by J. A. Jance
“That red one,” Julia answered, pointing up the hill in the general direction of Bob Larson’s vehicle.
“The Bronco parked in the driveway?”
Julia nodded. “I’ve seen it before now and then, but never this early in the morning, and never on a weekday. That one usually showed up on weekends.”
“How well did you know the Fraziers?” the cop asked.
Haley shivered, noting the officer’s deliberate use of the past tense—“did you know”—not the present tense—“do you know.”
“Fairly well, I suppose,” Julia answered. “We’ve lived across the street from them for close to ten years.”
“What about their relationship?” he asked. “Any marital difficulties that you know of?”
“None,” Julia answered definitively. “None whatsoever.”
The interview ended soon after that. Haley assumed that this was little more than an initial canvass. An interview with a detective would most likely entail a lot more detail.
Julia closed the door and returned to the living room. Julia gave Haley a sad smile. “I think I could use a cup of coffee,” she said. “How about you?”
“Please,” Haley said.
There was something infinitely comforting about that small gesture of hospitality—a tiny piece of normal in the midst of chaos. Somehow it helped Haley pull herself together.
8
Bob Larson sat in his orange jail jumpsuit and concentrated with every fiber of his being on not looking at the clock on the wall. He could hear it ticking, but he did his best to keep from watching it.
He knew from all the true-crime shows on TV exactly how guilty suspects behaved when they were left cooling their heels in interview rooms for an indeterminate period of time. They fidgeted; they looked at their watches; they studied the ceiling tiles; they cracked their knuckles. Bob tried his best to do none of those. If anyone was watching him through the two-way mirror on one side of the room or on screens fed by the video cameras mounted on the walls and ceiling, they would see a man sitting quietly in a corner and doing absolutely nothing.
He’d gulped down the bottle of water right after Carlotta had brought it to him. Now he was starting to regret that. Once again he was building up to needing to take another piss. If someone didn’t come open the door soon and let him use the restroom, he’d end up peeing his pants for the second time that day.
He glanced down at his hands. He’d scrubbed them as well as he could in the bathroom. There was nothing lingering under his nails because Carlotta had taken scrapings of all of those. Nonetheless, there were still traces of blood here and there—Dan’s or Millie’s or maybe both—lingering in the nail beds on both hands.
Bob remembered that old Shakespearian play they’d studied long ago in Mrs. Fitzsimmons’s high school English class. He wasn’t sure if it was Hamlet or Macbeth. It had to be one of those, but he recalled with chilling clarity how the old woman, whoever she was—the murderer—went nuts because she couldn’t wash the guilty blood from her hands. Now, even though he’d committed no crime, he understood how she felt, minus the guilt, of course.
He considered holding up his still-bloodied hand, waving at the mounted video camera, and asking for a restroom pass, but he didn’t. He held off. He was too damned old to have to ask someone for permission to go relieve himself.
The whole while he’d been sitting there, Bob had done his best to tamp down the anger he now felt toward those two young officers, the first ones who had arrived. He understood that their initial focus had been to take control of the crime scene, but once they had, why hadn’t they listened to any of what he had to say? As to why he was sitting here waiting hours later? That probably had something to do with their initial assessment of the situation.
On the other hand, Sedona PD probably didn’t have much of a history when it came to double homicides. Bob didn’t know the exact statistics on the Sedona Police Department. He estimated it had maybe a total of thirty sworn officers, about that many support staff, and probably no more than a couple detectives. No doubt all hands had to be on deck at the crime scene and were probably still there—securing the scene and gathering evidence. All of that meant that, like it or not, Bob had to wait his turn until someone finally got around to talking to him and letting him go.
What was stressing him right now, more than anything, even the critical need to take a leak, was thinking about Edie. He’d left the house just before nine without leaving her so much as a note saying where he was going or what he was going to do. It was two o’clock now. Bob had been AWOL for five whole hours. He knew that by now she was no doubt worried sick—worried enough that she might even forgive him for messing up on Wanda’s birthday cake, but probably not enough to forgive him for losing all their money. Without thinking, he reached for his cell phone to call, but of course it wasn’t there.
