The Trophy Hunter

by J. M. Zambrano

  “Another one?” Diana paused, looked around to make sure she was still alone. She suddenly felt trapped in the narrow hallway of the near-empty restaurant.

  “It wasn’t a name I was familiar with. Some associate of Flannigan’s.” Tamara paused. “Here it is. Shane Cutler.”

  Diana stifled a gasp.

  “Dr. Bell is representing Mr. Flannigan,” continued Tamara. “He’s picking him up from a rehab center.”

  “Flannigan’s in rehab?”

  “They’re probably on their way to Denver as we speak. Something in this case has Jess and Dr. Bell very worried about you. I gave Jess the information from your calendar. I think she went to that taxidermy shop. She’s called a couple of times, but I haven’t heard from her in over an hour.”

  “I’m going to try Winston now. I’ll get back to you,” said Diana. “If for some reason I don’t, let Jess or Winston know were I am. Is it snowing there yet?”

  “No, it’s just really dark. You can’t even see the foothills. Do you want me to stay late?”

  “No. Go on home. Wait, no. Stay until five in case Jess or Winston calls. Then go home. If I get hold of Winston, I’ll call you so you can relax.”

  She could hear Tamara taking a breath, as if she was reluctant to say something. Then, “Diana, are you still with Darren Rogart?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Is he…around?” Tamara finally asked.

  “I don’t know where he is.” She decided not to worry Tamara any more than she already had. “I’m okay. I’ll be back in touch.”

  “Be safe,” said Tamara. Then they hung up.

  Diana searched for more coins in her wallet, inserted them and punched in Winston’s cell number. Her call went to voice mail. Damn! “Winston, it’s me, Diana. I’m in Evergreen. I don’t have my cell. I think Jess is up here somewhere looking for me. I can’t leave till I find her. I’m headed for the local police, but damned if I know what I’m going to say when I get there. You were right about Rogart.” She hung up, then regretted the unsettling content of her message.

  As she walked back to the dining area, the dinner crowd was beginning to file in. Crowd was an overstatement. At least there were a few people dining and waiting to dine. The restaurant was done in a mountain motif. A gas fireplace shimmered invitingly. She felt relatively safe there. The smell of food cooking reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but even the thought of food made her gag.

  A matronly hostess with a wide, friendly face asked if she could seat her. “No, thank you,” replied Diana. “Can you tell me where to find the local police station?” As she watched the hostess’s smile fade, she wished she’d taken Jess’s advice and gotten herself a GPS unit.

  “We don’t have town police,” replied the woman. “Jeffco Sheriff substation’s over by the library.” The woman gave her directions that Diana committed to memory. Then she had another thought. Brookvale had been Darren’s stated destination—the site of Joe’s cabin. It had looked really close to Evergreen on the map she’d consulted that morning. But during her drive behind Rogart, she’d seen no sign of another town.

  “Wait,” she called to the departing hostess. The woman turned, the smile returning to her face, but this time it seemed more polite than friendly. “What can you tell me about the town of Brookvale?”

  The hostess shrugged plump shoulders. “What d’ you want to know?”

  “What’s there?”

  The woman rolled her eyes upward, as if trying to recall. “’bout three acres or so of forest. It’s not exactly a town,” she began hesitantly.

  “But it’s on the map.”

  “’cause it was a stagecoach stop in the eighteen hundreds,” said the hostess. “It’s got a few historical buildings left, some cabins, but it’s not really a town. Whole thing got sold last year as a package deal. One of our locals bought it. I hear it’s being turned into an artist colony or some such cultural thing.”

  Diana nodded and thanked the woman. A package sale seemed to rule out Flannigan’s owning a cabin there. One more lie for Rogart. Unless Flannigan had bought the whole town. But he wasn’t a local. And he didn’t seem the type to fund a cultural endeavor. If only she’d brought her laptop, she could’ve checked out the ownership.

