The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  Harmon lived on a quiet street in the Sam Hughes neighborhood. His house was a Spanish eclectic mansion—arched colonnades, red-tiled roof, stately palms and a lush desert garden which she could see through the gates set into the high stucco wall.

  The security business must be booming. She rang the buzzer at the gate, but nothing happened.

  She debated whether to go back to DPS or straight to Jay Ramsey’s house. She had a little over an hour before they were due to meet—too short a window to get anything done at DPS and get back out to mid-town. So she drove the few miles to Alamo Farm.

  Unlike Harmon’s place, Ramsey’s gate was open. Maybe Jay had made it home early.

  As she drove onto the property, the slanting sun poked holes through the windbreak of walnut and mesquite trees, throwing shadows on the lane like a bar code. She turned left on the lane leading to the house, driving into the sun. Dust from her car tires seemed to buzz in the air as sun and shade flickered across her eyeballs. The windshield gleamed gold and brown, like tortoiseshell.

  A black SUV turned onto the lane from between the two eucalyptus trees marking the entrance to the Ramsey house. Funny. It looked like Mike Galaz’s take-home vehicle.

  He stopped and she stopped, window to window. “If you’re looking for Jay,” Galaz said, “He’s not home.”

  “I’m meeting him here at six thirty.”

  “Have you talked to Mickey yet?”

  “No.”

  “Two minds with a single thought,” Galaz said. “Jay knows Mickey a lot better than I do—it occurred to me he could give us some insight.”

  “Same here.” Laura stifled her resentment. She hated the idea of him micromanaging her case.

  “You want me to come back with you and wait?”

  “That’s not—“

  “Let me turn around, okay?”

  She put the 4Runner in gear and drove on without waiting for him to catch up. Why was Galaz so interested? Was it because he was so close to Jay Ramsey and Mickey Harmon? She knew Ramsey was influential in raising money for Galaz’s campaign for mayor. Maybe he was here for damage control.

  She turned off at Ramsey’s house, Galaz on her tail. Trees cast long shadows across the dirt clearing, the hard-packed ground reddish gold in the dying light. No cars. Laura knocked on the door anyway, wasn’t surprised when she got no answer. Cold air leaked through the screen door as she peered in. Nobody home?

  Galaz wasn’t good at waiting. He paced back and forth on the flagstone paving in front of the house, finally went around to the back. Returned and checked his watch over and over, whistling. Annoying the hell out of her.

  A sprinkler stuttered noisily across the lawn, raining on a pair of shrieking grackles. Laura, grateful for the cooling mist as the water spattered near her feet.

  “I don’t think he’s coming,” Galaz said after his second circuit around the house.

  Laura was inclined to agree with him.

  “That’s it for me.” Galaz got into his Suburban. “See you back at the ranch.”

  He started his engine to cool off the Suburban, but didn’t pull out right away. She could see him talking on the phone as she walked back to her own vehicle.

  Something about this scene bothered her. Where was Freddy? She got out her phone and checked her messages. There was a message from Charlie Specter regarding the owner of the GEO . The man was being interviewed by Victor Celaya now. But neither Freddy nor Jay had called to cancel the meeting.

  The door to the house was open; only the screen door stood between her and the inside of the house. A guy who ran an Internet security company wouldn’t leave his house wide open like that.

  I’ll leave the gate open for you.

  Why? Why bother leaving the gate open when it was just as easy to do what he always did?

  Abruptly, she had a bad feeling. It took her a moment to pinpoint it, although it had been in the back of her mind all afternoon.

  She had interviewed and interrogated perhaps a hundred suspects and witnesses in her three years as a investigator, and in the cases where she got a confession, there was always that moment when the decision was made to capitulate. With some of them, it showed in their eyes; others, in their voices.

  She had heard that kind of resignation in Jay’s voice, realized that the sound of his voice was the main reason she had come out here. The link between Dark Moondancer and Musicman was tenuous and might come to nothing. Mickey Harmon may or may have not killed Julie Marr all those years ago. What compelled her to come here was Jay Ramsey’s state of mind.

