The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  “You called him? Detective Schiller?”

  A nod from down near her knees. The fingers moving, twisting the lank strands of hair.

  “Why did you call him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Dawn?”

  The girl suddenly looked up. Her hair flipped back onto her neck. “When he answered? I hung up on him. I chickened out.”

  Laura didn't know what was going on here, but she felt it was important. “Go on,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  The girl looking at her now, her eyes wide. “Will I get in trouble?”

  “Trouble? No, of course not. How would you get in trouble?”

  “For lying. Lying to the police.” She grabbed at her hair again, started pulling on the strands. Harder than before. “I don't care. You came here for a reason. I don't care I don't care I don't care!” Fuming now, the anger coming out of the deepest part of her.

  She suddenly looked around, shocked at what she had said, and lowered her voice. She looked up at the landing. When the apartment door remained closed, she visibly relaxed. “It's something I can't get away from, even though I'm an adult now and my dad is . . . my dad is dead.” She tapped her forehead. “I know up here he's not around to punish me, but it's hard . . . ”

  “Why would he punish you, Dawn?”

  “When I lied,” she said.

  “When did you lie?”

  “According to my dad, all the time. He couldn't stand liars. You know what he would do? He had a riding crop, and if I lied, I knew I was going to get it.”

  “He whipped you.”

  She nodded her head, up and down, up and down, the movement fierce. “Did he ever.”

  She added, “He was always saying I lied, even when I wasn't lying.”

  Laura had to pick her way carefully. “Why did you call Detective Schiller? What did you want to tell him?”

  She looked at Laura. “You probably already know. Jenny didn't go to Rose Canyon Lake.”

  Laura needed to be alone with her thoughts, so she drove a couple of blocks over to a park. The shade under the trees was deep, but it didn't cut the velvet warmth of summer. A little humidity to it, so at first it didn't seem as bad as the blaring heat of just a day or so ago, but she knew it would wear her down if she stayed here too long.

  She set her notes on the picnic table and stared at them.

  According to Dawn, Jenny had stayed behind on the day the campers went to Rose Canyon Lake. Dawn had covered for her, telling the counselor in charge of their van that Jenny was there, she was just in the bathroom or she was talking to another kid in another van.

  She had even taken along Jenny's tag, the flat, coin-like piece of metal with Jenny's number stamped on it.

  She had understood how important it was for Jenny to stay at the camp, because she had once had a dog of her own, before her father got rid of it.

  Jenny had been on a mission of mercy. On one of her walks—she was always going off by herself—she had come back both angry and elated.

  Jenny had been walking along a logging road below the camp, when she’d come across a box half-squashed in the road. She'd looked inside— a puppy. The puppy had not been squashed, but it had blood in its mouth, and she could tell it was dead.

  Then she’d heard whimpering.

  She’d looked around and seen another puppy, hiding under a log. Jenny had said the puppy hadn’t been a newborn puppy, but older. Old enough to run away when Jenny had approached it.

  Jenny had tried to get the puppy to come to her, but after a while, she'd given up and gone back to the camp. After stealing some food from the mess hall, she’d gone back down to where she'd last seen the pup. She’d known the puppy wouldn't survive long by itself in the woods, that he and his brother had been dumped there by some uncaring person, left to be run over.

  Jenny had been a girl on a mission. For three days, she had looked for the puppy, and when she’d found it, she’d tried to lure it with food.

  “The puppy had a collar,” Dawn had explained to Laura. “Jennie figured if she could just get the puppy to eat out of her hand, she could grab him by the collar and bring him back with her.”

  The day of the Rose Canyon Lake outing, Jenny had chosen to stay behind to try and save the puppy.

  No good deed goes unpunished, Laura thought. God only knew what kind of a monster Jenny Carmichael had met somewhere on the mountain.

  Chapter 39

  Steve Lawson wore another one of his long-sleeved shirts, this one dark green. Laura thought the sleeves had been rolled up and that he had unrolled them hastily, because the cuffs were unbuttoned. Maybe he was self-conscious about his scar. She thought about the ten-year-old boy who had risked his life to protect his mother. You couldn't always tell heroes by looking at them. Steve Lawson seemed ordinary, but there was something about him that inspired confidence—despite or maybe because of the wire-rimmed glasses and the slightly-long brown hair, the eyes that seemed self-contained, but held humor in them. Not her type at all, but he lured her.

  He seemed so normal. And yet his childhood had been anything but normal.

  Steve's eyes had widened briefly when he saw her on his doorstep. “I didn't expect you,” he said, opening the door wider for her to come in.

  “I should have called first,” Laura said. It was a lie. She never called first.

  “I heard about your partner on the radio. Jaime Molina, right? A car fire?”

  Laura nodded.

  “But he's going to be all right?”

  Laura thought he might never be all right. “They're doing everything they can.”

  Steve Lawson cocked his head. “I guess it's a very dangerous job.”

  Laura nodded. She glanced around the room, noticed the place was a lot tidier. “Looking better,” she said.

  “It's coming along.”

  “Are you planning on living here?”

