“You did good,” one of the paramedics had told me as his partner slowly packed up their gear. They hadn’t been in a hurry to leave the church hall, however. They needed to wait for the county coroner to arrive. And in a county as far flung as this one in North Dakota, I figured they’d be waiting a while. “Where’d you learn to do a crike like that?”
I’d mumbled something about being an army brat and taking an advanced course on an army post. But while we spoke, I couldn’t stop staring at the soles of Toomey’s shoes, still pointing north over the edge of the bleacher seat, worn smooth with walking and working for others—or sneaking peeks at Marc, dark and stormy and barely answering the state troopers who had him buttonholed by the proscenium stage. Being a DEA agent, he’d called me in on this wild goose chase because he’d wanted to keep his interest in Elena’s disappearance off the radar, but I wasn’t sure he could manage that now.
“Well.” The paramedic had patted my shoulder gently. “You did what you could.”
Yeah, I’d thought, I led Max Ribisi right to poor Pastor Toomey’s door. That’s what I did.
Except I wasn’t the only one culpable when it came to Toomey’s death.
And it was time I said so.
I dried my hands on a clean section of the cloth roll-towel mounted to the bathroom wall, pulled my cellphone from my coat pocket, and powered it up. To my grim satisfaction, I got a decent signal despite standing in the middle of a North Dakota restroom. And consulting a business card I’d brought with me from Colorado, I punched in a number I’d never thought I’d use.
“Ms. Sinclair,” Marshal Ingram said, answering my call. “I hope you have good things to say.”
“I have the worst,” I told her. “Special Agent Sandoval and I are in North Dakota—where Max Ribisi himself just murdered Elena Preble’s boyfriend.”
The silence from Ingram’s end of the connection stretched a second too long. Because I’d surprised her. And now she had to scramble for something to say.
“Ribisi and his men must’ve followed you,” she reasoned.
“No, they beat an update out of Elena’s brother.”
At least, that’s how I figured it.
And that wasn’t the only conclusion I’d come to.
“You know, Marshal Ingram, it’s kind of funny how everyone and her brother can run into a dangerous parole violator like Max Ribisi, but you and Marshal Douglas can’t seem to draw a bead on him. Don’t you agree?”
“I wouldn’t characterize it like that—”
“Well, I would. Unless, of course, our chat at Hearth’n’Home the other night was all smoke and mirrors—and instead of finding Ribisi, you have an alternate outcome in mind.”
“What kind of outcome?”
“I’d say you—or your partner—know exactly where Ribisi is, and where he’s headed. And as long as he’s busy running the wrong fox to ground, you’re okay with having him off leash.”
“That’s a hell of an accusation.”
“Yes, it is,” I concurred. “But can you tell me it isn’t true?”
“Ms. Sinclair, as a United States marshal, I can assure you I would never—”
“You’d never?”
The question shut Ingram down while she took in my meaning.
But it only shut her down for a moment.
She said, “Marshal Douglas and I will be on the next flight out.”
I bet they would, because I bet Marc had had to spill the beans to the Highway Patrol about Ribisi’s activities in Colorado Springs. And that meant naming the marshals, too. No doubt some trooper was burning up the phone lines straight to Marshal Douglas at this moment.
But even while I was thinking of Douglas, Ingram had her mind on Marc.
She said, “How’s Special Agent Sandoval taking this latest development?”
“Not well.”
And that might’ve been an understatement.
After my phone call with Marshal Ingram, I found Marc holding up the wall in the hallway, across from the old-fashioned pay phone outside the multipurpose room where Toomey had died. At the far end of the corridor, crowding the foyer, some of the men Toomey had tried to help shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. They were accustomed to loss and short shrift, no doubt about it, but tonight, they mourned the passing of Dustin Toomey, the man who’d treated them like human beings rather than garbage a cold wind had blown in. The white-haired woman who’d been attacked was up and at ’em with a couple more old guys at her side who looked a lot like church elders in their plaid shirts and cardigans. They paid me no heed as they organized the men for a sleepover in the sanctuary—and it did my heart good to know Toomey’s plan to help these fellows would live on for at least one more night.
