by Bush, Nancy
And then she stomped over to Abel’s truck
Chapter Twenty-Five
Monday morning, Auggie sat in Lieutenant Cawthorne’s office, one eye on the clock that sat on his boss’s desk. He’d been called in early, but he was bound and determined to meet Danziger at ten at his local Bank of America. He’d planned on picking him up, but Danziger had called and said he had his own vehicle and would rather meet him there. Auggie had to agree, but he wanted Danziger and the audiotape wrapped up before he spilled what he knew to the lieutenant.
Cawthorne strode into the room. “Good, you’re here,” he said. He was the youngest lieutenant on the force, and there was something rough-and-tumble about him that had remained from his days as a detective. On the whole, he and Auggie got on well. They shared some of the same sensibilities, and political pressure from above, like what was coming down on the Saldano case, pissed them both off.
“The feds think they’ve found the man who made the bomb,” Cawthorne said without preamble. He stood behind his desk and threw a glance out his office window, not being the kind to sit down and have a long tete-a-tete.
“Good,” Auggie said. “Maybe we’ll get some traction on the case.”
“This guy’s known to them. No ideological issues here, he’s strictly for hire.”
“So, who hired him?” Since Auggie was ostensibly no longer on the case, he had to tread carefully.
“That is the next question to be answered.” He glanced Auggie’s way. “I have another job for you. Undercover. Looks like insurance fraud. Arson.”
Auggie nodded slowly. “Can you give me today on the Saldano case?”
“And have you piss them off some more? Get another call from the captain?”
He decided to lay his cards on the table after all. “I met with Jay Danziger over the weekend. He has an audiotape that he’s getting me today. A conversation between two or three people in the warehouse, discussing some kind of smuggling operation apparently.”
Cawthorne turned from the window and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you heard this tape?”
“Not yet.”
“Nobody’s going to be happy you got this on your own.”
“Danziger was apparently doing some . . . soft . . . investigation into the Saldanos before the bombing. That’s how he got this tape. He gave a copy of it to Maxwell Saldano a couple weeks before the bomb went off.”
“He should have given it directly to us.”
“He’s not convinced it’s the reason for the bombing.”
Cawthorne harrumphed. “When are you getting a copy?”
“I’m meeting Danziger at his bank. It’s in the safe deposit box.”
The lieutenant made a face. Auggie waited on tenterhooks. He knew how unpopular Cawthorne was going to be if he allowed him back on the case.
“Okay, one day,” he said. “As soon as you get the tape, bring it back here. And bring Danziger, too.”
“I’ll ask,” Auggie said dubiously.
“Bethwick and Donley will want to talk to him.”
“I know.”
“Where’s the man been the past few days?” Cawthorne asked.
Though the question sounded rhetorical, Auggie freely answered. “Rock Springs. And it sounds like he’s heading right back there.”
“What’s in Rock Springs?” he asked curiously.
“A woman.”
“Ah. Well, I’ll take the heat for you today, but that’s all we got.”
Auggie was already out of his chair, cell in hand. Head down, he strode out of the office, scrolling through his stored numbers. As he pulled up Danziger’s, he damn near ran into someone in the hall. “Sorry,” he muttered as he punched in the number.
“Rafferty?”
Auggie glanced around and saw it was Geoffrey Stevens, the tech who’d shown him the videotape collected from the cameras on the buildings opposite Saldano Industries. “Oh, hey, Geoff.”
“You’re off the Saldano case, right?”
“Got reprieved for a few more hours.”
“Really?”
His tone of interest caught up Auggie, who was walking away. He shot a look back at the tech and asked, “What?”
“I’d rather give this to you than the feds.”
Auggie slowed to a stop. “What have you got?”
“Camera footage from that building that’s for lease on the opposite end of the block from where the Winters woman was. I don’t have to tell you how hard it’s been to find who was in charge of those cameras. Leasing agent wouldn’t help us. Corporate kept passing the ball from exec to exec.”