  An expression she could not read flickered across his face. “To tell you the truth, I've been thinking about it.” He motioned to a chair and sat down himself. Jake sat at his feet. “Is this about Jenny Carmichael?”

  There was tension here she hadn't felt before. She decided it was time to push harder. “Julie DeSabato came to see me.”

  That shocked him, she could tell. But he covered up for it quickly.

  Laura said, “Julie has an interesting perspective on what's been happening up here. She told me you saw Jenny.”

  He smiled, uncertain. His eyes, though, stayed on hers. “Jenny?”

  “She said you saw a 'manifestation.’ Of her. Jenny. She told me about the Ouija board, all of it.”

  Silence. His hand tightened slightly on the armrest of the chair he sat in, but he held her eyes. They were dark teal blue with gray in them, like the ocean when the sun slants just right. His hand fell down from the armrest, and he scratched Jake's neck. Jake's tags jingled. Steve continued to look at her. Laura thought he was trying to figure her out. Trying to divine what she was thinking. She decided to help him. “That's why you dug up that place out there,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen window. “Isn't that right?”

  His lips were a line. His eyes were still. She knew he was working it out in his mind whether or not to admit to what he'd seen.

  At last he said, “Yes.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “You won't believe me.”

  “What makes you think I won't?” She leaned forward, until her knees were almost touching his. She was thinking about the best way to get him to tell her what she needed to hear. “I talked to Jenny's best friend today, from camp. She told me Jenny never left Camp Aratauk. Instead, she came down here looking for a lost puppy.”

  That got to him. His fingers rubbing Jake's neck again. Jake shifting underneath Steve's fingers and looking up at him, an injured expression in his eyes. Laura had seen how tightly Steve had gripped Jake's fur—and probably some skin— and now Steve realized it as well. He
lifted his hand and put it back on the armrest.

  Laura said, “Julie said you told her about a puppy. She said you found a collar. She said that you heard Jenny—”

  “Okay.”

  “She said Jenny was yelling at the puppy—”

  “Okay.” He stood up. “You want to go for a walk?”

  “A walk?”

  “If I'm going to tell you this story, I want to be outside, walking. I don't feel comfortable in here.”

  “It's hard for me because I don't believe in things like this,” Steve said.

  They walked through the forest, Jake running ahead of them. Steve’s hands shoved into his pockets.

  “Just describe to me what you saw. Pretend you're telling a story.”

  He paused. “It started on July Fourth.”

  Laura prodded. “What happened?”

  “Jake and I went for a walk. We headed up along the stream bed . . . ”

  All the time he talked, Laura was thinking of Frank Entwistle. How she knew in her soul it was Frank who had awakened her the night of the explosion. What would have happened if she'd answered the door when Jaime knocked? Would she be in St. Mary's Burn Unit fighting for her life, too?

  But Laura heard Steve's story, too. What he described was close enough to Julie's version, but much more detailed. Once he admitted to seeing Jenny's ghost, he must have decided to be as clear and accurate as possible.

  When he got to the part about the newspaper in the porch ceiling, Laura said, “Why did your grandfather put that particular newspaper up into the porch rafters?” she asked.

  He halted and looked at her. They'd stopped near the crime scene tape, the excavation. Jake running ahead of them, coming back, circling around, sniffing the ground, coming back again. The sun caught Steve Lawson's hair, touched off a golden light in his dark eyes. “The newspaper?” His voice puzzled. “I guess it was handy.”

  “That's quite a coincidence, don't you think?”

  His mouth turned grim. “My grandfather didn't kill that girl.”

  “You don't know that.”

  He looked at her. “I do know that. I have faith.”

  Back at the cabin, he opened a kitchen drawer and produced the collar he'd found in the shed. “Evidence,” he said.

  She didn't take the collar. “If I put that into evidence, they'd laugh me out of the squad room.”

  “You're not telling anyone about this?”

  “I have my reputation to think of.”

  “Then why did you ask me?”

  That was a hard one. She didn't know what had pushed her to come up here. Maybe she'd hoped to fill in the gaps, now that she had the new information about Jenny and the puppy. Maybe because she, herself, talked to a ghost.

  But hearing his story, it seemed plausible, real.

  Laura couldn't figure out if she'd only wanted corroboration of what Julie had told her or if she'd just wanted to come up here again.

  He was looking at her. “Do you believe me?” he asked.

  Laura thought about Frank Entwistle.

  “I think you're believable.”

  As they walked side by side out onto the porch, their arms brushed. Laura felt a jolt, just as she had the first time on this very same porch.

  They looked at each other. She took a step backward, but their eyes held. There it was: the tacit recognition of the attraction between them. Laura suddenly felt the overwhelming desire to be with someone. Someone she could talk to, care about, do things with, make love to, love.

  Steve cleared his throat. “Laura—”

  She stopped him with a look. He was smart enough not to push it.

  She could see herself with this man. But she also knew it wouldn't work out. Not right now. This time she couldn't say anything because it was her job not to. She had to clear him first. She fished around for something to say. “Thank you for being so forthcoming.”

  “I want to find out who killed Jenny as much as you do.”

