by Dianne Emley
“Oh, honey. It would have been hard for me not to have ripped off Ashton’s head.”
“I don’t understand why Emily’s so defiant. She’s never lied to me about where she was before.”
“Emily’s a great girl. This phase will pass.”
“Jim, I’m worried. There’s something else going on. It’s as if Emily’s intentionally trying to hurt me.”
“I don’t think it’s that, Nan. Emily loves you. You and she are a team.”
“It used to be us against the world, but Ashton said something tonight about how Emily was messed up because of what I’d put her through. That I’d never win Mother of the Year.”
“He’s just a cocky little smart-ass mouthing off. Come on, Nan.”
“He didn’t make that up out of thin air. Emily must have told him that. And it’s true. I have put her through hell.”
“The lunatic who tried to kill you put Emily through hell.”
“But I did my share. Chasing him the way I did. My obsession to get him. Putting Emily’s life and my life in danger.”
“You did get him, Nan. And you saved who knows how many lives. Including yours and Emily’s.”
No one knew all the risks she’d taken, the boundaries she’d crossed, to bring down that particular killer. His insanity and compulsion had leached into her and she’d done things she’d never dreamed were in her to do. She’d told Jim about only a few of the transgressions she’d committed, which she’d defended in the name of justice. The rest she’d have to take to her grave.
Looking over at Emily sleeping, she became overwhelmed and a sob burst from her. “Have I ruined her?”
“Sweetheart…I’ll fly out this weekend. I want to be with you.”
“No, don’t do that.” She quickly composed herself. “You’ll pay a fortune to get tickets at the last minute.”
“I don’t care. I want to hold you in my arms.”
“I miss you too. So much. You’ll be out in two weeks. I can wait that long. I’ll be fine. Save your money and let’s put it toward a nice vacation for the two of us.”
She spotted Ray Campos peeking inside the curtained treatment room. “Ray’s here with my car key. Love you. Bye.” She brushed away her tears and stepped into the hallway.
“Hey, Nan.” Campos handed her the key. “It’s parked in the lot across from the ER on the second floor next to the stairs.”
“Thanks, Ray. Really means a lot to me.”
“No problem. How’s Emily?”
“She’s okay. We’re waiting for the test results to come back.” Nan’s responses were clipped because she sensed he had something to tell her and was holding back.
He said, “Can we take a walk?”
“Sure.” She headed through the door into the crowded waiting room. From there they went outside and walked to a small garden. “What’s up?”
“Nobody at the Balsam household is talking. Leo Balsam refused to let us take Ashton and his buddies to the station for questioning, so we talked to the boys at the house, with Balsam in the room. The other two boys’ parents came over. They were mortified. Didn’t find out anything new from the boys. They admitted that they behaved stupidly when they found Emily unconscious, but they swore they knew nothing about Emily having been given a roofie. I wrote out a couple of citations. Balsam said they were bullshit, see me in court, and so on.”
Nan raised her hands as if it had gone exactly as she had expected.
Campos said, “I would have been here sooner with your car, but I had some things to deal with because it was broken into.”
“What?”
“Sorry to bring you more bad news, Nan. Two other cars were broken into too. They shattered the passenger window on your car. The glove compartment was open and stuff was pulled out. Have anything of value?”
“I kept a little digital camera in the glove compartment and a Maglite.”
“Didn’t find a camera.”
“Oh well. It wasn’t expensive. My duty bag was in the back.”
“It’s gone.”
“Crap.”
“Anything of value in it?
“Supplies. The usual.”
“I had Forensics come out and take fingerprints. I took the report to save time. There’s broken glass on the passenger seat and on the floor.”
“I’ll call my insurance company.”
“Rough night for you.”
“Rough couple of nights.” She slapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh crap. My Walther.”
“You had a weapon in the car?”
“My Walther PPK. My backup gun. Son of a bitch. Damn. I love that gun.”
