Shadow Canyon

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Nine or ten things come to mind. But you need all your strength back first.”

  Resigned to no sex, she pulled on a clean T-shirt and a pair of flannel bottoms she usually saved for winter and headed into the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Lando asked, trailing behind her.

  “I’m hungry. I’m scrambling eggs and nuking some bacon.”

  But before they could get started on making dinner, Lando’s cell phone trilled. Payce’s number came up on the display. “What’s wrong?”

  “Chief, you told me to keep an eye on Louise after you took her DNA. I think she might be heading out of town.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause she’s packing up her car with luggage. What should I do?”

  “Damn it! You can’t let her leave. If that’s the way she wants it, let’s take her down in a very public way, sirens blaring right up to her front door. The neighbors will get an eyeful. If she moves her car an inch, block her in. I’m five minutes out.” Even as he ended the call he was moving toward the front door. “Louise isn’t staying put. I’ve gotta stop her.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  “Not yet. I was waiting for the DNA results, but now it doesn’t matter. I’ll arrest her and hold her as a material witness.”

  24

  More warrants took another day. Lando had exceeded his own deadline by an extra seventy-two hours, but the results would be worth the wait. At this point, he didn’t much care whether Louise was uncomfortable in her cell or not.

  He assembled his staff in the conference room, included Zeb and Jeff Tuttle, along with the mayor and everyone else involved in helping with the case. An unorthodox gathering for sure, but one that deserved to hear the truth as it all played out.

  By now, it seemed as if everyone in town had heard the news about Louise’s arrest. Many of her supporters jammed the police station lobby, standing alongside reporters from out of town representing all the major networks.

  “Are you sure you want to do it this way?” Zeb asked Lando. “It isn’t too late to change your mind.”

  “Hey, Coyote Wells residents deserve to know that no one on the Rez had anything to do with the heist. Once and for all, they deserve to hear the truth about Louise and Mallory’s murder, that includes all the dirty details whether they like it or not.”

  It took another fifteen minutes for Louise to make an appearance, wearing an ugly, orange and white striped jumpsuit. Her hair had been brushed to a shine. She wore makeup that couldn’t hide the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep.

  Lando cleared his throat and looked straight at Louise. “Over the last several weeks, we’ve built a solid case against you. On so many levels. For starters, you killed your own daughter because she was about to give away the biggest secret of your life to Fleet Barkley. It all started three decades ago when Fleet’s father, Aaron, helped you rob the Wells Fargo armored car back in 1984 when you were just nineteen years old. Mallory never knew about your stash of money until just recently. When she discovered the sizeable fortune you kept on hand in one of your accounts, she blackmailed you into giving her four hundred grand, which you apparently didn’t miss. But then Mallory couldn’t stop wondering where the money came from, and that curiosity set off a chain of events between mother and daughter that led to her demise.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Louise protested.

  “Keep telling yourself that, Louise. Over time, Mallory must’ve suspected you’d done something illegal to come by that much money and it caused her to sit around wondering about it. The more time she spent stewing, the greedier she became. But she had no idea what you’d done. Not until the day she overheard a conversation that took place by chance between Edna Lloyd and Peg Thackery. The two women were standing out on the sidewalk in front of the pub. Edna had stopped with her wagonload of flowers to sell a couple of the bouquets to Peg, who was always willing to take whatever bouquets Edna had on hand to brighten up the bar. The two women had seen the same newscast and were talking about the anniversary of the armored car heist. They mentioned the year it happened. Mallory knew the year you’d arrived in Coyote Wells. She must’ve known it wasn’t a coincidence that you got here six months before the robbery took place. She began to put two and two together. You certainly weren’t fessing up to anything, so your daughter decided to take matters into her own hands and try to figure out the details herself, like who your accomplices had been, on her own. With that information in hand, she’d leave you with few options.”

  Gemma decided to toss in a nugget of her own. “In case you were wondering, that’s why Mallory took to sleeping with half the men in town. She was trying to narrow down which ones were the descendants of your partners. The reason? She was pretty sure she could blackmail each of them. She had no idea at the time there were only two surviving sons. And one didn’t matter.”

