Luckily for me, some crazy-­ass developer from back east was chomping at the bit to buy it off me. Claimed he was going to build houses out there in the middle of nowhere for some godforsaken reason. Said it was going to be some hotshot retirement community. I used the money he paid me for that place to buy this one.”

  “So tell me about the fight the two of you had,” Brandon said. “When did it happen?”

  “Some night,” Lassiter said. “I’m not sure of the exact date. What I am sure is that’s the last time I ever laid eyes on Amos Warren.”

  Brandon knew from the autopsy that Amos Warren had been five foot eleven. Jo
hn Lassiter was a good seven inches taller than that. If Amos had taken John out, he must have been one tough dude.

  “You said Amos Warren clocked you that night,” Brandon prompted. “You said he knocked you on your ass?”

  For an answer John pointed at a jagged three-­inch scar on his left cheek. “Yes,” he said, “and left me this to remember him by.”

  “Where did all this happen?”

  “In a place on Speedway called El Barrio. It’s still there on the right, just this side of the freeway.”

  Brandon had seen the place often enough. He drove past it almost every day on his way back and forth to Gates Pass. It looked like a rough kind of joint, and he had never ventured inside.

  “So the two of you had a disagreement,” Brandon continued. “Was this something about your partnership, or was it something else?”

  “It was about a girl, if you must know,” Lassiter answered. “Her name was Ava Martin, and she was my girlfriend at the time. We were almost engaged. Amos kept harping away about her not being good enough for me, but the first time he thought I wasn’t looking, he made a pass at her and tried to get inside her pants. Hypocritical asshole! She wasn’t good enough for me, but it was fine for him to try screwing around with her.”

  “What can you tell me about the fight?”

  “What’s there to tell? I told him to knock it off—­to stop interfering in my life and to stop messing with Ava. I told him she was off-­limits. Next thing I knew, he hauled off and knocked me colder than a wedge.”

  “Did you ever patch things up?”

  “No, we never patched things up. I already told you, I never saw Amos again after that. The last I saw of him, he was sitting at the bar with a smug cat-­eating-­shit grin on his face and buying a round for every customer in the joint—­sort of like a celebration for knocking me on my ass.”

  “What happened to Ava?”

  “What do you think? Maybe Amos was right about her. She dumped me, too, as a matter of fact, just a few weeks later.”

  “Do you know where Ava is living these days?”

  “No idea,” Lassiter responded, “and who gives a shit? I heard she moved up in the world. Got herself a husband or two. No matter what Amos said, the girl had some smarts about her. By now she’s probably set for life.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m doing okay,” he answered with a shrug. “I’ve got a fairly new girlfriend now. She’s a nice girl, and I don’t want her dragged into any of this if that’s all right with you.”

  Brandon nodded. “I don’t see any reason why she should have to be, but I do have one more question. You and Amos worked together for a long time. Do you mind telling me how all that came about?”

  For the first time, a look of regret passed across John Lassiter’s burly face. “Back when I was a kid, my family situation wasn’t the best,” he said. “My dad was a drunk, my mom whored around, and Amos was our next-­door neighbor. When things got too tough at our house, Amos took me in and looked after me. I admit, for a long time he was like a father to me. When I was a teenager and got myself in hot water, Amos was the one who bailed me out and kept me from being shipped off to juvie. But once I got over being a teenager, Amos never noticed. He couldn’t see that I had turned into a man and that I didn’t need him running my life anymore—­telling me what I could or couldn’t do, who I could or couldn’t date.”

  Lassiter broke off and took a moment to pull himself back together. “So when do you think this happened?” he asked. “When do you think he died?”

  “Probably right after you had that fight,” Brandon answered.

  “So maybe he didn’t take off? Maybe somebody killed him and took all that stuff?”

  “Maybe,” Brandon answered.

  “All this time, ever since Amos disappeared, that’s what I’ve hated him for more than anything—­for taking off without a word. But if someone murdered him, maybe he didn’t desert me after all. Maybe it’s time I rethink that whole thing.”

  “Maybe so,” Brandon agreed. “Desertion is one thing; murder is another. Thanks for your help.”

  FORTUNATELY FOR ME, SCOTT BEAUMONT is currently a very low man on the Seattle PD totem pole. That means he’s required to work weekend shifts almost all the time. That reality may have been bad for Scott and Cherisse right then, but it was good for me that Friday night. It meant we left the Behind the Badge gala early on.

  My AmEx card had gotten a good workout. Much to my amazement and even without so much as a sip of the steadily flowing wine, I had gotten into the whole charity auction groove and had come away with several pricey purchases. The first was a trip for four to Walt Disney World—­tickets, hotel, and airfare included—­that would make a great gift for my daughter, Kelly, and her family. It turns out all four of them, from my son-­in-­law, Jeremy, right on down, love anything Disney. I’m sure I paid more than I should have for that because the guy I was bidding against was an overbearing jackass. In other words, I couldn’t help myself.

