by D'Ann Lindun
“Daralee Thomas.”
Her round cheeks colored. “Welcome, Agent. We can use all the help we can get.”
Agent Varner nodded her direction. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Jamie indicated the older, lean man on her left. “Jinx Jenkins.”
“Good to know you.” Jinx nodded, reluctant respect in his eyes. Close to retirement, he’d been on Big Jim’s crew forever and had been her dad’s top man. Jamie knew she could trust him. It was good to have someone with experience who didn’t think he knew it all.
The men shook hands.
“Tad Carver.” Carver wore his hair in an old-fashioned buzz cut, and his gut strained the buttons of his uniform. She wondered why he didn’t just buy a size bigger. At twenty-one, he’d just graduated from the same vo-tech she’d attended. His aunt was one of the town trustees—the only reason Jamie could think that he’d been hired.
“Varner.”
“Howdy.” Carver and the agent shook hands.
Now that the introductions were made, Jamie went back to business. “Agent Varner and I were going over the reports again. Does anyone here know any of these women?”
Daralee spoke. “My son is in the same class as Carly and he swears she’s a good girl. I know Carly from when she and Kyle were in the same homeroom in junior high, but I’m not familiar with Tina. I think her family is new to the area.”
“I knew Rosie.” When all heads turned Tad’s direction, he shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve been to The Moon a few times. She was a waitress there.”
“Did you sleep with her?” Austin asked bluntly.
“Hell, no!” Carver’s ruddy cheeks stained a darker red. “She was a whore.”
“Tad,” Daralee admonished. In many ways, she was a middle-aged housewife. Modest, quiet. A lady. One whose only exposure to crime solving was by watching true-life mysteries on TV. But her resume as a Denver parking ticket cop was impeccable, and the town trustees snapped her up when she applied to be a deputy.
Tad jutted out his double chins. “Everyone knows what Rosie is.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” Jamie said. “We need to treat each of these women with the respect they deserve. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He dropped his gaze. “Anything else?”
“Not right now.” Jamie glanced around the table. “From all accounts, there’s nothing tying these four women together. We have two Caucasians, a Hispanic and an American Indian. Their ages range from sixteen to twenty-eight. They’re all different body types and have dissimilar hair and eye color. We need the link between them.”
No one spoke.
“Could they have been bored?” Daralee’s soft voice broke the tension. “Gotten together and pulled a stunt for attention?”
“All teenagers are restless,” Jinx commented. “Particularly in a town the size of this one.”
“I don’t think Monique fits into the restless teen category.” Jamie frowned. “She wasn’t a teenager, and by all accounts, she was crazy in love with her husband and baby boy.” She studied the pictures of the two wholesome looking girls. “Did Carly and Tina drink or do drugs?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Daralee said. “But I’ll do some digging. Ask my son if he knows anything.”
“Why don’t you let me do that?” Jamie suggested. “He might open up to me faster than he would you.”
Daralee nodded. “Fine with me. He eats lunch with his friends on the football field. You can find him there around 12:45.”
Tapping her chin with one bare, short nail, Jamie thought out loud. “Two average teens, a mom and a partying waitress. What’s the common denominator? What are we missing?”
“Do the day of the month they went MIA match?” Austin spread the photos across the table and studied them. “Did they all vanish on the same day of the week or month?”
Jamie checked her notes. “No. The girls disappeared on the twenty-sixth of July, Monique on the fifth of August, and Rosie on the twentieth. No full moon, no summer solstice. Nothing.”
“Damn.” Austin’s soft curse said it all.
“Everyone, we need to conduct more interviews,” Jamie said. “Jinx, you talk to Monique’s husband again. Torres, can you talk to Tina’s parents—”
“Because I’m Hispanic,” he interrupted in a bitter tone.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Partly, yes. They don’t speak English very well. According to your resume, you speak perfect Spanish. Mine is rudimentary—”
“I know Spanish,” Austin said. “If you want me to go instead?”
