Mortal Crimes 1

by Various Authors

  The man always wore the same thing: blue jeans, a plain navy T-shirt, and work boots.

  Maybe it wasn’t the Ouija board that had conjured him up. Steve could have picked him up on the way back from Camp Aratauk. He was getting used to the fact that he saw ghosts, but he couldn’t figure out if the guy was trying to tell him something or if he was just there. He figured the man was manifestation of somebody who had been around here before. From contemporary times obviously—maybe someone who had known his grandfather. Maybe he was a hiker. If he really was a ghost, maybe he had died around here somewhere, like Jenny Carmichael did.

  It might even be that the man was Jenny’s killer.

  Steve was almost done cleaning out his grandfather’s cabin. Mostly there was just the furniture, which he would keep. It was ugly, but it belonged to the cabin, so Steve would let it stay. He went down to his own house periodically, but for some reason he didn’t feel that it was home anymore.

  Up here, in this rustic old cabin, he felt at home. He was coming to the understanding that this was the place where he was meant to be. Come right down to it, he could sell his house and live up here. It would make for a hell of a commute working for the USGS, but he could probably work it out.

  And if it didn’t work out, he had savings. Savings and investments. He could live for five or six years off his savings alone. Comfortably. He could do consultant work, he could hire himself out for a few months at a time on some project or another, then come back here.

  The thing was, he wanted to figure out what happened to Jenny Carmichael. He’d need time to do that. He knew the answer was here on the mountain, and he had an advantage that detective Laura Cardinal didn’t have. He had his secret weapon. Jenny.

  It had finally occurred to him that Jenny could tell him herself what happened. He just needed to conjure her up again, and she would tell him.

  And so he sent thoughts in her direction, asking her to appear. Asking her to not be so damn oblique about things and stop hinting. Come right out and tell him what happened.

  But the thing was, she didn’t appear to him. All he saw was the man. The Man Without a Face. The Man Without a Front Side.

  Steve wondered if he could summon Jennie back with the Ouija board. He’d need to enlist someone to help him out because the Ouija board needed two people. The only person he could trust was Julie.

  He didn’t want to get involved with her again, not romantically, but he didn’t see any other way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  After Julie left, Laura went for a walk. It wasn’t a nice area to walk, but she wasn’t looking at the scenery.

  As she walked, she thought about Mrs. Molina, what she’d said. Laura had been so caught up in self-pity, she’d given up. She’d let whoever it was get the upper hand. What Ana Molina had said was right; even though Jaime was in the hospital, he was still her partner—her new partner. She owed it to him to find out who had tried to kill him and who had killed his niece.

  She couldn’t turn her back on him. Someone had come for them. Someone had tried to kill them both. Maybe right now she didn’t care all that much that someone had tried to kill her, but they had also tried to kill her partner. How could she stand by and let this person get away?

  She couldn’t.

  Victor Celaya, the detective she most often partnered with, had been assigned to the cold cases. Victor had the case files, all her notes.

  She walked back to the apartment, took a shower, and for the first time in a week, dressed in her work clothes.

  Twenty minutes later, she was in Jerry Grimes’s office, asking if she could be put back on the case.

  Jerry looked away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “This is important to me,” Laura said. “Jaime is my partner.”

  “You know Victor. He’ll do a good job.”

  Laura tried to keep her voice calm. “It’s not about the job he’s doing. It’s the fact that Jaime is my partner, and it’s up to me to find out who tried to kill us.”

  “That’s right,” Jerry said. “Someone tried to kill you. You can’t investigate an attempt on your own life. My suggestion to you is you go home and take off a couple of weeks, try and make some sense of all this.”

  “How am I going to do that?” Laura asked. “Do you know what it’s like to live in that apartment? It’s not living. I’m going stir-crazy. Let me at least work some aspect of the case. If you want, I’ll steer clear of what happened to Jaime.” She could see from his body language that Jerry was warming to the idea. DPS criminal investigations was always shorthanded, and her absence had created a void. “I promise, I’ll steer clear of the murder investigation—I’ll leave that to Victor. But there’s still Jenny Carmichael. And I’m close.”

