Cold Betrayal

by J. A. Jance

  “What about the hangar? Did it burn down or not?”

  “No, ma’am,” Malovich said. “We located the kid with the dynamite and the cell phone. He was still waiting for orders to set it off.”

  Ali closed her eyes in gratitude. She had pulled the trigger in time. Richard Lowell hadn’t managed to complete the call.

  It didn’t take long for her to tell the story of how, with Ali in the rest­room, Lowell had broken into the Sprinter and taken its passengers hostage. Malovich listened but without taking notes. Knowing she’d be interviewed in far greater detail later when what she said was being recorded, Ali hit the high spots of what had happened, ending with her ordering Lowell to drop the phone and pulling the trigger when he didn’t.

  “Okay,” Agent Malovich said at last. “All that jibes with what everyone else is saying. You can go now. You should probably go check on your husband. He’s in the hangar right next door, and he’s pretty shaken up. Oh, and you’ll have to go out the back way and walk around to hangar number one. The space between two and three is an active crime scene.”

  It was three o’clock in the morning as Ali made her way to hangar number one. On the far side of number two she could see the generator-­powered floodlights that had been set up around the crime scene. She didn’t need to go there. Remembering visiting Sheriff ­Alvarado and with him totally at ease in his office hours earlier on the previous day, there was nothing she wanted to see.

  She found B. sitting just inside the door to the hangar, hunched into a plastic lawn chair, with his face buried in his hands.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, walking up to him and laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. “So much for being part of the out-of-harm’s-way ‘rear guard.’ ”

  B. nodded without looking up. “I signaled with the headlights as he was taxiing to his tie-down. Three shorts, three longs, three shorts—SOS. Sheriff Alvarado saw the signal and came right over to me, as soon as he got out of his plane.

  “I told him what was going on and that the guy was inside, holding hostages and threatening to kill them. By then Alvarado knew the SWAT team was coming, but they were still two minutes out. He told me he wanted to get closer so he’d be able to give his guys a better idea of what was going on inside the Sprinter. That’s when the door opened. Lowell came out, holding Governor Dunham in front of him. Alvarado was caught out in the open. Lowell opened fire and cut him down just like that.”

  Ali heard the futility in B.’s voice and her heart ached for him. “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  “If I hadn’t signaled him to come over, he wouldn’t be dead.”

  “You don’t know that. Neither does anyone else.”

  Looking around the hangar, Ali located another chair—an ancient wooden desk model on creaky casters. She pushed that over to B.’s chair and sat down beside him. Then she reached out and took his hand.

  “I heard the governor got shot and was airlifted out,” B. muttered after a minute or so. “Is she going to be okay?”

  Ali shook her head. “Don’t know,” she answered. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “I tried to come see you, but they wouldn’t let me back inside the van. Dave Holman told me you shot Richard Lowell.”

  “I did,” Ali admitted. “I didn’t have a choice. He was about to make a phone call that would have killed a kid and set fire to a tank full of jet fuel. I shot him in the back, and I’m not sorry about it, either. Did Dave say anything about how the search warrants went?”

  B. looked up at her questioningly. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what? I’ve spent the better part of two hours locked in the van with Lowell’s body and then being interviewed by an FBI agent. Nobody’s told me anything.”

  “I’ve been interviewed, too,” B. said, “but my guy let something slip, and Dave told me the rest. It turns out the men named in the search warrants are all dead.”

  Ali was taken aback. “Dead? All of them? What was it, some kind of suicide pact?”

  “Not exactly,” B. answered bleakly. “As far as I know, Amos Sellers is the only one still alive. Everywhere the teams went, they were able to lay hands on the Bibles with no problem because none of the men was home. Lowell had evidently summoned all the heads of households to what was supposedly an important meeting at the church.

  “There’s a bunker in the basement. He lured all but two of them into the bunker, then sprayed them with the automatic weapons fire, probably from the same AK-47 he used here. It was a bloodbath. The other two, the guys who weren’t in the basement, were found up at the airstrip, parked in the airplane hangar, inside in a pool of aviation fuel. Both of them had been shot execution style. The men in the basement died earlier in the evening. The men in the car probably died a while later.”

  “How many dead?” Ali asked as the weight of the death toll sank into her soul.

  “Twenty-nine from the family,” B. answered. “Dave says Lowell must have been trying to get rid of everyone who might know any of the details about the human trafficking operation.”

  “What about the girls?” Ali asked. “The ones at the hangar?”

  “There were only six of them, and they’re fine—frightened but fine. At least that’s what I was told. When Alvarado ran up the flag here, they split the SWAT team into two groups. Some came here and the others stayed behind to look out for the girls. They’ve called in a hazmat unit to clean up the spilled Jet-A before it leaks down into the water table.”

  Dave Holman walked into the hangar and came over to where they were sitting. “DPS is sending a helicopter over to Kingman to notify Sheriff Alvarado’s next of kin. They asked me if I wanted to go along. I told them I wanted to check with you first. It’s been a hell of a night; if you need any help getting back home . . .”

  “Come to think of it, we do,” Ali said at once. “We rode up in the governor’s Sprinter, and that’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Andrea Rogers and the two Brought Back girls are in the same fix.”

