by Diane Capri
“You might have told me about the mistake of the clerk thinking the second gunman was a man before I got to Shaw’s office this morning, too,” he replied, wearier.
“We’re even then. Pax.” She sipped the Scotch and waited a couple of beats for him to argue. When he didn’t, she moved on. “So I found the medical records and the follow-up blood work on the Oakwood baby. Looks like Oakwood and Prieto kept the child. At least initially.”
“That could be helpful. Gives us something more to go on.”
“Maybe. The low hemoglobin was confirmed a couple of days before the robbery at the only other hospital within twenty miles of where the baby was born. Definitely sickle cell disease, the report said. Both parents were carriers, too. Confirmed from the blood evidence left at the crime scene. Poor kid.” Scarlett’s tone sounded a little sad and a lot tired. “But I don’t see how that helps us find Laura Oakwood.”
“Don’t you?” He drained the rest of the water from the bottle. “No luck in Mexico? Or with your US connections?”
“Would I be standing here now?”
He grinned, but she probably couldn’t see that in the dark with her eyes closed. “I guess not.”
“I’m waiting, Flint.” She sounded just like the ferocious ten-year-old he remembered. Funny how voice tones and timbres don’t change that much as humans age. Not females’, anyway.
“Or what? You’ll hold me down and twist my arm and rub my face in the dirt?” He grinned again and rubbed the scar on his chest and his voice was a little less defiant. “Maybe you’re going to aim your bow and arrow with your eyes closed, like William Tell, and shoot me in the chest?”
“Don’t tempt me.” She plopped down on the sofa, pouting. But he knew she regretted the day she’d almost killed him with a straight arrow to the heart. She hadn’t meant to hurt him and he hadn’t even tried to duck. She’d been devastated as she rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital. It was one of the many times when their childhood games went too far off the rails.
He laughed. He walked to the bar in the corner and poured himself a glass of Scotch before she drank it all. Ginger was a Scotch drinker, too. The last time she was here, before he went to London, she’d reminded him to replace the bottle, but he hadn’t done it yet.
He returned to his chair with the heavy crystal glass. “I saw Bette Maxwell today.”
Scarlett’s breath caught, but she didn’t reply. Scarlett’s affection for Bette had never been as great as his. Their relationship had been filled with bickering and challenge. But he knew Scarlett loved Bette all the same. Bette knew that, too.
“She’s still living at the Lazy M. She’s closed the school and all the kids are gone. But she’s still there.” He paused. Sipped. Savored. “Did you know?”
“I, uh, didn’t know.” She cleared her throat. “And I don’t see how she’s relevant.”
“I thought maybe Laura Oakwood had been a Maxwell kid after she ran away from home. Bette’s place is the only thing anywhere close to Mildred’s Corner where a reasonable young woman might have been living.” He sipped again and swished the Scotch around in his mouth before he swallowed. “Or maybe she just went there for help with the baby, either before or after the robbery. Bette would have helped her if she’d turned up.” He sipped again and leaned his head back on the chair and closed his eyes. “I thought maybe Bette would know something about where she went.”
“And did she know anything?”
He thought about Scarlett’s question for a while. He replayed Bette’s responses to his questions in his head. “You know, I think maybe she did.”
“Maybe?”
“Well, Bette never said she didn’t know the girl. And that’s unlikely, isn’t it?”
“Why?” Scarlett studied the glass of Scotch as if it were a crystal ball that might hold the answers.
“This convenience store, Mildred’s Corner. It’s fifteen miles straight south from the Lazy M. You know what that area’s like. Nothing but dirt and tumbleweeds as far as the eye can see.” He paused and sipped and savored and swallowed and felt the liquid warmth all the way into his toes. “How many times did we try to hitch a ride along that road when we were kids? Instead of adventure, all we ended up with were sore thumbs and tired feet.”
“Don’t remind me.” Scarlett was definitely not overcome with warm fuzzies by reminders about Bette Maxwell or their days at the Lazy M. Which didn’t matter much. He was really thinking out loud at this point, anyway.
