by J. A. Jance
“All right,” she told Delahany at last. “I’m not making any promises, but I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I need to make another call.”
But Agent Delahany wasn’t ready to hang up. “About Marcella,” he said. “Where exactly is the body?”
“In Ellensburg, Washington,” Joanna said. “In the morgue at the Kittitas County medical examiner’s office. I believe the remains are due to be released on Monday.”
“Will the family be bringing the body back to Arizona?” Delahany asked.
“Yes,” Joanna answered. “That’s why Jaime flew up there yesterday-to bring her home to Bisbee for burial. Why?”
“Regardless of what happens with the brother and Miguel Rios, please let the family know that my people and I deeply regret their loss. You can tell them from me that we’ll help with bringing Marcella home. It’s the least we can do.”
Joanna was surprised to hear the sound of genuine regret in his voice.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll let them know.”
“And one more thing,” Delahany added. “About that homicide situation over in Bowie-the one your guys are working on?”
“The Lester Attwood case?” Joanna asked.
“Yes, that’s the one,” Delahany said. “Once the dust settles on all this other stuff, you can let your detectives know that I’m pretty sure we have some surveillance videos that will help you sort out what happened there.”
“As in legible surveillance videos?” Joanna asked.
“Of course they’re legible,” Delahany declared. “Why wouldn’t they be? It’s my belief that it pays to buy the very best.”
That’s something the Savages have yet to learn, Joanna thought.
“All right,” she said. “Detective Ernie Carpenter is my lead investigator on the Attwood case. I’ll have him be in touch.”
With that she ended the call.
I had awakened that morning in a strange bed in a Best Western in Ellensburg. If you had told me that a few hours later I’d be heading for Gig Harbor and chasing a fellow cop across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, I would have said you were full of it.
By the way, I’m not exactly wild about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and my jaundiced opinion has nothing to do with the fact that it’s now a toll bridge. My dislike goes all the way back to the time when I was a little kid growing up in Seattle. I was born only a few short years after the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, otherwise known as Galloping Gertie, crashed into the drink. The bridge had been open for only a few months when it started swaying uncontrollably and then collapsed during a fierce windstorm during the winter of 1940. It took ten years to build a replacement. When that one opened in 1950, newsreels in theaters replayed the flapping demise of Galloping Gertie over and over. For me, seeing that film footage left a lasting impression.
These days and as someone who crosses Lake Washington’s floating bridges on a daily basis, I’m well aware that they can sink, too-especially if you allow water to rush inside the hollow concrete pontoons, as a careless workman did on I-90 back in the early nineties. But at least if one of the floating bridges sinks, whoever happens to be on it at the time won’t be hundreds of feet in the air when it goes down. If I had to choose, I’d rather swim than fall.
That’s what I was thinking when my phone rang. I thought it would be Mel calling to let me know if she was ahead of me or behind me on the bridge. But the caller wasn’t Mel.
“It’s me again,” Joanna Brady announced. “It turns out Marcella’s husband, Marco Andrade, was a snitch. He was delivering the goods on some bad guys to the DEA.”
“The Cervantes Cartel?” I asked. “Out of someplace in Mexico?”
“So you know about them?” Joanna asked.
“Only as much as Jaime Carbajal told me this morning.”
“Anyway,” Joanna continued, “it sounds like the cartel found out about Marco’s participation and took him out. That probably explains why they came after Marcella, too.”
“Jaime told me about the cartel,” I said, “but I doubt he had a clue about Marco turning on them. Where did you hear that?”
“From Bruce Delahany, the DEA agent in charge in Tucson,” she answered. “They’ve been putting together a massive takedown that’s supposed to happen within the next few weeks. Unless…”
“Unless Jaime screws it up?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Joanna replied. “Delahany is afraid that if Jaime spooks Rios prematurely, a lot of the other people involved will go to ground, but that’s his concern. I’m a lot more worried about Jaime. I can’t imagine him being pushed so far that he’d even think about going after Rios on his own.”
