Duel to the Death

by J. A. Jance

  “Were she and her former boyfriend ever arrested and charged?”

  “Never, they both got off for lack of evidence. Even though my parents had disowned Cameron, that didn’t keep my mother from blaming Traci for what happened.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “Nope, I thought the cops made the right call on that, and the fact that I did was the final straw that tore our family apart. My mother is still alive, as far as I know, but we haven’t spoken for the past fifteen years. And all this time—from the time Cameron died until right this minute—it’s burned my butt something fierce to know that whoever did it got away clean.

  “A few years ago I heard about that TV show called America’s Most Wanted. I thought maybe that John Walsh guy could help reopen Cameron’s case and get it solved. Didn’t happen, of course, but I nosed around enough that I was able to lay hands on a copy of that old composite drawing, the one Traci did back in the day. Once I did, I could see why the cops thought it was a put-up deal and phony as a three-dollar bill. The guy in the drawing doesn’t even look human—more like a dead fish.”

  Cami heard the words and her heart skipped a beat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know how a dying fish looks—sort of a gasping, puckery-shaped mouth, no eyebrows, hardly any ears?”

  Gooseflesh spread down Cami’s legs. “That composite drawing you mentioned,” she said. “You wouldn’t still happen to have a copy of it, would you?”

  “Sure, I kept it. Why?”

  “Is there a chance you’d be able to take a picture of it and e-mail it to me?”

  “How come?”

  “Because I think I may know who killed your brother.”

  54

  Stu had spent most of the afternoon communing with Frigg via text rather than Bluetooth for fear of being overheard. Texting by phone was a slow, cumbersome process. Finally, in desperation, he paired a spare keyboard with the phone. He didn’t think it was possible for Frigg to infect that.

  There was no sign that Graciella had actually taken the bait. As far as Frigg could ascertain from her credit cards and bank accounts there had been no transfers or purchases. And after being online almost constantly for the previous twenty-four hours, all of her accounts had gone dark.

  E-mails voicing questions and concerns about the High Noon intrusion were still coming in, and those had to be answered in a timely fashion, but Stu found his ability to concentrate flagging. He had been close to asking Ali if she’d let him take off early and give him a ride back to the Village when a text came in from Cami, written in bold all caps.

  COME TO THE BREAK ROOM NOW! YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS!

  Stiff and sore from sleeping either in a chair or on a chaise, Stu levered himself upright and lumbered out of the computer lab.

  “What?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

  Cami’s iPad and cell phone lay side by side on the table. “Take a look,” she said.

  Stu leaned over and stared down at the two devices. The iPad held the mug shot image of El Pescado that Stuart had seen before when Frigg had put it up on a screen in the man cave. Cami must have downloaded it from the Internet. When he glanced at the phone’s much smaller screen, Stu’s first impression was that he was seeing the same thing. When he picked up the phone to study the screen more closely, he realized they weren’t the same thing at all. One was a photo; the other was a drawing.

  “El Pescado?” he asked wonderingly. “Where did you get this?”

  “It’s a composite drawing done by a woman named Traci Rhodes, Cameron Randall Purdy’s girlfriend, who happened to be in the car with him the night he was shot at point-blank range.”

  “An eyewitness?”

  Cami nodded. “When she did the drawing, the cops thought she made it up as cover for an old boyfriend.”

  “Where is she?” Stu asked.

  “She was in the Chicago area in 1992. I have no idea where she is now.”

  Stu reached for his Bluetooth. “Frigg?”

  “Good evening, Stuart, how can I help?”

  “I need you to find someone named Traci Rhodes. That’s T-R-A-C-I.”

  “Is that a maiden name or a married name?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, and I don’t have a middle initial, either. All I do know is that she was living in the Chicago area in 1992.”

  “Of course, Stuart,” Frigg said. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “How do we explain this if Frigg does find her?” Cami asked.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Stu told her.

  It took all of eleven minutes for Frigg to locate Traci Rhodes Cantrell, now a married mother of three, living on a ten-acre parcel just outside the city limits of Boise, Idaho. According to the report Frigg provided, Traci had been married to Steve Cantrell for seventeen years. Her husband was self-employed, owning and operating a small contracting business, while Traci taught second grade. Frigg, ever efficient, provided a full catalogue of addresses and phone numbers.

  “So what do we do now?” Stuart asked. “Do we call her or do we hand this over to the cops?”

  “Let’s see,” Cami said. “I believe you wanted me to be on the up with this. We learned about the Duarte Cartel because of the intrusion and have been researching same—with all my browsing history still fully intact, just as you requested. So I’m clean. I’ll have to figure out a way to have located her phone number on my own, but otherwise I’m good. I should be able to call her and get away with it.”

  “That whole experience must have been a nightmare for her. Should we even bring it up?”

  “Twenty-five years ago Traci had a brand-new boyfriend who was murdered in front of her eyes. At the time the cops thought she was involved, if not responsible. They probably still do. All the way along, the only person who believed her story was Cameron’s brother, James. I think finding out that there are other people who believe her will be a blessing to her rather than a curse.”

