Here goes, Michael thought to himself. “Long story.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, I’m also working a missing—”
“Unrelated to Razin, you mean?”
“Maybe,” Michael admitted, and the agent’s eyes flared with surprise. “I was on my way to Beatty to re-interview the wife when I noticed the Carrara historical marker alongside the highway.” He neglected to say on my way this morning; the less said about time frames the better. “Then it hit me—could this be the Carrara Razin was referring to in his note? I hadn’t thought of it before.”
“Why not?” Higgins pressed.
“As you can see, there’s nothing here. If it hadn’t been for the marker, I would’ve driven right by.”
“So this place didn’t cross your mind when you and I were inside Razin’s apartment?”
“Context, R.J.”
“Say what?”
“It has to do with context. As you’ll recall, the note was inside a phone book...” Michael inclined his head toward the ghost town below. “The last time there was a telephone here you probably had to crank it to get an operator. There’s also a Manhattan, Nevada, but say Manhattan and it’s not the big apple I’m thinking of.”
“What about the context of the dolomite dust found in Razin’s clothing? I’ve learned that dolomite is another name for marble.”
“Dolomite is also another name for limestone. And most of the gold and silver veins in this country occur in limestone. It was on my list to recheck the Lucky Boy Mine, to see if it was in a dolomite formation.”
At that instant, the generator purred to life and floodlights blazed on. “Show it to me,” Higgins said, testily.
Michael led the agent deeper into the pit.
When he’d first crossed the floor of the quarry near noon, almost half it had been buried under a thick layer of tumbleweeds. These globes of thistle had sprouted on the flats below, died there in the summer’s heat, only to be uprooted and carried along by the wind. Their frolic had ended against the quarry walls. Tumbleweeds are barbed, and he had to pick his way to the point where the sun had reflected off something.
By now, the technicians had cleared enough of the weeds to expose a white 1991 Buick Reatta convertible with California plates. It had been pushed over the lip of one the voids left by the extraction of a marble slab and come to rest at a forty-five-degree angle. Earlier, Michael had surmised that the car had been pushed and not driven over the eight-foot precipice—there were hand smudges of dried blood on the grille and the front curvature of the hood.
Higgins said nothing as he studied Nastour Razin’s Buick, obviously struggling to put it all together. After a few minutes, he pivoted, his street shoes now a dusty mess, and squinted back along the darkening stretch of road that descended into the pit. “Your sergeant in Independence said a glint caught your eye?”
“The sun had just cleared the top of the quarry and lit up the Buick’s windshield. It was buried in thistle at the time, so I really didn’t know what I had. That’s when I started down this way.”
“From where?” Higgins asked.
“About where you parked near the guard shack.”
“What drew you up there in the first place?”
“From the town site?”
“Yes.”
“I found nothing down there,” Michael went on. “I was even beginning to think Razin had been referring to the other Carrara. But knowing I wouldn’t be back this way for a long time, I decided to take a quick jaunt up the old railroad grade. Glad I did.”
Higgins finally shed his jacket and folded it over his left arm. “I’d like to know how Razin got this convertible over that last piece of road down into this pit.”
“Not without damage,” Michael said. “Your people say he broke a spring.”
The agent shifted around, studying the convertible from different perspectives. Meanwhile, a technician had propped open the driver’s door and perched himself on a step-ladder to dust the steering wheel and controls for fingerprints.
“Any blood on the steering wheel?” Higgins called down to him over the generator noise.
“None apparent,” the techie responded.
“That probably means the suspect didn’t drive it after he got Razin’s blood on his hands,” Higgins noted. “I just don’t think old Nastour would’ve risk damage to get his car up here. He loved it. Any signs he might have parked below and walked...?”