“I can,” I replied. “There are times when revenge sounds a whole lot better than whatever the justice system might get around to dishing out. Think about it. Jaime’s sister is dead and, most likely, so is the triggerman, the guy who actually killed her. From Jaime’s point of view it probably looks as though the guy who’s ultimately responsible for his sister’s death has a good chance of walking.”
“But what about the other cases?” Joanna asked. “The ones you’re working on, those other dead prostitutes? According to Delahany, Miguel Rios runs the cartel’s prostitution interests in your part of the country. He’s also supposedly the cartel’s chief enforcer. So maybe if one of his girls doesn’t toe the line, the next thing you know, she’s gone.”
I could see where this was going, and suddenly I felt like we were on to something. Maybe our dead prostitutes were actually Miguel Rios’s dead prostitutes, and if they had been imported by the cartel-smuggled across the border and brought north, like the girls Lupe Rivera had told us about-no wonder no one in this country had ever bothered reporting them missing.
During my momentary lapse in attention, Joanna had gone right on talking. “With any kind of luck we’ll be wrong,” she was saying when I tuned back into the conversation. “You’ll get there and Jaime won’t be. But I did ask Tom Hadlock to check with the car rental agency. Jaime is driving a blue Chevy Cobalt with a GPS. Do you want the license number?”
“I can’t write it down right now. If you could text it to me…” There was a buzz in my ear. “Sorry,” I said. “Another call’s coming in. Gotta go.”
This time it was Mel on the phone. “I’m just coming up on the bridge.”
“Good,” I told her. “You’re only a couple of minutes behind me.”
“Wait for me at the Gig Harbor exit,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you there.”
I stopped on the far side of the first gas station I saw. Then I got out, went around to the trunk, and dragged out my Kevlar vest. It was while I was putting it on that I noticed for the first time that it had stopped raining-completely. The sky was clearing. The sun was out. It had turned into a bright spring day.
A beautiful day, I thought. Too beautiful for someone to die.
Because if Jaime Carbajal had come to Gig Harbor bent on taking out Miguel Rios, it seemed likely to me that someone was bound to die. Maybe even me.
What if that one trip to Disneyland is all I’ll ever have? I wondered. What if that’s all Kayla remembers about me-that I took her to Disneyland once and got sick on the teacups?
Once inside the office, Joanna went straight to the bull pen, where she told Ernie he needed to be in touch with the folks from the DEA for information on the Lester Attwood homicide.
“They may try to put you off,” she said, “but let them know that we’re going to be dogging their heels until they give us what we need.”
“What about me?” Deb asked as Ernie reached for his phone.
“For you I have another whole problem,” Joanna said. “Take a look at what’s on this and then we’ll talk.” She plucked the memory card out of her pocket and tossed it to her detective, who caught it in midair.
“Great catch, by the way,” Joanna added. “Not just the memory card-the bridal bouquet, too.”
Looking embarrassed, Deb shook her head. “
Catching that bouquet was a freak accident,” she said. “It was coming straight at me. If I hadn’t caught it, it would have hit me full in the face. Trust me, I have zero intention of getting married again. I tried it once. I’m not very good at it.”
Joanna disappeared into her office. The place was unnaturally quiet. There were no ringing telephones. No people talking. She wanted desperately to call Beau and find out what the hell was going on with Jaime, but she didn’t dare interrupt. If he was caught up in a life-and-death situation, the last thing he needed was a ringing cell phone.
When Deb appeared in Joanna’s doorway a few minutes later, her face was decidedly pale, and she was once again holding the memory card.
“These pictures are awful,” she said. “Where did you get them?”
“From Norm Higgins,” Joanna answered. “From the mortuary. They were taken by his grandson, Derek. While Norm and his sons were out of town, Alma DeLong evidently showed up with another dead client and bullied him into cremating the remains in a hell of a hurry. Once you see the photos, it’s no wonder she was in such a rush.”