  Louise looked stricken, like she’d been dealt the death card. “I’d been so careful all these years. I even kept most of the money in a bank in San Francisco so Sam Wells, the bank president here, wouldn’t be tempted to run his mouth about how much I had.”

  “Or none of the other busybodies in town would find out either,” Leia added.

  “Then what gave it away? What gave me away?”

  Lando picked up the thread. “For starters, you always seemed to have enough ready cash on hand whenever Mallory got into trouble through the years, enough to bail her out of jail, enough to hire a lawyer, not just any lawyer, either, but one who charged four hundred dollars an hour. It took some time, but we figured that through the years you must’ve spent in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty grand on legal fees. We put our heads together. How could you possibly have that kind of cash on hand on a dispatcher’s salary? It didn’t make any sense to people who earn what you make. Unless, of course, you’d somehow come into a bunch of money all at once.”

  Louise looked terrified. “You don’t know a thing about me. You have no idea what kind of life I had as a child.”

  “I think we do, at least we do now. You started life out as Deborah Borelli in Tucson, daughter of a drug-addicted prostitute, who left you and Holly with a neighbor one day when you were very young and never bothered coming back. Flash forward ten years later, when you hit eighteen, you took off for Reno, where you met your den of thieves---Aaron Barkley, Lindsay Bishop, and a man named Arnie Gafford, who as it turns out is the same name listed on Billy Gafford’s birth certificate. Arnie was Billy’s father. Are you with me so far? Because by this time, you’d changed your name to Louise Rawlins, using a name you got off a headstone in Utah as you made your way from Arizona to Nevada.”

  Gemma sent Louise a sympathetic look before bringing the hammer down. “You left Tucson looking for excitement, a thrill, some big score to improve your lot in life. Was it your idea or Aaron’s to rob an armored car?”

  Louise turned a cold stare on Gemma. “I’m not saying another word.”

  Gemma gave her nemesis a wide smile. “That’s okay. Whoever’s idea it was, your little gang needed an inside man, someone who had all the routes down perfectly, all the details you’d need to pull off a successful heist and get away with it. You kept your eye out for that person, perusing the casinos along Reno’s strip until you found one such guy. It was Arnie who recruited a Wells Fargo driver he’d become friendly with named Dave Gilbert, who surprisingly didn’t live long after the robbery. But we’ll get to that in a minute.”

  Gemma took a deep breath before going on. “Initially there were five---Louise, Aaron, Lindsay, Arnie, and the inside man, Dave Gilbert. But you guys were broke. You needed a money man, a backer. For that, you turned to Weldon Callaway, a gun shop owner in Reno who was willing to provide the firepower and the vehicles needed in exchange for a share of the money. Someone decided you needed red pickups to blend in with the red Wells Fargo armored car you had in your sights. Weldon bought three fairly new identical Ford pickups, registering o
ne to Aaron, one to Arnie, and one in his own name. That’s why they all had Nevada plates. And in a small town like Coyote Wells, out of state plates stick out, even when we have tourists here, we all look at the different plates from other states. How does the story sound so far, Louise?”

  “Like a made-up story. You’re so smug, aren’t you? The pampered little princess who ran off to the Bay Area and tried to make it in the big city.”

  “At least I never pulled off a five-million-dollar heist and then turned on my own little band of vultures out of greed. My guess is you probably took care of getting rid of Gilbert yourself. Because that Labor Day weekend there was a boating incident out at Spirit Lake. Gilbert was found floating in the water in what was later determined to be an accidental drowning. Who really knows the truth, though? I think you do, Louise, because you were there. The police report, left over from Caulfield’s days---lists you as an eyewitness. You were on the boat that day when Gilbert went into the water.”

  Louise crossed her arms over her chest in a defiant posture. “Drownings happen all the time.”

  “Sadly, they do. But it’s just another so-called strange death that seems to follow you around. So it isn’t too surprising when Weldon, the guy who provided you with the guns and bankrolled your move to Coyote Wells, ends up shot dead in his own store in what was made to look like a robbery a few weeks after it was all over. It appears, you and Aaron are tidying up all the loose ends.”

