Fatal Game

by Diane Capri

  The stolen van was a petri dish of trace evidence, but the most valuable samples were taken from the cabin on the driver’s side. The airbag, the steering wheel, the door handle, and the side window were spattered with trace amounts that matched a small pool of blood on the driver’s seat.

  There was no question, the crime scene techs said, that the owner of that blood had been driving the van. The driver would be found. And when she was, she’d be charged with at least four counts of vehicular homicide, as well as other crimes related to the wreck. All they had to do was identify her and then arrest her.

  A few days later, law enforcement databases had turned up a match for the blood’s DNA. Karen Warner. The same Karen Warner who was presumed dead and whose high-profile husband was convicted of her kidnap and murder.

  Jess’s mouth dried up, even after she drained the water bottle.

  It must have been a relief when investigators learned that Karen Warner had an identical twin sister, Melissa Green.

  The pendulum would have swung back to incredulity when they were unable to locate Melissa. If Melissa Green drove the stolen van, she was injured in the carnage. But she hadn’t turned up at area hospitals for treatment. She might have died, like four others involved in the crash. But her body, like her sister’s before her, had not been found.

  Jess put the papers down and rubbed her neck. There were a lot of possible answers. Melissa Green’s injury might have been relatively minor. She might have left the state, knowing she would certainly be arrested when authorities found her.

  Jess put the notes away as the plane touched down with a hard bump that bounced her into the air above her seat until the seatbelt pulled her down again. She deplaned with the other passengers and, forty minutes later, drove away in the Ford Mustang Thelma had rented.

  Melissa Green’s house was located on the outskirts of a town called Bear Hill, thirty miles from Santa Irene. The police were entering the house in less than an hour, according to Carter’s sources. She wanted to be there when they found something.

  Jess punched Melissa Green’s address into the navigation system and gunned the Mustang’s throttle onto the freeway.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Monday, May 22

  Santa Irene, Arizona

  Pony sat in the living room. The television was on, but he occupied himself carving crude images into the coffee table with a steak knife. When the blade dulled, he stabbed it into a wingback chair, which he thought too ugly to exist.

  The television’s volume was turned down, but the mute function displayed the captions.

  Some weather reporter was waving his hands around, to say today would be hot, which was a pretty safe bet for Arizona in May.

  Pony fetched another steak knife and returned to the coffee table.

  The image on the television jolted him. The middle of a small town he recognized. A crossroads he’d passed through many times. A traffic light swinging in a gentle breeze from which he’d waited for permission to proceed.

  A blonde reporter in a blue outfit talked into a microphone.

  “Cora,” Pony called.

  She wandered into the room. “What?”

  She caught the image on the screen before he answered.

  Closed captions about the manhunt for the driver of the stolen white van scrolled across the screen.

  “Hades, get in here!”

  He burst into the room, stumbling to a stop in front of the television. “What are they doing?”

  “Looking for the driver, I’m guessing,” Cora said with a smile.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  Cora shook her head. “Who knows? But we can’t go back there.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” He kicked the end table with his heavy boot, and it sailed across the room and crashed into the wall.

  “Our cover’s blown.” She looked at the television and shook her head. “I can’t go out in public in the daylight.” She waved the back of her hand toward Hades. “Neither can you. Even with our masks.”

  He ran both hands through his hair and blew an exasperated grunt. “How long have they been searching?”

  “Don’t know,” Pony replied. “But if they’re searching, they must have gone in the house.”

  “They just said they’re going inside when they have a warrant, which is on the way.” Cora shook her head. “Even if they have been inside the house, they can’t have found anything. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be asking for help.”

  Hades shook his head. “They’d ask anyway. They won’t be happy until they answer whatever’s stirred them up.”

  “But we don’t know what’s got them interested,” Cora said.

  The TV news moved onto another subject.

  “Now’s the time.” Hades pulled a laptop from his backpack.

  Pony reached over and yanked the laptop from his grasp. “We can’t give them a reason to link this place to our safe house.”

  “You think I’m that stupid?” Hades shot a withering glower in Pony’s general direction. “This is exactly why I set the place up with remote access.”

  Pony pursed his lips. “Things can always be traced.”

  Hades replied with exaggerated patience. “The police are going to get their warrant and get inside that house. Then we’re hosed. We have to send the command. Now. Not in an hour. Now. Don’t you get it?”

  Pony nodded.

  Hades sat on the couch with a thump and powered up the laptop. “I’ll relay it through a server in Latvia. It’ll take them months to trace it here.”

  He hammered on the laptop’s keys for a minute before stabbing the mouse button hard. “It’s done. Now we wait for the command to work its way through the servers to the house.”

  “That’ll take time,” Pony said. “They might find whatever they’re looking for in the meanwhile.”

  “There’s nothing else we can do.”

  “It’s a risk.”

  “No kidding!” Hades stood and paced the room until he calmed himself. He took a deep breath. “That’s why you’re going over there to make sure the safe house and everything in it is destroyed. Every last scrap.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Monday, May 22

  Bear Hill, Arizona

  Jess took the exit her navigation system indicated and passed through the town of Bear Hill. The road led into a canyon.