“What do we do now?” Deb asked.
“I want you to go see Bobby Fletcher,” Joanna said. “Take your computer and that memory card with you so you can show Bobby the photos. It’s one thing for him to put his foot down about exhuming his mother out of respect for her or even because he’s at war with his bossy sister. But if Bobby realizes that exhuming his mother’s body might prevent some other poor patient’s suffering, I think he’ll step up and give us the go-ahead.”
“Dr. Machett isn’t going to like it,” Deb said.
“Too bad for Dr. Machett,” Joanna answered. “That’s why the county pays him the big bucks.”
Mel pulled up and stopped. I waved at her, got back into the Mercedes and drove off with her tailing behind while I followed the confident turn-by-turn directions issued by the Lady in the Dash. Just as she told me my destination was one half mile ahead on the right, I caught sight of a bright blue Chevy Cobalt parked on the shoulder of the road overlooking a bluff. It could have been a sightseer parked there to enjoy the view, but a quick glance at the text message on my phone told me otherwise. It was Jaime Carbajal’s rental, all right, and it was empty.
“Bingo,” I said aloud. It seemed likely that he had parked here and hiked the rest of the way down the hill to Miguel Rios’s house.
“You are arriving at your destination,” the Lady in the Dash announced.
Ignoring her, I drove another three hundred yards or so beyond the turnoff and pulled off onto a wide spot on the shoulder that was lined with mailboxes. That’s where I parked and got out. Mel did the same. Once out of her car, she hurried up to me and handed me a windbreaker.
“Put this on over your vest,” she said. “That way you won’t look quite so much like a cop.”
And a target, I thought.
I put on the jacket. Together we walked back toward the steep driveway that led down to Miguel Rios’s waterfront home at the base of the bluff.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Mel asked.
We had already discussed the matter on the phone. The fact that there were no emergency vehicles in sight made me think that we might have arrived in time to avert disaster, but if it all went bad, it was important to have someone up at the top of the driveway to sound the alarm and call for reinforcements.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Jaime’s a cop.”
“A cop who’s bent on revenge,” Mel said.
I couldn’t disagree with that, and I didn’t.
“Right,” I said. “I get that. My job is to talk him out of it.”
“What if talking doesn’t work?”
“Then we drop back and punt.”
It was a joke. Mel wasn’t smiling. “Is your Bluetooth on?” she asked.
I nodded. I hate walking around with the damned thing in my ear. It makes me feel like I’ve turned into a pod person, but she was already dialing my number.
“I love you,” she said into her phone. “But I’ll be listening every step of the way. If anything goes wrong…”
I could hear her voice coming from two directions, through the phone and not through the phone. On my way by, I stepped close enough to give her a glancing kiss. If she had tried to talk me out of it right then, I might have relented, but she didn’t. We both felt responsible for the part we had played in putting Jaime Carbajal in harm’s way, and we both needed to extricate him.
“Be careful,” she said.
“You, too,” I told her.
With my heart pounding a warning tattoo in my chest, I started down a single-lane paved driveway that wound through a stand of windblown cedars. It was steeply pitched. Walking downhill hurt like hell. It felt like my knees were on fire.
Why does going down hurt so much more than going up? I wondered. But all the while I was walking, I was also listening-listening for the dreaded sound of a burst of gunfire or for a car passing by on the road above me. What I mostly heard, however, were the loud squawks of a massive flock of seagulls that wheeled back and forth in the air far overhead. Other than that, it was quiet-deathly quiet. Scarily quiet.
At last I emerged from the trees and could see Miguel Rios’s place laid out below me. It was sprawled in a huge clearing at the base of the forested bluff. At first glance the house looked like a misplaced Mediterranean villa, complete with white stuccoed walls and a red tile roof. It was surrounded by an expanse of green lawn that ended in another steep drop-off where a series of wooden steps led down to a long dock that jutted out into the water. A big sailboat was moored next to the dock. Clearly Rios had done all right for himself. I also noted there was no sign of a yellow Hummer, although it might well have been parked behind one of the closed doors on the three-car garage.