  “The governor’s chief of staff assigned a DPS officer to do The Family’s next-of-kin notifications. My understanding is that Andrea, Patricia, and Agnes will be assisting with that.”

  “We should probably help with that, too.”

  Dave shook his head. “No,” he said. “You two have done enough.”

  Ali glanced at B.’s ashen face. “You’re sure it’s no trouble to drive us?” she asked.

  “None at all,” he answered. “Between doing a next-of-kin notification and getting my friends back home to Sedona, which one sounds like a better idea to you?”

  37

  The Phoenix-area taco truck that Governor Dunham had summoned to provide refreshments for her teams of officers had now arrived on the scene. It was parked on the shoulder of the road, just outside the entrance to the airport. With cops of all descriptions coming and going, the place was doing land-office business. Once convoys of hastily dispatched media vans started to arrive, it would be even busier.

  Dave pulled over and stopped next to the food truck. “It’s a long way back to Flag from here,” he said. “After what you’ve both been through, you’re going to need food, and it’s on me. What do you want?”

  “Whatever’s good,” B. said. Because of his need for legroom, he was in the front passenger seat. That put Ali in the back of the patrol car—behind the screen and in a part of the car with no interior door handles—something she found unsettling.

  Looking at the mob lined up at the window, Ali’s assessment was more realistic. “Whatever they have left,” she said. “Since a few of the people waiting in line are early-bird reporters, it’s probably best if B. and I stay in the car.”

  Dave left to place their orders, returning a few minutes later with three brown bags of food and another filled with cans of soda. “They’re about to run out of everything. All they had left are bean
-and-cheese burritos, so that’s what I got. We all have a single burrito and cans of Diet Coke. Hope that’ll work for you.”

  As soon as Ali smelled the food, she realized she was once again starving. In terms of hours, the box lunch she had eaten as the Sprinter came north from Flagstaff wasn’t that long ago. In terms of life experience, it was epochs away.

  “This is fuel for us,” Ali said, unwrapping her burrito and taking a bite while the beans were still hot. “What about gas for the car?”

  “Someone in authority convinced the guy who runs the trading post on the south side of Colorado City that it would be a good idea for him to do an unscheduled opening,” Dave answered. “He’s got all his gas pumps up and running. I filled up immediately. If demand ends up outstripping supply, I don’t want to be one of the people left stranded until the next gasoline tanker truck shows up with a delivery.”

  They headed south a little before four. A few minutes into the drive, when Ali unconsciously reached for her phone to let Leland Brooks know what was happening, she remembered it was gone. So was B.’s phone and both their iPads. B.’s had been in his briefcase. Ali’s iPad had been in her purse, and both purse and briefcase were still in the impounded Sprinter. As for her iPhone? Agent Malovich had commandeered that as evidence documenting the call she had made to Stu. With all their electronic devices under lock and key as part of a crime scene investigation, Ali started to ask to borrow Dave’s phone. But then, noticing the time, she didn’t.

  “So how did you get mixed up in all this?” Dave asked Ali as they drove under a moonlit high desert sky. “B. gave me the shorthand version earlier before we left Flag to come here, but I have a feeling there’s a lot I don’t know.”

  Between them, Ali and B. told the story, a little at a time. By the time they finished, the sky was beginning to brighten in the east. For a while, the only sound in the vehicle was the whine of all-weather tires on the pavement.

  Dave was the one who broke the silence. “There you have it,” he said. “In one fell swoop, Sheriff Daniel Alvarado goes from being an unindicted homicide suspect to being a full-fledged hero. So do you still think he murdered the Kingman Jane Doe?”

  “I do,” Ali said quietly. “I most certainly do.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ali said.

  The problem of dealing with that had been banging around in her head the whole time she and Dave had been telling the story. “Alvarado may look like a hero right now, but Anne Lowell and her baby are still dead.”

  “Are you going to go through with the Doe exhumation, then?” Dave asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Ali said again.

  “What’s the point?” B. asked quietly.

  “We’ll determine once and for all if the Kingman Jane Doe is Anne Lowell,” Ali answered. “We’ll also know if Daniel Alvarado was the father of her baby.”

  “But knowing that won’t tell us who killed her,” B. objected. “With the evidence box missing, we’ll probably never know. The only people who’ll be hurt by all this are Daniel Alvarado’s widow and kids. Right now he’s a hero. Can’t we let him stay a hero?”

  “It may come up later,” Dave cautioned. “Other people know that the Kingman Jane Doe most likely came from The Family. The human trafficking investigation will require putting DNA samples of all the victims into the system. There’s no telling what’ll happen when they get a match.”

  “That’ll be somebody else’s decision, then,” B. said. “It won’t be ours.”

  Given the circumstances, it didn’t surprise Ali that B. was turning out to be one of Sheriff Alvarado’s staunchest defenders.

  “All right,” Ali agreed. “I can live with that.”

  At six o’clock in the morning, a time when Leland usually showed up to start breakfast, Ali borrowed Dave’s telephone to call home.

  “Oh, madame,” he said, “so good to hear your voice. We’ve all been worried sick.”

