Remains of Innocence

by J. A. Jance

  “Much as I’d like to say otherwise, I don’t see how it’s possible for Liza to be involved in what happened on your end. I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that she’s still somewhere right here in Great Barrington. The last time I saw her was early Friday morning. I suppose she could have flown out in time to get to your side of the country and off her brother that night, but like I told you, we’ve been checking with all the airlines. I can tell you for sure that no one using her ID flew on any commercial flight on Friday. I suppose she could have used fake ID or else have flown private, but that’s highly unlikely for someone who earned her living as a waitress in a diner.”

  When the call ended, Joanna turned to Alvin Bernard.

  “That was unexpected,” she said.

  He nodded. “Sounds like that next-of-kin notification is going to be a problem.”

  “I’ll say,” Joanna agreed. “In more ways than one.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “UP AND AT ’EM, LINDA,” SAM CALLED INTO THE BERTH ABOVE THE Peterbilt’s cab. “This is the end of the road for you as far as we’re concerned, because we’ve found you another ride. Want me to give you a hand with your stuff?”

  It took a moment for Liza to realize first where she was, who she was, and that the truck was no longer moving. Sitting up and throwing off the blanket, she wondered how long she’d slept.

  “Coming,” she called. It took several long fumbling minutes before she managed to get the scarf on right. Finally finished, she passed down her luggage and purse.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she said, stepping out of the truck and into what turned out to be haze-covered early morning sunlight. “Where are we?”

  “Welcome to Truck City in beautiful Gary, Indiana,” Sam told her. “We were planning on taking you all the way into Chicago, but the guy we were supposed to hand you off to there had trouble with his rig on the far side of Detroit. Overnight we hooked you up with a buddy of ours, Howard Prince. Everybody calls him Bruiser. Aimee said you were headed for L.A., and Bruiser is going to Kansas City by way of Des Moines. That’ll put you on Interstate 80. The good thing about ol’ Bruiser is that he drives weekends. A lot of the guys don’t, but Bruiser says he makes better time on Saturday and Sunday than he does during the week.”

  “Is he here?” Liza asked.

  “Nope,” Sam answered, picking up Liza’s luggage and heading into the building. “He’s still about an hour out.”

  Joe, who had already been inside, hurried out to meet them. “I talked to Bertha, and we’re good,” he said.

  “Who’s Bertha?” Liza asked.

  “As far as Truck City is concerned”—Joe grinned—“you should call her Your Royal Highness. She’s the old broad who owns the place. She says you’re welcome to come on into the truckers’ lounge. You can freshen up there and take a shower if you want. There are phones if you need one and some computers, too. You do whatever you need to do. When you finish, go out into the restaurant to wait. Bruiser’s gonna have to gas up, but he’ll come looking for you when he’s ready to rumble.”

  Sam and Joe escorted Liza into a lounge area that came complete with worn but comfortable leather lounge chairs, several television sets, and a pair of what turned out to be pristinely clean restrooms. Sam set her luggage down outside a door marked HERS.

  “You take care now,” he said, reaching out and pulling her into a strong-armed hug. “You’re doing the right thing getting away from a scumbag like that. A man who would hurt his woman when she’s busy fighting cancer . . .” He stopped and shook his head. “There’s words for low-down curs like that, but I can’t say none of ’em in front of a lady. Best of luck to you.”

  When Sam let Liza loose, Joe gave her a hug and an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “If anybody gives you any guff about being here, just tell ’em to talk to Bertha.”

  Liza nodded. She was worried about being passed off from one set of strangers to another, and some of that discomfort must have showed.

  “Don’t you worry none about Bruiser,” Sam added consolingly. “He talks way too much, which is one of the reasons he drives solo, but the man’s a gentleman from the top of his head to the tips of his shoes.”

  “Boots,” Joe interjected. “Bruiser wears boots, not shoes.”

  “Thank you,” Liza said. “Thank you both for everything.”

  A few minutes after they left, Liza stood in a steaming shower with a powerful stream of water raining down on her naked body. It was odd to feel the water pounding directly on her tender bare scalp and even odder to shower without needing to use shampoo or conditioner.

