Queen of the Night

by J. A. Jance

  When he came out, working on a hunch, Brian drove back around the circle and pulled up behind the queue of cabs that were parked near the far end of the terminal building, waiting for fares.

  It was ungodly hot. The drivers, several of them smoking, stood in a knot outside their vehicles, looking bored and discouraged. Most of the time they would have been less than interested in talking to a cop, but in this instance they were happy for anything that would take their minds off their shared misery.

  “We’re looking for this guy,” Brian said, holding up a copy of the photo. “He may be trying to fly out of town this morning. Have any of you seen him?”

  Brian was astonished when one of the drivers raised his hand. “Let me take a closer look,” he said. After examining the photo, he nodded. “Yes, that’s him. I gave this guy a ride about an hour ago.”

  Brian’s heart skipped a beat. “Did you bring him here? Did he say what airline?”

  “That’s just it. When I picked him up, he told me he was flying American, but when we came up the drive, he said he’d forgotten something back at the hotel and needed to go back.”

  “Were the patrol cars here then?” Brian asked.

  The driver frowned. “I think so.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I drove him back to his hotel. When he paid me, I offered to wait for him and bring him back, but he said it wasn’t necessary.”

  “What happened then?” Brian asked.

  The driver shrugged. “I watched him. He didn’t go back to his room or even into the office. He got in a car and drove away.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “A silver minivan.”

  “What hotel?”

  “Los Amigos downtown.”

  Los Amigos Motel was a name Brian recognized. It wasn’t the kind of accommodations airport passengers generally preferred on their way in or out of town. It was a dodgy place with a reputation for renting rooms on an hourly basis.

  After taking down the cabbie’s name and contact information, Brian thanked him for his help and headed back to his own vehicle. If the driver was correct, Jonathan Southard had already checked out of the hotel, but accessing his registration records would let Brian know if he was still using his own ID or if he had managed to get his hands on a phony one.

  The desk clerk at Los Amigos was not happy to see Brian Fellows’s badge. Neither was the manager on duty, but they managed to give Brian what he needed. Jonathan Southard had checked in using his own name and his California driver’s license. He had paid cash for his room, arriving late Saturday night and departing today. And yes, Mr. Southard’s arm had been in a sling. He claimed that he’d been bitten by a neighbor’s Doberman.

  Probably thought that sounded better than being bitten by his wife’s beagle, Brian thought.

  He immediately relayed what he had learned back to the department to Jake Abernathy’s voice mail. He also passed the same information along to Detective Mumford in Thousand Oaks.

  “So he saw the cop cars at the airport and figured out that trying to fly wasn’t going to work,” Alex said. “His next move will be to ditch that car and pick up a new one. Can you cover used-car lots?”

  The truth was, Brian Fellows was off the case. He couldn’t “cover” anything, but he didn’t want to admit that to Alex Mumford.

  “I doubt he’d use one of those,” Brian said. “If I were in his shoes and on the run, I’d be more likely to pick up a ‘for sale by owner’ vehicle from a street corner somewhere rather than going to a dealer. A private citizen would be only too happy to take a handful of cash. A dealer would be obliged to report it.”

  Alex Mumford sighed. “You’re probably right,” she said. “But even that will take time. He’ll have to make contact with the seller. The cabdriver told you you’re only an hour or so behind him. If that’s the case, you may still be able to nail him before he can get out of town.”

  “Let’s hope,” Brian agreed. “But there is one piece of good news in all this. I was worried that the shooter might come back looking for our surviving witness, the little girl. But since he was trying to fly out of town, I don’t think he’s focused on her. I’ve had a Border Patrol officer keeping an eye on her. I just left him a message that he can probably stand down.”

  “Speaking of phones,” Alex Mumford said, “have you made any progress on tracking the victims’ phones?”

  “Not on this end,” Brian admitted.

  “It sounds like my chief is a whole lot more motivated than your sheriff. I should be able to add them to my request for a warrant.”

  “I’m glad somebody is motivated,” Brian said with a hollow chuckle. “Do what you can, and if you can make it work, call me on this number. Any time night or day.”

  “Will do,” Alex said. “Night or day. But if the high-tech solution doesn’t work, maybe the low-tech one will.”

  “What’s that?” Brian asked.

  “You know,” she said. “That old standby. He gets pulled over for a broken taillight.”

  “One can always hope,” Brian said.

  Brian knew that buying a car from a dealer was a process that could take several hours, and purchasing one from a private individual wasn’t a slam dunk, either. If Jonathan Southard was trying to replace his vehicle, there was still a window of opportunity to catch him. If anybody was paying attention, that is.

  Brian had been dismissed from the case and he had passed on everything he knew to the new team of detectives. It would have been easy to forget about it—to go home for a much-needed nap and let Jonathan Southard be Jake Abernathy’s problem—but there was a big difference between being removed from a case and being able to let it go.

  Brian Fellows was a plugger. Yes, he believed there was such a thing as blind luck, but he knew luck came most often to the people who applied themselves and did the grunt work. Rather than heading home, Brian returned to the sheriff’s department, where he settled in behind his desk and started working the phone, calling car-rental agencies and used-car lots.