  Trees were dotted in clumps along the sides of the road. They seemed to cling together for support in the pulsing heat.

  Occasional letterboxes marked driveways. The letterboxes were the rural sort. A wooden post with a box on top, the posts leaning at all angles. Some had numbers, some had the metal outlines of men riding horses, and some were no more than rust and faded paint.

  The driveways sloped up the canyon’s sides. The houses were invisible behind the trees and the curve of the land.

  Jess slowed as the navigation system said she had arrived. The entrance to Melissa Green’s property ran over a cattle grate. Barbed wire ran from the gate, left to right, in both directions. The Mustang’s stiff suspension took the cattle gate hard, bouncing her phone out of the cup holder. She took it as a warning to slow down.

  The dusty driveway twisted and turned as it climbed before depositing her on a broad expanse of almost flat land in front of the house.

  In the middle of the driveway’s end was a two-story, white painted clapboard home that might have been built in the nineteenth century. The boards bowed up and down, partly from the natural cut of the wood and partly from the movement of the house over the years.

  The window frames were outlined in black. Their perfectly rectangular shapes suggested they were replacements for the original wood and constructed of man-made materials.

  A porch ran the full width of the house. A swing seat hung crookedly on its chain to one side of the front door.

  Cars and SUVs were parked at various angles around the edge of the clearing. She counted two police cars as she worked her way around and park
ed. She reversed into the space, the car pointing down the hill in case its sports suspension and tires weren’t up to the task of starting on the rough ground when she was ready to leave.

  She retrieved her phone from the floor, shoved her camera into her crossbody bag, and headed to join a group of people standing near the front porch.

  The group consisted of two police officers and four civilians. The civilians all sported DSLRs and handheld recorders on straps around their necks. Reporters. The officers watched her approach. They all stood calmly, as people for whom waiting was an integral part of the occupation do.

  “Captain Mitch Jackson.” One of the officers stepped forward, extended his hand, and nodded to the officer standing with him. “This is Officer Lester Cook. Who’re you with?”

  “Taboo,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “The monthly magazine?” Jackson frowned. “You in the right place?”

  “Melissa Green?”

  He nodded. “We wanted dailies. Get the story out. So she gets to hear it quick.”

  The other reporters nodded sagely. Jess suspected they were halfway between wondering what had brought her there and hoping the Captain would persuade her to leave.

  She gave a flat smile. “I just flew in.”

  Jackson grunted. “We don’t want some big sensation. Melissa Green keeps to herself, but she’s a good person. We just need her to know we’re looking, and she’ll come back.”

  His words jarred. Did he not know about the crash? “You think she’s simply wandered off?”

  He handed Jess a sheet of paper. “Leave your name and email, and we’ll send you a photograph and description.”

  An old red truck with a cap on the back labored up the driveway, its diesel engine wheezing and black smoke emerging from the rear. It lurched to a stop, blocking several parked cars. Faded lettering on the side said Ernest Kettering. Underneath was the word locksmith, and a phone number.

  Ernest Kettering emerged from the truck. He was tall and thin and gray, a hundred and fifty pounds at best. He collected a heavy toolbox from the rear of the truck and struggled to carry it as he joined the group.

  “Captain,” he nodded toward Jackson.

  Jackson smiled. “Good to see ya, Ernie.”

  Ernie set his toolbox on the grass. “Saw a TV crew in town.”

  “I gave them an interview. Thought we’d keep them away from here. Don’t want a big circus. This isn’t reality TV.”

  Ernie gestured to the house. “Everything ready?”

  Jackson nodded and handed Ernie the warrant. Ernie looked it over and handed it back.

  “Then let’s get started.” Ernie lifted his toolbox and struggled up the steps onto the porch. He knelt by the front door, peering at the lock.

  Captain Jackson turned to the reporters. “We’re going inside to check the place out. When we come back, I’ll give you a statement, and you can take pictures of the front of the house.”

  The four reporters nodded, but they didn’t smile.

  Jess took a deep breath and kept the questions circling in her mind to herself. She didn’t expect them to find Melissa Green inside the house and she got the impression they didn’t expect to find her there, either. Let Jackson get on with it. She’d ask questions afterward.

  The reporters waited on the lawn. The officers joined Ernie on the porch. In a moment, the front door swung open.

  Ernie stepped back and sat in the swing seat.

  Jackson led the second officer, Cook, into the house. His muffled voice calling for Melissa reached Jess’s ears outside. She heard no reply. No cat meowing. No dog barking. Nothing.

  One of the reporters stepped forward, holding out a business card. “Sidney Mackenzie. Santa Irene Gazette.”

  Jess took his card and shook his hand. “Jess Kimball. Taboo.” She rummaged in her bag and handed him a card, too.

  He ran his thumb over the embossed logo. “Let me guess. You’re interested because of Melissa Green’s relationship to Donald and Karen Warner?”

  She shrugged. “We have a lot of different interests.”