  “Like any criminal does who needs to cover up her tracks to keep from getting caught,” Zeb said.

  It was Lando’s turn to stick the knife in and turn the blade. “So let’s back up to July 1984. You and your friends had pulled off the biggest armored car heist in California history. You were walking on air. Now you just had to play it safe and smart. The six of you decided you wouldn’t split up the loot right away. You couldn’t be seen spending any of the five million anywhere just yet. Even though the take was old money---money that had been in circulation for years and there were no pesky sequential numbered bills to worry about, you just had to get through the next few weeks before going after the cold hard cash. But where do you stash that many bags of money? In your case, Aaron had stumbled across a cave one day when he was out hiking. A criminal’s dream. Five million in untraceable cash and an out-of-the-way hiding place made for stashing it. At a very young age you were practically millionaires. But you wanted more, Louise. And Aaron wanted more, too. A lot more.

  “One by one, your little band started to mysteriously die off. You and Aaron had already gotten rid of Lindsay, Dave Gilbert, and Weldon Callaway. You were down to the next guy on the list. That man had to be Arnie Gafford. So right before Christmas, you arranged for Arnie to get blind, stinking drunk. You provided the booze and took him out to the railroad tracks south of town. You waited for the five a.m. train going southbound to do your dirty work for you. Arnie was hit by that train and dragged to his death. Another death ruled an accident because his blood alcohol level processed out at .30 at autopsy. The coroner decided Arnie simply had too much to drink and passed out on the tracks. The train took care of the rest. You two keep Arnie’s share. Instead of a measly million, now there’s two and a half million for each of you.”

  “That’s the reason Billy Gafford chose to live here,” Lianne pointed out. “It was his father’s last known address and the town where he died.”

  “Exactly. As it turns out, Billy has a sentimental side. He wanted to build a cabin in the general vicinity of where his father spent his last days. But then Louise didn’t have to worry about Billy because she already knew he had no idea about the millions taken in the robbery. Billy had been an infant at the time Arnie died, living with his mother down in Los Angeles. Neither you nor Aaron was about to get in touch with Arnie’s estranged wife and tell her there was a fortune in stolen money available. You had what you wanted, and Aaron had what he wanted.”

  “Tell them the rest of it, Lando” Leia prodded.

  “Backing up to August, Aaron Barkley had his hands full with a very remorseful wife. You see, Lindsay Bishop had started feeling guilty about what she’d done, especially about killing the two guards. Depression set in. Lindsay started talking about turning herself in and giving the money back. Aaron figured he needed to get rid of her before she went to the police. Although he’d married her a few months before the robbery took place and they were still newlyweds, Aaron wasn’t happy with his wife. That summer he’d fallen in love with someone else.”

  Gemma swung back to Louise. “Take a bow. The two of you were quite the topic of conversation around town during those summer months. I got the down and dirty details from Natalie Henwick and Lucinda Fenton, who had very good memories about seeing the two of you making out all around town. You’d be surprised what we found out when we started asking the right questions. It only took a few to learn how much some of the residents back then remembered your little gang, and how many people recalled so many scintillating details. Even though you did a great job hiding your affair from Lindsay, others in town knew all about it. But by then the affair was the least of your problems. Both of you were starting to get very concerned that Lindsay might be the weakest link. You were afraid she might wake up one day and decide to clear her conscience by going to the authorities and telling them everything she knew about the heist. That would put a great big ding in your plans for the future. Instead of sitting around worrying about it, you guys decided to do away with Lindsay the same way you’d taken care of Hank Montoya back in June.”

  Rima’s hands covered her mouth. “They killed my brother?”

  Lando put a hand on Rima’s shoulder. “Sorry, Rima, to have to hear it like this but this part came from Donna Montoya, Hank’s widow. She told Zeb that Hank must’ve somehow discovered their plans to hit the armored car. Donna says she thinks he must’ve overheard them discussing the job out at the casino. But it doesn’t really matter how Hank happened on the information because the moment Aaron realized someone else knew, your brother didn’t stand a chance of hanging around.”