Jamie considered him for a minute. “I think it might be better if Benny does this interview. The Vallejos family knows Benny and might feel more comfortable talking to him.” Agent Varner nodded in agreement and she continued. “I want Daralee to track the carnival to other towns where they’ve been and see if they have any missing girls. Agent Varner will go to The Moon and talk to the waitresses.” Because he was sexy as hell and one of them might tell him something they wouldn’t anyone else, but she left that unsaid. “Jinx, please do regular patrol.”
“What about me?” Tad asked.
She eyed him. “Stay here. Cross reference any dates you can think of. Birthdays, anniversaries. Anything.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What are you going to do?”
Torres’s arrogant tone rubbed Jamie wrong, but she kept her tone neutral. “After I talk to Daralee’s son, I’m going to meet with Agent Varner to see if he can help me profile a serial killer. Because I think we might have one on our hands.”
“A serial killer?” Daralee’s voice rose to a near screech. “But we don’t have any bodies.”
“That we know of,” Jamie reminded her. “Let’s get busy. If anyone learns anything, alert me immediately.”
The team scattered except for the CBI agent. He waited until they were alone before speaking. “I think you might have a serial killer, too. And I think he’s going to strike again if we don’t find him first.” His dead serious tone sent a shiver down her spine. “Although I agree with you, I wouldn’t spread that theory around outside this office. Word gets out, you’ll have mass hysteria. Plus, you might spook off your killer.”
His suggestion made her feel like the rank amateur she was and she spoke harsher than she meant to. “Anything else?”
“Nope.” He placed his Stetson on his head and stalked out the door.
CHAPTER TWO
Austin left the meeting angrier than he had a right to be. He’d wanted to punch Benny Torres in the mouth. His disrespect toward Jamie had infuriated him. Granted, she was young, but had a good head on her shoulders. When she called his office, he never thought he’d be working with a girl young enough to be in diapers. Strike that. She was no kid. Young, yes. But a woman nevertheless. He’d always been a leg man, and hers were to die for. Long, shapely.
He forced his mind back to business. Not stepping in at every turn and guiding her had taken all his considerable willpower. He couldn’t, though. She’d requested his help, not for him to take over. Sheriff English had good instincts. Everything she’d investigated or directed her team to check out had been something he would do.
Part of his anger stemmed from fear.
If someone was desperate enough to shoot a lawman in his own driveway, there was no telling what they’d do to a young woman with little experience under her belt.
What if he couldn’t protect her?
He couldn’t lose another woman on his watch.
Sheriff English was an inexperienced investigator with no idea what she was up against. His former partner had been a skilled CBI agent and still lost her life to Las Carnales—the Mexican drug runners who outfoxed her. The sheriff was alone with no one to watch her back.
Except him.
He wasn’t here to babysit. Getting distracted by a long-legged blonde with big, blue eyes was unacceptable.
Letting her fend for herself was less so.
; ~*~
Austin easily found The Moon and parked in front of the weathered, gray building.
He walked inside and sat at the bar. At ten in the morning, the place was quieter than a tomb. Smelled like one, too. The mingled scents of last night’s alcohol and the faint, sour odor of cigarettes made him curl his lip. Dimly lit, even in the early morning hour, it took him a minute to see.
The barkeep was the only other person inside the establishment, leaning on his elbows against the bar, busy watching a TV hanging from the ceiling. Tall, thin. Wearing a vest with no shirt. Tattoo sleeves covered both wiry arms. He tore his gaze from his program when Austin cleared his throat. “What’re you having?”
“Coffee.” Austin studied the other man. Lean to the point of emaciated, he sported a long brown ponytail and three tiny silver hoops in each ear. A heavy silver ring in the form of a snake with ruby eyes on his right ring finger. Jeans low on skinny hips. None of his tats matched any of Rosie’s that Austin could see. A tiger, an eagle, the American flag, all intertwined with flowers and other symbols inked the man’s arms from fingers to shoulders. But nothing Native American.