His voice had taken on a lazy, meandering quality. “After the robbery, Oakwood had to go somewhere. And now we’re thinking she either had the baby with her or she was traveling to collect the baby before she moved on. And she’d been wounded during the robbery, so she’d have needed first aid, at least.”
Flint sipped again, thoughtfully. If Oakwood and Prieto had been at the Clovis Ranch before the robbery, she might have gone back there, too. But that seemed too risky. The police would have considered members of a cult like that to be suspects. She was more likely to have been found out there.
He rolled the crystal glass between his palms. “The Lazy M was her only real choice. I don’t see how she could have kept running that night. Someone had to have helped her.”
“Bette was always helping kids one way or another. It’s possible she might have sheltered Laura. Especially if she had a baby with her. But not if she knew about the robbery and the murders.” Scarlett took a breath and shook her head. “Bette wouldn’t have helped a killer. Not knowingly anyway. But that was years ago. Look, I didn’t keep in touch with her and you didn’t either. And we lived there for a long time and Bette petted you like a favorite bunny, so you loved her. Why would Laura Oakwood have kept in touch when she’d only known Bette for less than a year, at the absolute most?”
He shrugged and then realized she couldn’t see the gesture. “You know how I work. I was looking for a thread to unravel.”
“Was Bette able to help with anything at all?”
He might have told her what Bette said about his mother, but something made him hold that back. “She said Mildred’s husband was the one at the store that night. Oscar Tuttle. He was the clerk. Both he and Mildred are dead now, but their son, Steve, handles the store these days. Bette said Steve Tuttle was home with his mother that night, not in the store. He might know something helpful.”
“That’s pretty thin.” She swigged her Scotch. “Not worth wasting more time on.”
“It’s worse than thin. Steve Tuttle’s in the hospital now. Couldn’t talk to him even if we wanted to. Not before Shaw’s Tuesday-morning deadline, anyway.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Scarlett shook her head like her ten-year-old know-it-all self would have. “You got into a fight? With the one guy who might have been a lead?”
“Not me. Drake did. And it wasn’t his fault. He asked about Oakwood, and Steve’s pals came after him. One of them accidently hit Steve. His head hit the concrete.” Flint tipped the glass to his lips again. “We thought at the time that the problem might have been Paxton and Trevor. Maybe they were there before us. Probably acted like their usual charming selves.”
“Meaning they either busted up the place or pissed people off and you got the brunt of it? Figures.” Scarlett sighed. “Okay, so what did you find out by applying your considerable charms all day? Anything? Or did you just burn too many hours of our time?”
“I wanted a feel for Laura Oakwood. See where she came from. Maybe get a lead on where she might have gone. Talk to people who knew her so I could see and hear for myself. At the Oakwood ranch and Wolf Bend, Crane’s men had definitely been there first. I’m not sure about Mildred’s Corner, but it seems likely.”
“And? What did you find?”
“Let’s just say that nobody rolled out the red carpet for me and leave it at that.”
“Figured.” She nodded. “Did you find anything remotely useful?”
“Maybe. I put stuff in a file and sent it t
o your private server. Look at all of it. Tell me what you think.” He pointed to a black nylon bag by the door. “There’s some hard forensic stuff in there on Jeremy Reed. Bio data. Prints, blood, photos. And a business card with fingerprints from Paxton and Trevor. Check it all out. See if you find anything worthwhile.”
“None of that is going to tell me where Laura Oakwood is, Flint. Did you find anything else?”
Instead of answering, he shrugged. “Tell me what you found out today. Everybody except me already knows.”
Scarlett grinned. “I thought you’d quit this case. No reason to tell you anything.”
He lifted his glass.
She smiled and lifted hers in return. “The biggest thing was the baby, which you already knew. And she’s definitely sick. It’s possible she’s dead. Sickle cell disease kills if it isn’t managed properly. And it’s been twenty-seven years.”