  She walked back to the house, glancing at Galaz in his vehicle, still engrossed in his phone call. She thought about asking him to go with her, but discarded that notion. She didn’t know if he would be a help or a hindrance. Better to do this on her own.

  “Jay?” she called. “Freddy?”

  She pulled at the screen door and was surprised that it was unlocked.

  Suddenly she remembered the last time she had walked into this house uninvited, the night Jay Ramsey was shot. For a moment the two incidents, decades apart, seemed to meld together into this one surreal moment. She withdrew her weapon. Heart slamming against her ribs, she cleared each room she came to. Heading down the hallway to the master bedroom, unable to shake the bad feeling growing just beneath her solar plexus. The air coming from the vents was frigid, a vapor that seemed to seep like melting ice into her bowels.

  Something wrong.

  The white carpet with the vacuum marks had long ago been replaced by Saltillo tile. The tiles reflected the white of the hallway walls and ceiling, gleaming yet cold; inviting yet ominous. Ahead in the half-light, Laura spotted a sheet of paper lying in the hallway. She picked it up. The freezing air coming from the vents made the paper flutter in her fingers.

  “Dark Moondancer is a secret no longer worth keeping. I thought my penance was living the rest of my life as a quadriplegic, but it has become clear that I cannot live …”

  The letter took up most of the page, twelve-point print. Laura returned the note to the floor where she found it. There would be plenty of time to look at it later; right now, she needed to find out if Jay was alive or dead.

  She approached the open doorway to the master bedroom. The black iron dogs guarding the foot of the bed were gone, but she saw them as clearly as if they were here in real time, along with the indelible image of Jay Ramsey tangled in the sheets, bleeding onto the white carpet.

  Superimposed by reality.

  Now Jay Ramsey sat in his wheelchair. A bottle of whiskey and an empty pill vial lay in his lap. A plastic bag had been pulled over his head.

  55

  Laura holstered her weapon and was at Jay Ramsey’s side in three strides. The bag had already been torn by his desperate fingers, leaving a hole, probably the last thing he did before he lost consciousness—suicides often had second thoughts.

  A possibility then that he was still alive—she felt for a pulse. Weak, but there.

  She removed the plastic bag and checked his airway—unobstructed. Breathing through his mouth. Good, she didn’t have to give him CPR. She couldn’t risk moving a quadriplegic from his wheelchair and laying him out on the floor.

  Laura fumbled for her cell phone and pressed the TALK button.

  “What’s going on?" Mike Galaz called from the hallway.

  “In here,” she called. “Ramsey tried to kill himself, but he’s still alive.”

  Galaz appeared in the doorway, his gun out and held at his side. “Is someone on the way?”

  Face pale, eyes dark in his head. Agitated. “Did you call dispatch? 911?”

  “I was just going to call it i—“

  He put his gun away and crossed the space between them. “Let me do it.”

  Before she could object Galaz seized the phone from her hand. He looked at the screen for a moment, raised his arm, and threw the phone savagely across the room. It hit the wall and exploded into plastic shards.

  Laura stare
d at the wall and back to Galaz.

  “Houston, we’ve got a problem!” Galaz shouted. “Do you hear me, Mickey?”

  Laura heard a noise from the master bathroom and pivoted, but it was too late; her fingers had just brushed the grip of her Sig when two huge hands closed down on her wrists like a vise, wrenching her arms up against her spine. Her shoulders and neck protested as Harmon shoved his knee square in the small of her back. He pushed her hard against the bedside table with crushing force, knocking the breath right out of her. Cuffs ratcheted around her wrists.

  She didn’t feel the gun being taken from the holster, but knew he had it. Smelled his sour breath: Pickles. Harmon yanked her upright, and as he did so, Galaz darted in like a bantam-weight prize fighter, jabbed her in the hip with a hypodermic needle.

  He jumped back as Laura howled.

  Galaz started pacing. “Dammit!”

  “Don’t worry, boss. We can contain it.”

