“When?”
“I don’t know, I was just getting ready to go to class. Quarter of eleven, maybe?”
“Which friend was this?” Laura picturing thirty-eight-year-old Bobby Burdette, all swagger and dark sunglasses.
“I don’t know. Probably someone he knew from class.”
Class?
“Can you describe him?”
“He was my age—”
Laura straightened. “Your age? What did he look like?”
“Just your average guy. I do remember he was upset, though. Really mad he missed Dan. You could tell he was pissed.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know. He was just upset. The way he acted.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“He did, but I can’t remember it.”
Laura asked him a few more questions, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
A kid looking for Dan. It could mean nothing. Probably meant nothing. But she’d give a great deal to know who it was.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The ophthalmologist was cute. Not good-looking—cute. He was in his mid-thirties, and had an open, friendly face. His brown hair flopped in a bang over his forehead as he scooted around the darkened room on his little rolling chair, his quickness and the lab coat reminding her of some long-ago movie starring Groucho Marx.
He asked her to recount the last couple of instances when her vision went haywire. She did. A stickler for detail, she even told him about the ice.
“Ice? Oh, for those circles under your eyes.” He had been looking at her chart on the low table by the door. Now he zoomed across the space between them, looming up close to her face, his eyes searching. Shining a light on her face. “You know, we can fix that.”
“What?”
“Just a little snip here and pull this tight—it’s a simple operation.”
Laura felt something shake loose inside her. If he was talking plastic surgery, the prognosis couldn’t be that bad.
“I used to do that kind of work, but now I’m strictly ophthalmology But I know a good guy who could do it. Let me know if you want his name. Insurance doesn’t cover it, though…” He tapped the chart against his knee, thinking.
She wanted to scream, What’s wrong with my eyes?
“You probably want to know what’s going on.”
Duh.
“You’ve got ocular migraines. It’s obvious—it’s either that or a brain tumor.”
“I don’t have a brain tumor?”
He shook his head. “Not likely.”
He told her about ocular migraines. They were like migraines, but instead of giving her headaches and nausea, they caused a halo effect around her vision. “Harmless, but a pain in the ass. Stress brings them on, so if you can eliminate stressors, you’re home free.”
How simple it sounded. Eliminate stressors. Right.
“Also, if I were you, I’d stop using ice. No wonder you got ocular migraines—you must have frozen half your cranium.”
*
Laura had made the appointment from the Tucson airport and gone straight there. Debated going home, but there were too many things she had to do, so she drove back to DPS afterward.
Richie gave her the bad news as soon as she came in.
“The shell cartridge doesn’t match Bobby Burdette’s shotgun.”
“He had other guns.”
“None of them were 12-gauge.”
“He could have ditched it.”
Richie nodded. “But that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Anyway, the dirtbag’s dead, so it’s a moot point.”
“Swell.” She walked to her desk. Five or six “While You Were Out” slips sitting there waiting for her. She looked through them all, hoping one of them was from Tom.
No such luck.
She sat down, feeling oddly disconnected. From the place, from the other detectives, from the world. At least her eyes were all right.
She closed said eyes now, feeling disoriented. That familiar tightness in her chest. The need to know what was going on with Tom, needing to pinpoint the source of bad feelings rising up in her throat. Maybe it was just what she’d seen: Bobby Burdette’s truck rearranging itself in the air over the Mojave.
She sat there for a few minutes. Remembering the billboard she’d seen on the way to the airport in Flagstaff this morning: CHOOSE LIFE.
The people who paid for the billboard were referring to abortion. But it made her think of Bobby Burdette. He’d had an image to protect; he’d seen himself a certain way. She thought that picture of himself was more important to him than the reality.
Given that, it was easy to see why he had killed himself. In his mind, he’d had no choice.
But she did.
She walked downstairs to Jerry’s office, knocked on the doorjamb. Jerry stood up from his desk, grizzled and smiling. “Congratulations are in order. That was some wild ride you went for up there. Looks like you closed this case and then some.”
“Looks like it.” Although now she wasn’t so sure. “What I came in to ask you—I’d like to take a couple of days off. I haven’t had much sleep—”
Jerry sat back down, his blueberry eyes assessing. “I think that’s a good idea. You’ve been through a lot.”
“So, it’s okay? I can leave now?”
“I think you should.”
Laura turned back at the doorway. “I think I’m going to need some counseling, too.”
*
She was almost to the turnoff to Vail, to the Bosque Escondido and her reunion with Tom Lightfoot—however that might turn out—when her cell rang.
It was the chief of police in Lordsburg, New Mexico.
“Laura Cardinal? I understand you know a Jamie Cottle from Williams, Arizona?”
“Yes—”
“We have him here at the jail. He asked to talk to you.”
“Jail?”
“He was following a schoolteacher around, Richard Garatano.”
Laura saw the Wentworth Road exit sign come up, then flash by. She glanced across the median at the mesquites, the road arrowing through the desert beyond. The road to home.