Somehow, not having the phone available when Bob needed it most was the final straw to an already unbelievably bad day. That was when despair and helplessness finally overwhelmed him. He leaned over the table, buried his face in his hands, and wept while the unblinking eyes of the camera continued to watch his every move.
He had barely managed to pull himself back together when the door to the interview room clicked open. Detective Hank Sotomeyer entered the confined space wearing a blue sport jacket and tan pants along with a white shirt and tie. Bob recognized the detective at once. In his mind’s eye, however, the Hank Sotomeyer Bob remembered was an eleven-year-old kid in a freshly pressed brown uniform, standing at attention to receive his Tenderfoot badge.
Hank’s mother, Linda, was a war widow whose Marine Corps husband had perished in Desert Storm. After her husband’s untimely death, Linda had come home to Sedona with her seven-year-old son to live with her parents. Over the next few years, in both Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, Bob had been honored to take the boy under his wing and be there as a stand-in when it came time for overnight campouts and other designated father/son occasions. After Linda remarried, Hank had dropped out of scouting. Bob knew Hank had hired on with the local police department, but until that moment, he had no idea that he’d been promoted to detective.
“How’s it going, Mr. Larson?” Hank asked.
Obviously their old relationship as Boy Scout and scoutmaster still held sway in Hank’s head as well as in Bob’s. That was a relief.
“Not so great,” Bob admitted.
“For us, too,” Hank said. “Sorry to leave you here so long, but . . .”
“I get it—a double homicide, a messy scene, people you know. It’s tough on everybody.”
“I’ll be recording this interview,” Hank said.
“Before you do, you might want to take me down the hall to a restroom,” Bob warned him. “Otherwise I’m going to piss all over this chair.”
9
What’s going on?” Sister Anselm asked as soon as Edie Larson’s call ended.
“It’s my dad,” Ali explained. “He took off earlier today—much earlier—without telling my mom where he was going or when he’d be back. He’s still among the missing, and my mother is worried sick—enough so that she just asked me to come home.”
“You do that, then,” Sister Anselm said. “I’ll be glad to sit in for you and ‘woman the phones,’ as it were. Before you go, tell me if there’s anything pressing that needs handling, and I’ll do my best.”
Ali flashed her friend a quick smile. “I’m guessing that your best will be plenty good enough.”
Once in her Cayenne, Ali called B. Most of the time her calls tracked him down in some distant corner of the planet. This week, however, he happened to be at home, or close to it. He was spending most of his days and parts of his nights in Cottonwood at the corporate headquarters for High Noon Enterprises.
At the moment, he and his newest recruit—Lance Tucker, a teenage computer hacking prodigy hired straight out of juvenile detention—were putting together a copyright application for Lance’s latest piece of codi
ng genius, something he had developed on the side while he was supposed to be working on his freshman-level computer science classes at UCLA.
“I promise I won’t be late for dinner tonight,” B. said when he answered his phone. “Leland is making meat loaf, and I’d never be late for that.”
“I wasn’t calling about dinner,” she said, “although I’m glad to know you’ll be home at a reasonable hour. I was really calling to ask you to do something for Mom. Dad has gone off everybody’s radar since sometime this morning. He’s not answering his phone, and she’s worried sick. I was hoping you could turn on the device tracking app on Dad’s phone and find out where he is. My best guess is that he’s had car trouble in that old jalopy of his. He’s probably broken down somewhere out in the back of the beyond.”
“No problem,” B. said. “I’m doing something else right now, but I’ll put Stu or Cami on it right away.”
Stu was Stuart Ramey, B.’s second in command at High Noon, and Cami was Camille Lee, Stuart’s relatively new assistant.
“Where are you?” B. asked.
“On my way home from Flag,” Ali said. “See you when I get there.”