  As Laura walked out to the Yukon, she was aware of him watching her. She sincerely hoped she didn't trip over a stump and go sprawling. As the investigator on the Jenny Carmichael case, she needed to maintain the upper hand.

  The funny thing was, she felt as if she'd already lost it.

  Chapter 40

  Laura met with Victor at the Wendy's near DPS the next day to compare notes. Laura told Victor about Dawn Sayles's assertion that Jenny Carmichael had never left Camp Aratauk, and Victor filled her in on Jaime's last few hours before he showed up at Laura's place.

  “We know he went to the Circle K some time that night. Probably after he talked to the Pinal County detective about Purvis's death. Detective Franklin was home with his wife, and she was watching a show that came on at eight thirty.”

  “How do you know he went to a Circle K?” Laura asked.

  “It's a tradition, according to the guy he worked with. He won five-hundred dollars on a Lotto ticket a couple of years ago. So every Friday night, he goes to a different Circle K and plays the scratchers. He buys the same games: Crazy 8's and Diamond Bucks. Buys fifty at a time.”

  “Different Circle K's?”

  “That's what his wife says. Guess that's part of his ‘system.’”

  Just their luck. “Did he tell her which one he went to this time?”

  “He doesn't remember anything about that night. There are a couple of 'em near his house. I want to look at all the Circle K's between his place and the sheriff's office.”

  “Or on South 12th,” Laura said. “We had dinner at Prieta Linda.”

  “It's like finding a needle in a haystack,” Victor said morosely.

  “If we split up, we can do it twice as fast.”

  “Wait a minute. You're just working Jenny Carmichael.”

  Laura shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “What are you looking at?” Victor said, following Laura's gaze across the street.

  “I guess you can start with that one.”

  Just as they were finishing up, Ana Molina called. “Jaime wants to see you.”

  Laura broke all speed records getting to St. Mary's. Afraid that if she didn't show up quickly, the invitation would be rescinded.

  Ana met her by the elevators on the fourth floor. She wore a lavender flowered dress today, nylons, and pumps.

  “He gets tired,” Ana said. “He likes to overdo it, so please don't stay too long.”

  She led Laura around the corner and up the hallway to the Burn Unit. On the left side were plate glass windows looking down onto a little outdoor area surrounded by the tall building. No saints in this courtyard, just gravel, chairs, and walkways.

  They were admitted into the Burn Unit and given protective booties and gowns as a precaution, since burn victims are susceptible to infection. Laura wore a similar gown and booties whenever she witnessed an autopsy. She hoped this would be as close to an autopsy as she'd get with Jaime.

  As she suited up, Laura thought about Ana Molina dressing up every day, only to be covered up by a gown.

  She was allowed to go in alone. The room looked like any other hospital room, the bed cranked up, a lonely light above, casting thin light on the man under the sheet.

  The big man Laura remembered was gone. Jaime seemed shrunken. He was swathed in bandages, although she could see part of his face, and one hand was untouched by fire. He was able to move his head slightly in her direction; she saw the strain it caused.

  He had a notepad on his stomach. He carefully wrote a note. He used his left hand. Laura tilted her head to read it; his handwriting was unnatural and hard to read, but she got it.

  Where's my Brylcreem?

  She laughed. His eyes shone with approval.

  Laura said, “I'm so sorry about Chris.”

  He nodded, but wrote nothing on the pad.

  “You're looking good.” Feeling she had to say something positive. Realizing again how she hated hospitals, hated being in them—she had an almost fight-or-flight response. Willing hersel
f to be strong, upbeat, laugh at Jaime's sense of humor, when what she really wanted to do was throw herself at his feet and beg him for forgiveness. “Can I get you anything?” she said, thinking she was sounding too jaunty. “Is there anything you need?”

  He wrote on the pad, “A yacht.”

  She laughed again, hoping her laugh didn't sound forced. Tempted to ask him if he remembered which Circle K he'd bought his lottery tickets from, but his wife and the sheriff's detective working the case already had. Jaime didn't even remember dinner at Prieta Linda.

  He was writing something else. His handwriting getting worse. Laura craned her neck to see. The letters faint, but with effort, she was able to read the words:

  Nail his ass.

  Nail his ass. Laura promised herself she would, no matter how long it took.

  A list of Circle K addresses on the seat beside her, she started on Grande near Jaime's house and headed in the direction of Prieta Linda on South 12th. Victor started at the sheriff's office and headed in the direction of Jaime's.

  It was time-consuming work. First, Laura asked the Circle K clerks if they had been there on that Friday night the week before. For those who answered in the affirmative, Laura described Jaime and his vehicle, which they might have seen through the front windows. Then she asked to see the purchases from that night, looking for a purchase of fifty scratcher tickets: twenty-five Crazy 8's and twenty-five Diamond Bucks. She also asked to see the video tape from that Friday. Most of the time, the tapes had already been recorded over, and at that point, she was at a dead end.

  It was only luck that at the sixth Circle K on her search, the clerk remembered a big man buying fifty scratchers.

  Laura prayed that her luck would hold, and it did. The store manager had recently replaced the video tape of the outside of the store, and thrown it into a bin in the back. When the bin filled up, they would toss the whole thing out.