When I joined Marc, he said, “You all right, babe?”
He looked mad enough to bite the heads off nails. Witnessing needless death did that to some people. And Toomey’s death was particularly angering, because it was completely unnecessary.
“I’m fine,” I told him, though that was a wee bit of an exaggeration. I shoved my scrubbed hands deep into the pockets of my trousers. “When can we hit the road?”
“Highway Patrol say they’re not done with me yet. They weren’t thrilled to learn they had a DEA agent at the scene for no good reason. And they really hated it when I mentioned the U.S. Marshals will probably have an interest in tonight’s outcome, too.”
I said, “Odds are some trooper’s on the phone with Douglas right now, asking him to vouch for you.”
Marc shrugged. “Douglas can bite me.”
“Well”—I couldn’t help but smile—“I get the impression that Ingram would volunteer to give you a nibble if you spent some time alone with her.”
Marc’s brows knit like he didn’t understand a word I’d said.
“I think she’s attracted to you,” I added, spelling it out for him.
Marc frowned. He opened his mouth to reply. And across from him, the pay phone rang.
I jumped at the sound. The phone’s bell clanged with a repeated brrr-ring, brrr-ring. But no one rushed to answer it. Not the white-haired lady or Toomey’s tenants, either. When the phone rang a fourth time, and then a fifth, I picked up its clunky mouthpiece and spoke into it.
“Church hall.”
“I’d like to speak to Pastor Toomey,” a woman replied.
Her voice was strong but soft, and definitely feminine. The tone was upbeat, like she couldn’t wait to hear Toomey’s voice. Like she might be in love with him.
Like she might be Elena Preble.
Waving Marc close, I laid a finger to my lips, urging him to silence. And then I tipped the receiver so he could hear both ends of the conversation. Into the phone, I said, “Dustin can’t come to the phone right now. Who should I say is calling?”
The woman hesitated. She could’ve had a hundred reasons to resist leaving her name. But I suspected I knew the real one.
“I’ll call back,” she decided. “Do you know when he’ll be available?”
Marc gripped the receiver, leveled a look at me.
“Elena,” he said. “I’ve got some bad news.”
“Marc? What are you—” But Elena’s confusion at hearing her ex’s voice at her boyfriend’s church gave way to a bigger concern. “Is it Cody? What’s happened to Cody?”
“No, no. Cody’s safe.” Marc drew a deep breath. “Elena, I’m sorry to tell you, but Dustin Toomey’s dead.”
Elena didn’t reply.
“Elena, did you hear—”
“How? How did he die?”
The warmth in her voice had fled. Shock replaced it. And Marc took advantage of it.
“Toomey died,” Marc said, “protecting you.”
I fished Marshal Ingram’s business card from my pocket, shoved it into Marc’s hand.
“I’m going to give you a phone number,” he said. “You need to call it.”
He rattled off the digits.
“Whose number is this?” Elena dema
nded.
“You need to get in touch with the U.S. Marshals Service—”
“I can’t do that.”
“Toomey is dead. Your father is dead. Your mother is barely alive and Robert is lucky he’s still walking around under his own power—”
“You don’t understand,” Elena said.
“And you don’t see what’s going on!” Marc thundered. “Cody could be next, Elena! Do you want Cody to be next?”
“He won’t hurt Cody,” Elena insisted, “if he can’t find him.”
He.
Maximillian Ribisi.
Elena didn’t need to say the name.
“Where are you?” Marc demanded. “What if he finds you?”
“He won’t. I can’t let him. And you can’t let him find Cody.”
“Elena—”
“Take care of our son, Marc. Take care of yourself.”
“Elena!”
But the phone went dead.
Because Elena had hung up.