The man nodded and poured a cup from the luminous stainless steel pot behind the bar. Wordlessly, he handed it over.
“No cream or sugar?”
Tattoos grinned without mirth. “I know you aren’t craving coffee. What are you after, Copper?”
Austin took a sip, then set down the lousy beverage. “This tastes like mud. You’re right. I want to know everything you know about Rosie White’s disappearance.” Although Jamie sent him to talk to waitresses, Austin recalled Tattoo Boy had been the one to report Rosie missing when she hadn’t shown up for her scheduled shift.
Tattoos’ gaze went everywhere but on Austin’s. “Nothin’ to tell.”
Austin leaned forward and placed his palms on the bar. “How about we start with your name and how long you’ve been working here.”
“I got nothin’ to say,” Tattoo Boy declared.
“That’s too bad. I was just hoping for a conversation, but we can take it down to the station if you want.” Austin touched his handcuffs hanging from his belt.
“That isn’t necessary, man.” He held up both palms in surrender. “Mark Boyd. And I don’t know nothin’ about what happened to Rosie. I wasn’t on the night she took off.”
“How long have you worked here?” Austin sipped the vile coffee, remembering the fresh stuff he drank in the sheriff’s conference room. He forced his mind back on business.
“Two years.”
“Not exactly your kind of place. Full of cowboys and all.” Austin glanced around at the scuffed dance floor, the jukebox in the corner and the typical western interior of any small-town bar.
Tattoos shrugged. “They’re all right. They leave me alone, I leave them alone. A few call me Hippy, or Hairy, but I grin and bear it and all’s good.”
“Any of those cowboys have an issue with an Indian?” Austin lifted the cup, but didn’t drink again.
“The opposite, man. They all wanted to take her for a ride.” He shifted the rag in one hand to the other and twisted it tight. “And she let them.”
“And this bugged you?”
“Hell yeah!” Tattoos’ eyes glittered with sudden anger. “She was better than that. But she couldn’t see it. Buy her a few drinks and she’d be all over any one of them.”
“Were you two involved?”
Tattoo swiped at an invisible stain on the bar. “Not so you’d notice, but yeah, she came to me when she needed a place to crash. Or booze money.”
“An alcoholic?”
“Big time. She’d try to quit, but working here—” he flicked at the imaginary spot on the bar “—impossible.”
Austin flashed back to the days his mother spent her meager checks on alcohol instead of food for him and his brother. For an alcoholic to quit drinking while working in a saloon didn’t seem likely. “What about drugs?”
The tattooed man shook his head. “Rosie liked to drink her demons away. Hated drugs.”
“She didn’t have her own place?” Austin studied the other man. Pain replaced the anger in his eyes, then vanished. “Where’d she crash?”
Mark pointed above his head. “Upstairs. It’s not much. Just a place to sleep it off after her latest cowboy got his fill of her and sent her packing.”
“Did she take men to her room?”
“No. She always went to their place. I guess she kept her own space just for her.”
Austin pushed a little harder. “What about you? You ever been in Rosie’s room?”
“I said she didn’t take men there. That included me.”
“Can I take a look?”
With another shrug, Tattoo Boy said, “I guess.”
Austin stood. “Show me.”
He followed the skinny man up the narrow stairway to the room at the end of a dark, dusty hall. Austin noticed Mark wore a pair of high-heeled, snakeskin cowboy boots. At a door he took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.
“You have a key?” Austin followed the other man inside. Faint odors of dust and abandonment permeated the room.
Tattoo Boy flipped on a light switch. “Rosie gave it to me in case I ever needed to get in for an emergency.”
Did she expect an emergency? Or maybe to drink herself to death? Austin looked around. A single bed next to the only window. One dresser. No pictures. No personal touches at all, other than a handmade quilt across the neatly made bed. And a dreamcatcher hanging like a dead thing in the dirty window. Austin brushed the dreamcatcher with his fingertips and it spun in a wild circle. “These aren’t indigenous to the Ute people.”