  The Aces wouldn’t mind. Detectives Abernathy and Adams were long on flash and bang, but they weren’t big on gutting it out.

  Gutting it out was Brian Fellows’s middle name. He picked up his phone and went to work.

  Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:30 p.m.

  91º Fahrenheit

  Delia had made it sound as if the court order for Angie’s temporary guardianship was already a done deal, but it took a lot longer for Judge Lawrence to issue the actual paperwork than Lani would have thought possible. As the two women sat side by side in the waiting room outside the tribal judge’s chambers, Lani wondered if this was the same place where her parents had come years earlier when they petitioned for her adoption.

  But I was already their foster child by then, Lani thought. They had clothes for me and furniture and all those other things little kids need. I’ve got nothing, and the bedroom that would be Angie’s is full of unpacked boxes of books.

  When she voiced some of those concerns to Delia, the tribal chairman nodded. “When we go before the judge, we’ll ask if he’s able to permit you to go into Delphina’s house to retrieve some of Angie’s clothing and belongings.”

  Ultimately, that’s just what the paperwork said. In addition to granting Lani temporary custody, Judge Lawrence issued an order stating that she, accompanied by an officer from Law and Order, was authorized to enter Delphina Enos’s residence for the sole purpose of retrieving Angie’s personal items.

  That may have been what the judge ordered, but it wasn’t what happened.

  After leaving the judge’s office, Lani and Delia went straight to Law and Order. Accompanied by a uniformed patrol officer, the two women caravanned to Delphina Enos’s mobile home. They arrived there just as Carmen and Louis Escalante were preparing to drive away in a pickup truck that had been loaded down with their dead daughter’s furniture and possessions.

 
; Furious, Delia Ortiz signaled for them to stop. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  “We came to get Delphina’s things,” Louis said with a shrug. “Everything she owned is stuff her mother and I gave her. It’s only fair that we should get it all back.”

  Inside the mobile home, Lani and Delia were dismayed to discover that the place had been stripped of everything of value—clothing, furniture, dishes, pots and pans. If Angie had any special toys or remembrances, they were gone now, too, except for one—a single cheap stuffed toy, a bedraggled lion that had probably come from the stuffed-toy vending machine just inside the front door at Basha’s. Clearly the lion had been there in the dirt and debris under a couch for some time. Lani picked it up and gave it several hard whacks. The blows raised a cloud of dust.

  “How could they do this to their own grandchild?” Lani wondered.

  “Did you ever see the movie Zorba the Greek?” Delia asked in return.

  Lani shook her head. “Never heard of it,” she said.

  “My mother and Ruth loved that movie, mostly because of Anthony Quinn,” Delia said. “In it, some poor old woman dies. The townsfolk descend on her house like a pack of jackals and strip it of everything.”

  “Just like this?” Lani asked.

  Delia nodded. “Just like,” she said.

  As Delia spoke, she opened her purse. Reaching inside, she pulled out two hundred-dollar bills. “This isn’t much, but it’s a start,” she said, passing the money to Lani. “Take Angie into town and use this to get replacements.”

  “How can I take her anywhere?” Lani asked. “Legally I can’t even drive her home from the hospital. I don’t have a booster seat.”

  “Is that Border Patrol guy still anywhere around?”

  “Dan Pardee?” Lani asked. “Yes. I believe he’s still over at the hospital. Why?”

  “He’s the one who brought Angie into town from the crime scene last night,” Delia said. “The officers there let him remove the booster seat from Donald Rios’s Blazer in order to do that. I’m sure he still has it.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Lani said.

  Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:45 p.m.

  91º Fahrenheit

  By early afternoon, Dan Pardee was mad enough to chew nails. He had waited around all morning and well into the afternoon, but there was still no sign of Angie’s missing relatives, and no sign of Dr. Walker, either. Angie was asleep again, and Dan was pacing up and down the hallway when he saw Dr. Walker’s midnight-blue VW Passat pull into a parking space reserved for doctors. When Lani stepped out of the driver’s seat, Dan strode out to meet her.

  “Dr. Walker, where the hell have you been all this time?” he demanded. “Angie and I are still waiting. No one has come for her, not one person. Where are those people? What the hell’s wrong with them?”

  She handed him a piece of paper, an official-looking document. “What’s this?” he asked, looking at Lani rather than the court order.

  “It’s what’s taken me so long,” she answered. “Nobody has come for Angie because no one is going to come for her. Her family doesn’t want her.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “You and I both know that Angie’s alive because the killer didn’t know she was there. Her superstitious relatives have decided that since Angie wasn’t slaughtered along with her mother, she is now regarded as a dangerous object—a Ghost Child. They won’t come anywhere near her.”

  “And this?” he asked, nodding toward the document.

  “It’s a court order from the tribal judge declaring me to be Angie Enos’s legal guardian.”

  “Why you?” he asked. “Did the judge just pull your name out of his hat?”