  “All right, then,” Stu said. “We’ll call her, but on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re the one who has to talk to her. I’ve done my one phone call for the day.”

  A minute later, Cami dialed the phone Frigg had listed as Traci’s home number.

  A man answered. “Cantrell residence.”

  “May I speak to Traci?” Cami asked.

  “She’s busy cooking. Can I tell her who’s calling and what this is about?”

  “It’s about a homicide that took place near Morton Grove, Illinois, in 1992.”

  “Hey, hon,” Steve Cantrell said. “You might want to take this in the bedroom. I’ll finish getting dinner on the table.”

  A few seconds later, a woman’s voice came on the phone. “Who’s calling?” she asked warily. “Why couldn’t I take this call downstairs?”

  “My name is Camille Lee, and I work for a company called High Noon Enterprises,” Cami told her. “I’ve been investigating a break-in that occurred at our corporate headquarters in Cottonwood, Arizona, last week. In the process, I’ve come across the story of a woman named Christina Miramar who was attacked in Panama City, Panama, back in 1989.”

  “Oh God, not that again. I know all about it. I dated one of the guys who was part of that whole mess. Cameron told me about it when we first met. He said he was so drunk at the time he didn’t even remember, but he was part of it, and he took his medicine along with everybody else. I think he thought I’d break up with him as soon as he told me, but I’d done some stupid stuff, too. And then he was killed.”

  “Right in front of you.”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “And the cops thought you did it.”

  “That, too.”

  “Do you have a cell phone with you right now?” Cami asked.

  “It’s in my pocket. Why?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind sending me the number, I’d like to send you a text.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t some k
ind of scam? Are you trying to get my number so you can put it out on the Internet?”

  “I can assure you, this isn’t a scam,” Cami said. “I want to send you a mug shot of the guy I think murdered Cameron Purdy and at least four of those other six guys from the Christina Miramar case.”

  The entire transaction took less than a minute. When the image came through, Cami heard Traci gasp. “Oh my God, it’s him—the one who did it! Where is he? Is he still alive? How did you find him?”

  Cami heard a man’s voice in the background. “Okay, the kids are eating. What’s going on?”

  After that, for the better part of two minutes, all Cami and Stuart were able to hear over both phones was the sound of Traci Rhodes Cantrell’s wracking sobs. Finally her husband’s voice came on the landline. “I’m hanging up now,” he said. “We’ll have to call you back.”

  55

  For obvious reasons the celebration that followed was confined to the break room, well away from that one remaining transmitter.

  “Traci called us back after she pulled herself together,” Cami explained to Ali and B. “She wanted to know what she should do. I told her that was up to her. I suggested to her that going to the cops would probably bring all of that old business back to light. If she didn’t want to go there, it was perfectly understandable. I mean, she’s a whole other person now. She has kids of her own; she teaches school. I warned her that going to the cops might throw all of that into uproar. I gave her James Purdy’s number in case she wanted to be in touch with him. The last thing Traci said to me was that she and her husband would talk it over and decide what to do.”

  “The thing is, I’m not sure her going to the cops will do any good,” Stu said. “If an Illinois DA decided to press charges, it would be a circumstantial case at best, based on eyewitness testimony only and with no physical evidence. Besides, El Pescado is holed up in Sinaloa. If the US isn’t trying to extradite him over something as recent and horrific as that series of firebombings, the chances of his ever being brought to trial on a twenty-five-year-old cold case are slim to nonexistent.”

  That dose of reality sucked the jubilation out of the room. “Trial or not,” Ali said, “what you two did today was huge. You validated what that poor woman has been saying for a quarter of a century. She’s been walking under a cloud of suspicion for all this time, and you gave her a way to possibly fix that.”

  “What about the other families?” Cami asked. “Should I get back to them with that composite drawing?”

  “I think so,” Ali said. “Cameron Purdy’s family deserved some answers, and so do the others. We may not be able to give them convictions, but having answers and some idea of who was responsible may help.”

  “I’ll work on that tomorrow, then,” Cami promised, “but for right now, I’m done.”

  And so was everyone else. That long, exhausting weekend from Friday through Monday had drained them all. Like Cami, Stuart, too, was at the end of his endurance.

  “Are you going to stay here?” Ali asked him as they were getting ready to close down for the day. “Or would you like a ride back to the Village?”

  “Village,” Stu answered. “I’d like to do some work with Frigg on the screens instead of the iPhone. But first let me grab a few things, including some sweaters and jackets. I damn near froze to death last night, and maybe we can pick up a pizza on the way.”

  An hour later, layered in two sweaters and with a piece of pepperoni pizza in hand, Stuart Ramey settled into a chair in front of Control Central, donned his headset, and summoned Frigg.

  “Good evening, Stuart, is there something you need?”

  “Yes, what’s going on with our friend Graciella today?”

