The Fault Tree

by Louise Ure

  Dupree knelt beside the bloody bed, waiting until the medical examiner finished taking the liver temperature. Probably in his late forties, McDougall had been a bear of a man, jowly and big fisted, with a day’s worth of stubble gracing his cheeks and chin. He lay on his back, one arm and leg hanging off the bed, a gaping gash across his throat. The spilled blood was a dark red Rorschach against the white bed linens, pajamas, and rug.

  “Looks like they didn’t wait for the homeowner to wake up this time,” Nellis said.

  “And it doesn’t look like the front door was forced either. How long ago?” Dupree directed his question to the medical examiner.

  “Three to six hours.”

  Dupree rose from the squat and followed Nellis to the kitchen. Cupboards had been flung open and emptied: pinto beans, rice, and coffee grounds speckled the floor. The refrigerator had an automatic icemaker, and its plastic bin had been yanked from the machine and hurled to the ground. A broken jar of spaghetti sauce mimicked the bloodstain in the bedroom.

  Dupree knelt to retrieve the blood-smeared bath towel on the floor and placed it into an evidence bag.

  “The killer wiped the bloody knife on the towel, then came in here. McDougall didn’t interrupt a burglary in progress.”

  “And nothing but the kitchen touched. Ransacking a house is not unusual, but when it’s only the kitchen…think we’ve got a copycat?” Nellis asked.

  “Maybe. Some of the details of Wanda Prentice’s murder were in the paper and on the news. Or maybe it’s one killer who just likes doing things a certain way. There was a knife used in both attacks. See if the coroner can match the wounds.”

  They rejoined the first officer in the front yard.

  “Mr. Hutchins,” Dupree said after introductions were made, “you were to meet Mr. McDougall this afternoon?”

  Tim Hutchins had a bulbous nose dappled with sun-damage cankers. He cleaned an ear with his little finger while he answered. “Yeah, our shift starts at seven, and Jim said he’d help me hang an overhead light before we had to go to work.”

  “He was supposed to come over to your place?”

  “I was supposed to pick him up. His car’s in the shop. There was no answer when I got here, but the door was unlocked so I went in. I found him there in the bedroom. Haven’t seen anything like that since I last went hunting.” He shook his head.

  “Did you notice anything missing in there? Was anything taken?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Never spent much time in the house. But check with his daughter; she should be able to tell you.”

  “His daughter?” Dupree looked to Nellis for confirmation. Nellis shrugged.

  “Beatrice. She’s seventeen.” He stopped, then searched the detectives’ faces. “Oh, please don’t tell me she’s in there too.”

  Seventeen. Almost his daughter’s age. “We need to find her,” Dupree said. “Do you know what school she goes to?”

  “She’s not in school anymore; he’s been homeschooling her.”

  “Any idea where she’d go?”

  Hutchins shook his head, and Dupree drew a question mark after Beatrice’s name in his notebook, then added another after Priscilla Strout’s name. Two women missing.

  He didn’t want to think of the possible reasons that a seventeen-year-old, who should have been home on a Tuesday afternoon, was gone when her father was found murdered.

  “Find out what kind of car McDougall drives and whether it’s still in the shop. And let’s get a picture of Beatrice out on the wires. I don’t know what we’re looking at here, but when kidnapping is the best of the options, you know the rest are downright pitiful.”

  Chapter 45

  The six o’clock news was just ending. They didn’t have any details but said there had been a possible kidnapping and another murder in Tucson. I guess we really had graduated to big-city status.

  “Cade!” Juanita called from the front porch.

  I turned down the TV and went to unstring my warning bell and unlatch the screen door. “Didn’t expect to see you today.”

  “I just wanted to check in after our adventure in the parking lot yesterday. And I brought dinner. Any word from Dupree on that license plate?” She brushed past me cradling a big paper bag with both arms.

  “Nothing yet. Want something to drink?”

  “Thanks. We look like twins today,” Juanita called from the kitchen where she was unloading her groceries. “White T-shirts and jeans. Great minds think alike, huh?”