  After the shower she dried off and changed into clean underwear. She still had the small makeup kit that she had kept in her old purse. Once she had fixed her face and rewound the scarf she was ready to face the world again. Or at least the truck stop.

  Out in the lounge, she tentatively approached the table where two aging desktop PCs sat side by side. One was taken by a beefy guy who was so completely engrossed in what he was watching that he didn’t bother glancing in Liza’s direction as she slid onto the chair beside him. What showed on his screen was something a very long way on the wrong side of R-rated, and it made the note taped to the bottom of the PC monitor self-explanatory: CLEAR YOUR HISTORY WHEN YOU LEAVE. WE DON’T WANT TO SEE WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WATCHING.

  Using Safari, Liza typed in the words: Great Barrington Herald. The Herald was the local newspaper, print copies of which were often left behind by customers who breakfasted at Candy’s. Until the site came up on the screen, Liza wasn’t even sure there was an online edition. What she saw took her breath away. Staring back at her was her own image—a copy of her senior photo taken from Great Barrington High’s yearbook, the Crusader. According to the caption, Liza Elaine Machett was being sought as a person of interest in the Thursday-night homicide of longtime Great Barrington resident Olivia Octavia Dexter.

  With her heart hammering in her chest, Liza quickly closed the page and shut down the search engine. She sidled a glance toward the man beside her. He was too engrossed in the naked images on his screen to pay the slightest attention to hers. She didn’t need the reminder from the hand-printed sign to erase her search history before she grabbed her luggage and purse and fled the lounge.

  Inside the restaurant, a large woman with a bright red bouffant hairdo and a beaming smile stood at the hostess counter. “I’m Bertha,” she announced as she led Liza to a booth near the window. “Hope you enjoyed your shower.”

  “I did, thank you,” Liza said.

  “Have yourself some breakfast now,” Bertha added kindly, handing over a menu. “Order whatever you want. It’s on the house. Someone in your condition needs to keep up her strength. I didn’t have cancer at the time, but I had me a husband just like yours once. He’s dead and gone now and good riddance. I know, it hurts like hell to leave, but sometimes it’s the only thing to do. When Bruiser gets here, I’ll let him know where you are.”

  With that Bertha flounced back to the hostess station, leaving Liza flushed with a combination of embarrassment and guilt. Between them, Candy and Aimee had provided Liza Machett with the perfect disguise. Everybody felt sorry for battered women and for cancer patients, too, and they all wanted to help. It filled Liza with shame to realize she was misleading these wonderful strangers by playing on their pity and their generosity.

  How was it possible that she was here, fleeing everything familiar and throwing herself on the mercy of people she didn’t even know rather than staying put and taking her chances with Amos Franklin? After all, he wouldn’t be able to find any proof that she had done anything wrong because she hadn’t. The detective scared her, but what scared her even more was whoever had burned down the house and murdered Olivia. Those people were after her, and they were deadly. Liza had no faith whatsoever that Amos Franklin and the Great Barrington Police Department would be able to offer her enough protection. In fact, given Amos’s surly attitude, he was more likely to throw her to
the wolves.

  “Excuse me, would you be Miss Linda?” someone asked in a distinctly southern drawl.

  Finished with her breakfast, Liza had been staring off into space and thinking about her photo on the Herald website. Startled out of her reverie, Liza found a tall man standing next to her booth. He was dressed in jeans, a faded flannel shirt, worn black cowboy boots, and an equally worn Stetson. He looked to be somewhere north of sixty. He had piercing blue eyes, and a network of smile lines crisscrossed his weathered cheeks.

  Caught unawares, Liza almost blurted out her real name. Instead she managed to stifle the urge and simply nodded her reply.

  “I’m Howard,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  When Liza started to rise, he offered an arm to help her up out of the booth. “My friends all call me Bruiser, my lady. Your coach awaits.”

  He led her out to the parking area. The coach in question was a sleek red Kenworth hauling a silver trailer. Black letters on the end of the trailer and penciled onto the doors on the cab read PRINCE AND SON TRANSPORT SERVICES, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY.