  He smiled. “I’m not fishing. We’re a daily. Today it’s the Warners, tomorrow I’ll be on to something new.”

  Jess gave him a sympathetic smile. She knew the pressure small newspapers were under to keep turning up the latest news. The constant Internet news cycle had made their jobs much harder. Even so, she wouldn’t be manipulated into disclosing Taboo’s intel.

  Mackenzie pointed to the house. “They’re upstairs already.”

  “Probably a good sign,” Jess replied.

  They stood in silence, watching the two officers move past the windows on the upper floor.

  Ernie relaxed in the swing seat. His eyes looked closed. Jess wondered if he knew more about Melissa’s disappearance. She made a note to question him before he left.

  Captain Jackson walked out of the house and stood on the porch steps. He called the reporters closer.

  “As I expected, there’s no sign of foul play. Nothing’s been disturbed. Bed’s been made, and there’s food in the pantry. Everything is A-OK normal.”

  Mackenzie raised his hand. “Any sign of where she might have gone?”

  Jackson shook his head. “We’re going back in to conduct a more thorough search, but nothing obvious.”

  “You still want us to report you’re concerned about her?”

  “I’d say we’re interested in talking to her, not that we’re concerned. I’m not concerned. These things usually have a simple answer.”

  The other journalists wrote down Jackson’s quote in their notepads. He gave them a moment, but no one asked any more questions.

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me.” He turned back into the house, closing the front door behind him.

  A couple of the reporters wandered back to their cars. Mackenzie walked around the front yard, apparently looking for a good angle to get a picture of the empty house.

  Jess walked around to the back. The yard sloped upward behind the house. A second porch ran the width back here, too. Three steps led up from the ground level. Jess guessed that even with Arizona’s reputation for blistering heat, the elevation was meant to thwart possible flash floods.

  The rear porch had several potted plants, neglected and barely alive. Two large prickly cacti stood guard on either side of a weather-worn table and chairs.

  Officer Cook stepped out of the back door, looked up and down the porch, and went back into the house.

  A large bright yellow hose was coiled on a reel attached to the rear wall near the door. There was a brass tap beside it, and a dark stain on the porch that suggested the hose had a leak.

  Jess climbed the stairs. The back door was half glass. She cupped her hands to keep out the sunlight and looked inside. The window beside the door opened over the kitchen sink. The kitchen had a large pine table in the middle with six chairs. A circular container filled with cutlery rested in the table’s center.

  Several magazines were strewn over the countertop on the far side of the room. Jess angled her head to read the mastheads. The fonts were too small to read from this distance, so she took a picture with her camera, and enlarged the image. The words were still unreadable in the viewfinder, but the front cover clearly featured a motorbike sliding on a muddy track.

  Jess frowned. Melissa Green could be interested in dirt bikes, but it was hard to reconcile with her shy reputation.

  Jess tried the backdoor. It clicked open. Cook must have failed to lock it when he poked his head out earlier. She went inside.

  She photographed the room as she approached the magazines. She slid them out into a line, using a knuckle to avoid fingerprints. The last four months’ editions of Dirt and Track, a motocross magazine, mingled with several women’s fashion magazines. Jess snapped pictures of each cover in quick succession and re-stacked the pile.

  Captain Jackson called for Ernie from upstairs.

  Jess moved to the back door, prepared to dart outside. The
last thing she wanted was to get sideways with the local police for unauthorized breaking and entering.

  The front door creaked open and slammed shut.

  “Bring your tools,” Jackson shouted.

  The front door creaked and slammed a second time. “What’s up?” Ernie said, climbing the stairs.

  Jess returned her attention to the kitchen. Coffee maker, toaster, and microwave rested on the countertops. Old mail was piled up in one corner.

  The pantry was well stocked. Unsurprising given that the grocery store was a ten-mile drive into town.

  Jess rubbed her eyes. Something was making her eyes itch. Probably dust or pollen. She took a tissue from a box on the window ledge and wiped her nose. The last thing she needed was an allergy.

  The fridge and freezer were two separate appliances, side-by-side in an alcove. The freezer was three-quarters full. Mostly microwave meals. The door closed with a heavy thunk.

  Jess listened hard. Ernie and the two officers were talking upstairs, but all she could hear were muffled voices. After a moment, a drill squealed. Jess rolled her shoulders to ward off the screech of metal on metal, and opened the fridge.

  The refrigerator was as well stocked as the pantry and freezer. A gallon carton of milk was all but empty, but the orange juice jug was full. She checked the expiration dates on both and saw they’d last a few days longer. Stacked plastic containers were filled with unidentified leftovers. She leaned forward to peer in through the opaque plastic.

  The drill motor upstairs ceased its battle and the squealing stopped.

  She reached for one of the plastic containers.

  Upstairs, someone shouted. Footsteps hammered on the floor. She froze, listening, half in and half out of the fridge, the plastic container in her hand.

  After that, everything happened fast.

  A deafening explosion tore through the upstairs.

  The hallway door snapped off its hinges and whirled past Jess.