  “It’s almost a uniform for me,” I wore only black and white shirts, and I’d stitched an X into the neck of the black shirts so that I could tell them apart. As if thirty seconds in the Arizona sun wouldn’t have told me anyway.

  “But today’s too damn hot for the jeans. What are you cooking?” She already had at least one container open and it smelled great.

  “My mom’s carne adobo. She was cooking all day and made us up a to-go bag with the beans and salsa. All we’ve got to do is grill the steaks.”

  “I’ll let you light the grill.” Open flames didn’t sit well with my finger-friendly style of cooking.

  “You mind going over the bills while you’re here?” I asked.

  “Sure. Let me get the fire started first.”

  She dumped charcoal into my hubcap-size Weber grill while I poured a glass of red wine for her and iced tea for me. We took our drinks to the kitchen table to go through the bills.

  My electricity bill was as low as ever, but the cost of water in the desert was skyrocketing. After Juanita filled in the payee line and the amount, she positioned the check in front of me and placed my left forefinger on the signature line. I know there are computers that could help me, but I loved Juanita’s running commentary as she read through each letter.

  When the bills were done we gave the steaks a scant five minutes on each side and served big plates, towering with the meat, tortillas, beans, and salsa. I poured a second glass of iced tea.

  “Hey, I’ve got a new sign for you,” Juanita said. “I was driving along in a construction area today, and the sign says ‘Double Fine Zone.’ Great, huh? Double fine, even better than fine. But they ought to put it up someplace like the Grand Canyon. Someplace really double fine.”

  I folded a chunk of beef and a fingerful of beans into a tortilla and thought about Double Fine Zones. Double the happiness; life would be good. But I couldn’t picture anybody else there with me. There was nobody at the shop I was interested in. Turbo and Danny were years younger than I was and treated me like a sister. The two detectives were the only new men I’d met in more than a year. Dupree already had a wedding ring on, and I could understand perfectly well why Nellis didn’t.

  “Say, what do you want to do for your birthday?” Juanita asked between bites.

  My birthday. Tomorrow. These hit-and-runs must have shaken me up more than I realized. I’d been so focused on planting ice picks, knives, and screwdrivers in every room that I’d completely forgotten the date. I usually looked forward to my birthday for weeks, because it meant my annual plane ride with Kevin. I hadn’t heard from him yet about scheduling one this year.

  I tapped the side of the plate. “This is my birthday celebration. Thanks for a great dinner.”

  When we were done, I walked her to the front door and rehung the tinkling bell trip wire across the threshold. Mindful of the electric bill I’d just paid, I turned off all the lights. Nobody here needed them anyway.

  Chapter 46

  “Okay, every squad car and news outlet in the city has her picture,” Nellis said. “It’ll be on again on the late news and then in tomorrow’s papers.”

  Dupree sat at the foot of the narrow bed in Beatrice McDougall’s room, holding a wallet-size snapshot of the girl with both hands. The date on the back said she was fifteen years old in the picture, but there didn’t seem to be any more recent photos around. Long, straight blond hair past her shoulders. She was young enough to still have baby fat, and her smile had a vague air of sadnes
s, as if she had only enough energy to raise one side of her lips.

  Like the rest of the house, everything in the girl’s room was done in shades of white. Glossy white furniture. Nubbly ivory bedspread. Off-white rag rug covering most of the floor. There were strips of sticky tape on the wall, the adhesive scars marking locations where pictures or posters had previously hung. Dupree wondered if they were taken down because of content, because the girl’s tastes had changed, or because they added too much life and color to the otherwise icy white room.

  “We’re just about done out here, sir,” the Crime Lab technician said from the doorway. They’d spent the last four hours dusting, photographing, and taking samples from the house and the body.

  “Thanks. Did you find anything?”

  “Just this.” He held out two small evidence bags. “We found this piece of chewed gum out by the sidewalk. It smells like Bazooka, but we’ll check to be sure. And right beside it we found this.” He handed over the second bag.