  The second item was a getaway weekend for two at one of the top-­of-­the-­line B and B’s in Port Angeles. I’d overheard Cherisse talking to Scott about how much she’d love to go there for their wedding anniversary. It was part of the silent auction, so she had no way of knowing I had purchased it until that section of the auction closed and I handed the certificate over to her.

  “Happy anniversary,” I said. “Just make sure he has the weekend off.”

  As for the third item? That was an immense piece of multiple-­layered and thoroughly bubble-­wrapped Dale Chihuly glass resting in the trunk. It was bright red, one of Mel’s favorite colors. I had no idea where we’d put it—­in the condo or somewhere in the new house—­but it was ours now. And I bought it for the same reason I bought the Disney tickets—­I was bidding against the same guy.

  Scott and Cherisse stopped in front of Belltown Terrace. Scott carried the piece of glass art into the building, and the night doorman put a BACK IN A MINUTE sign on his desk long enough to help me get it up to the unit. My phone was ringing as I let him back out the door.

  “How’s the party?” Mel asked.

  “I’m home,” I told her.

  “Already?”

  “It’s ten,” I said, “so not that early. But if it’s ten here, it’s one there. What are you doing up so late?”

  “The clock may say it’s late. My body begs to disagree. I’m not the least bit sleepy. What did you buy?”

  To my way of thinking, there should have been a full stop to allow for a new thought and a new paragraph. That’s not how Mel Soames works. She goes straight for the jugular.

  “Some tickets to Disney,” I said.

  “And?”

  “A getaway weekend for Scott and Cherisse at a B and B over at Port Angeles.”

  “And?”

  I didn’t want to tell her about the very expensive red glass bowl. I said, “It’s for you, and I’m not telling you. It’s a surprise.”

  “How much did it cost?”

  “Same answer. Not telling.”

  “Spoilsport. Did you call Ralph?”

  That counted as another abrupt U-­turn in the conversation, with no advance warning. “I didn’t,” I said. “Not yet.”

  It was also a sore spot. My friend and attorney, Ralph Ames, had helped start a privately funded and operated cold case organization called The Last Chance, a group that is patterned after the Vidocq Society. The guys who work TLC cases are retired law enforcement and forensics folks—­­people who were and are, unfortunately, all too much like me.

  As soon as Ralph got wind that S.H.I.T. was a thing of the past, he was all over me, trying to get me to sign on. And every time he asked, I turned him down. My recent experience with a cold case hadn’t gone well. Yes, the case got solved—­decades too late—­but a very talented homicide cop,
Delilah Ainsworth, died in the process.

  Ralph had been on my case about TLC, and so had Mel. The Harry I. Ball Project was completed, and my next venture into construction—­the remodel of our newly purchased fixer-­upper in Bellingham—­was on hold. There was a major delay in the permitting process, which meant that everything was up in the air. Much as I despise being dragged around looking at appliances and designer plumbing and light fixtures, to say nothing of tile and backsplash materials, doing all those things was better than doing nothing. Because that was what I was up to right now, nothing, and it was driving me nuts.

  I had come face-­to-­face with every retired cop’s worst nightmare. I had nothing—­not one thing—­to do. I don’t golf. I don’t bowl. I don’t play chess. I do, in fact, do crossword puzzles, but the older I get, the less time those take. Mel had told me on the way to the airport that she had learned, through Ralph’s wife, Mary, that his group was tackling a cold case in Portland.

  “I don’t want to go to Portland to work a case,” I told her. “When you’re in Bellingham and I’m here, we’re already ninety minutes apart. Being in Portland would add three hours to that.”

  The part I didn’t say aloud, although she probably suspected it all the same, was that I was still shaken by what had happened a ­couple of weeks earlier when Mel’s second-­in-­command, Austin Manson, had gone off the rails. The man had fully expected to be handed the police chief’s job, and when the city council and city manager had settled on Mel, the assistant chief had been beyond pissed. Seething with anger and fueled by too much alcohol, he had caught Mel unawares, knocked her out, trussed her up, and tossed her in the trunk of his vehicle. He had been within minutes of dropping her off a seaside cliff when I, with the help of a cooperative tour bus driver, had managed to come to her rescue.

  All that had quieted down now, at least on the surface. The mayor of Bellingham, Adelina Kirkpatrick, had gone to bat for Manson, who happened to be the son of her best friend. As a result, no criminal charges had been brought against the guy. He had been quietly packed off to a rehab facility of some kind. Mel insisted she was over it; I was not. I had felt completely helpless that afternoon. I had known she was gone, and for a while it had seemed as though there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. It didn’t help that I have a recurring nightmare in which I endlessly open the trunk of Manson’s car. In the dream, sometimes Mel is there, bound in duct tape just as she had been that day. Other times, I see Delilah Ainsworth’s bloody body. And once, just once, the body in the trunk had been that of Anne Corley, my second wife, looking exactly the way she looked the day I shot her to death.