  “You don’t understand! She’s not some dime-a-dozen street hustler off Miracle Mile. She’s DPS. This is not going to go away!" He crossed over to Jay and fiddled with the plastic bag. “There’s a hole in this thing!" He tore the bag apart, crumpled it up and shoved it into the pocket of his slacks. Breathed deeply. “The whiskey and the pills’ll finish him off. All we needed was a little time.”

  He sat down on a chair by the window. “There’s a way to do this, I just have to figure it out. I know what to do, I just need a little space. It’ll come." He checked his watch, then looked at Ramsey. “He can’t last much longer. While we’re here, we might as well stay around and make sure.”

  Mickey kicked Laura’s feet out from under her, and she sat down hard on her tailbone, legs jarring as they hit the floor.

  Shit-scared. What had he given her?

  Galaz crossed one elegantly-trousered knee over the other and stared down his elegant nose at her. “Under the weather, Laura? You should start to feel it any time.”

  “What? What did you give me?”

  “Do you feel hot?”

  “Hot?”

  “Not hot as in Girls Gone Wild’—I mean hot as in burning up.”

  She did feel hot. She tried to bring her legs under her to stand up and found she couldn’t. Her legs weren’t responding. They felt like wood. Rigid.

  Her tailbone throbbed from the fall, and her hip hurt where the needle went in. The ache seemed to be spreading up into the small of her back. “What did you give me?”

  “Steatoda juliei.”

  “What?” Her body was clenching. Sweat popped out on her forehead, her upper lip, her arms, trickled down her sides.

  “Steatoda juliei,” Galaz said. “It’s a neurotoxin that comes from the false black widow.”

  It felt like she was cramping up—everywhere at once.

  Galaz continued, “The term ‘false’ is misleading, since there are few differences between Steatoda and Latrodectus. The black widow is glossy black, as opposed to a matte finish—that’s steatoda—and the steatoda doesn’t have the hourglass on its belly, but otherwise, they’re almost identical. Especially where their neurotoxins are concerned.”

  Locked in pain, Laura followed his words, but there was a lag. She could feel a buzzing in her brain and knew it was pure fear. This wasn’t just pain, it was agony, her body slippery with sweat—soaking every inch of her skin, in her eyes, blotting her blouse with it. And clenching, God, her toes were clenching and the pain just wouldn’t stop …

  Galaz said, “There are variations in neurotoxins from species to species. Some are far more extreme than others. This particular neurotoxin is pretty severe, but fortunately for you, not long-lasting. One, two hours at the most, and then the effects wear off. Another choice of spider, and you could be in incredible pain for two or three days. But I chose Steatoda juliei because we don’t need that long.”

  She looked at his crossed legs, the top leg moving back and forth. Using his knee as a fulcrum. He was smiling. “I gave this Steatoda its name. Since I spent months studying the effects of its venom on everything from bunny rabbits to horses, I can safely say this was an unnamed species, until now. That’s Phylum: Arthropoda; Subphylum: Celicerata; Class: Arachnida; Order: Aranae; Genus: Steatoda; Species: juliei.”

  Suddenly, her lower back bloomed like a bright red flower, pain so crushing and absolute that for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

  She closed her eyes and moaned. Her instinct told her to curl up in a fetal position on the floor, but her abdominal muscles were as stiff as a washboard. She gulped air, tried to roll with the cramping pain, but couldn’t: It was the bright screaming center of her brain.

  Galaz was talking at her but she didn’t understand much of what he said.

  “When you find a new species you can name it after anything you want—other than yourself. That would be in bad taste. You just add an ‘i’ to the end. So I named it Steatoda juliei. Do you know why I chose juliei?” He leaned his upper body as far forward as it would go so he was looking into her eyes.

  Julie Marr. She didn’t know if she spoke it out loud or if she just thought it.

  “I meant this dose for Buddy Holland’s daughter. I wanted to see how she reacted, but—” He shrugged— “The best-laid plans … you know the saying.” He turned to Harmon. How is our other patient?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “You sure this time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Galaz stood. “We’d better go then. You’ll have to carry her. Give me her gun.” Galaz removed his own gun from the paddle holster on his hip and traded it for Laura’s Sig Sauer. Harmon tucked Galaz’s gun into his ankle holster.

