The Fault Tree

by Louise Ure

  “You’ll have to step back, ma’am.” He ushered her back toward the curb.

  “I said I was trying to get your attention,” she repeated.

  “Well, you got it. Now go back to your house and I’ll send an officer over as soon as we’re done here.”

  Dupree stifled a grin and watched the woman purse her lips and shuffle back toward the street. Nellis confirmed their timing with fingers one-two-three, raised his knee to his chest, and kicked hard next to the doorknob. The door splintered in a foot-size pattern and he kicked once more to clear the frame completely.

  Officer Hanks and his partner had come in through the back and met Nellis and Dupree in the kitchen. “All clear.” They holstered their weapons.

  A black Naugahyde weight bench, complete with a set of weights and two chrome dumbbells, filled the left half of the living room. A big-screen TV and matching black Naugahyde reclining chair took up the rest. Priscilla Strout would have been happy with the upgraded TV but otherwise wouldn’t have thought this house much better than her own.

  Dupree moved toward the bedroom. A month’s worth of dirty clothes on the floor. No Randy Owner.

  “Excuse me, Officer!” A voice as thin and reedy as straw. Dupree turned to the parenthesis shape of the old woman silhouetted in the front doorway: the ghost of desert summers past and present.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you. Mr. Owner got home about three-thirty yesterday afternoon. Then he came out with a suitcase and raced out of here in that black truck like his tail was on fire.”

  “Put out an APB on Owner’s Toyota,” Dupree directed. “They’ve either run off together, or Arlen Strout got to them first and made sure they weren’t going anywhere.”

  Chapter 49

  I woke to the sound of birds. Little birds, not the big piñon jays or starlings. Maybe a warbler. One sounded like a pugnacious loading dock boss giving orders: witchety-witchety-pit-chek! He was answered with a high-pitched plaintive song: sweet-sweet-sweet-sitta-see. Happy birthday to me. I knew that by late in the day, my mother would remember and place a call. Until then I was probably on my own.

  I made coffee and double-checked the security precautions I’d added to each window and doorway. The tilted chair was still in place by the back door, the bells across the front door hadn’t rung during the night, and the tin cans I’d lined up on the windowsills were undisturbed. Despite my night terror, I was fine.

  I decided to treat myself to a mechanic’s version of a spa.

  I put my favorite Lalo Guerrero CD in and turned the sound down low. “Vamos a bailar—otra vez,” he crooned from the living room. I filled the tub with the hottest water I could stand and squirted in dish-washing liquid for a sudsy treat. Then I grabbed the foot-long file from my tool kit, the chamois that I used to wash special cars at the shop, and the plastic tub of grainy ProSoap.

  I eased myself into the tub, taking care to keep my knee and its itchy stitches out of the water. I was going to have to rise cranelike on one leg to get out. No way my stitches would let the knee bend enough to use both legs. Using the ProSoap as an abrasive, I filed away as much of the callus on my heels as I could, then rubbed the rest of myself with the heavy leather chamois. Not quite Elizabeth Arden but the best I could do under the circumstances.

  I draped the chamois over my face and sank lower. I was feeling vaguely guilty about taking pleasure in celebrating a birthday knowing that Mrs. Prentice would never have another of her own.

  Was there anything else in her house or on the street that I should have suggested Juanita check? It sounded like they’d already covered the house and neighborhood thoroughly.

  And what about the Chevy Lumina from the grocery store parking lot? At least the police now had definite information there—a real license plate to track down—but I didn’t know if they were doing anything with it. Something was nagging me about that car. The antifreeze smell was right. The engine noise was right. And it matched the description my Good Samaritan neighbor had offered. I guess I hadn’t expected the car to be as new as Juanita said it was—only five years old. It had sounded older than that. I couldn’t even trust my ears anymore.

  The phone rang just as I started to add more hot water. Balanced on one foot until I could get my damaged knee clear of the tub, I wrapped myself in a big towel and grabbed the phone.