“What did you get?” Auggie interrupted.
“The tapes came through this morning, so I did a preliminary check. About three hours before detonation, someone in a trench coat, hat, wig, the works, walked into the lobby. The front of the building’s open during the day, per the leasing agent. The only cameras they’ve got are set up in the lobby and outside the building. Well, the elevators have cameras, too, but the elevators aren’t operational right now. She had to take the stairs.”
“She?” Auggie asked carefully.
“I can’t say for certain, but it’s the way she walks,” he said. “Even with men’s shoes. Kind of a hip sway. When I take a closer look, I think we’ll find it’s a woman.”
A woman. “Son of a bitch.”
“Come on and take a look,” Geoffrey invited, but Auggie had already fallen in step beside him. He had just enough time before he was due to meet Danziger.
Jordanna was writing down notes as fast as her fingers could fly across the keyboard. Her thoughts were in no chronological order, but it didn’t matter. All she needed to do was put something down to remind herself later.
She thought she might be getting used to instant coffee. Some of the stuff on the market wasn’t half bad.
Dance had phoned her this morning on his way to the bank. “Rafferty called and wants me to stop by the station afterward. I said no, but he was insistent. Said that I’d want to be there. For all the times I’ve tried to get law enforcement to talk to me and hit a brick wall, I think I’d better go.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be there soon,” he promised. “Be safe.”
“You, too.”
She settled back to her computer, but had barely dragged her mind off Dance and back to her notes, when her cell rang again. She picked up the phone, looked at the screen, and said, “Rusty.” This time she answered. “Hey, there, Rusty. I’m sorry I didn’t call back. I did get your text. I haven’t seen Todd.”
“Todd’s dead,” he stated flatly.
“What?” She nearly knocked over her coffee cup.
“Found his truck at Fool’s Falls lookout this morning, but he wasn’t in it. There was blood on the ground, just on the other side of the curve. Right about where Emily went over, y’know?” He choked, sounding like he was breaking down for a moment, then pulled himself together. “I looked over the edge and there was a car down there. A gray sedan. I called the cops and they found out it’s a rental. Rented to Kara Winters.”
“What?” she repeated herself, more faintly. “What do you mean? Where’s Kara?”
“Don’t know. Todd was in the driver’s seat. He’s dead, Jordanna.” Rusty sounded dazed.
“What cops found the car? Where’s Kara?”
“Drummond and a couple others . . . they took Todd by ambulance, but he’s dead. He’s gone. There’s no doubt about it.” He was chattering. “They’re pulling the car out now. I think Drummond called your father, but I knew you’d want to know.”
“Yes, yes . . . I’ll be right there.” She was already in motion, checking for her purse, turning back to switch off her laptop.
“I’ll see you here.”
She moved so fast that the phone slipped out of her hand and crashed to the floor. “Shit, oh, shit.” She swept it up, relieved to see it was still working. As she grabbed her jacket, she belatedly listened to the message Rusty had left on her voice
mail, which said he’d just found the truck, he was going to look around for his friend and that he hoped Todd had called Jordanna.
She ran down the wooden walkway to the back door, her feet clattering loudly. She was sick with renewed fear. How could Todd be dead? Where was Kara? And why was Todd in her rental car? How had she gotten to Portland? Had she gotten to Portland? Jesus. Had she really even called Jennie . . . ?
Jordanna punched in Jennie’s cell number as she jumped in her RAV. She counted her heartbeats, waiting for her stepmother to answer. “Come on, come on.”
Finally Jennie picked up. “Jordanna,” she said. And in that one word Jordanna knew she was already thinking along the same lines as she was. “You know about the car over the cliff? That they think it’s Kara’s car?”
“Yes. What about the text, Jennie? When did that actually come in? And what did it say? I mean, exactly. What did it say?”
“I—can’t look at it when I’m on the phone,” she said tearfully. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll hang up. Look at it, and call me,” she ordered. “Do you hear me? Call me back. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s at the clinic, maybe on his way home now.”