  “That reminds me. Better check her boots, too. She should have another weapon.”

  Harmon’s manhandling was excruciating. He found her second gun, her mace, her knife.

  Galaz put his index finger to his lip. “What we’ll do is, you make sure this place looks right. Doesn’t matter about hair and fibers, lots of people come here. What about Freddy?”

  “I saw him race out of here. He won’t be back for a while.”

  Galaz said to Laura, “Freddy thinks someone stomped his boyfriend. He’s probably just now figuring out his inamorata isn’t at St. Mary’s Hospital. Pretty ingenious, don’t you think? If only you hadn’t come early and spoiled the party.” He sighed. “I should have known—you never know when to stop.”

  Laura barely heard him. Her arms felt as if they were being pulled out of their sockets, handcuffed as they were behind her back. Every muscle, long and short, big and small—writhing, turning inside-out, flopping like an oxygen-starved fish, wringing itself limp, squirting pain and adrenaline into her system.

  “Aren’t you even curious where we’re going?”

  Laura tried to say something, but couldn’t.

  “You mean to tell me you haven’t figured it out?”

  He stood over her, the toe of his alligator-skin loafer inches from her face.

  “We’re going to see Summer,” he said.

  Buddy Holland trailed Laura Cardinal to a house in midtown, then to Fort Lowell Road. He knew from the way she was acting that Cardinal was on to something and he wanted to know what it was.

  It was easy to get locked out in an investigation like this—he was just some cop from Bisbee with no power here. He also knew that Cardinal didn’t trust him because Summer was his daughter. He understood how she could think that. But he didn’t care how she felt; he wanted to find his daughter, and no one was going to stop him.

  He watched her drive through the gates to what looked like an estate. He got out and walked up the utility road along the east side of the property, lined with a new ten-foot-high, chain link fence topped with barbed wire, every panel marked NO TRESPASSING in big red letters. When he came to a place where the lane curved, he spotted a mirror by the side of the road to show the blind corner. The last time he’d seen something like that was in Germany, where he’d been stationed during his stint in the Army. Fingers
locked into the chain link, Buddy peered through the kaleidoscope of foliage at the narrow road and saw Laura Cardinal’s car stopped on the lane as she talked to someone in a black SUV.

  The SUV turned around and followed her up the lane. They turned in at some tall trees—where he assumed the house was. Buddy wondered if the black Suburban belonged to the DPS lieutenant, Galaz. Whatever they were doing, he and Victor had been kept in the dark. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Summer’s kidnapping. Maybe their meeting was of a personal nature.

  Still, he decided to stay around awhile and see what happened.

  He backed his Caprice under a tamarisk tree a little ways back from the road, where he could keep an eye on the entrance. The sun was low in the sky and the shade of the tamarisk, dense and inky, concealed the car well.

  A little over an hour later, he heard cars coming up the lane. Galaz’s black Suburban drove slowly out the gate and turned right onto Fort Lowell, followed by Laura Cardinal’s 4Runner.

  The glass was dark on the SUV, but he thought he saw a person in the passenger seat. A man drove Laura Cardinal’s 4Runner. He was by himself.

  Why wasn’t Cardinal driving her own car? Was she riding with Galaz?

  There was something secretive about this that seemed off.

  Buddy realized he had a choice. He could go onto the property, or he could follow Galaz and the 4Runner.

  He compromised by calling Victor Celaya. Victor said he would send someone to check out the property. That worked out, Buddy put his brown Caprice into gear and slipped into the traffic stream like an alligator into a river.

  56

  Ghostly letters spelled out the words CHIRICAHUA PAINT CO. in canary yellow on the dark red brick just under the roof line of the warehouse. Below that were two rows of multi-paned factory windows, all of them either blacked-out or broken. The property was wrapped in chain link. Behind the warehouse, an east-bound train rattled past. Laura wished she could scream to them. But even if she were able, they were too far away.