  Zeb turned his chair so that he could take his mother by the hand. “That June before the robbery went down, Aaron and his pals figured Hank had to go. They decided the easiest way was by car accident. Louise, who’d worked on cars growing up, knew how to rig an accelerator to stick. As a foster kid back in Tucson, she’d lived with a mechanic and his wife. According to them, she could break down an entire engine and put it back together again like a pro. They said she’d definitely know how to rig a pedal assembly. It explains how Hank’s car hit the curve that day and couldn’t slow down enough to maneuver the hairpin. It’s possible Hank was already dead before he went off into the ravine. We may never know for sure how long Hank lived after overhearing something he shouldn’t have. They probably killed him on his way home from the casino. And when it came time to repeat the process for Lindsay’s death two months later, Aaron fell back on what had worked before. He sent Louise to fiddle with the pedal assembly on Lindsay’s little Mazda RX-7. Later that day, Aaron sent his wife on an errand that made sure she had to take the cutoff onto Lone Coyote Highway. By then, the road had gotten so much negative press, everyone around town knew it was a dangerous section and accepted the accidents as a terrible misfortune. No one will ever know how Louise and Aaron pulled it off exactly, but they got away with it for thirty-four years…that is until Louise decided to kill Mallory. Ironically, her daughter’s death prompted a great many questions about Louise’s money that just wouldn’t go away.”

  “So why did my son have to die eighteen months later?” Paloma asked.

  Gemma circled the conference table and went around to where Paloma sat. “That was pure spite. You see, Aaron and Louise didn’t last long after Lindsay’s death. Their relationship fizzled out around the time Dave Gilbert drowned over that Labor Day weekend. I suppose you could say the thrill was basically gone. It’s a basic question. What’s left for two surviving killers to do with each other except to m
ove on past all their misdeeds? Together they were a perfect killing machine, getting rid of anyone who got in their way. But by Thanksgiving, Aaron had met a new woman named Trina who worked at the casino as a cocktail waitress. Trina and Michael were coworkers. And what often happens between coworkers? Trina was one of the women Michael had been seeing. Unfortunately, Trina mentioned their affair to Aaron, who didn’t like knowing Michael had slept with his girlfriend. Weeks went by and then months. Aaron couldn’t let it go. He approached Louise about working her magic with Michael’s car to get him completely out of Trina’s life for good. With the old boyfriend out of the way, next thing you know Trina is Mrs. Aaron Barkley, living the good life with the stolen millions.”

  Horrified by the details, Paloma glared over at Louise. “I hope you rot in prison. I hope all the people you’ve murdered haunt you every single day of your life until you draw your last breath.”

  Lydia wrapped her arms around Paloma’s shoulders. “She speaks for me, too. You were always a snake among us, spreading your evil everywhere you went. We just didn’t know how deep it went.”

  Gemma cast a pitiful look at Louise. “You really were like a killing machine. Was there ever a day when you thought about any of the people you so callously took away from their families, the kids left behind, the wives you made widows?”

  Louise raised her chin. “I’m assuming you can back up all these accusations?”

  “We wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Lando fired back. “Once we received the right tip that pointed us in the direction we needed to go, everything fell into place.”

  “What about the ten grand Gemma found in Mallory’s house?” Leia asked.

  Gemma rocked back on her heels. “That part’s easy. Louise had to send Lando down a few wrong rabbit holes. That money was part of it, a small token to make Lando think Mallory was into distributing drugs. For planting the money, Louise simply ‘borrowed’ a bag that belonged to Holly. Whether that was to implicate her own sister, who knows? You just have to remember that Louise had tried pointing the finger at me, using anyone who would listen to put doubt in their minds that I was responsible. But when that didn’t work, she tried another tack. Getting Lando to think Mallory’s death was drug-related was her next best option. When he didn’t fall for that, she set her sights on ruining Dale, making the most out of Denise seeing the two arguing that night in the grocery store parking lot. The scene that night at Thackery’s Pub was just to make sure everyone there knew Dale was a suspect and throw doubt on Lando’s ability as a cop.”