He began to read through the files systematically, from beginning to end: the initial report, the follow-ups, the interviews, the forensic material. He read the police reports extra carefully, looking for the kind of things that showed up in police reports that were considered irrelevant so not followed through on. Then there was additional information not included in the police report itself because the investigator making the report considered it irrelevant … or even possibly pointing suspicion elsewhere, when what was wanted was a quick and easy suspect, locked up, and the tourist town of Dudley safe and sound. He’d like to talk to the detective with Dudley PD who was the official investigator. He checked the name – Luna, Ben Luna – and wrote it down.
Go to the scene, check it out, hunt down witnesses, not only Mrs Acuna, who’d heard the shots and called the police, but what about other nearby residents, any of them interviewed? Not in the files. What about the bartender at the St Elmo Bar – the bar Chico presumably staggered out of just before he went down the alleyway? Had Chico been with anyone there? And the Coopers, what was their stay like at the Copper Queen Hotel? Were they nervous, apprehensive? Talk to the staff there.
And talk to Chico himself, of course.
He would do everything in a systematic way from scratch, as if he were the detective in charge, starting an investigation.
He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and let it simmer for a while. Theory of the case. There was always the theory of the case. Sometimes it helped to have one, sometimes it blinded you to the evidence. In this case the theory was a drug cartel hit, or, more to his liking, a hit man hired by an unknown person, disguised as a drunken accident. Want to kill someone close to the border? Blame the drug cartels.
How would it have happened, exactly?
The most logical was that Chico was at the wrong place at the wrong time and the shooter took advantage of that – put the gun in Chico’s hand and split. According to the report where Chico was interviewed, he didn’t remember anything. He needed to talk to Chico.
No one involved in investigating the crime had spoken to the relatives of the victims. Anyone they knew had a vendetta against Wes and Carrie? After all, if someone other than Chico had killed Wes and Carrie, surely they would want the truth to come out.
Unless one of them had done it.
A family feud?
Then there was Kate, who he kind of had a hankering for. Why? Because he was an asshole.
He yawned, stretched. His shoulder pain had settled down, wasn’t too bad. He stood up, aware he was feeling just a little more up than he had for a while. His cellphone chimed.
Lupita.
‘Malcolm here,’ he said.
‘Remember Kate? You said you were going to talk to her?’
‘Haven’t done that yet,’ Malcolm said.
‘Well,’ Lupita said, ‘I hope it’s not too late.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘She was in a bad car wreck.’
‘Kate?’ said Malcolm. ‘Kate was in a bad car wreck? You’re kidding. When? Is she okay?’
‘Like, maybe an hour or so ago. She missed the turn from Sierra Vista. My cousin Reynaldo told me. His girlfriend was coming back from Sierra Vista, and—’
‘Wait.’ For a moment he was stunned, didn’t know what he was even thinking. ‘I mean, is she alive?’
‘What I told you is all I know,’ said Lupita. ‘If I find out any more I’ll call you.’
Malcolm opened his laptop, scanning the news, looking for reports of a fatal accident on Highway 80 and had a memory from a couple of years ago. Cindy, his dead wife, one morning, very sad, very down; whatever she’d been taking had stopped working, and he knew they were in for another bout of deep depression. It seemed like things with Cindy went on and on forever, changing all the time, yet nothing ever really changed.
He had thought about this while driving to work back then, through the city traffic. Thought about his biggest fear, that she would eventually give up, kill herself. On that drive long ago in Phoenix, thinking about Cindy maybe killing herself had filled him with exhaustion. The truth was the next thought he’d had was, God damn, why doesn’t she just go ahead and do it? That was months and months before it happened. He hadn’t meant it at all.
Rain was spattering on the car windshield. The smell of strawberries was all pervasive. Kate had called the Co-op first thing and talked to Windsong, but someone on the road must have called the highway patrol because a police car showed up right away. Kate was sitting in her car, and a highway patrolman was pacing around it, when Windsong showed up in his old Crown Vic that he’d bought years ago at a city auction.