  She wasn’t actually close at all, but it didn’t hurt to say she was.

  They wrangled back and forth awhile longer, but Laura knew Jerry’s heart wasn’t in it. There was a backlog of cases, more every day, and the Jenny Carmichael story was big news. They needed to make some headway on it. Finally he said, “You could wear down a diamond, you know that?”

  Laura stood there, waiting. Hoping.

  Jerry sighed. “Go talk to Victor. If he doesn’t mind you working the Carmichael case along with him, that’s fine with me.”

  She wanted to reach across the cluttered desk and hug him. Of course she didn’t.

  ________

  She caught Victor in the squad room. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Victor swiveled his chair around and leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head. “Sure,” he said. His voice was as wary as his casual way of sitting was studied.

  “In the hallway?”

  “Okay.” He grunted as he got up. Victor was in good shape—late forties, but he played tennis and golf. He didn’t need to grunt when he stood up. He was doing it to show his displeasure.

  They stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall. Victor staring straight ahead, not looking at her.

  “I want to help you with the cold case.”

  “I don’t think Jerry—”

  “He already said I could ask you.”

  Victor said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Your main focus is what happened to Christine Lujan and Jaime Molina, right? You’ve got a lot to do.”

  “I’m in touch with a detective from the sheriff’s office.”

  “In touch with?”

  He shrugged. Victor was the best shrugger in the business. It was an elegant, negligent shrug, which went with his beautifully tailored clothing, which he got at cost because his uncle ran a famous men’s clothing shop here in town.

  “Be honest, Victor.”

  “Okay. I have a call into him. He hasn’t called me back.”

  “Doesn’t sound like he’s interested.”

  Victor was looking at his nails. His nails, like the rest of him, were perfect.

  “Victor.”

  He looked at her. “Okay. You can work the Jenny Carmichael case. But that’s it.”

  ________

  Victor and Laura decided together that Laura didn’t need to be at DPS. Even though her leave had been rescinded, her presence might be a distraction. On his lunch hour, Victor boxed up everything to do with the Jenny Carmichael case and took it over to Laura’s, stopping to pick up sandwiches from eegee’s on the way.

  “Jerry knows we’re doing it this way, right?” Laura asked, as they sat at the kitchen counter and unwrapped their sandwiches.

  “Uh-huh. He thinks I’m nuts to agree to it, by the way.”

  Laura said, “What kind of progress are you making on the bombing?”

  He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to say.”

  “Come on, Victor. I could have been in that car.”

  “All we have right now are the numbers Jaime called on his cell.”

  “The cell wasn’t damaged?” Laura vaguely remembered seeing it
on the porch near Jaime, but she had been so absorbed in keeping him from going into shock, she had let that detail slip. “Who’d he call?”

  Victor sighed. He knew it was pointless; she’d get it out of him. Victor always took the easy way, which was why Laura had been sure she could get him to let her back on the case. He liked to share the workload.

  “Think about it, Victor. Jaime and I worked these cases. I might actually be of some help.”

  “The Pinal County sheriff’s office. He talked to one of their detectives. Guy named Franklin.”

  “This was after our dinner at Prieta Linda?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t make me pull it out of you word by word, Victor. What did they talk about?”

  “According to Franklin, Jaime was just touching base with him, getting his facts together. But Franklin had a bombshell for him.”

  Laura remembered the night of the explosion, how sound always carried in the boonies. Jaime saying: She’s gonna want to know about this.

  “What was it?”

  “You know the meth lab explosion that killed Tom Purvis? Apparently, it wasn’t an accident. Somebody used a homemade calcium carbide bomb, wiped the guy right off the face of the earth.”

  “Calcium carbide? That was what blew up Jaime’s car, wasn’t it?”