  The drive to the sheriff’s station took about three minutes. An anal-retentive sky was still holding back its burden of snow. Diana pulled up to the building and parked in one of the two visitor’s parking spots. She would go in and say…what? Start with Trisha’s disappearance? Then she remembered Marge Lane’s brush-off from the Feds and Custer County. Would anything likely be accomplished by reporting the incident with Rogart? Would her strongest complaint be that he stole her cell phone? She tried to imagine the next question. And her answer: It must have been while we were kissing. Of course, that was before I tried to run over him.

  With a jolt, she considered the possibility that Rogart might be filing his own complaint against her. But where? There was no other vehicle in the substation lot. Why else would he have given up the chase? Was the chase all in her mind? Where was Jess?

  Then she remembered that Jess had been going to interview that woman who had painted Darren’s portrait. The humongous paean to his overblown ego that hung in the entry hall of his home. The same woman whom Jess said was Rogart’s alibi in the Strickland murder. Arlette of the double sir-name. What was it? Cruz-Ramos. She could almost see the distinctive signature on the painting. Jess had filled in what the “A” stood for. One more reason to have a GPS.

  She gave up on the sheriff’s station and drove next door to the library where she hoped she’d have access to a computer and the internet.

  The library was small by Denver standards and nearly empty when Diana entered. A white-haired woman directed her to the public computers. There were two, neither in use. Diana logged in the necessary information, then typed “Brookvale” in the search field. What the screen disgorged was meager. She scrolled down and saw: Town sold to local artist… When she pulled up the entire article, she saw the name again: Arlette Cruz-Ramos.

  She copied the article, then went on the Jefferson County site looking for Arlette Cruz-Ramos in Evergreen. While this site offered online information, she needed the property address to access it; so she looked Arlette up on Switchboard. The artist was listed, along with a map to her residence.

  Before leaving the library, Diana emailed both Jess and Winston.

  When she reached the Cruz-Ramos estate, it was 5:00 p.m. and nearly dark. The angry clouds indistinguishable in a dark sky now spit snow on her windshield. The wipers scraped, making an irritating sound. Not enough moisture to glide smoothly, yet just enough fine snow to require their engagement.

  Diana pulled up to the closed gates and pressed the call button on the keypad. She had a speech prepared. But when she glanced beyond the gates, into the courtyard, the sight of Jess’s red Camaro parked inside knocked it right out of her head.

  Chapter 57

  A man’s unnaturally high voice answered Diana over the gate intercom. She asked for Arlette Cruz-Ramos.

  “Mrs. Cruz-Ramos doesn’t receive unscheduled visitors,” replied the voice.

  “I’m Diana Martin, an attorney from Denver here to see Ms. Cruz-Ramos on an urgent matter. Apparently she made an exception for my associate, Jess Edwards,” replied Diana crisply.

  “She makes no exceptions.” His tone matched the outside chill.

  Diana shivered, but remained firm. “My associate’s car is in your driveway. I can read her license plate from here.” Well, almost. Diana squinted through the snowy drizzle. She had no doubt that it was Jess’s car.

  The next voice she heard over the intercom was a woman’s. “I’ll have to ask you to leave, Ms. Martin.”

  “Are you Arelette Cruz-Ramos?”

  “You must leave now, Ms. Martin.” The woman’s voice was overtly hostile.

  “Not until I speak with Ms. Edwards.” This was so wrong. Even if Jess
wasn’t there, why the hostility? Well, she was a stranger. And this was pretty far off the beaten track. The caution might make sense, if not for Jess’s car parked on the property.

  “There’s no Ms. Edwards here,” replied the woman.

  Diana thought of asking for Darren Rogart, but revisited their last encounter. She would like to hear the reaction this brought from the woman, but the risk of having him appear was too frightening. Neither of his vehicles was in sight, but that didn’t mean anything.

  Oh, what the hell. “Is Darren Rogart there?”

  Silence. Bone-chilling as the increasing snow. Diana imagined she could hear the sound of breathing, but decided it was probably the swelling wind that had commenced to scatter the loose snow.