“Okay . . . okay. Call me back,” she said again. She wasn’t quite sure Jennie was really hearing her.
“I will,” Jennie promised.
Jordanna clicked off and drove with studied concentration. She counted in her head until Jennie called back. Though it was mere minutes, it felt like forever before Jennie rang through again to say that Kara’s message had come in directly before Jennie had phoned Jordanna with the information. She repeated the message, then spelled it out just as it was written.
Jordanna said, “She got ‘Portland’ wrong and ‘sorry’?”
“Well, it is a text.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Kara’s most common form of communication was texting, and Jordanna always noticed how correct it was.
“Maybe she was driving,” Jennie suggested.
“Yeah, maybe. Okay, thanks.” With that, she tossed her phone onto the passenger seat and pressed her toe to the accelerator, driving as fast as she dared up Wilhoit to Summit Ridge, past the older Benchley’s farm with their NO TRESPASSING sign, and past the drive to Zach Benchley’s farm. She flew by the entrance to the old cemetery, then slowed for the curves before Fool’s Falls. Suddenly she had to stand on the brakes because there were vehicles parked haphazardly all along the road. One of the cop cars had its light bar flashing. A winch was just pulling the gray sedan over the lip of the cliff.
She slid to a stop and leapt from her SUV. “No sign of Kara?” she asked to the crowd at large.
“You’re going to have to move your car,” the same young officer from the night before warned her.
“Fuck that.” Rusty was hurrying toward her, his strawberry-blond hair disheveled. He swept her into a full-body hug. Jordanna hugged him back, aware his whole body was trembling.
“Kara?” she asked again, when Rusty released her.
He shook his head, looking lost. “They took Todd to the hospital morgue in Malone. I can’t believe he’s gone. Why was he in that car?”
She felt terrible about Todd, but her worry about Kara was in the forefront of her mind. “Do they have an idea when this happened?”
“Yesterday sometime.”
“My sister supposedly texted that she was heading into Portland yesterday. But if this was her car, it doesn’t make sense. You said Todd was found behind the wheel?”
“Yes.”
“Could they have met up with each other?”
Rusty’s eyes moved to the edge of the road, where tire tracks ran over the edge. “Here’s Shitface,” he muttered.
Peter Drummond’s head could just be seen clearing the lip of the road as he trudged up from the crash site. The rest of his body appeared step by step, and then he reached the asphalt, dusting dirt from his hands. He looked at Jordanna, his expression hard to read, then he strode over to her, lifting a chin at the gray sedan that was being moved onto the flatbed of a tow truck. “Your sister’s vehicle.”
“That’s what I heard. But you haven’t seen her?”
“Nope. Did she know Douglas?” Drummond had turned his attention to Rusty.
Rusty shook his head. “Todd just met Jordanna the other day, and he was . . . he liked her. If he knew Kara, he woulda said something to me, or her.”
“He liked you?” Now Drummond was looking at Jordanna again.
“I barely knew him,” she said.
Drummond said, “You seem to have a few admirers. Where’s Mr. Danziger?”
She didn’t want to tell him that Dance was out of town, so she just said, “Working on a story.”
“The story about the missing body in the cemetery?” His tone suggested he thought her account was a total fabrication.
“Among others,” she said shortly.
“What happened to Todd?” Rusty broke in. “He didn’t just run off the road.”
Drummond wasn’t ready to give it up. “This body in the cemetery that you say you saw—”
“That I did see,” she corrected.
“A woman’s body. If that’s true, you think there’s a chance it could have been your sister?”
Jordanna’s heart jolted before reason reasserted itself. “The body in the grave had been dead for some time. I talked to my sister on Saturday.”
“Huh. Well, it’s a mystery then, isn’t it?” He glanced around, their conversation apparently over.
“Someone did this to Todd, Pete,” Rusty said, his voice raspy. “You need to find out who.”