She pushed the 4Runner up to eighty.
It was only another one hundred and forty miles or so to Lordsburg, if she kept going straight on I-10.
Chapter Forty-Eight
By the time Laura got to Lordsburg just over the state line, the lowering sun was hanging on by its fingernails, staining the world red under streaky dark high clouds, the glow almost blinding in her rearview. Red suffused everything: the houses on the outskirts dotting the high grassy plain, the reflective signs, the bargain motels, fast food places, truck stops. The town seeming to stretch out on the left side of the interstate like a giant motherboard. Car lights flashed on as she took exit 22, drove under the overpass, and tracked her way up State Route 70 to Wabash Street.
She gave her name and badge number into the speaker set into the plastic window dividing the police department from the public. A few moments later Chief Thaddeus Farnsworth himself met her in the small lobby and led her back. Chief Farnsworth was a tall man, a rancher. Square face, square hands, the wrinkles webbing his sure-shooter blue eyes like a badge of honor. He smelled of nicotine and Juicy Fruit.
“Kid is something else,” he said as he led her to the interrogation room. Laura looked in the window: the boy inside looking small and helpless, even though he was tall for his age. His dark hair flopping over his face.
“You said he was following Garatano?”
“I’d say ‘stalking’ is more like it. We confiscated a 12-gauge shotgun from the gun rack in his truck.”
“Truck?” Laura asked. “He owns a car.”
“It’s registered to his parents.”
“What exactly was he doing?”
The chief summarized the events of the last day and a half. The first time Richard Garatano noticed Jamie Cottle was when he went to the Pizza Hut with his wife and baby
boy. He sensed the kid watching him. When he got a good look, he knew right away who it was.
Apparently, Cottle had followed him around in Williams, too. Ran into him a lot, never said anything, just gave him the Evil Eye.
“When Garatano saw Cottle here in Lordsburg, it threw the fear of God into him. He called us. By the time we got there, the kid was gone. We didn’t take a report. Last I checked, a cat can look at a king.”
Laura smiled at that. “Do you know Mr. Garatano’s history?”
“We do now. I talked to the Williams PD yesterday. Bad situation.” He paused a beat—“poor kid, let him rest in peace. Drowned in Cataract Lake.“ Anyway, two nights ago, Cottle spent the night in his truck outside the Garatano residence. Garatano twice asked him to leave, and Cottle told him what I just told you: ‘A cat can look at a king.’ ”
Garatano was now teaching at Royal’s Academy, a charter school here in town.
Jamie Cottle parked outside the school, stayed there all day. When Garatano came out, Cottle got out of his truck and asked him if he’d found another boy. “This was when school was letting out and there were lots of kids around to hear it. According to Garatano, Cottle threatened him, said he better not touch another boy or he’d regret it. Since there were witnesses, we had enough to bring him in for questioning. It was a clear threat.”
“How did he react when you brought him in?”
“He seemed happy.”
“Happy?”
“Said he wanted to make Garatano’s life miserable, and it looked like he was succeeding.
“As I understand it, he’s got a real beef, though. After what happened to his brother. Jesus.” He touched his nose. “Chief Loffgren and I go way back. He said this kid had a crush on the girl who was shot up there a week or so ago? She was killed by a 12-gauge shotgun, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, she was.”
The chief shook his head. “That kid could be in a heap of trouble. I know he asked for you, but I wouldn’t cut him any slack if I were you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t.”
Jamie Cottle looked up when the door opened, his expression interested. Again she was struck by his clear-eyed intelligence. His face open, and yet she knew that he had plenty of secrets roiling underneath.
“You came,” he said. “I didn’t know if you would.”
“Looks like you’re in big trouble.”
His smile dropped. “Not so much. I didn’t do anything.”
“Stalking someone isn’t nothing.”
“And pedophilia is? What about drowning someone?”
That stubborn look again.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what happened.”
“I know my brother’s dead and that bastard is walking free. Even got himself another job teaching the kiddies.”
Laura set her recorder on the small table between them and switched it on. Gave her name, rank, his name, the location, the date.
“I called you for help,” he said.
“I am here to help you. But you have to tell me the truth. Why have you been following Mr. Garatano?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“How did you find out he lived here?”
“I’ve got my sources. I’m not stupid.”
“So when did you get this idea? To come out here? What did you think you would accomplish?”
He leaned forward. “Have you ever lost anyone? Someone in your family? Well, I have. I think about my brother every day. Why should that … that prick walk around, enjoy the sunshine, enjoy going to the Pizza Hut for fuck’s sake, have a whole life, after what he did to T.J.?”
He looked her in the eyes, his gaze daring her to argue. Laura said, “It’s not up to you to dispense justice.”
“Dispense justice? Are you kidding? They didn’t even charge him. The only thing that happened was he lost his job. And now he’s got another one. Teaching kids. You call that justice?”
He was drawing her into an argument she couldn’t win. “I notice you have a 12-gauge shotgun in your truck. Have you fired it recently?”