Michael had had seven hours to mull over the possibilities, but he kept silent as the agent and technician speculated out loud to each other. Without distinct tire impressions, which were hard to come by on a stone surface more than two weeks after the event, an attempt to plot out the choreography of how killer and victim had arrived and maneuvered against each other was futile, at least until such time the suspect could be interviewed. That’s when you filled in the blanks. But one thing had struck Michael—the sense that neither party had known exactly where to find the other. Almost as if the arrangements had been fuzzy, or the two hadn’t directly communicated about where to meet. Joanna Wallace had mentioned how, during their phone chat on the First, Kincannon had asked if he had any pressing messages. “I came across boot impressions headed this way from below,” Michael finally volunteered.
Higgins spun toward him. “What size?”
“Large. Much larger than Razin’s eight-and-a-halves. I came across them on the slope above the old narrow-gauge rail line that runs through the bottom of the canyon. The prints go as far as the road near the shack and then peter out. I showed them to your people, and they took a couple of plaster casts. Don’t know if they’ll be worth anything. Wind and maybe a rain shower beat us to them.”
“Then the suspect parked below,” Higgins declared. “He parked down there and hoofed it up here to meet Razin. What do you think of that?”
Michael shrugged, checking his wristwatch. “All I know is that two subjects rendezvoused here, and one of them wound up dead in a mine fifteen miles away.”
“Another quarry like the one near Lancaster,” the agent reflected out loud, “but this time it looks like old Nastour ran up against somebody with an even nastier temper than he had.”
Michael picked his day-pack up off the ground. “Listen, R.J., I’ve got a week’s worth of reports to do in the next few hours. You mind if I shove off? I gave your head techie my cell number, in case he has more questions.”
“What about this case being tied to your missing?”
Michael thought a moment. The coincidence was wearing thinner by the minute. On June 30, Razin had left work in Beverly Hills on the trumped-up excuse of visiting his ailing brother in Oregon. The next morning, Kincannon reportedly departed Kern County to see his estranged wife near Beatty. Still, all Michael had was a rattle of corrugated tin to place Kincannon in the area here, and the rest of law enforcement would see that as coincidence and Gorman as wild speculation. “I said maybe tied, R.J. I still need to think this through. I’ll ask the sheriff to route you a copy of my report ASAP.”
Higgins exhaled. “Okay. Was that your busteed I saw parked below?” The same FBI slang for cruiser Carson had used.
“Yes.”
“Need a lift down to it?”
“Thanks but I’d like to stretch my legs after standing around all these hours.”
Higgins mumbled something mildly appreciative, and Michael set off up the road. He climbed out of the quarry and neared the guard shack. The wind had died, and the corrugated tin was silent. Dulcie had never called back, so now, in passing, he recited the rural-route mailing address on her driver’s license to the Nye deputy, explaining, “I’ve got to do a quick follow-up interview before I head home. Where can I find this?”
“Not exactly sure,” the deputy answered, “we don’t have many house numbers out here.”
“Same where I come from.”
“It sounds like the area a couple miles south of town on Ninety-five. Can’t miss it—right behind
the Bobwhite brothel. Need any help?”
“Should be fine. I’ve already monopolized your day. Take care.” Michael moved on.
A minute later, he glanced back to make sure that he was no longer in sight from the floor of the pit. Then he cut down the slope toward the rail bed.
An inexperienced killer will dispose of the murder weapon as soon as possible. Michael had almost expected to find it in the tumbleweeds near the Buick. However, when the technicians cleared them for a hundred feet around the car, the tapered but square-tipped tool described by Gorman from the autopsy results was nowhere to be found.
Michael came to the rail bed again. Erosion had left it impassible to vehicle traffic, but he recalled the place just beyond the embankment where a vehicle had made a loop before heading back toward the highway. And the patch of disturbed ground nearby. He wanted to see if the killer returned to this spot after descending on foot from the quarry. Michael hunted for widely-spaced boot tracks. They would be the same gargantuan size as those he’d found this morning on the slope above, but the subject would have been running headlong at this point, the bloody instrument in his hand growing heavier by the minute.