She was silent for a while, maybe processing the reality of an infant diagnosed with a serious lifelong blood disorder. Scarlett had a daughter she adored like crazy. She was devastated when Maddy suffered so much as a paper cut. For all of Katie Scarlett’s toughness, she could be frighteningly vulnerable.
She took another sip of the Scotch and cleared her throat. She took a deep breath to deliver one of her long-winded explanations. But her voice was stronger when she continued.
“Once we knew about the sickle cell disease, we began searching for the child, but it’s like panning for gold in a stream. We’ve come up with a bunch of rocks. The disease is not rare, and it’s more common in the Hispanic population. There are a lot of patients. We started searching registries and hospitals, but we haven’t found any records on a female that might be Oakwood’s daughter yet. We’ve broadened the searches, starting in Texas and moving out. We did the same in Mexico. If we had unlimited time, we might find a trail of her medical treatment and it could lead us to her mother. But finding either Laura Oakwood or her daughter through the sickle cell treatment before Shaw loses to Crane will require divine intervention.”
“Yeah, well, neither one of us has ever been that blessed.” Flint tapped his fingernails absently on the Scotch glass to the music’s beat. “Keep looking. It might be our turn to win the lotto, you know?”
Scarlett scowled. “No way you could narrow our search down a bit?”
“Not yet. Look, here’s what I know about the disease, which is not much. The red blood cells are deformed. They block blood flow through the body. That causes pain, fatigue, infections, and pretty often requires medical intervention.” He couldn’t afford to let Crane, Paxton, and Trevor get ahead of him again. Right now, she was saving him from chasing down false leads. But he couldn’t spend the whole night talking to her. He had other plans. “What do we know about standard treatments? Anything that we could use to find and identify the girl now?”
“Like most medical conditions, symptoms and treatments vary, according to the experts I talked to.” Scarlett grabbed her wild hair and held it at the nape of her neck. “She should see her doctor every three months or so. Like you said, SCD patients are more susceptible to infections, so she could be on daily penicillin for the rest of her life as a preventative measure. We’re checking pharmacies. She could have more serious medical conditions, but we haven’t found any connection that we think is her. Stuff like that.”
“And what about continuing treatments besides penicillin? What does she need? Where does she get it?”
“Regular lab tests. Monitoring for organ damage. Ultrasound screening for stroke prevention. Eye exams. Cognitive screening.” Scarlett sighed. “There’s a long list. And it never ends. Cradle to grave, as they say.”
“Sounds pricey. Even back in the 1990s, that kind of regular medical care wouldn’t have been cheap. How could Laura Oakwood have paid for it? She took the money from the robbery, but it was only about thirty thousand. Even with stellar management, that much cash wouldn’t have lasted twenty-seven years.”
Scarlett cocked her head, but she didn’t go any further. She’d suss it out, though. He was counting on that.
Flint figured Oakwood would protect the child. She’d have been living somewhere close to good medical care while the girl was a minor, for sure. And probably long after that.
The reasonable options were limited. Living inside the United States under a false identity with great medical insurance was one option. She could be working in the medical field. Or living in Canada as a citizen entitled to national health care. There were other possibilities, but he didn’t have unlimited time either, and these three were the most likely choices. They’d found nothing so far to rule any of them out.
Scarlett said, “So what do you want me to do besides play decoy and chase an endless stream of medical issues?”
“I’d like to know who Jeremy Reed really is. Get all of that bio data in the bag over there checked out. And find out who installed him at the Oakwood ranch and when that happened. And how.” He paused. “And why.”
“So you said. I’m on it. What else?”
“You followed up with the Mexico branch of Rosalio Prieto’s family. Find anything helpful at all?”
She shook her head.
“Her mother was related to Juan Garcia. Maybe there’s a Mexico family connection to the Garcias.”