  “Did you think I’d forgotten our annual flight?” Kevin asked. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

  “Thanks, Kev. Are you at work already?”

  “Yep. I came in early so we could still get in an airplane ride this afternoon. Are you up for that?”

  “Absolutely. I’d love it.” I’d been afraid that his work and family obligations would have meant missing my birthday treat this year.

  “Can you meet me at the Avra Valley Airport at four? I’ve got my boss’s plane lined up for us.”

  I grinned and agreed.

  I poured a second cup of coffee and called Dupree again. This time he was in. “Did Detective Nellis tell you about getting the license plate on the car that ran me down?”

  “Good morning to you too, Ms. Moran.” We shared the moment with separate sips. “Yes, he told me, and we’ve received information from the California authorities already.”

  “You haven’t found him yet.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No. But we’ll get him. We’ve got the information in every cruiser in the county.” He paused. “Does the name Darren Toller mean anything to you?”

  “No. Is he the guy in the Lumina?”

  “Yeah. But he’s just one of the people we’re looking at. There is something else, though. There was another killing yesterday, very much like Mrs. Prentice’s, although we’re not telling the media about any similarities between the two. And a seventeen-year-old girl may be in danger. I want you to be especially careful.”

  I remembered hearing about the murder and kidnapping on TV. “Is there anything I can do?” Aside from arming myself with tin cans and ice picks, that is.

  “You’ve been a big help already. Just take care of yourself.”

  I put on jeans and a white T-shirt, and then added my best silver concho belt and soft Kaibab moccasins in celebration. All dressed up and someplace to go.

  Chapter 50

  “We may have a break on that Chevy Lumina,” Nellis said, putting down the phone. “The San Diego cops went back to reinterview Darren Toller’s neighbors. Nobody knows where his ex-wife is, but one neighbor has a number for his mother. She’s in Florida now.” He set the phone to speaker and dialed the Florida number.

  “Mrs. Toller?” he asked when the woman answered.

  “It’s Bolivar now. But my first husband’s name was Toller.”

  “I’m with the Tucson Police Department and I’d like to ask you a few questions about your son.”

  “Darren? What’s wrong? Has he been hurt?” Her voice was fragile and thin across the wires.

  “We think he might have been a witness to a crime, but we’re having trouble finding him.”

  “Oh, my. I don’t know how I can help. Darren calls about once a week, but he’s just moved to Arizona and I don’t think he’s settled down yet. Where did you say you were calling from?”

  “We’re with the Tucson police, Mrs. Bolivar.”

  “Oh, dear. I don’t know what to tell you. When he called last week he said he’d found an apartment, or maybe he said a house—something that he was renting by the week.”

  Dupree jotted a note. They would canvass all the motels and rental units in the area.

  “Did he leave you a phone number or does he have a cell phone?”

  “No cell phone. And he didn’t leave a number. He said he might be moving again, but he’d stay in touch.”

  Nellis frowned. “Did he say anything else? What street it was on? Or what neighborhood?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I just don’t remember anything else.” She paused. “But where’s Steven?”

  “Who’s Steven?”


  “His son. He’s ten. Darren told me that Steven was traveling with him for a little while, and then he was going to drive him back to Fresno where he lives with his mother.”

  Of the two sets of footprints at Wanda Prentice’s murder scene, the Crime Lab had said one was from a size-nine Nike, and the other was from a flat-soled woman’s shoe in size seven. The Nikes could have belonged to a ten-year-old boy with big feet. But who was the woman? And what link could there be between Wanda Prentice and a newcomer to Tucson like Darren Toller? Maybe they met at the Desert Museum—every Tucson visitor went out there. But if that was the case, how did Toller and James McDougall fit together?

  “Does your son belong to a church, Mrs. Bolivar? Is he very religious?”

  “Oh, my goodness, no. Neither one of us. Although we’ll probably pay for that in the next life.”

  Nellis nudged Dupree and pointed to a line in his notes. Juanita Greene had said the car in the grocery store parking lot had some kind of sign on the door. Dupree nodded, and Nellis asked the question. “What kind of work does your son do, Mrs. Bolivar?”