  “Is Graciella our friend? I thought she was on the other team—the bad guy team.”

  Stu shook his head. Frigg was smart but not subtle. “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Sarcastic,” Frigg repeated. “Having to do with sarcasm: a sharp, often satirical or ironic utterance meant to be hurtful. So when you said the word ‘friend’ you did not mean friend?”

  “Friend or foe, does it really matter?” an exasperated Stu replied. “Just answer the question, please.”

  “Ms. Miramar has gone completely dark,” Frigg reported. “She was logged in to an audio storage account on the dark Web earlier today. Once she logged out of that, there has been no additional usage on either one of her computers or on her cell phone.”

  That pretty much confirmed what Stu had suspected. Graciella knew about Frigg for sure now, and she suspected she’d been hacked, so of course she’d gone dark.

  “What about financial transactions? Any credit card dealings with airlines or private jet providers?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  That was disappointing. There was no way to tell for sure if Graciella had taken the bait. Was she coming or not? And if she did come, would she show up alone or would she come with a troop of armed helpers? Stu and Ali had talked about that on the drive from Cottonwood—about the possibility of his needing a weapon for protection, something with a little more firepower than his grandfather’s Swiss Army knife.

  “As you said earlier, we’re up against some very scary people,” Ali had warned him. “If they come after us, we have to be prepared to defend ourselves. Even in the office, Cami and I shouldn’t be the only ones carrying, and that goes double for you when you and Frigg are on your own there in the man cave.”

  “I’ve never owned a gun in my life, not even a BB gun,” Stu replied. “I wouldn’t know how to use one if I had one.”

  “No matter,” Ali said. “Tomorrow morning when I come to get you, I’ll bring along my spare Taser and show you how to use it. I also think I’ll ask Alonso to come over here and keep an eye on the place when you have to be in Cottonwood.”

  “Do you think Graciella knows that we’ve set Frigg up in the Village?”

  “Obviously she’s not stupid. If she’s done any kind of property records search, she might have found this address listed and figured out that it would be a logical location.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t have someone like Frigg working for her,” Stu said.

  “Let’s hope,” Ali agreed.

  Stu felt a chill that had nothing to do with the humming AC unit. In Cottonwood he would have been tucked into his studio behind the impenetrable barrier of security shutters. Here he was isolated and completely on his own.

  “Frigg,” he said, “is there a video available explaining how to operate a Taser?”

  “Of course. Would you like me to send it to one of the screens?”

  “Please. And what is the weather report for tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow in the Village of Oak Creek, the high will be seventy degrees and the low thirty-eight with scattered clouds. Will there be anything else?”

  Frigg already knew that he was no longer in Cottonwood.

  “Yes, there is,” Stuart said. “I would like you to create an accessible index of what information you keep available for off-line use and what you have in online storage, by category. I want to be able to read through it myself.”

  “That is a complex undertaking.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Stu agreed, “but take your time. There’s no rush.”

  “I will use the Apache Lucene format for the index. Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes, Apache is fine.”

  “Will there be anything else?”

  “Yes,” he said, “one more item. On the night of Sunday, April 8, 1979, there was a two-car motor vehicle accident on I-10, somewhere between Phoenix and the California border. Three people died as a result of the incident, including Penelope and Robert S. Ramey, Jr.”

  “Your parents,” Frigg said.

  Having created a dossier on Stuart for Owen Hansen, it wasn’t surprising that Frigg instantaneously knew that detail of his background.

  “Yes,” he confirmed, “my parents. I’d like to know more about the accident, including exactly wh
ere it happened—the milepost, if possible.”

  “Of course, Stuart. I’ll get right on it. In the meantime, I’m sending the Taser video right now.”

  56

  Had Stuart Ramey been punching a time clock, he would have run up far more than forty hours a week. Because he lived where he worked and loved what he did, he slept when he was tired, ate when he was hungry, and worked the rest of the time. When B. was traveling to some far-off corner of the planet, Stu usually timed his waking hours to coincide with B.’s current time zone.

  Back in the man cave, Stu settled in to watch the Taser demonstration video. The problem was, he could barely keep his eyes open. At six p.m. he admitted defeat and told Frigg that he was going to grab some sleep. Not wanting to be completely out of touch in case Graciella made contact, he took a Bluetooth along with him when he went upstairs and settled into his chaise under an extra layer of blankets. He awakened at three a.m. feeling relatively well rested. Since Frigg was still maintaining silence, he showered, dressed, and made a pot of coffee before heading downstairs.

  “Good morning, Frigg. Do you have anything for me today?”

  “Yes, I do. I am working on the Apache Lucene index you requested. I am making good progress, but it is not yet complete.”

  “Any news from Panama City?”

  “Ms. Miramar’s electronic devices continue to show zero activity. The same is true for her financial transactions. There’s nothing showing in any of her accounts or credit cards.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I have obtained records concerning the deaths of your parents. Would you like me to post them on a monitor?”