Chapter 31
Once upon a time, scores of helpful switchboard operators worked every local telephone exchange station in every small town and every big city from coast to coast and beyond. In a matter of moments, those professionals could trace the route a call had taken across a network of cables and insulated wires to reach the telephone squatting on your desk or hanging in your hall. But a lifetime ago, actual switchboard operators were replaced with electronic gadgets that connected calls faster than humanly possible—and a solid source of information was lost. Now, to trace a call, a body needed a warrant signed by a judge and one more thing: probable cause that the caller in question was involved in a crime. Without those, not even Marc, with his DEA credentials, could get the phone company to cough up Elena’s location when she’d phoned the church.
But I had a sneaking suspicion regarding Elena’s whereabouts, at least in theory, if not in fact. I told Marc about it once the Highway Patrol had released us. And Dustin Toomey’s corporeal remains were on their way to the nearest morgue in far-off Jamestown.
“I don’t think Lucy Ribisi is really dead,” I said, glancing in the SUV’s rearview mirror to make sure Max Ribisi’s boys weren’t behind us, and then at Marc in the passenger seat to gauge his reaction. “And I think Elena’s with her.”
“Why?”
The energy rolling off Marc felt dark and dangerous. He’d been tense since he’d introduced me to Cody under the rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History. With his boy’s mother missing, and drug abuse a real possibility, tense had been understandable.
Things, however, had gone rapidly downhill from there, and I’d have said they’d taken Marc’s resilience with them. The garroting of his almost-father-in-law, the vicious beating of his son’s grandmother: such medicine was hard for anyone to take, even a law enforcement professional like Marc who often saw the worst mankind could do. Now, considering Elena’s current boyfriend—not a deadbeat as Marc had surmised, but a man of the cloth—had died under his hands, I wasn’t so sure Marc himself wouldn’t break in half.
I said, “We only have Douglas’s word that Lucy Ribisi died in that fire two weeks ago. But Marley Jones saw her at the Miner’s Pick after that.”
“Marley Jones might’ve been drunk off her ass.”
“Then why would Elena tell Marley to forget about Lucy?” I shook my head. “Lucy’s alive, Marc. Elena protected her once. She’s protecting her again.”
Marc glared at me before turning his intensity toward the side window and the North Dakota landscape. “Lucy’s got Douglas and Ingram to protect her. What can Elena do that they can’t?”
I checked the rearview mirror again. According to the troopers, Ribisi and his goons had ditched the getaway car Marc had seen behind the church hall. By now, they could be driving anything and they could be anywhere—but they weren’t behind us, and that was the main thing.
Theoretically, they didn’t know about Sam Brewer’s cabin, so if they were hunting for more of Elena’s connections in order to ramp up the pressure on her, they wouldn’t find Marc, her ex, tonight. They didn’t know Marc and I had shipped Elena’s son to Texas, either, so they wouldn’t find him. But that’s when it hit me.
“What if Elena’s not with Lucy Ribisi?” I said aloud. “What if she’s with Lucy’s daughter?”
“So, Lucy Ribisi trusts Elena more than the U.S. Marshals Service to look out for her kid?” Marc grumbled. “That’s not likely.”
“You’re a parent, Marc, and a DEA agent, and you’re worried about looking out for your son. But who did you trust to protect Cody? Some wholly impersonal, totally professional law enforcement agency? Or an ordinary woman who’s got a wealth of wisdom and a mother’s touch?”
Marc’s head whipped around to look at me again. And this time, he didn’t say a thing. Because by sending Cody to San Antonio with his own mother, that’s exactly what he’d done.
We each kept our own uneasy counsel the rest of the way to the cabin. Caution suggested I bypass the lane, just in case Ribisi had tailed us from a distance along these lonely country roads, so I did, and turned around at the edge of an obliging field three-quarters of a mile on. Marc and I met no one on the return trip. Because no one had followed us from Fortune’s Crossroads. And no one waited for us down Sam’s dark drive.
Someone had been there while we were away, however.