  “Carpentry, home repair. That kind of thing.”

  “Does he have a sign for that business on his car?”

  “I think he has something small painted on the driver’s door. Something like ‘I Can Fix It,’ with his phone number. But, of course, that was his California phone number.”

  Dupree made sure the woman knew how to contact them in case Toller called her again.

  “Get her phone records,” he told Nellis after they hung up. “If we can identify the phone he called from—even if it’s a pay phone—at least that will narrow it down to a neighborhood. From there, well, you know the drill.

  “And we’d better start praying that he didn’t see a sign for a rental apartment when he was driving past. If that’s the only way it was advertised, we’ll never find him.”

  That covered everything they could do to find Toller, but there was one more suspect that Dupree wasn’t willing to walk away from yet. “Rich, see if MacDougall or his daughter were on any prescription drugs and if they ever shopped at that Best Aid on Swan.”

  Of course, if the McDougalls got drugs from John Stephanos, it didn’t mean they’d met him at the pharmacy. Especially the teenager. Maybe that was what Stephanos was doing with the drugs he was squirreling away.

  Chapter 51

  At three-thirty I called a cab to go meet Kevin. We drove northwest on the freeway toward the Avra Valley Airport in Marana where Kevin’s boss kept his private plane, a little two-seat Cessna 150. In the years that Kevin had been taking me flying, I’d come to treat the Cessna like a favorite pony at a children’s ride. Sure, there were faster and newer planes around, but I knew this old Cessna like a familiar song.

  “Happy birthday!” Kevin said when I walked into the office thirty minutes later. He pushed a heavy plastic tub into my arms. The heady scent was unmistakable.

  “Jasmine! It smells great.”

  “For your front porch. It should climb right up that post in no time.”

  “You’re wonderful.” I reached up and pulled his cheek to my lips.

  I left the potted jasmine in the airport office and we walked around the plane together on a preflight check. The Cessna was a high-wing single engine, no bigger than some of the cars I worked on. I ran my fingers along the edge of the propeller, checking for gouges or dings that would change the vibration and balance as we climbed, then did the same for the leading edge of the wing. I traced the smooth, hot metal dimpled by rivets that held the thin sheets in place.

  We circled the plane and Kevin checked the trim tabs, elevator, and pitot tube. I tugged the chock from under the front wheel and climbed into the passenger seat. When he started the engine, the little plane bounced around like a tractor in a rutted field.

  He pulled the microphone from its hook on the instrument panel and told the tower who we were, where we were, and what we wanted to do.

  “Wind’s not too bad today,” Kevin said to me, then keyed the mike and acknowledged the tower’s response.

  “Here we go.” He revved the engine to fifteen hundred RPM to check the magnetos, left and right. The rudder pedals on the floor tap-danced as Kevin tried to keep us centered on the taxiway.

  A crosswind hit the plane on the right side and jostled it like a friend sharing a joke. Kevin called tower control with our plane number and readiness to depart. When we heard the confirmation over the headphones, he slued the plane into a sharp turn and came to a stop at the end of the runway.

  “Okay. Ready?”

  “For this? Always.”

  “You can read the yoke if you want,” he said, placing my hands on the steering device in front of me.

  “Thanks.” I kept my touch as light as a breeze so Kevin could move the yoke as he needed to.

  He kept talking through the takeoff. “Sixty…seventy. We’re almost at takeoff speed. And up.” The yoke pulled back toward my chest as Kevin drew the nose of the plane toward the sky. “And left on the crosswind leg.” The plane canted to the left with his words and we continued to climb.

  Kevin read out the altitude, airspeed, and heading information as we climbed, guiding my hands to the relevant gauges as he spoke. “Want to go do some turns around Picacho Peak?”

  I grinned at him, knowing that he would be watching for my reaction. Truthfully, I didn’t care where we did the turns, I just liked turning.