  Dupree turned the bag over in his hands. “A gum wrapper, Bible Gum brand. And the Bible card that goes with it. There’s a bowl of them in the living room. So maybe our thief helped himself to one?”

  “Could be. There are some great prints on that wrapper.” The Crime Lab technician grinned like he had the inside scoop on the lottery numbers and hadn’t told his ex-wife.

  Nellis and Dupree set out on opposite sides of the street to interview McDougall’s neighbors. The first officers on the scene had done a preliminary canvass and had noted the addresses where neighbors had something to offer. Unfortunately, none of them had been around earlier in the day when McDougall had been killed.

  “What can you tell me about your neighbor, Mrs. Carlyle?” Dupree asked the harried mother of twin eleven-year-old boys in the house across the street.

  “They’ve only been there a year or so. I think they used to live on the east side of town. Beatrice—that’s the daughter—said something about going to Palo Verde High School for a while.” She swatted absently at the Star Wars combatants behind her.

  “I thought she was homeschooled.”

  “She is now. Her father was very possessive, you know, and he didn’t like what she was learning in public schools.”

  “Homeschooling must have put quite a burden on him, raising a daughter by himself like that. Where’s Mrs. McDougall?” Dupree sketched two Jedi light sabers to remind him of the interview.

  “He said she died when Beatrice was little. Didn’t go into details. It was hard to get him into conversation at all.”

  Dupree flipped back to his notes from the interview earlier in the day with Hutchins. Both men were on-call plumbers working the night shift. If McDougall was homeschooling Beatrice in the daytime, he wouldn’t have much time left to chat up the neighbors.

  “He loved that little girl,” Mrs. Carlyle continued. “But I don’t think she liked being kept on such a short leash.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I heard them arguing last week, out in the front yard. He said, ‘I mean it this time. I’ll move us out of state.’ And she said, ‘You’d better hurry, then, ’cause the minute I turn eighteen I’m leaving anyway and you can’t stop me.”

  Dupree thanked the woman and left, wondering whether every teenage girl was hardwired to make that threat. And whether the standoffs ever ended happily.

  Chapter 47

  As unexpected as an icicle in the desert, the sharp crack of a twig outside my bedroom window sent alarms ringing up and down my spine. I held my breath, waiting for a second sound that would tell me what kind of predator waited there and what direction he was going.

  Something rustled in the thick lantana that carpeted the narrow flowerbed under my window. Was that the swish of fabric? An inhaled breath? Why the hell hadn’t I planted a cholla cactus?

  I reached out to grab the butcher knife I’d positioned within easy reach on the bedside table, then gulped. It wasn’t there.

  I groped from one corner of the nightstand to the other, my terror rising—Kleenex, alarm clock, telephone—but no knife. I knew I had left it there when I’d armed the house before going to bed.

  Was he already inside, standing an arm’s length away and grinning at my vulnerability?

  Thirty seconds. A minute. Nothing but silence from the backyard.

  I wanted to move but couldn’t make myself do it. My heart raced with panic. I didn’t want to be the hysterical woman the cops refused to respond to after a while. Neither did I want to be the dead one they would read about in the morning paper.

  Slowly, slowly, I reached out to take the cordless phone from its cradle and pull it under the covers with me. I punched in 911 but didn’t push Send yet.

  I eased one leg from under the sheet, moving in one-inch increments as I stretched toward the floor.

  My toe connected with the sharp point of a blade and I jerked back in surprise. When my heart slowed, I reached down and retrieved the knife from where it had fallen.

  This killer wouldn’t have to terrify me. I was doing a damned good job of that myself.

  I spent the rest of the night with my hand cradling the phone, the predialed number all ready to go.

  Chapter 48

  Wednesday morning, Dupree checked the messages as soon as he got to his desk. Priscilla Strout had not come home during the night and Beatrice McDougall had still not been found.

  “Any news?” he asked Nellis.