“I don’t think Rosie gave a damn about what tribe it came from. She loved anything Native American.” Tattoo took a step closer to the door. “Except guys. She wasn’t into her own kind.”
“Her own kind?”
“I already told you, man. She liked cowboys.” He thought a minute. “Bikers, too. But not Indians. She hated them.”
Austin opened the dresser drawers. In the top one he found a pile of nondescript underwear and a pack of birth control pills, two-thirds used. “She didn’t take these. Must’ve planned to come back for them.” He continued his search. Nothing but a couple pairs of jeans and a few tank tops. No shoes. No purse. “Did she carry a handbag?”
“Yeah. A big leather thing. Ugly.”
After bending to look under the bed, and finding only an empty tequila bottle, Austin straightened. “You didn’t say if you and she were lovers.”
Tattoos’ gaze slid away from his. “Does it matter?”
“It matters.”
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Sometimes.”
Austin did a mental rundown. No personal effects except a quilt and a dreamcatcher anyone could buy at any tourist joint in the southwest. Not exactly a sentimental type, this Rosie. Birth control pills here, but her purse gone. Probably left for the night, intending to come back. “Mark, did Rosie ever mention any family? Anyone she’d go home to?”
“Never.”
“Who’s the last person you saw her with before she vanished?”
“I already told you I wasn’t here on Saturday night.” His eyes narrowed into twin slits. “But Friday was just the usual crowd.”
Austin raised his brows. “The party girl didn’t pick up a date that night? Maybe she met somebody special . . .”
“She served drinks and said she was going to crash.” Mark frowned. “That was the last time I saw her.”
“Did you notice her come up here?”
“No. I was cleaning up and got too busy to watch out for her.” Tattoos fidgeted with the key in his hand. “Look, I don’t know what happened to Rosie. I think she got tired of the whole scene and took off.”
“Except her car is still here.”
Tattoos snorted. “Have you seen that bucket of rust and bolts? I doubt it would make it to Grand Junction.”
Flipping back the quilt on the b
ed, Austin found clean white sheets. He peeled them away to expose the sagging mattress. Half expecting to find blood, relief filled him when he didn’t spot any. Rosie either never slept here that night, or made her bed before she took off. He changed the subject. “Did she go to the carnival during fair week?”
“Hell if I know.” Mark edged toward the door. “I didn’t keep up with what she did with her days. I only saw her at night.”
“But you wanted her all to yourself, didn’t you?” About halfway into this conversation, Austin had figured out Tattoo Boy was head over ass in love with Rosie. “You had it bad for the Indian gal.”
“So what if I did? Loving somebody isn’t a crime.” He held out his arms. “If it is, take me in.”
“Loving Rosie is not the problem,” Austin said softly. He let that hang for a minute. “Killing her is.”
Mark’s eyes bugged out of his skull-like head. His hands fell to his sides. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“When she went for one too many of her cowboys you got pissed, followed her, maybe hit her on the head or shot her,” Austin stated. “Hid the body and called the cops to cover your tracks.”
Adam’s apple bobbing, Mark shook his head. “No. I didn’t touch Rosie. Never like that.”
“Can you prove it?” Austin closed in like a wolf spotting a lamb. “Give me an alibi.”
“Sure, man. Whatever.” The guy was almost pissing himself. But then he seemed to dig deep and find his courage. “Ask Deputy Carver.”
Austin quirked a brow. “What does he know about this?”
“He was here that Friday night. He can tell you I was still here after Rosie left.”
“She vanished on a Saturday,” Austin reminded him.
Adam’s apple bobbing, Mark said, “I meant Saturday.”
Austin left the bar fairly certain Tattoo Boy hadn’t killed Rosie. His gut instinct told him what the tattooed man claimed was true; he loved the girl, not harmed her.
~*~
Jamie left Big Jim’s—her—office, placed her holstered pistol on the front seat of her pickup and headed for the high school.