  Victor took a bite of his Reuben. “Looks to me like somebody has a pattern.”

  Laura stared out the window at the walkway out front and the patch of grass beyond it. “Who, though?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question.”

  Laura took Victor’s pickle. He always let her take his pickle. “You know what the link is.”

  “Heywood, but he’s dead.”

  “Heywood must have had a partner.” Laura thought about Bill Smith, Micaela’s abductor.

  “Maybe,” Victor said. “Or somebody who hated both him and Tom Purvis.”

  “The meth lab explosion was eight years ago. Seems like a long time to hold a grudge.” She thought about it. “There has to be some connection, though. It can’t be coincidence. Any other calls Jaime made?”

  “He called Mary Carmichael, left a message. And he called you.”

  “That night? After we ate?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Laura remembered she had turned off both her phones, wanting a good night’s sleep. That hadn’t panned out, though.

  Victor crumpled up the butcher paper the sandwich came in and threw it in the trash can beneath the sink. “Gotta get back to the salt mine.”

  Laura, thinking. Heywood killed girls. Maybe Tom Purvis helped him. Or Bill Smith. Or both.

  Victor said, “You know? This apartment isn’t so bad.”

  “It’s hell on earth.”

  Laura had to drag her mind away from Robert Heywood’s death and the fact that a calcium carbide bomb had been used both on Tom Purvis and on Jaime Molina. She wanted to know who had tried to kill them and what that person’s link was to Tom Purvis, but she knew that she’d have to tread carefully. She had one small piece of the case and that was the death of Jenny Carmichael. She needed to concentrate on that.

  The one person Laura had not yet talked to was Dawn Sayles, Jenny’s best friend at camp.

  When she tried the number from eleven years ago, she got a dry cleaner. She called twice to make sure, then went through the reverse phone book and found three numbers: one for a James Sayles at the same address listed in Jenny’s case file, another for a Dr. Martin Sayles, and the last, a D. Sayles.

  Laura called D. Sayles and, when a woman answered, asked for Dawn.

  “This is Dawn.”

  ________

  Laura realized why the Peppertree Apartments looked familiar; they were a carbon copy of her own apartment, the Village Green.

  Dawn Sayles lived in an upstairs apartment, 12C. Laura was surprised to see a young woman standing at the top of the steps, the door behind her slightly ajar. Hand clutching the doorknob, her expression diffident.

  Dawn Sayles was slimmer than in the photos, but with the same pale skin and dark, wounded eyes. Listless dark brown hair pulled back by a clip, a grimy-looking T-shirt stretched over a pot belly, and skin-tight bicycle shorts. She wore cheap purple flip-flops. She pulled the door shut all the way, keeping her voice low. “My husband’s still sleeping, but I’m going to have to get back in there soon.” She led Laura down to the part of the steps that was in the shade of a massive pepper tree, one of several that gave the apartment its name. Laura could hear someone vacuuming on the floor above.

  Dawn sat down on the concrete step and hunched over her knees, arms holding them close. “I saw on the news they found her,” she said. “I wondered if you were going to come.”

  Laura sat down next to her. The shade was deep and dark, but the heat still clung to them, bouncing whitely off the steps. Laura handed Dawn the photograph she’d copied at One Hour Photo. It was the picture of Dawn and Jenny.

  Dawn took it, stared at it. Her lips moving. “Can I keep this?” she asked, hope lingering between the words. Hope with every expectation of defeat.

  “I brought it for you.”

  She tucked it into the waistband of her shorts. “Thanks.”

  Laura said, “Could you tell me what happened that day?”

  Dawn Sayles looked away. “I told the detective at the time.”

  “I know, but I’d like to hear it firsthand. It could really help.”

  “He died, didn’t he? The detective?”

  “Yes.”

  Dawn leaned down and pulled her ponytail around her neck, moving the strands between her fingers like worry beads. Her head almost between her knees. “I called him,” she mumbled.

  “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.