Michael stitched back and forth across the mouth of the canyon in search of those impressions. The sunlight was gone now, but the sand, made of decomposed marble, was luminous.
Suddenly, he halted and dropped his pack.
He dug his flashlight out of a pouch and held the beam flush to what had appeared to be oblong shadows on the ground. Again, as above on the mountainside, wind and weather had come close to erasing the tracks, but the big foot size and human origin were undeniable. As was the vaulting distance between them—the man had been sprinting toward the stop-start depressions in the sand, showing where he’d parked. In these heart-pounding minutes, the killer must have been frantic, desperate to put miles between himself and Carrara but also coming to the conclusion that, somehow, he must find the nerve to drive back up into the pit, conceal the Buick and then transport his victim to a remote gravesite. This place was too close to the highway, to Beatty and its dirt-bike enthusiasts, bottle hunters.
But first there was the murder weapon to deal with.
The killer’s route began to meander, revealing where he’d searched for boulders or even some brush thicker than creosote. There was nothing in the area, which might account for the disturbed ground, which Michael finally reached. It was of a different color and texture than the surrounding slope, which often could be dismissed as nothing more than a jackrabbit’s wallow. These hares, which cooled themselves by circulating blood through their upright ears, lived in the open and didn’t burrow like their relatives. Yet, overlapping human tracks showed where the killer had lingered here, however briefly.
Again, Michael set his pack aside and knelt.
He used his ballpoint pen as a probe. After only a few thrusts, he struck something hard under the surface. Carefully, using the shaft of the Bic as leverage, he pried the object out. He examined it without handling it, then clamped his flashlight in an armpit and took a highway flare from his pack. He ignited it and waved the festering glow over his head.
Within seconds, his cell phone rang. He planted the flare in the ground and answered.
“Is that light from you?” the head technician asked.
“Yes,” Michael said, “come on down to it. I’ve got something you and Higgins should see right away.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Then Michael leaned over the object again. The rock pick was covered with dried blood.
It was also called a geologist’s hammer.
Chapter Fourteen
The highway flare had burned out and been replaced by a portable light by the time Michael finally got back to his cruiser. It was pushing ten o’clock. He left the driver’s door ajar for air while he thought a moment. Through the windshield, he could see the FBI team still out in the brush, hovering over the geologist’s hammer. Higgins had wanted more answers, but Michael had begged off until tomorrow, inviting the agent to swing through Furnace Creek on his drive back to Los Angeles.
Michael needed answers of his own, and only Dulcie Kincannon could give them. Now, after finding the murder weapon, he would disturb her, regardless of the hour or where she was.
Yet, even before starting his engine, he opened the glove compartment. There it was. The cell phone Carson had given him at the cemetery in L.A. If he speed-dialed the man and reported in, he would violate departmental confidentiality. That, unlike keeping an arrest warrant under wraps, would get him fired. Without question. It didn’t help that the sheriff was already trying to dump him. This had nothing to do with any personal loyalty to Gorman. It was tied to the sense of duty that had made him take down his own brother. But Carson had been right—Michael was on thin ice, and his days with Inyo County were numbered. A terminated cop had few if any takers, and soon he might need another job in law enforcement. He had no real education, and self-education didn’t count for much in this world. One way he knew he had Shoshone blood was his reluctance to get too far from home. Even Jimmy, the family rebel, had strayed no farther from Death Valley than Las Vegas. Certainly the governor of Nevada could create a soft landing for Michael in Clark County.
But then he slammed shut the glove compartment and his side door.
He accelerated north along U.S. 95.
Carson had said his boss wanted to be kept up to speed on the Kincannon case, stressing up to speed. For Michael to sit on today’s discoveries wouldn’t please his future employer, particularly when he got the news secondhand from another source, such as the Las Vegas office of the FBI.