‘Jesus, you could be dead,’ Windsong said. ‘What happened?’
‘A tire blew.’
‘Jeez,’ said Windsong. ‘Why is it women never notice when their tires are low?’
‘My tires weren’t low.’ Kate got up, almost fell.
‘Hey, hey,’ Windsong said, ‘take it easy.’
Kate steadied herself. ‘They were almost new, goddamn it! I bought them in California. Three months ago I had everything checked out when I knew I was leaving Harry. It’s not my fault, Windsong, don’t you try to make it that way. Something weird happened. I don’t know what. I heard these bangs.’ Kate started to cry.
‘Now, now. Sorry.’
‘Windsong,’ she cried, ‘do you ever feel sometimes like you’ve done things that don’t make sense, like you don’t even know why you did them?’
Windsong looked thoughtful, standing there in his drawstring yoga pants, his sandals with red socks, his yard sale black T-shirt with the slogan ‘Insufficient Memory’. ‘Sometimes.’
‘I need some time off,’ Kate said. ‘I’m going to go see my friend Ellen in New Jersey.’
Late, late that night, Malcolm browsed his computer and discovered Kate was in fact alive. He had a few things he wanted to investigate first, but he’d talk to her pretty soon. After all, she wasn’t going anywhere.
FOURTEEN
Kate put her purse on the scanner belt – her small backpack with its three ounce containers, a magazine and a book, her iPod shuffle and ear buds. She took off her black with white trim Converse sneakers, put them on the scanner belt, then walked through security. She held her arms up as the woman guard ran the sensor over her body. Kate didn’t mind the sensor, but she hated to fly.
‘Not to worry,’ Dakota had said. ‘I’ve got something—’
‘Not sublingual vitamin B,’ Kate said. ‘That stuff doesn’t work. I’m tired of people giving me organic solutions that don’t work.’
‘This will. Ativan. A pharmaceutical. Take one an hour before you get on the plane, no problem. Here – I’ll give you two. One for the plane, and one for upcoming stresses.’
I’m thrilled, thrilled, Ellen had written in response to Kate’s email. I’ll try to get there before you, but I could get tied up. Just in case, there’s a key under the rock by the door. Oh, and here’s my phone number so we can text.
Kate bought some water in a plastic bottle at the restaurant and sat on a vinyl chair to wait, listening to the sound of planes landing, taking off, the screams of inanimate objects. On CNN they were reporting the story of a little girl missing.
‘I know she’s alive,’ said her mother, ‘I can feel it.’
Dead, thought Kate, she’s most likely dead. She reached in her purse, found her little pillbox with the two Ativans Dakota had given her and took one.
The plane flew over puffs of bright trees, then she could see the Atlantic Ocean, like beaten silver and in the distance, the towers of New York City. Final descent, she imagined Ellen and the old friends, whoever they were, all taking the train into the city, maybe spending the night, traipsing around Manhattan, reliving their youth. Besides, wasn’t forty the new thirty?
And then they were on the ground.
Newark, New Jersey.
Waiting to get off, Kate texted Ellen that she had landed. Then she texted Dak
ota, because she’d promised she would: Landed! She exited the plane, wheeled her carry-on to the car rental place and got herself a blue Toyota Tercel. It was chillier here, middle afternoon, than it was in Arizona. She got a sweater out of her carry-on and put it on.
It was an easy trip to the freeway, and Kate figured it was about a twenty to thirty minute drive to Ellen’s aunt’s house in the vast sea of suburbs. MapQuest said thirty-five minutes, and it was usually pessimistic. She had the printout in a pocket on her backpack, and she pulled it out and put it on the seat. Too poor, she was, for a smartphone with a GPS.
Kate had last seen Ellen more than ten years ago. She and Rick had gone into the City. They used to go regularly – it was only a couple of hours from where they lived in Vermont. Ellen was a documentary film-maker. Now that Kate was thinking about her with a little more focus, she remembered that Ellen had a raucous laugh that went on and on a little longer than it should have, but back then everyone Kate knew was a little nuts and proud of it.