  Ten minutes later we had leveled off at three thousand feet and Kevin gave me the controls. “How about a perfect two-minute turn?” he asked.

  From an aerodynamic point of view, the perfect 360-degree turn should take two full minutes. At that rate, you wouldn’t even be aware of turning. I could swear that I’d seen a couple of little old ladies do that same thing in Cadillac convertibles before I lost my sight, and I didn’t think there was anything perfect about it at all.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  I turned the yoke to the right and the wing dipped. Then I depressed the rudder pedal and the plane banked into the turn.

  “Too much right rudder,” Kevin said. I nodded and let up a little on the pedal but held a steady backpressure on the yoke.

  “I thought this might help get your mind off that murder and your hit-and-runs,” Kevin said as we tucked deeper into the turn. He nudged my knee with his own to remind me about the proper pressure on the pedal. I suppressed a groan. It had taken all my willpower to get my bandage-wrapped leg into the cockpit and in position. It was already throbbing where the stitches had pulled tight.

  “Flying blind is one of those things that focuses the mind wonderfully.” It wasn’t just the murder I wanted to forget. It was the teeth-grinding terror of hearing an unrecognizable sound in the night. I wasn’t sleeping much.

  I pictured the terrain that Kevin could see but I could not: the dark, volcanic boulders of Picacho Peak above the brown desert floor. Gray-green scrub brush dotting the landscape everywhere except the arroyos and washes. No water there, just the sandy traces of last year’s monsoon runoff.

  “Is there any more news from the cops?” Kevin asked, belying his desire to keep me from thinking about the murder.

  “I talked to Dupree this morning. He said there’s been a second murder, this time with a kidnapping. They’re looking for somebody named Darren Toller, driving that Chevy Lumina I told them about. Maybe it means they’re getting close.”

  We turned and dipped and climbed for another half hour before Kevin said we had to head back to the airfield. The plane seemed to go faster—surer—with Kevin at the helm. Like a horse rented to tourists at a dude ranch, the Cessna made the return trip to home base a great deal faster than the trip out.

  Leaving the plane, I felt weighted, heavier than I had in the air. But that was just physical. Mentally I felt light as helium, uplifted and buoyed by my birthday flight.

  I kissed Kevin good-bye, shifted the new jasmine plant to my hip, and tapped my way outside to wait for
one of Tucson’s few taxis for the ride home.

  “I’d offer you a lift, but I’ve got to go pick up the girls on the other side of town,” Kevin said.

  “No worries. You’ve already made my day.” I didn’t know then how wrong I was.

  Chapter 52

  The sun had just dipped below the horizon as he pulled to the curb down the block from the woman’s house. He couldn’t leave town until he knew she was no longer a threat. Not with what it meant for him and Lolly.

  He would have waited on the far side of the house, but that was where the nosy, bald-headed neighbor lived, and he didn’t want to give the man another look at him. The guy hadn’t noticed them when they’d been here in the new truck yesterday, watching her water the plants, but he didn’t want to chance it. He unfurled a new piece of bubblegum and began chewing.

  He still had a good view of the woman’s house from here. Red brick, with potted plants on the gravel yard and the concrete porch. The screen door was warped and torn at the corner and the paint was faded on the wooden posts that held up the porch overhang.

  A horn honked in the distance and jerked him back to his surveillance. If this lady worked a regular job, she should be coming home soon. The sky deepened in color around him, rivers of coral and purple across the horizon.

  And there she was, in a light-colored sedan pulling into the driveway. She was alone in the car.

  He’d thought he might have to wait until full dark to avoid being seen, but that honeysuckle hedge did a good job of hiding the little four-door from the neighbors. Dusk would do just fine. He wouldn’t have to take the chance of waiting on the street any longer.

  He took a deep breath, pulled the buck knife from the pocket of his denim jacket, and tested the edge against his thumb. “Stand up!” the dream voice ordered. “And finish what you start,” he reminded himself out loud. He owed it to Lolly to have the same courage she had shown.