A few minutes later, Ali was on I-17, headed south. She considered trying to call her father’s number in case the only calls he wasn’t answering were ones from his wife, but then she thought better of it. As Ali accelerated to highway speeds, she still considered that what she had said earlier to her mother—that Bob had gone off to look after one of his “guys”—was the most likely scenario. But it wasn’t until she saw the highway sign saying SCHNEBLY HILL ROAD EXIT ONE MILE that she decided to do something about it and go see for herself.
Ali had been to the homeless encampment on many occasions over the years, often accompanying her father when Bob went there—especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas, when he handed out food and clothing, served with a side of holiday cheer. Obviously she knew the way.
After turning off the freeway and leaving the exit behind, she left the bright June sunshine behind as well. Within a few hundred yards she was under a gloomy canopy of ponderosa pines and driving a confusing maze of narrow dirt tracks. There were road signs designed to keep her on Schnebly Hill Road itself, but none directing her toward the camp, which she knew was perched on the edge of the Mogollon Rim not far from where Schnebly Hill Road plunged off down the mountainside into the valley below. Fortunately, Ali’s father had taught her to read the secret codes left in subtle small mounds of rocks stacked along the shoulder on either side of the road. For those in the know, the rocks were as good as street signs.
Even here on what was relatively flat terrain, the road surface was washed out and rough enough to make Ali grateful for having four-wheel drive. How bad conditions would be farther down Schnebly Hill Road was anybody’s guess.
A few stray spots of dappled sunlight alerted Ali to a piece of blue tarp or maybe part of a tent off to her left that indicated she was nearing the camp. At a tiny wide spot in the road, she pulled over and parked. She had exited her vehicle and was turning to click the door lock when she heard the distinctive racking of a shotgun directly behind her. The hair rose on the back of her neck. A spike of adrenaline shot through her body, leaving her fingers tingling as she spun around, hands in the air. She turned just as a huge man materialized from behind the trunk of a nearby tree.
He was large enough that his arms seemed to dwarf the twelve-gauge, making it look like a child’s toy in his meaty paws. If ever there was a mountain man, this guy was it. Wild red hair, ten inches long and sprinkled with gray, stood out from his head in a wild, tangled afro. The explosion of hair, combined with an equally unkempt two-tone beard, added to the effect, making him even more giantlike and that much less human. In addition, he was missing several front teeth.
He wore a faded plaid flannel shirt, ragged around the cuffs, and a pair of threadbare jeans. Layers of duct tape were wrapped around the soles of his boots, literally holding body and sole together. The fact that both boots lacked shoelaces of any kind meant that they flopped loosely on his immense feet with every step. Even from ten feet away, Ali could smell the rank stink of sweat, grime, smoke, and rough living.
“If I was you, missy,” he growled, waving the shotgun in her direction, “I’d get my ass back in that fancy-shmancy vehicle you’re driving and get the hell out of here.”
Ali stood for a long moment, peering down the barrel of what she had no doubt was a fully loaded weapon. She forced herself to take a deep breath before attempting to speak. “I’m here looking for my father,” she said, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
“If your daddy is up here with us,” the mountain man told her, “then there’s a pretty good chance he ain’t interested in being found. Now get going.”
“You don’t understand,” Ali said. “My father doesn’t live here. His name is Larson—Robert Larson, but he goes by Bob. He comes here to help out sometimes. He’s been gone from home for several hours. Since we can’t reach him, my mom and I were wondering if maybe he came up here.”
The effect of her words was instantaneous. The barrel of the shotgun lowered. “Sorry, missy,” the man said at once. “My sincerest apologies. I had no idea you were Corpsman Bob’s daughter. I been out here keeping watch on the road for three hours now, and I ain’t never seen him. He might of come up the back way, though—up Schnebly Hill. He does that sometimes, you know.”
The adrenaline that had been holding Ali upright receded as quickly as it had come. For a moment she felt a little weak in the knees. Not trusting her ability to stand on her own, she leaned against the car door for support.