The SUV’s headlights picked up fresh tire tracks in the dust, but the tracks proved to belong to the gas station’s fuel truck. They ran right up to the tank behind the cabin. A single set of boot prints indicated where the driver had walked as he’d run his hose from truck to tank, and then more tire tracks overlaid the original set when the truck went about its business after our delivery. I parked the SUV behind the cabin so it would be out of sight if anyone came snooping. And Marc cranked up the generator and threw the switch on the electric water pump before we headed inside.
We found nothing amiss on the cabin’s short porch or with the triple deadbolts on the door. Still, when Marc locked the heavy portal behind us, neither one of us relaxed. Phone in hand, I used its glow to locate a wall switch near the mantel. I flipped it on and half a dozen sconces came to life with crystalline bulbs that danced like candlelight. In that instant, they transformed the hunting cabin into an enchanted cottage and, somehow, drove more than the darkness out.
Marc cleared his throat.
He knelt before the fake fireplace with its high-tech insert meant to heat the whole structure.
“I’ll figure this thing out,” he said, careful not to look at me for some reason. “Water should be heating up. You can hit the shower.”
I did as he advised, luxuriated under the showerhead’s hot spray, and let it wash the last few hours away. By the time I donned my flannel pj’s, I didn’t exactly feel like a brand-new woman. But I didn’t feel as crummy as the one I’d been all day.
While Marc took his turn in the bathroom, I curled up in one of the two armchairs facing the fancy electric fire. Drawing my knees to my chin, I wrapped my arms around my shins and tried to work out where Elena would’ve taken Lucy Ribisi’s daughter while I watched the faux flames dance. But I didn’t know enough about Elena’s past to predict what she might do in the future. Dustin Toomey, it seemed, had been planning for a future with her—just as Barrett had been planning on one with me. And with that thought, grief and guilt, both sharp and swift, hit me in the chest.
“How’s this for dinner?” Marc asked, appearing out of nowhere.
I didn’t look up at him. “I’m not hungry.”
“That’s all right, babe. We’re not eating. We’re drinking.”
Marc took a seat in the armchair alongside mine, plunked a bottle of high-priced bourbon on the little curio table between us.
He said, “Sam said we’re welcome to use anything he’s got.”
“Do Sam’s invitations usually extend to his top-shelf booze?”
“Knowing him? Absolutely. Besides, he’d be the
first to say I could use a drink right about now. And you could, too.”
I didn’t disagree.
Marc splashed two fingers’ worth of the rich, tawny stuff into the cut-crystal rocks glass at my elbow, and then he poured his own. Showered and freshly shaven, he looked good. Almost relaxed. Maybe that was a trick of his wardrobe: track pants and T-shirt. But relaxed, he seemed almost like the Marc I’d met last October. And maybe that was a trick altogether.
“What should we drink to?” I asked, the tumbler cool in my hand.
“You,” Marc said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Me?”
“If you’d like.”
“To us,” Marc said, but there was an undercurrent of wistfulness in his voice.
“To Dustin Toomey,” I suggested.
“To Toomey,” Marc agreed.
We sipped our bourbon and watched the fire in companionable silence.
And then I ruined the moment.
“Fugitives,” I said, “and other folks on the run often head for someplace relatively familiar.”
“You’re asking where Elena went on vacation as a kid or where her grandmother lived.”
“Something like that.”
Marc sighed. He topped up my glass. And his.
“She had an aunt in Albuquerque. When Elena was a girl, the family drove from Colorado to visit her every July. She hated it. Her parents took her to Disneyland, though, when she was nine and Robert was twelve, and she loved that. But I doubt we’ll find her in Anaheim, with Lucy Ribisi’s daughter or not.”
I doubted it, too.
I said, “Then we’ll have to get tough with Marshal Douglas when he gets here tomorrow. He knows things he isn’t telling.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Marc touched his glass to mine, and after a long sip he said, “I didn’t know Elena was seeing anyone, let alone a minister like Toomey. I had no idea she was ready to be so serious.”
“Maybe,” I said, frowning into my liquor, “it was only serious on Toomey’s side of the equation.”
The Kill Wire Page 19