Chapter 27
Nan always woke with the sun and did so this morning even though she’d only slept a few hours. It was 6:15. In her bedroom, light filtered in between the closed wooden blinds. She turned her head on the pillow to look at Emily, who was curled on her side facing her, deeply asleep, her lips parted. A lock of dark hair was over her face. After getting home from the ER in the wee hours of the morning, Nan had wanted to keep an eye on Emily and was going to suggest that the girl sleep in Nan’s bed while she slept on an inflatable mattress on the floor, but Emily had wanted her mom to stay in bed with her.
Emily’s urine had tested positive for Rohypnol, commonly known as roofies or the date-rape drug. Her blood alcohol level was negligible, consistent with her insistence that she’d only drunk a small cup of beer. Because she’d tested positive for Rohypnol, by law she had to be examined for sexual assault. The exam had come back negative.
Nan slipped from bed and picked up her smartphone from the bedside table. A text from Sergeant Early was previewed on the home page. Before Nan opened it, she went into the bathroom in the master suite, silently grabbed her robe from the back of the door, and put on her slippers. She wet a washcloth and rubbed it over her face, then leaned on the sink and peered into a mirror above it, frowning at the dark circles under her eyes and at the gray in her hair that needed touching up.
She turned, leaned back against the bathroom counter, and read Early’s text: Glad Emily is fine. Search warrant served at the Balsam-McCarthy home today at 0500. Tovar supervised search. Did not find Rohypnol. Found Xanax prescribed to Becky. Leo had meds for high blood pressure, cholesterol, and Viagra.
Nan sniggered, imagining Early’s wry smile as she typed the unnecessary information about their private lives. An image entered Nan’s mind of Becky zombied out on Xanax and rotund and hairy Leo, fortified with Viagra, hopping into bed.
Early’s text continued: Report completed on your stolen pistol. She concluded with Carry on as discussed. Keep in touch.
Nan interpreted that to mean Early was telling her to move forward with her covert investigation into the Erica-Jared killings. The Carry on message reminded Nan of the T-shirt Jared had been wearing when he died. The message on the shirt had ended with WE ARE ALL INFECTED. How true, Nan thought.
While still at the hospital, Nan had made a telephone report of the break-in to her car insurance company. A local auto repair shop would fix the broken window today.
Nan padded back into the bedroom. Emily hadn’t budged. Nan left the bedroom and quietly closed the door behind her.
In the kitchen, she brewed a pot of coffee. She had a lot to do today. She went into the TV room, where she’d left her school messenger bag, got her laptop, and took it to the dinette table. Pouring a mug of coffee, she checked her emails, deleting many of them, setting aside others to deal with later, and opening one in particular with great interest. Last night, while waiting for the results of Emily’s medical tests to come back, Nan had emailed a retired PPD officer she knew, Rick Crary, who she’d heard was working part-time doing security at the Wilson Academy. She’d asked if he could find information about a former student, Ashton McCarthy, specifically whether Ashton had been in any trouble at Wilson that may have prompted the administration to request that he withdraw from the school. She’d assured Crary anything he told
her would stay on the QT.
Crary had responded at length in his return email. He knew Ashton well, having intervened in or heard about more than one dispute between Ashton and other students, and even a teacher. There were also incidents of smoking pot on campus. The tipping point for the school administration was when Ashton had been arrested for a DUI. Other Wilson students who’d been in the car with Ashton had confirmed what happened. Ashton’s stepfather did argue the charge down to reckless driving, but the administration still asked Ashton to voluntarily withdraw from Wilson or face expulsion. They had a battle with Leo Balsam about it, but Ashton did finally leave.
Nan typed a thank-you email to Crary and sent it. She considered whether she would tell Emily that her suspicions about Ashton’s background had been right and decided to tuck the information away for now. She hoped that Em would see the light on her own and end her relationship with Ashton.
Bringing up a browser, Nan did a search on “John Hayword Silver Spur.” There were thousands of hits. She’d read Jared’s essay about his dad. It was competently written but had left her with unanswered questions. She thought about what the blogger, Luther Prevett, had said about John Hayword maybe having been shot by a disgruntled husband, that the grand mystery could come down to something as mundane as that.