Kate merged on to the freeway, driving more cautiously since the accident than she used to. She still saw, in her mind, the stop sign coming up at her out of the darkness. Although she wasn’t feeling nervous; kind of relaxed, actually – in fact, all things considered, quite relaxed. Maybe she was getting over it. In fact, at that moment she felt as though she was finally getting over every bad thing that had ever happened to her. Even new bad stuff, she could handle easily.
Ooops. The Ativan. It actually worked.
Miles later, she exited the freeway on to a suburban plaza: a couple of motels, a gas station, Radio Shack, Jack in the Box, Burger King, McDonald’s, Kentucky Colonel, Wendy’s and Kroger’s. She pulled into the Kroger’s, got out, stood in the parking lot for a moment in a kind of jet-lagged daze. Then she went inside. It was Senior Day, said a sign by the door. The aisles were full of elderly couples.
Kate found the florist department and bought a bouquet of pink and white alstroemeria and, after a moment’s consideration, a bottle of red wine. Ellen (she hoped) would appreciate it. Back in the car she checked her map and turned right coming out of the plaza.
The house, 350 Roscommon Drive, was at the end of a curving street that was off another bigger street, off a third street in an older development, lush with trees beginning to turn and green green grass. She passed several houses that were in foreclosure. The house next to 350 had a foreclosure sign in front and so did the one across from it. Behind 350 Roscommon was a patch of woods.
In front of 350 there was a ‘For Sale’ sign hanging crookedly from an iron stake, as though whoever had posted it had given up halfway through.
The driveway was empty, so presumably Ellen hadn’t arrived yet. Kate pulled in, feeling a little disappointed. By the front door a climbing rose grew over a trellis, full of yellow roses. Kate immediately regretted the alstroemeria, which had probably been injected with who knew what to keep it looking fresh and flown thousands of miles from Chile or Argentina or someplace.
The sun was getting lower now, hitting one of the windows and winking at her. Just in case, Kate pulled back the brass knocker on the door: bam, bam.
‘Ellen,’ she called. ‘Ellen, I’m here.’ Bam. bam.
No one came. Kate found the rock by the door and lifted it. There was the key. She opened the door, then got her stuff from the car, including the flowers, and went in, down a short hall, past a living room bare except for a couch, looking for the kitchen and water to put the flowers in.
The kitchen was at the end of the hall, facing west and flooded with light from the sinking sun. An older kitchen, quite big, with a linoleum floor, avocado green appliances. A dead plant stood on the window sill, possibly an African violet. Kate dropped her stuff on the chrome and Formica table in the center of the room and opened cabinets still stocked with a few dishes and pans, until she found a glass pitcher that would do for the flowers.
She turned on the faucet.
There was no water.
Shit. Experimentally, she clicked the light switch. There was no electricity. God damn it. Had Ellen actually invited her to visit in a place with no electricity and no water?
She hadn’t gotten a text from Ellen about her arrival time, but just in case she’d missed the blip she checked her phone. No text from Ellen. Her cell was running low so she turned it off. She opened her laptop, to check her email, but, of course, just her luck, there wasn’t any Wi-Fi connection.
She had Ellen’s email address and Ellen’s cellphone number, but she had no idea where Ellen actually lived, just somewhere in New York, outside of the city.
But she still felt quite calm.
‘I’m as calm as the waters that fill up Lake Michigan, calm as the waters that fill up the sea.’
A line from Lisa Strange, an indie country singer Kate particularly liked. What did she mean by that song, anyway?
Ellen probably planned to turn everything on as soon as she got here. In fact, maybe that was where she was now, getting the utilities turned on.
But, just in case, Kate went back out to the car, got in and drove to Kroger’s. This time she bought three gallon jugs of water, and then she stopped at Kentucky Colonel and got a three-piece meal: dark meat with coleslaw, mashed potatoes and gravy.