  “Nothing on McDougall. Priscilla Strout doesn’t have a cell phone, and the bus driver on that route doesn’t remember her, so I was thinking, how does she get out of there? I pulled the LUDs from a pay phone at the Circle K a couple of blocks away. There was a call to Randy Owner’s cell phone just ten or fifteen minutes after Ogilvy dropped her off.”

  “Good work. Have you tracked down Owner?”

  “That’s the best part. I just heard back from his boss. Owner left the job site yesterday after getting a call and didn’t show up this morning. And get this, the boss checked back through their records for me. Three months ago, their crew paved the cul-de-sac where the McDougalls live, and they had a job just a couple of blocks from Wanda Prentice’s house the week before she was murdered.”

  “That’s good enough for me.” Dupree holstered his Glock and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. Officer Rodriguez had executed the first search of Randy Owner’s house after they’d picked him up at the Bum Steer. Dupree was looking forward to seeing the place for himself.

  They took I-10 south to the Kino Parkway exit and headed toward Owner’s house, a scant half mile from the western edge of the airport property.

  “I could have sworn that Priscilla Strout was in the clear after what Cadence Moran told us,” Dupree said, wincing as they raced through a yellow light at the intersection.

  “Yeah, I thought your witchy woman might finally have been right about something.”

  “Hell, she was probably right about the high heels and the perfume. But I guess that doesn’t prove Randy Owner wasn’t there. Any word on that missing Corvette?”

  Nellis shook his head.

  Dupree had phoned for more units to join them, and two cruisers were already parked around the corner from Randy Owner’s house when Dupree and Nellis arrived fifteen minutes later. It was a worn-down neighborhood: dead grass and weeds where there should have been lawns. Tinfoil lining the west-facing windows to keep the sun at bay. Shallow front porches that hadn’t seen a welcome mat in twenty years.

  “You guys made good time.” His words were almost lost to the shriek of a massive departing jetliner overhead.

  “We haven’t seen any activity,” a black officer said. He was the older of the two in the first patrol car, and the buttons on his uniform were pulling apart from what looked like an extra ten pounds since he’d bought the shirt. Dark sweat rings blossomed under his arms.

  Dupree nodded and looked at the tiny house that sat apart from its neighbors. Pink stucco with small windows; the hous
e couldn’t be more than two rooms wide. The front yard was bisected by a cracked concrete walkway, and the wooden ramada was only big enough for a single car. Randy Owner’s black truck was nowhere to be seen.

  Nellis organized their approach. “Hanks?” he said to the black officer, “you and your partner go around back.” Dupree could see straight across from one yard to the next, with only a junked car and an empty aboveground pool to block the line of sight.

  Nellis indicated the other officers with this chin. “We’ll take these two with us.”

  They gave the officers a chance to get in place around the side of the house, then approached with their weapons held to their thighs. The murders had involved knives and not guns, but they couldn’t take the chance that Owner didn’t have a gun as well.

  Nellis and Dupree braced the door, with the uniformed officers pressed close to the wall behind them.

  “Randy Owner!” Nellis called. “Tucson Police Department. Open up!”

  Silence from the house.

  “You’ve got five seconds, Owner! Come out with your hands up!”

  Nellis got a nod from Dupree and holstered his gun, took a deep breath, and moved one step back for better leverage. The policeman beside him craned his neck to the side to see through the grime-encrusted window.

  “Ah!” Nellis jumped at the tap on his shoulder. He spun around, fist cocked to protect himself and get enough room to get to his gun. He didn’t need to.

  Behind him stood a woman no taller than a child, hands on hips and elbows held wide. Her thin hair was cotton candy white and she wore two sweaters—one pullover and one cardigan—on her small frame. She’d cut holes in her sneakers so her bunions wouldn’t rub.

  “I’ve been trying to get your attention,” she said. “I live across the way and I’ve been yoo-hooing since I saw you pull up.”

  Nellis released some of the tension with a long exhalation. He caught Dupree’s grin and returned a headshake.