She clicked on articles about the Silver Spur takedown in the Reno newspapers. For the first time, she saw a photo of Eli DePaul, former chief of the Silver Spur PD, looking confident and robust in uniform in his official portrait in front of a U.S. flag. Forty-nine years old at the time of the indictments, he had brown hair laced with silver, a gunslinger’s moustache, and the steely gaze of a longtime lawman. He looked slightly less self-assured in a suit and tie and clean-shaven on the courthouse steps, a woolen scarf wrapped around his handcuffs to disguise them, but he stood tall and gave off a withering stare. His wife trailed behind him, looking mortified.
Bernard Saxena, “Barney Sax,” sixty years old when he was indicted, was nearly bald with a round face, several chins, and a broad smile that showed both rows of teeth. In some photos, she could see his clunky, gold-nugget pinky ring, which was set with a big diamond, and his big wristwatch with a gold-nugget band. Nan could see him shaking hands and slapping backs at a Shriners’ convention. He seemed an unlikely gambling kingpin. His courthouse-steps photos showed him in a suit and tie but looking moist and rumpled. He didn’t care about disguising his handcuffs and his wife wasn’t trailing behind him.
Nan lingered on a color photo in front of the courthouse of John Hayword with his star witness, Yvonne Zuniga. John was wearing a nicely tailored, dark suit. He was tall, well built, and had a head of thick dark hair. Jared, who’d had his dad’s body type and bone structure and his mom’s facial characteristics, would have grown up to be an imposing man.
Yvonne was a pretty, petite, and slender woman in her early forties. Her black hair was styled in a short bob. She wore an off-white suit with a skirt that brushed the tops of her knees, revealing shapely legs that were long in proportion to her height. Jack was looking ahead, his right arm protectively around Yvonne’s shoulders and his other hand held up, shielding her from the crush of reporters. She was looking up at Jack’s face with, Nan thought, adoration in her dark eyes.
Chapter 28
Nan Googled “Yvonne Zuniga Silver Spur” and got numerous hits. News articles confirmed what Melissa Hayword had said about Zuniga, that she’d been Bernard Saxena’s longtime bookkeeper and had laundered money for Barney but then decided to cooperate with the prosecution, turning state’s evidence because her conscience had gotten the better of her. Nan remembered Melissa’s pronouncement that “Yvonne’s a brave woman.” Nan agreed that Yvonne was indeed brave to have stood up to the Silver Spur criminals—reports said that she’d worn a wire during conversations with Saxena and DePaul—but she wondered if John Hayword had sweetened the deal for her beyond immunity from prosecution. If Hayword had been having an affair with Yvonne, that could have been plenty to get her to cooperate. Still, Nan wondered if something else had been in play.
Nan kept searching for information about Yvonne. Melissa had said that she still lived in Sparks, Nevada, which helped narrow the search results. Nan came upon a news article that stunned her. It was in the Daily Sparks Tribune and had run in May seven years ago. The headline read “Local Man Killed in Hit-and-Run.” It described the death of David Zuniga, twenty-two years old, whose body had been found off the side of a remote desert road on the outskirts of Reno.
“How sad.” Nan pressed her lips together as she glanced through the article.
David had been riding his motorcycle home after his night shift as a waiter at a casino restaurant. His body had been thrown thirty feet. Police had not yet found any witnesses. Zuniga had been studying computer programming at Truckee Meadows Community College and had hoped to transfer to the University of Nevada. He’d left behind a daughter, Isabella, eighteen months, and his mother, Yvonne Zuniga.
After more searching on the Net, Nan found a directory listing for Yvonne Zuniga, age forty-eight, at 501 Tumbleweed Lane, Sparks, Nevada, and a phone number. Nan called the number from her cell phone.
A woman answered. “Hello.”
“Hello. Is this Yvonne Zuniga?”
“Yes.” Yvonne’s voice was guarded. “Who’s calling?”
“This is Detective Nanette Vining with the Pasadena, California, Police Department.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Zuniga, I was hoping I could get some information from you about your involvement in the Silver Spur illegal gambling ring investigation.”