Back at the house she put the flowers in water and set the pitcher on a table in the dining room. It was still light enough to reconnoiter and see the rest of the place. Since there would be no light soon she tried to memorize where everything was – besides the dining room, a big den with no furniture in it at all, a couch in the living room and a coffee table, and two bedrooms, both with beds, thank God.
In the second bedroom, there was a bedside table and on it, as if forgotten in haste, was a framed photograph: a woman in sunglasses, a bikini and a big straw hat, smiling on a beach. Was this Ellen’s aunt? Her aunt who had died? For a moment Kate stared at the picture in the dimming light.
Things were getting to be a little weird, but so what? She was actually still amazingly relaxed. The Ativan, she thought. It’s probably horribly addictive.
Practical. What was practical? She should have bought more water; she would need it to flush the toilet. She went back to the darkening kitchen, opened some drawers and found, hallelujah, some matches and a couple of big fat lilac colored candles. She lit one of them; it smelled of lavender. Lavender, she imagined Posey at the Co-op saying excitedly, it’s so soothing.
She ate the Kentucky Colonel dinner at the chrome and red Formica table. She turned on her cell again, but there were no calls. It was getting late. Where was Ellen? What if, she thought suddenly, Ellen had been in an accident?
Alone without any working devices except a dying cellphone, beneath the quiet pharmaceutical ease of the Ativan, Kate started to worry. To stop the worrying she went outside to the little portico at the front door and stood there, listening to the night.
It was remarkably quiet, not even the chirp of a cricket, and somehow fragrant, not from the yellow roses, which seemed to have no smell, but with ozone from all the green grass. Where were the people? To one side of the house was an empty lot, to the other the house that was in foreclosure. The house across the street was dark.
She walked down the driveway, and from there she could see around the curve. Lights were on in a couple of houses, a silver SUV parked in front of one of them. Dimly, she could see someone opening the back door of the SUV and removing what was probably bags of groceries. It looked so normal, so reassuring.
Then, for some reason, standing alone in the evening at the end of a driveway in this suburban development, with the green trees and the green grass, with nothing between herself and her own company, Kate felt a nostalgia, a longing, so keen that it almost made her want to cry.
My life, where did it go? she thought. My job, I loved my job, and it just went away. And then Rick. Usually, when she thought of him it was with rage, but now, all at once, the rage had turned to grief. All those years they had seemed to be in love, done
everything together. How could he? How could he?
She went back inside, walked round the house in the dark, looking out all the windows. She went from dining room to kitchen, to bathroom to the first bedroom, the second. Kate was tired now, from the travel and, she suspected, from the Ativan. She found a dish for under the candle, lit the candle, took it into the living room and sat on the couch to wait for Ellen.
Her cellphone beeped battery low, a gentle warning. She hadn’t turned it off the last time she checked it for messages. She did now. Outside, the green lawns were dimmed, the trees, shadows. In the second bedroom a woman in a big hat and a bathing suit smiled and smiled.
FIFTEEN
The Cochise County jail is located in a complex of buildings that also includes the justice court, a mile or so outside the city limits of Dudley in an area of hilly desert.
Malcolm MacGregor, formerly of Mesa PD, parked and went in.
‘Hi there, how they treating you?’ he said, when he was face to face with Chico Flores, only some plate glass between them.
‘Okay.’ Chico’s voice was so low that Malcolm could barely hear him. He was a handsome young man, or would be if it weren’t for the orange jumpsuit that reduced him to one perp among many. ‘Thanks for coming, man.’
Next to Malcolm, a perp’s mother was weeping, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. He needed to stop thinking of the guys in here as perps, at least temporarily.
‘I guess your lawyer mentioned the Rohypnol.’
‘It makes sense, I guess.’ Chico smiled suddenly, a flash of humor. ‘But so what? I was pretty drunk. Could have just been the alcohol, you know.’
Empty Houses Page 7