  Then, the woman’s voice again, “If you don’t leave immediately, I’ll be forced to call security.”

  “Go ahead,” snapped Diana. “I’d welcome the chance to talk to them. Shouldn’t take a deputy long to get here from the substation.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t find our security people as friendly as the local authorities,” threatened the woman. Then Diana heard a sharp click, as if the woman had terminated the connection.

  Diana backed up, and then angled around to the side of the wall that surrounded the estate. Damn! If she just had her cell. The prudent thing to do would be to go back to town and report what had happened. Now she had something tangible. There was no way Jess would have left her car and gone somewhere else. And if she were inside the estate, there was no way she wouldn’t have made her presence known. Unless she’d been prevented from doing so.

  What if she was wrong about the license plate? Just like there was more than one silver Ram with a vintage hood ornament, there were bound to be other red Camaros. She pulled her car close to the wall, shut off the engine and got out. If she could find an opening somewhere without setting off an alarm, she could confirm that the car was in fact Jess’s. As Diana crept along the outside wall, she heard a hissing sound above her. Psst!

  She staggered back. Her heart lurched as she looked up into the man’s face. He must be standing on something, but he was definitely tall. Like a scarecrow. Or someone on stilts. His brown eyes under bushy brows looked as frightened as she felt. He touched a bony index finger to his lips. She nodded and swallowed the scream in her throat.

  “She went with Darren Rogart,” he whispered, inclining his head toward the road leading away from the property. Diana swallowed again, trying to find her voice, blinked once. When she looked back, he was gone.

  Chapter 58

  Diana drove back to the sheriff’s substation, parked and entered the small concrete building. A deputy with a thick head of mouse-brown hair sat hunched over his evening meal—a bun with barbequed mystery meat on a paper plate. Beside him on the table sat a king-sized drink in a red-and-white paper cup.

  Diana cleared her throat to get his attention. He belched in response.

  Just go for it. “Is there someone I can talk to about a missing person?”

  He turned toward her, wiping barbeque sauce on a red-and-white paper napkin as he did so. “I’m it,” he said. A bit of barbeque sauce clung to his bushy mustache.

  “My name is Diana Martin. I’m an attorney—”

  “Martin? Whoa, lady, hold it right there,” he interrupted.

  “Excuse me?” Diana stepped back.

  The deputy glanced down at a notepad on the table where he’d been eating. Then he got up, walked to the front window and looked out at her car. “And you just come from Mrs. Ramos’s place?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You’re lookin’ for your friend who drives a red car.” Now he wasn’t asking.

  “Yes, Mrs. Ramos has obviously called you.”

  He gave Diana a knowing look, then returned to his sandwich. “Obvious you been botherin’ the woman.”

  “I suppose she told you that my friend left with someone. That’s why her car is still there.” Diana felt futility setting in. “I can assure you, if my friend left, it wasn’t willingly.”

  The chair scraped as the deputy stood up again. “Lady, they ain’t no red car at Mrs. Ramos’s and they ain’t no black gal there neither. Never was. You keep away from Mrs. Ramos or I’ll have to call for backup and run ya down t’ Golden for a sobriety test.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You just go on down to the hotel, check in an’ things’ll look better in the mornin’” He winked, reminding her of Rogart. “We don’t take kindly to folks botherin’ Mrs. Ramos.”

  Diana bristled. “She’s lying. You said ‘black gal.’ I never mentioned my friend’s race.”

  The deputy rolled his eyes at her, picked up the phone and punched. “Hey, Matt, I got me a problem. How long it take you t’ get somebody up from Golden?”

  For a moment, she thought he’d relented until she heard, “I think I got me a harasser, a distrurber of the peace. Can’t rule out drugs or alcohol’s involved.”

  As Diana backed out of the office, she saw him hang up the phone, a smug look on his face. Then he turned back to his meal.

  Chapter 59

  Diana climbed hurriedly into her car and drove next door to the library where the redneck deputy couldn’t watch her every move. She tried to sort through diminishing options as snow blanketed the car, and her rapid breathing quickly fogged up the windows.