“Yes,” Ali agreed, when she found her voice. “He does like to come up the back way.”
“Want me to check for you?”
Rather than reaching for a cell phone that probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, the man pulled a walkie-talkie out of his shirt pocket. “Hey, Tom-Boy,” he said. “It’s Luke. Anybody seen Corpsman Bob around here today?”
“Nope, neither hide nor hair,” came the scratchy reply. “He generally checks in with me first thing.”
Ali thought about the eleven cliff-hugging miles of Schnebly Hill Road between the homeless camp and Sedona. Her adjustable-ride-height, four-wheel-drive Cayenne was nimble and responsive, but even in it, the switchback riddled trip down from the Rim would be a challenge. Depending on road conditions, the descent might take as long as two and a half to three hours. A glance at her watch told her it was already going on three. If she drove that way and left immediately, she’d be lucky to make it back to civilization by evening when herds of elk would be on the move. And if she happened to find her father’s crashed Bronco somewhere along the way, what would she be able to do about it? Most of the trip she’d be out of cell phone range. No, given the circumstances, the freeway was probably her best bet.
“You think Corpsman Bob’s lying out there dead or hurt bad somewhere down on Schnebly Hill?” Luke asked.
Ali bit her lip before she answered. “That’s what we’re afraid of. I could try driving that way, but I’m worried about it taking too long.”
“Likely it would,” Luke said, “so don’t you be thinking about doing such any thing. One guy here, Owen, went through a hell of a divorce. All he got out of the deal was his Jeep, which he owns free and clear. He don’t have no insurance on it and no license, neither, so he don’t take it out on the highway. But if Corpsman Bob’s life is on the line, he’ll head down Schnebly Hill Road in a heartbeat.”
Ali handed over one of her business cards. “If Owen finds anything and wants to be in touch, here are my phone numbers.”
Luke took the tiny card in his huge, grimy paws and held it up to squint at it for a moment before stuffing it into his shirt pocket right along with the walkie-talkie.
“Will do,” he said.
“Thank you, Luke,” Ali murmured as she opened the door of the Cayenne. “Thank you very much.”
10
; The gravel pit was deserted when Alberto and Jeffrey arrived at five past three. “He stiffed us,” Alberto fumed. “The asshole stiffed us. He isn’t even gonna show. And why here? This place gives me the creeps.”
It didn’t help that on the way down from Sedona there had been a Silver Alert posted for someone driving a white Ford F-150, which happened to be the same kind of vehicle they were driving. The plate license didn’t match theirs, of course, and it was unlikely that someone who was the subject of a Silver Alert would be driving around in a company truck loaded with landscaping equipment. Still, anything that sent additional scrutiny in their direction was worrisome.
“Come on,” Jeffrey told him, getting out of the truck. “Have a cigarette. Don’t get yourself all worked up. He’ll be here. Maybe he’s just running late. Maybe there was traffic on I-17 or an accident.”
Standing outside in the triple-digit temperatures in the gray expanse of gravel pit wasn’t fun, but standing in the heat was better than working in it, Alberto told himself. With his skills as a landscaper, he knew he could get a job almost anywhere, no questions asked and no papers needed, either. This time, though, wherever he ended up, he was determined it would be someplace a hell of a lot cooler than Phoenix.
They were a long way off the freeway, but the low rumble of traveling semis carried across the raw desert. Gradually, the steady noise seemed to settle Alberto’s frayed nerves. Once they had the money in hand, that’s what they’d be doing—hitting the road. As for the truck? It was Alejandro’s, of course, but maybe one day Alejandro would forgive him. After all, isn’t that what big brothers always did? They forgave you no matter what.
Ten minutes later, a dusty tan minivan nosed its way into the gravel pit. “See there?” Jeffrey said triumphantly. “I told you he’d be here, and now he is.”
“But is he gonna fall for it?” Alberto whined, as if one solved problem had instantly been replaced by another. “What if he has a computer along, plugs in the drive, and figures out we’ve brought him a blank?”