“Do you see anyone?” Mel asked in my ear.
“Not yet,” I told her.
But even as I said the words I spotted someone. On the far side of the yard, near the steps that led down to the dock, stood one of those new-style swing sets-not the kind of tire-on-a-rope affairs that were in vogue back when I was a kid. No, this one was built of cedar planks that formed a playhouse sort of fort. A slide led down from that. There were also a couple of swings and a teeter-totter. I could see the figure of a man resting his butt on one of the swings. Silhouetted against a bright blue sky, he was too far away to identify, but I was pretty sure it had to be Jaime Carbajal.
“I think I see him,” I told Mel. “He’s on a swing over by the dock.”
“Maybe nobody’s home,” she said.
“Or maybe we’re already too late,” I replied.
Stepping closer, I waved at him. I could see that his carry-on bag lay open on the ground at his feet. I suspected he was armed, but I couldn’t see a weapon, not from there.
“Hey, Jaime,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Get out of here, Beaumont,” he said. “This is none of your business.”
I kept walking, moving closer all the time. “You’re wrong,” I said. “It is my business. I’m a homicide cop too, remember?”
“Tomas Rivera killed my sister.” His voice was taut, a bowstring wound too tight. “Most likely he did it on Miguel Rios’s orders, but do you think the law will ever hold him accountable? No way. I know how the system works. He’s got money. He’ll hire some hotshot attorney to get him off or else he’ll negotiate a slap-on-the-wrist plea bargain. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m going to get him to confess. Then I’m going to take him out.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically. “Sure you will. Let’s see how the old eye-for-an-eye routine works for you. Maybe you’ll end up wringing a confession out of the guy, but if you do it at gunpoint, without reading him his rights, you’ll be winning the battle and losing the war. Nothing he says will stand up in court. He’ll get off on a technicality.”
“He won’t get off because there won’t be any technicality,” Jaime said. “I�
�m a good shot.”
I was close enough now that I could see the weapon. He was holding it at his side, pointed at the ground. I was glad it wasn’t pointed at me. It looked like a.45 caliber Smith amp; Wesson. That’s not the kind of handgun you use if you’re intending to wing someone. They call it a deadly weapon because that’s what it is-deadly.
“I know you’re doing this because of Marcella,” I said. “But I’m here because there are five other victims, five victims who are all just as dead but whose names we don’t know. I think there’s a good chance that Miguel Rios killed them as well-that he’s responsible for wrapping them in tarps and setting them on fire. But if you wreak your revenge on Rios for Marcella’s death, you’re taking away any hope of justice for those other families.”
“I don’t care about the other families,” Jaime said. “I care about my family.”
“Like hell you do,” I told him. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. What you’re planning right now is premeditated murder. What happens to Luis if you go through with this? His parents are gone. Who’ll be left to take care of him? He’ll be devastated.”
Jaime wasn’t persuaded. “He’ll live,” he said.
“And what about the people who didn’t live?” I asked. “What about Marcella and Marco? Is your killing Miguel Rios going to bring them back?”
“Marco was scum,” Jaime spat back. “He deserved to die.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “He was working with the DEA.”
“Marco was a snitch?” Jaime returned. “Don’t make me laugh!”
“It’s no joke. Sheriff Brady told me all about it a few minutes ago. Marco was spilling his guts, and the feds were listening.”
“And they’re claiming that’s why he died?” Jaime scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
“But it’s true,” I said. “With Marco’s help the feds have spent months putting together a program that should bring down the whole cartel. It’s all supposed to happen in the next few weeks and it’s going to work-at least it may work if you don’t screw it up, that is. Because if you go through with this, Jaime, that’s exactly what will happen. The Cervantes guys will know someone is closing in on them and everyone connected to the cartel will disappear like a puff of smoke. It’ll take years to bring them back out into the open.”