Michael let down the windows to release the heat of the day, and the night air was flowing coolly around him when he growled and flung open the glove box again. He grabbed Carson’s gift phone and was on the brink of removing all temptation, forever, by hurling it out the window—then he reminded himself that he hadn’t heard back from Gorman today. Mid-afternoon, he had reported in to the watch commander in Independence, but so far the other shoe—the sheriff’s inevitable wrath that once again his Death Valley detective was off the reservation—had yet to drop. Any minute, he might be fired.
We’re all whores, but only a few of us have the courage to admit it.
He stuffed the cell in the front pocket of his Levi’s.
As promised by the Nye deputy, Michael had no trouble finding Miss Janine’s Bobwhite Ranch. A huge quail rose out of the desert and was visible for miles, a voluptuous bird that winked in neon at passers-by.
By Nevada law, each county was free to decide if it wanted prostitution, and long ago Clark County had opted to be hooker-free, mostly because of pressure from a federal government that believed the trade would have a bad effect on its workers then building Boulder Dam. So the closest legal bordellos to the Strip had always been over the line here in Nye County.
Miss Janine’s was a modular building, a step up from the old mobiles most were housed in. It was surrounded by an eight-foot-high chain-link fence. But, after parking, Michael didn’t go to the gate and ring the buzzer for entry. Instead, he went to the row of mailboxes alongside the highway and checked the numbers by the light of the quail sign. Box One belonged to the brothel itself. Inside Box Twelve—the address Dulcie had given him—was a letter from the Nevada State Health Division addressed to her.
“Buon,” he whispered, closing the box and turning back for his cruiser.
From other investigations, he’d learned that a cop wasn’t welcome inside a brothel. Flashing a badge tended to put a damper on the festive spirit of the place. So he didn’t want to interrupt Dulcie at work, getting her in trouble with her madam. Before that, he’d drive by the trailer houses marked by porch lights scattered across the wash to the east, looking for her blue Toyota. It wasn’t among the vehicles parked outside the brothel.
That water flowed beneath the surface of the arroyo was revealed by copses of tamarisk. The foliage of these salt cedars shimmered li
me-green in his headlights, as he crept up the winding road. Lime-green. The color of the vehicle missing from AEI’s motor pool. The FBI’s head technician had agreed with Michael that, given their width, the tracks near the spot where the rock pick had been buried probably were to a Hummer.
Dulcie’s trailer was the one farthest from the brothel, a single-wide with the Toyota parked beside it. Wind chimes hung limp and silent from the carport awning. A yellow floodlight bathed the immediate property, but shortly the moonless dark took over again.
She was home, or at least she’d better be—her front door was wide open.
Parking on the side of the dirt road, he cut his lights and motor. He wondered if she’d heard him coming and slipped away. She hadn’t returned his phone message today, after all. This kept him from calling out her name as he stepped from the Ford.
He listened all around.
A dog was barking somewhere below in the arroyo, too far off to be Dulcie’s.
Soft and muted voices were coming from inside the trailer. A television, he believed. But before going up the steps, he examined something odd. Twine had been strung from shrub to awning post to ski pole—entirely around the place, except for the carport. Tin cans hung off the twine. He thumbed on his penlite and glanced inside one—pebbles. They held pebbles, which would clatter when the can was disturbed.
Passing by the Toyota, he felt its hood. The sheet metal was warmer than the sun, gone three hours now, would have left it.
Quietly mounting the steps, he glanced through the yawning door. The TV screen spilled flickering light out onto a neat but simply-furnished living room. The only clutter to be found was on the cocktail table, its top crowded with stuffed toys, mostly bunnies and giraffes. A box of tissues had been left on the sofa.
Michael heard a sniffling in the same instant something clicked. Both sounds came from behind him, and he swung around—to face Dulcie staring at him over the sights of a revolver. Her glassy eyes seemed anything but warm tonight as they skipped from his face to his hands and back to his face. She wore a terry-cloth housecoat that had to be too much for temperatures in the nineties. Yet, while her lightly freckled skin looked flushed, she wasn’t perspiring.
Under the Killer Sun: A Death Valley Mystery Page 11