“No.”
“Do we have permission to check that out?”
“What? Oh, is that it? You still think I killed Kellee, don’t you? What’s your theory? I shot them both in a jealous rage? Is that it?”
On the offensive. For a moment she thought he’d shoot out of his chair at her. “You honestly think I would kill her? What, you think I shot her and her boyfriend, then I drove out here to shoot the teacher? Like some kind of rampage? Is that what you think?”
“You have to see it from where I’m sitting.”
“No, I don’t. Because you’re wrong.”
“Then why are you here? Enlighten me on that. Why did you come all this way? Just to bother him?”
He stared at her, his face pale. Two pinpoints of color on his cheeks. Eyes like stones.
“You don’t believe me, do you? You really think I killed her.”
Laura thought: You only get one chance with this guy.
“Jamie, you know how it is. I have to ask you questions, but we’re all on the same side here—”
He folded his arms, glared at her. “I thought I could trust you, that you of all people would understand, but I can see you’re just like the rest of them. I’m not talking to you anymore. I want a lawyer.”
From that point on, there was nothing she could do. Jamie Cottle had a very strong will. Laura tried a few techniques that sometimes worked, trying to enlist him, get him on her side. But he stared straight ahead and said nothing. When his lawyer appeared, the game was over.
They didn’t have enough to hold him. The warrant had been denied. As Cottle left, he gave Laura one last resentful look.
In his mind, she had betrayed him.
*
She drove home that night.
Spent most of that time thinking, working things out, as she flashed past the few small towns strung out along the freeway, a sprinkling of lights here and there. The road unraveling before her. Weary, but her mind alive.
She thought about Jamie Cottle, about what his world must be like now.
His brother’s death ignited a fuse. So much rage—outrage. There was a moral component, as if it had been all done to him. His brother had died, but the insult was to him. Yet even after his brother’s death, he’d still had something tethering him to the world. He had his family, and he had Kellee.
His relationship with Kellee had all been fantasy, but it had been real to him. Was this the reason he didn’t spend all summer following and threatening Richard Garatano? Had his love for Kellee made the difference?
Then his fantasy—perhaps the only thing sustaining him—was blown to bits.
He already knew she was with Dan. Probably had it in his mind that she and Dan would split up. But when they went off to get married, that changed the equation. To his mind, marriage was permanent.
A terrible blow. Something he couldn’t deny, couldn’t gloss over.
First, his brother is killed, Garatano getting off without even a slap on the hand. And now the girl he loves gets married.
Brandon Terry had described the young man showing up at Dan’s apartment as agitated, angry.
Outraged.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Laura thought: I’ll know in a minute.
She turned onto the loop road. Glanced at the corrals, but the moon was under cloud tonight and she couldn’t see shapes, just a dark mass. Couldn’t tell if his truck was there or not; it was too far away.
She drove up the dirt road, through the wash and up again, to the curve. Her house, mi nidito, on the right.
The house was dark.
She glanced at the digital clock on the dash: almost one a.m.
He’d be asleep by now.
She parked out front and pushed through the iron gate. Walked up onto the old brick portal. A cricket chirped somewhere.
Laura unlocked the door and was confronted by pitch
black. Reached to her right and flicked on the light, a white ceramic globe on the ceiling, held in place by wrought iron. Pretty funky—came with the house.
She tiptoed through to the bedroom, letting her eyes adjust.
The bed was made. It looked the same as it had when she left three days ago. She looked over at the answering machine on the bedside table. Blinking manically—too many messages to count.
She turned on lights. No need to creep around because there was nobody to wake up. She walked into the kitchen, looking for notes. There were none. Checked the refrigerator. A few condiments. Not even the beer he liked. Nada.
He had not been here.
Where was he?
Too late to go to the cantina. Too late to ask anyone. The whole place was sleeping.
She went back in and played the messages. She didn’t like the sound of her own voice, which sounded tentative and increasingly desperate.
She walked over to the closet they shared together. His stuff was still here. That was a relief.
What do you think? He’s going to walk out on you? Why would you think that?
Something going on, but what?
Tom was a free spirit. He had mentioned going down to Mexico, a working ranch where sometimes he hired on to round up cattle. The owner was a friend of his from way back. Laura had his name and number in her address book.
She found the page, started to punch in the number.
One in the morning.
Screw it.
She pulled off her clothes and crawled into bed, sure she wouldn’t get a minute’s sleep, everything running around in her head like a hamster on a wheel.
*
The phone woke her.
She reached across the empty side of the bed. She had been scrupulous to keep to her own side, a habit she had gotten from sleeping with Tom.
“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. Rise and shine.”
It was Richie.
“What time is it?” she asked. Full sunlight across the bed, the floor: late.
“Noon.”
“Noon?” Then she remembered. Jerry had given her some time off. She didn’t have to go in. “What’s up?”
“Just your genius partner, making another brilliant deduction.”
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