  “Prince would be my stepdaddy, and I’m the son,” Bruiser explained as he stowed Liza’s two pieces of luggage in an outside compartment. “He’s eighty-seven and doesn’t drive anymore, but I’m too damned cheap to change the name. I’d have to paint the whole truck. Besides, I sorta like it. You can ride up above if you want, or down here with me, whichever you prefer.”

  After spending most of the previous night lying down, Liza was ready to sit up for a while. She almost changed her mind when she climbed into the passenger seat and caught sight of the half-smoked cigar resting in the ashtray. Bruiser bounded into the driver’s seat and caught her looking at the cigar. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said. “The little woman won’t let me smoke at home, so I do it on the road.”

  “I don’t mind,” Liza said, thinking to herself, Beggars can’t be choosers.

  Sam was right. Bruiser talked. Steadily. He explained that the trip to KC, as he called it, would take eight hours, give or take.

  “Assuming the guy’s there at the warehouse with his forklift the way he’s supposed to be, it’ll take us forty-five or so to drop off the load in Des Moines. That’ll put us into KC about six o’clock or so. Where you headed next?”

  “West,” Liza said. “L.A. eventually.”

  “Let me see what I can do, then. Lots of folks drive back and forth on I-80. I’ll see if I can’t fix you up with one of them. Not as many on weekends as during the week, but I’m sure we’ll find you someone.”

  Liza settled back in the seat and simply let him talk. And smoke. He spent more than an hour talking into his Bluetooth before he had what he told her was a satisfactory set of drivers for the next leg.

  “They’ll be great. Kimi Sue and Oxman are a husband and wife team with a cute little dog name Major. They drive for Yellow Freight. We can meet up with them at Turk’s in KC and they’ll have you in Denver by morning. They’ll be going on west from there, to Salt Lake and then south to their home base. They’re willing to take you on as far as Salt Lake or else send you south to Albuquerque. It’s up to you.”

  Liza closed her eyes and tried to visualize a map of the United States. She had been as far as New York City a couple of times, and her senior class had taken a trip to D.C. She’d already traveled farther into the interior of the country than she had ever expected to venture. Where was Albuquerque in relation to Bisbee? She was pretty sure Arizona and New Mexico were next door to each other. In Albuquerque maybe she’d only be an hour or so from where Guy lived.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Bruiser laughed. “Well,” he said. “You’ve got yourself plenty of time to think about it, little lady. You just settle back and relax.”

  With that, he punched in the lighter and pulled out another cigar.

  CHAPTER 15

  IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT WHEN JOANNA FINALLY PULLED INTO the garage at High Lonesome Ranch. She stopped long enough to key in the alarm code and lock her weapons away in the laundry room safe.

  It was strange to come into a house that was dead quiet and empty. No Butch; no Jenny; no Dennis; no dogs running over one another as they raced to greet her. She couldn’t remember when that had happened any time in recent history. Lucky and Lady were spending the weekend at Carol’s house just up the road, and Desi, as part of his service dog training experience, was in Silver City with Jenny attending his first-ever rodeo.

  Having spent a very long day in a pair of unfamiliar boots, Joanna’s feet were killing her. The first thing she did upon entering the kitchen was drop into the breakfast nook and strip off the offending footwear. Then, in her stocking feet, she went looking for food. That was something else about being home alone. No Butch meant foraging for herself.

  She had made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and was about to take the first bite when the landline phone rang.

  “You’re home,” Butch said, sounding relieved.

  “Just got in,” she replied.

  “I know. I’ve been calling every fifteen minutes.”

  “Why didn’t you call my cell?”

  “Because I knew you were dealing with a homicide,” Butch said. “I figured you had your hands full and thought it would be better if I talked to you after you got home. You were gone a long time. How are things?”

  Joanna had taken a bite out of her sandwich and had to finish chewing and swallowing before she could answer. She gave him a shorthand version of Guy Machett’s death, ending with the waterboarding followed by the failed attempt at resuscitation.