  “All?”

  “Well, yes. Athena tried to reach you. Your mother tried to reach you. When neither you nor Mr. Simpson answered your phones, they both called me. I take it something serious has occurred. How can I be of service?”

  Ali closed her eyes. She was bone weary. She had a choice to make. If she told the story to Leland on the phone right now, she’d end up having to repeat it at least two more times, once each with Athena and her mother and maybe with Chris and her father, too.

  “What day is this?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Just a sec.” She covered the phone with her hand. “What do you think?” she asked B. “Should we invite everyone to breakfast, tell them the story all at once, and get it over with?”

  B. thought for a moment and then nodded. “Have Leland set up a separate table out in the kitchen for Colin and Colleen. This isn’t a story that’s good for little ears.”

  Ali took her hand off the speaker. “How about if you invite everyone over to an early brunch,” she suggested to Leland. “B. and I should be home around nine or so. That way we can say it once and be done with it.”

  “Of course,” Leland agreed. “I shall do so immediately.”

  “Oh, and set a table for the little ones in the kitchen, please.”

  “Of course.”

  Once off the phone with Leland, Ali dozed off. Two hours later Dave drove them through Flagstaff to DPS headquarters. When he dropped them off, the parking lot wasn’t nearly as full as it had been the night before, but given what all was going on up in Colorado City, the place wasn’t exactly a deserted village. The collection of media vans—many of them with national news outlet logos—told Ali that what had gone on in Colorado City was big news. Doing his best to be unobtrusive, Dave dropped B. and Ali as close as possible to their respective cars. With her purse still in Governor Dunham’s Sprinter, Ali was missing both her driver’s license and her car keys. B. had a spare key for her to use, but no spare license.

  Alone in the Cayenne, Ali wrestled with the enormity of what had happened. Twenty-nine members of The Family were dead, twenty-eight of them gunned down by one of their own. Governor Dunham’s driver had perished as had Sheriff Alvarado, and Virginia Dunham was gravely injured.

  Richard Lowell, the man most directly responsible for all that death and destruction, was dead, too. Ali had pulled the trigger that took him down. She felt absolutely no guilt about that—not a whit. As for the others? That was another story.

  The operation at The Encampment, an action designed to bring human traffickers to justice, had ended in disaster—not the one Ali or anyone else had anticipated, but a disaster nonetheless. As far as Ali knew, the tour buses Governor Dunham had ordered to transport refugees from The Family were still there waiting, parked just up the road from the bustling taco truck. Who knew how many of The Encampment’s residents, including other Brought Back girls, would choose to leave The Family in the face of this sudden and tragic turn in all their circumstances. The jury was definitely out on that score.

  By now, the Department of Corrections bus, no longer needed, had most likely been recalled to its place of origin. The men it had been sent to transport were all dead. Twenty-nine of the thirty men named in the human trafficking warrants would be leaving Colorado City in a convoy of medical examiners’ vans. They would never see the inside of a jail or a courthouse; they would never have their guilt or innocence determined by a judge and jury.

  Unlike the raid at Short Creek, none of The Family’s children had been taken into custody, but, with the exception of Amos Sellers’s kids, they had all been left fatherless. Ali had heard Governor Dunham say she would take full responsibility if anything went wrong. In the upcoming news cycle, there would be plenty of comparisons between Governor Dunham’s actions at The Encampment and Governor Howard Pyle’s long-ago actions at Short Creek. The Short Creek raid had been publi
cized as being all about religious beliefs. With The Family, religion had been nothing but a thin veneer over an ongoing criminal enterprise. Governor Pyle had lost his election after Short Creek. Ali suspected that even with the death toll, Governor Dunham would come out smelling like a rose. The fact that she had been carried away from the incident with life-threatening injuries almost guaranteed that her glowing political legacy would continue to shine.

  But what about Sister Anselm and me? Ali wondered as she turned off Manzanita Hills Road and onto her driveway. What happened may be Governor Dunham’s responsibility, but it’s ours, too.

  38

  The space at the top of the driveway was full of cars—Chris and Athena’s new Ford Flex, Ali’s mother’s blue Buick, and a bright red Ford Fusion Ali thought belonged to Cami Lee from High Noon. Colin and Colleen came racing out of the house, followed hard upon by Bella. The kids were in the lead as they left the porch, but Bella beat them to and through the gate. By the time Ali opened the car door, Bella made an impossible leap, scrambling into the vehicle and up onto Ali’s lap. Laughing through a barrage of doggy kisses, Ali exited the Cayenne and bent down to greet the kids.

  “Where were you?” Colleen demanded, greeting Ali with a serious frown. “Mommy was worried about you and so was Daddy.”

  B. arrived on the scene and swung Colin up onto his shoulders. “And well they should have been,” he told them. “It’s been a tough night.”

  “Daddy said you were chasing bad guys. Did you get them?” Colin wanted to know.

  “I think so,” Ali told him. “I hope so.”

  By then the adults had made their way out of the house. First came Ali’s parents. Edie Larson pulled her daughter into a tight hug. “You’ve got to quit scaring us this way,” she ordered.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Ali said. “Didn’t mean to.”