“No kidding. Like we didn’t already chase that to the dead end of the trail.” She straightened her shoulders and her nostrils flared. “I know you’re holding back. I’ve got a big team. Let me help, Flint. It’s important to me that we nail this and get Shaw what he wants.”
She was right. She was running out of time. She’d asked for his help. Maybe it was time to give it up. “I was in Wolf Bend today.”
“So you said.”
“I have to sort of soak up what I can.” Her scowl didn’t faze him. He’d made a decision and he didn’t want to talk himself out of it. “One of the things I found out is that Oakwood and Prieto left Wolf Bend with another guy. A drifter. Prieto’s sister said he was a bad apple. He had a criminal record. Allegedly, the three were headed for a place called Clovis Ranch to live with some crazy satanic cult or something. It was all the rage in 1989, I guess.”
“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll? That’s the best you can do? Seriously?”
“Sounds ridiculous, yes. But here’s the thing. Clovis Ranch is not too far from Mildred’s Corner.” He paused again. “So I figure it could have been Oakwood and Prieto’s home base for a while before the robbery. And that guy could have been the known associate that the cops figured for the second gunman.”
“The police reports we’ve got don’t include the name of the known associate. We’re digging for that now.” She frowned. “But wouldn’t the cops have chased all that down at the time?”
“Prieto’s sister said they tried. But just because they didn’t find anything doesn’t mean there was nothing to be found.” He paused. “And after all these years, someone might be willing to talk about things they weren’t willing to say back then.”
They’d run into that before. People change. Circumstances change, too. Someone knew what had happened to Laura Oakwood. They knew now and they knew back then, too. Flint had only to find the people with the right answers.
That was always the secret to locating people. Somebody knew where they were. Find the right somebody, and he could find the missing. Every time.
Or they could simply get lucky. Old crimes were sometimes solved when quirky, unpredictable things happened. Which wasn’t a strategy to either count on or ignore.
She nodded. “Does the cult still exist? Most of those things flame and burn out after a few years.”
“That’s what I’d like you to find out. The drifter called himself John David. Which sounds like a fake name and probably was. But if there was a cult, we might be able to get a lead on why Oakwood robbed Mildred’s Corner.” He closed his eyes, visualizing the area again and the people he imagined were living there. “Maybe they told someone where they were going. Hell,
maybe this John David, or whatever his real name was, helped them. Just because you believe he wasn’t the second gunman doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved somehow. Maybe he drove the getaway car and that’s how Oakwood disappeared after the robbery.”
Scarlett considered the problem for a bit. “You didn’t interview the Wolf Bend sheriff about the guy? Get an ID, a real name, at least?”
“I would have, but the sheriff’s office was closed and I was running short on time. I thought maybe you’d have the name of the known associate the local sheriff at Mildred’s Corner figured to be the second gunman and we could go from there.” He paused.
“We’ve been running down the second gunman stuff. The old records are atrocious. Everybody’s dead and gone. But okay. We’ll give it a higher priority. At this point, we’re grasping anyway. Can’t hurt to take a harder look. But keep in mind that if this guy, John David, was the known associate, then he’s dead. So finding him won’t help.” Scarlett nodded again. She was silent for a while. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Do you think you can do it without using any of your office resources? Or leading Shaw and Crane right along with you?”
Her frown jumped back as fiercely as ever. She was touchy tonight. The pressure was getting to her. “I’m as good at covert ops as you are, Flint. I’ve got as many contacts in the right places, too. Don’t flatter yourself.”
He grinned. Her melancholy over the sick Oakwood baby was hard for him to take. He preferred ferocious Scarlett any day. She’d always been a woman who could take care of herself. It was one of the things he most admired about her. Not that he’d let her know that.
He sipped his Scotch. “Have you found anything more about Richard Oakwood’s family of origin?”
“Not yet. Have you?”
He nodded. “Laura’s high school principal says that before he fell in love with a local girl, Richard Oakwood might have emigrated from Canada to work in the oil fields. Maybe he had family in Canada. His daughter might have known that. Maybe that’s where she went.”