  “Not exactly,” Lani said. “It turns out Angie Enos is my second cousin.” She collected the document, turned away, and started toward the hospital’s main entrance.

  “You and Angie are related?” Dan asked, falling in behind her. “Couldn’t you at least have mentioned that to me earlier?”

  Lani spun around and faced him. She seemed angry, and he didn’t understand why. “I would have mentioned it earlier if I had known it earlier. It turns out I didn’t find out about it until after I left the hospital.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dan said. “How could you not know you were related?”

  “I’m adopted,” Lani said. “There’s a lot about my birth family that I don’t know. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  For the first time he noticed the bedraggled stuffed toy Lani held clutched in her other hand.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Lani took a deep breath. “It’s the only thing Angie Enos has left in this world,” she said. “Some time this morning while you were here at the hospital, Delphina Enos’s parents went to her house and emptied the place. They stripped it of everything—and I do mean everything. This worthless stuffed toy is the only thing they left behind. Angie Enos has nothing left,” she added bitterly. “Nothing but this poor damned lion and me.”

  Sells, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:45 p.m.

  91º Fahrenheit

  Lani’s eyes filled with hot tears. The injustice of it was more than she could bear. It was bad enough that the Escalantes had turned away from their grandchild, but to take everything she owned and leave her with nothing . . .

  Dan Pardee’s hand went to his pocket. Initially Lani thought he was reaching for a hanky to offer her. Instead, he pulled out a wallet. Opening it, he shuffled through what he carried there. Then, unfolding a frayed envelope, he removed a single photo, which he handed over to Lani.

  “Not quite nothing,” he said. “She still has this. I found it at the crime scene last night. I probably shouldn’t have taken it, but I did.”

  “Who is this?” Lani asked. “Angie and her mother?”

  Dan Pardee nodded. “So you see there? Angie does have something after all—a lion, a photo, a pink-and-yellow pinwheel, a surprise cousin, a dog named Bozo, and me, the ohb. What else could a poor little kid like that possibly need?”

  Lani looked up at him in amazement. Ever since hearing about Andrew Carlisle’s appearance, Lani had been filled with dread that something bad was about to happen, that something Apache-like was about to enter her life. What she hadn’t expected was to find herself faced with the real thing. She had also expected this Apache-like entity to be something evil.

  “You really are Apache?” she asked.

  Dan Pardee nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  Still holding the photo, Lani found herself smiling up at him through her tears. “You may be ohb,” she said, “but right this minute, I believe, next to my dad, you’re probably the nicest man I’ve ever met.”

  Thirteen

  Tucson, Arizona

  Sunday, June 7, 2009, 10:00 a.m.

  76º Fahrenheit

  Jonathan Southard slept in that Sunday morning. When he finally awakened, he felt rested, relaxed, and absolutely triumphant. Unbeatable. Part of that was due to having had a good night’s sleep for the first time in days. The antibiotics seemed to be doing their work. The hand was still lame—the urgent-care doc had said something about a severed tendon—but at least the throbbing was gone and the infection seemed to be lessening.

  But Jonathan was glorying in more than physical well-being. He also felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. Not guilt. Accomplishment. He supposed he should have felt like a monster, but he didn’t. Timmy and Suzy had been collateral damage; the Indians, too. But everyone else deserved it.

  There was only one thing he regretted, and that was the fact that one name was missing from Jonathan’s deadly roster. Kathleen Bates had been Jonathan’s old boss. She was also the one who had given him his “outplacement counseling session.” Of course, the job she had should have been his. Had that been the case, she would have been the one getting the boot. And he knew that she had reveled in k
icking him down the stairs.

  For a moment he went so far as to consider going back to California and taking care of her before he left the States for good. He wasn’t really worried about the cops. They’d never figure out what had happened. In Jonathan’s experience, most police officers were too stupid to live, much less work in a bank. Besides, Jonathan’s IQ clocked in at something north of 156. Not even his mother had ever so much as hinted that he wasn’t smart.

  Unfortunately, his sense of self-satisfaction lasted for only five minutes or so, until he picked up the remote control and turned on his television set. The hazy news broadcasters on his snowy, non-high-def set were busy reporting on the quadruple homicide that had occurred overnight out on the reservation. They didn’t call it a reservation. They called it the Tohono O’odham Nation, but that was beside the point.

  What mattered was the disturbing realization that the bodies had been found far sooner than Jonathan had expected. He had thought he’d have all morning to make his leisurely way to the airport and then catch his plane for south of the border. But the reporter on the screen was saying that police had yet to identify the victims, pending notification of next of kin.

  Hearing those fateful words propelled Jonathan straight up in bed.

  Once the authorities identified Jack and Abby Tennant—with their car right there at the crime scene, even a stupid street cop could probably manage that much—then someone was even now heading for Abby’s son’s home in Thousand Oaks, for Jonathan’s home, to give him the bad news about his mother’s death. When that happened—maybe it already had happened—the jig would be up. Once Esther and the kids were found dead, Jonathan, the missing husband, would move to the very top of the suspect list. Cops in two states would be looking for him—seriously looking.