  “In other words, he didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear or give them what they came to get,” Butch replied.

  Joanna had come to rely on bouncing ideas off Butch. Now was no exception.

  After pouring herself a glass of milk, she told him about the problem with Guy’s next-of-kin notification.

  “Calling her a person of interest is bogus,” Butch observed. “You know as well as I do that’s just a way of splitting legal hairs to keep Franklin from having to give her the Miranda warning the moment he lays eyes on her. And if Guy’s sister has gone underground, how do you handle the press when you can’t do a next-of-kin notification?”

  “That’s one of the things Alvin and I were huddling about. Everyone who lives on the Vista already knows who died. We can’t very well hold up releasing Machett’s name until Liza Machett is found. According to the people in Great Barrington, she’s Guy’s only living relative. We talked to Madge Livingston. She says she remembers the sister calling sometime in the last month. She said it wasn’t a terribly long conversation and that it ended with Guy raising his voice. Madge claims that after that one call, Guy told her that if Liza ever phoned again, she should take a message rather than putting the call through.”

  “Sounds like there’s some bad blood there,” Butch suggested. “Is there any chance the sister is responsible for what happened to Guy?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. If she is, she would have had to hire local talent for the hit. That’s not easy to do when you’re on one end of the country and your target is on the other.”

  “Maybe she’s in Arizona, too.”

  “Detective Franklin says not. He claims to have had people checking to see if she purchased an airline ticket. So far no luck on that score. He thinks she’s holed up somewhere right there in town with someone helping her stay out of sight.”

  “There are plenty of airports to choose from back east,” Butch said. “I can’t see how Franklin could have checked all of them. How’s your mother taking to the idea that you pulled George back into your orbit?” he added, changing the subject.

  “How do you think?” Joanna replied. “With two cases pending, we needed an M.E., and we needed one fast. Mother was on the phone to ream me out about it before George made it to the stop sign on Arizona Street. Since he was already in trouble tonight, he went ahead and did Junior’s autopsy.”

  �
�And?”

  “Junior Dowdle died of blunt force trauma from hitting his head on a rock when he fell. He also broke his neck. Either injury would have been fatal, so take your pick. George also found bruising on the small of Junior’s back that could be consistent with his being pushed.”

  “So that’s a homicide, too?”

  “Looks like,” Joanna agreed. “Now that the autopsy’s done, George was able to release the body to the mortuary. Junior’s funeral is scheduled for late Tuesday morning. That’s all the news on my end. How about yours?”

  “I called Dr. Ross and told her it’s a go on buying Maggie,” Butch answered. “I’m hoping Jenny and I can drive up to Payson next weekend to pick her up. Jenny is over the moon. Dennis is pissed. He wants to know when he’s getting a horse.”

  Joanna laughed. “I think he’s still a little young.”

  “That’s what I told him.” Butch chuckled. “He’s a stubborn little guy. Takes after his mom on that score. He was still giving me the cold shoulder when I put him to bed.”

  “About Maggie,” Joanna began. “Don’t you think we should try to convince Jenny to change Maggie’s name? I mean, what’s going to happen when your mother finds out that she shares her name with our new horse?”

  “She’ll be fit to be tied,” Butch said, laughing aloud. “I hope I’m there to see it.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said, “and you know who she’ll blame. It won’t be her precious son!”

  “I’m not worried at all,” Butch replied. “If anyone knows how to handle my mother, you do. Now go to bed and go to sleep. I’m glad you’re home safe.”

  Joanna went to bed, but she didn’t go to sleep, not for a long time. For one thing, her conscience was bothering her. She hadn’t liked Guy Machett. In fact, she had been less than kind to him on occasion, but she certainly hadn’t wished him ill. And no one, arrogant asshole or not, deserved the kind of treatment that had been visited on him. The level of violence involved in Guy’s death indicated the existence of some kind of secret life. The search warrant requests for phone, Internet, and bank records were being processed, but Dave Hollicker said it was unlikely that he’ll have any results to work with on that score before Monday.