“I don’t talk about the past.”
“May I ask, what was your relationship with John Hayword?” Nan moved the phone away when it clicked in her ear as Yvonne Zuniga hung up on her.
—
Outside, in front of her house, Nan heard the belching rumble of the old car the newspaper delivery people—a young woman and her mom—drove and soon heard the plop-plop when they tossed her two daily papers onto the walkway. Emily thought her mom’s daily papers killed trees and the news was out of date as soon as the paper was off the presses. Nan refused to give up her tradition. She’d grown up reading a daily newspaper at her grandmother’s house when Granny had watched her and her sister.
Nan walked from the kitchen through the TV room and down a short entry hall, where she opened several locks on the front door, and went outside. She headed down her front porch steps and a concrete walkway that crossed her small yard. She’d replaced the grass lawn with drought-resistant landscaping that made her smile whenever she saw it, since it always looked good, as opposed to the thirsty grass she’d never managed to keep up even before she’d stopped watering it because of the drought. She picked up her newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Star-News, and waved to her next-door neighbor, who was pulling out of his driveway to go to work.
Back in the kitchen, she poured more coffee into her mug and made a piece of wheat berry toast. While she was slathering on peanut butter and Knott’s boysenberry jam, she got another text from Early: Did you see this? The message included a link to the Pasadena Per Se blog. Nan opened the link on her laptop and read Luther Prevett’s latest blog post as she ate her toast.
Prominent on the page was the photo Prevett had taken at the memorial, screaming the caption “Ryan Keller Takes Selfie with School Hottie.” In Prevett’s online article, he excoriated the Pasadena PD for its lenient treatment of wife-abusing PPD Sergeant Keller. He quoted “a Pasadena Police insider who would only speak anonymously” who revealed Keller’s “unorthodox” interview conducted by Lieutenant George Beltran in the back of a police vehicle. Nan would have given almost anything to have seen Beltran’s face when he read that and would have paid double to have been a fly on the wall when Ryan Keller got word of his selfie going viral. The blog post had already been shared via social media thousands of times and ranting comments were pouring in.
Prevett quoted fr
om an interview he’d done with Melissa Hayword in which she said she was having an independent autopsy performed on Jared’s body. Prevett also reported that Ryan Keller had already had Erica’s remains cremated, reputedly as per Erica’s wishes. Ryan had refused to speak to Prevett but Erica’s brother, Jason Inman, had said that he had no knowledge of Erica having made any plans in the event of her death. He and his parents would’ve preferred that she not be cremated. Ryan had conceded to having her remains buried in an Inman family plot in the city of Glendora.
Nan sat at the dinette table and flipped through the newspapers. The memorial at Coopersmith and the closed investigation into Erica’s and Jared’s deaths were front page news. The Pasadena Star-News devoted more space to the tragedy, quoting Lieutenant George Beltran as saying the case’s swift resolution would bring “closure” and “healing” to the victims’ loved ones.
“Closure for you,” Nan said aloud. She didn’t believe in the all-healing concept of closure. It was feel-good, TV talk-show BS as far as she was concerned. Broken people with broken lives didn’t go skipping into the sunset. Still, similar to a damaged tree branch or a fractured bone, sometimes things could be lashed together and healing could occur, never erasing the wound’s residue but life managing to go on in a different and unexpected direction. Knowledge could help that process, even if the knowledge was accepting that you might never learn the truth. Nan had just begun the battle to get to the truth behind what had happened to Erica, Jared, and, hopefully, John Hayword. So far, she’d yet to lose a battle in her law enforcement career and she’d never backed away from one, regardless of the personal toll.
Kaitlyn, Emily’s stepmom, called just as Nan had finished her last bite of toast. Nan was glad she’d had time to fortify herself with food and caffeine before having to deal with the super-hyper soccer mom. She quickly brought Kaitlyn up to date on Emily’s condition. At the ER earlier that morning, Nan had stepped outside and called Wes, Emily’s dad. She’d been primed to be judged by him and ready to go on the attack, too exhausted to take any guff, but he’d been surprisingly conciliatory.