“Oh, I will,” Drummond said, all business again. He strode back to his car, the one with the light bar still circulating with red and blue, and got on his walkie, though Jordanna wondered if he was really doing anything more than posturing. She didn’t trust him to help her.
Where was Kara?
Grabbing her cell phone from her purse, she texted her sister once more. Found your car over a cliff. Looks like an accident. She purposely left out that Todd was behind the wheel. Please tell me you’re okay.
She waited for nearly an hour, but Kara never returned her text.
The person on camera moved with a slight hitch to her hips. Even with the layers of clothes, the wig, the sunglasses that looked more male style than female, the chin tucked into the overcoat, covering up the lower part of her face, Dance would bet it was Carmen.
“You’re saying she pushed the remote,” he said.
Rafferty said, “Seems likely.”
They were in a video room at the station. Dance couldn’t take his eyes off the image on the screen. Carmen was just stepping into the building’s lobby.
“Can you think of a reason your ex would want to kill you?” Rafferty asked.
He almost laughed. “She’s Carmen Saldano.”
“Meaning?”
“She’s been trained to get what she wants at all cost. If she can’t achieve it, she’s just as likely to destroy it.”
“She didn’t want the divorce.”
He shook his head, his throat dry. Though she was the one who’d initiated divorce proceedings, he’d always known she hadn’t really wanted it. He’d just thought she’d finally recognized there was nothing worth saving in their marriage.
Rafferty cleared his throat and said, “Maxwell Saldano was called away from the bomb site because of his father’s illness.”
Dance ripped his gaze away to meet the detective’s eyes. “Carmen wouldn’t have told him. You think Victor knew and faked it.”
“It’s a possibility. Maybe Maxwell knew, too.”
Dance struggled with all of it. He’d considered them his family.
“Federal agents Bethwick and Donley are on their way,” the detective said. “They’re already pissed that I’m involved. Seeing this isn’t going to improve their moods. They’re going to want to talk to you.”
“They’ve got ten minutes, then I’m out of here
.” He hesitated. “What about Carmen?”
“We’re picking her up,” he said. “Don’t go home.”
“Don’t worry.”
Jordanna tried calling Dance, but the phone went straight to voice mail for the third time. She knew he and Rafferty had probably picked up the audiotape from the bank and were at the police station by now. She needed to talk to him, but he’d probably turned his phone off. It’s what she would do when facing the police, not to mention the FBI or any other federal agents.
She texted him, also for the third time, saying the same thing she’d said the first two times. Cops found my sisters car at the bottom of a cliff. Todd Douglas was in the drivers seat, dead. Kara’s not answering texts or calls. Don’t think she ever left for Portland.
When he turned on his phone, he would see that and call her.
The crime tech team was scouring Summit Ridge Road. She realized they were collecting bits of blood. Todd’s blood . . . or Kara’s. She inhaled sharply. She couldn’t think like that.
“I’m going to go,” she said to Rusty, who’d wound down into silence.
“Where?” he asked, as if there was nowhere he could think of to be.
“I don’t know yet.”
She walked back to her car. She kept going back to her last conversation with Kara. Who had her sister seen in town? She’d recognized someone . . . Emily’s old boyfriend? That had been the thrust of the conversation. But who was that? Not Martin Lourde. According to him, Emily had broken up with him, not the other way around, and he was still affected by her death. Not Rusty. He was Jordanna’s age and Emily wouldn’t have looked at someone younger, and even if she did, Jordanna would find it hard to believe she’d choose goofy, freckled Rusty. There were tons of guys from Emily’s class who could fill the bill, guys Jordanna scarcely remembered. She’d only had eyes really for Nate.
Nate.
Jordanna swallowed hard, making herself think back. She’d been entranced with Nate Calverson. A really deep crush. He’d been the handsome, wealthy, everything guy, whereas she was the doomed, half-crazy Treadwell girl, not even the prettiest one. That had been Emily.