  At least she could scratch the possibility of Rogart having Cutler with him. If he had teamed up with Cutler, Rogart seemed the most likely candidate to have ended the association—permanently. But why? If Rogart and Cutler had some internet porn scheme going, why would Rogart kill his partner? What else was at stake?

  Two missing women and two dead men. All with connections to Darren Rogart. Was Jess getting too close to the truth? Was that why he took her? Frustration brought Diana close to tears as she thought of poor Joe Flannigan. One of the missing women was his daughter. No wonder his behavior had been erratic. Then she started tabulating all the things Joe couldn’t have done. Probably the only thing the man was guilty of was being half out of his mind with grief.

  She had to find a phone. Diana got out of her car and climbed the steps to the library door. She breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing it was still open. Inside, a half dozen or so people—mostly young—sat at tables or prowled the rows of bookcases. The librarian she had seen before dozed at her desk.

  The computer area was unoccupied. She logged onto the closest machine and sent emails to Winston and Tamara. There was no time to wait for outside help. But at least she’d leave a record of where she’d gone and why.

  Then she thought of the Rogart children alone and unsupervised. If she failed in what she was about to attempt and dropped off the face of the earth like Brandi and Trisha…and…no…don’t even think it…Jess…nobody was going to know about Rogart’s neglect of those kids. She couldn’t believe she’d once entertained the dream of helping him raise them. The thought that nobody was going to know the true face of Rogart was scarier than any physical danger.

  Diana found a pay phone next to the computer area and left a concise voicemail message informing Marge of the situation and her concern for the Rogart children. Maybe Marge would help with both problems. Jeffco for sure was not going to come to the aid of some nut that had ruffled the feathers of their local celebrity.

  Where could she get help right now? Still holding the phone, she looked at the strangers going about their business in the library, oblivious to her plight. She may as well have been invisible. A feeling of isolation permeated her being. She ached for a familiar face or voice. Then she entered Winston’s number. If she could just hear his voice, she might have the strength to go after Jess. Her call went to voicemail again. He was probably with Joe at the FBI office. She left another message in a small voice that sounded foreign to her ears.

  Outside the library, she found a blanket of snow covering her car. She ducked inside to start the engine, then got out and brushed snow off as the defroster c
leared the windshield. Snow still covered the side and rear windows. As she got back in the car, she had the weird feeling of entering a coffin.

  She wished for that sense in birds and animals that told them where to go without sight or sound, some radar that would bring her back to the spot where she’d last seen Rogart.

  The town was so quiet. Few cars on the streets. People headed to warm homes and dinner. Her stomach cramped at the thought. She reached over and opened the console, half-remembering the energy bar left there a week or so ago. She grabbed the bar, tore the wrapper off with her teeth as she drove slowly to where she remembered entering the town after fleeing Rogart.

  The snow had moved east as she retraced her route as best she could. The energy bar was tasteless. Just as well. She reached down for her water bottle, unscrewed the lid and took a long drink.

  There was not a doubt in her mind that the cabin Rogart had attributed to Joe Flannigan was really the property purchased by Arlette Cruz-Ramos. If Rogart had an accomplice, it was likely the Cruz-Ramos woman and maybe the skinny man as well. There had been a real destination that afternoon. But it was Rogart’s place, not Joe’s.

  When she was following Rogart, she must have been almost there when some primitive inner radar had caused her to pull over and stop. The fact that Rogart had driven around the mountain and approached her from the east in another vehicle indicated the proximity of the destination.

  She concentrated on the curves, turned up the defroster as the windows fogged up again. A hulking, naked deciduous tree by the side of the road rose up in her vision like an eerie hitchhiker. Her brain had sorted out that it was a tree before her body stopped trembling.

  If the scarecrow with the high voice at the Ramos estate was an accomplice, why did he tell her Jess was with Rogart? Well, duh. She was doing exactly what Rogart wanted. He knew her. He played her like an instrument. He knew all the chords to strike.