Cold to the Bone

by Emery Hayes

  “I know, because I made sure he was nowhere near my daughter,” Mrs. Gatling said.

  “And the woman?”

  “She was laying down upstairs,” Gatling said. “Benjamin told King she was ill.”

  Nicole nodded. “Did you see Beatrice again after that?”

  “No.”

  “But the woman, Charlene, you saw her later?”

  Dr. Gatling nodded. “They left the same time we did. They had a car and driver, and Benjamin had her bundled up—” He shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Her face was flushed. She had the chills.”

  “When did you realize Beatrice was gone?”

  Gatling thought about it. “About an hour after King took her upstairs. I asked him about her. I had to remind him I was there to do a job. He said to give her twenty more minutes and then he would check on her. And he did, but when he came back downstairs, it was without the girl.”

  “What did King say?”

  “That she was gone. He didn’t know where, and he was upset about it.”

  “And she didn’t turn up. We left at eleven thirty.” Mrs. Gatling’s tone tightened with disapproval. “King wouldn’t let us leave before that.”

  “Because we were supposed to start the proofing,” Gatling said.

  “And King thought Beatrice would be back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the couple there for the proofing?”

  “They were the neutral party. They were supposed to broker the deal.”

  “They knew that the moment of truth was upon Esparza?”

  “Of course. We all knew it,” Gatling replied.

  “What would you have done with Beatrice? If she hadn’t left?”

  “Proven the presence of malignancy.”

  “So that Esparza could cure her?”

  “Yes. And he was going to do it fast. In days rather than months. And better. No radiation. No surgical intervention.”

  “How?”

  “He didn’t say, but it could be done through the cath lab, so I thought maybe he’d invented some kind of nano-cell.”

  “Nano?” Nicole questioned.

  “Small but mighty. We have a lot of them at our fingertips already, but none that can do what Esparza claims his can.”

  “Did it alarm you that Esparza used his daughter as a test subject?”

  But Gatling shook his head. “No. He had FDA approval. I saw the paperwork myself. He had his daughter classified as a viable subject—that’s what got our attention initially. Approval of that nature is hard to come by. It gave him credibility with us. But the girl had cancer, and that gave the whole project an edge of desperation. Her father developed the cure. He was sure of it. Or he was blinded by need. It was hard to tell which, because King kept a tight hold on this one.”

  “How do you know she had cancer?”

  “It was in the paperwork.”

  “Did you confirm it? Run tests to prove its existence?”

  “That wasn’t necessary. Not at that point. His cure worked in the lab and would be tested on Beatrice. Just as soon as we proved the malignancy.”

  “The reason you’re here.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And there’s promise in his cure?”

  “Definitely.”

  “King told you this?”

  “Yes. Esparza too. I saw his lab notes—what he’d give to us, anyway. I went through them myself, checked and double-checked every detail. Esparza’s documentation backs up his claim. I left our first meeting believing.”

  “You no longer believe?”

  He shrugged. “If he had something, if it was genuine, then why haven’t we begun the proofing?”

  “And if the tissue sample showed no malignancy?”

  That seemed to stump him. He was quiet for a moment as he processed Nicole’s words and thought about all the implications.

  “You mean, if Beatrice didn’t have cancer?”

  “Yes. What then?”

  “End game,” Gatling said. “Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  “There would be no deal?”

  “Because there could be no deal.”

  Beatrice didn’t have cancer. And even if Esparza had a cure, if his super cell existed and did everything Esparza claimed it did, with no viable way to prove it, he really had nothing. And yet the victim had been sick, multiple times. Sick and then cured in a deliberate cycle. Nicole had seen it for herself in the girl’s sport diary. She’d heard it from Joaquin and the mother. Was it possible that Dr. Esparza had given his daughter cancer just to cure it? The thought raised the bile from Nicole’s stomach.

  “Have you ever known Michael King to be in possession of Rohypnol?”

  The doctor’s eyes flared, and his mouth tightened. “I’ve never seen him have it in hand.”

  “But he could get it?”

  “Easily,” he acknowledged.

  “Beatrice had it in her system,” she told him. “How do you think that happened?”

  Gatling stood, and Nicole could see she’d insulted him. His body and mannerisms became stiff. His voice too. “I don’t know. We don’t medicate patients to get their compliance.”

  “It’s a pretty common practice.”

  “In a hospital. Not in the lab. Testing is voluntarily or not at all.”

  Nicole nodded and accepted his answer, and then she let him have it. “Beatrice Esparza is dead, Dr. Gatling. She was murdered. Her body was discovered early this morning.”

  Mrs. Gatling stepped closer. Her arms tightened around her torso. Her body vibrated with tension.

  “She’s dead?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes,” Nicole confirmed.

  “And you think it was King?” Dr. Gatling asked.

  “Let’s talk about Beatrice’s sisters,” Nicole suggested, redirecting the conversation. “You saw them at the party?”

  “Yes. Sofia and Isla,” Mrs. Gatling confirmed. “Little girls, younger than our daughter.”

  “Were they still at King’s when you left?”

  “Yes. Yes, they were sleeping over,” Dr. Gatling explained.

  “And the girls never made it home?” Mrs. Gatling paled and blinked rapidly to push back tears.

  “No, ma’am. We think they’re still with King.”

  “But why?” Dr. Gatling asked.

  “You said it yourself: Dr. King went rogue. He has too much to lose. And Magellan wasn’t the highest bidder for Dr. Esparza’s super cell, was it?”

  “No.” Gatling shook his head. “We bid, because everyone agreed there was promise in Esparza’s cure, but we came up short.”

  Nicole walked toward the back door, thinking ahead. Big Horn House was less than a mile up the road, hidden behind belts of forest. It was a fairly new construction built in tiers so that each level jutted out farther than the one below it. This placed the top floor over the surface of the water, with a large party deck that the owner and previous occupant had used to exhaustion. It’d caused trouble in the community, from blocked views to pollution and flotsam in the lake. Nicole had pulled champagne bottles and even fine china to shore and written more than a single fine for it, but a county permit existed, and even after the owner grew bored and left for finer climes, the home had been a popular rental.

  “We’ll want to talk to you again, Dr. Gatling.”

  “We’re leaving Friday.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Dillon.”

  Just south of Butte. Three hundred miles southwest of Blue Mesa.

  “Magellan’s home base is in Dillon?”

  “No. It’s a satellite lab and a few administrative offices.”

  “Why? Is that normal, keeping the lab separate from headquarters?”

  “Most pharm companies have the same setup. HQ with its main lab, smaller labs lost in the boonies or the urban jungle.”

  “A secret location?”

  But he shook his
head. “Hard to find, but not completely off the map.”

  She moved toward the back door but paused long enough to connect with Mrs. Gatling. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She didn’t tell them she was sending a deputy their way. That Friday would come and go and the Gatlings would remain tucked in the small rental, material witnesses to the crimes of murder, kidnapping, and medical malpractice.

  19

  The snow caught in the headlights, a swirling dervish as the wind cut through the trees and swept the powder from the full branches. Benjamin loved pine and evergreen and fir. His favorite was the blue noble, which was often harvested in this area of the world. For the past five years he’d ordered one from Winter Haven Farms, in Columbia Falls, Montana, which was fifty-seven miles west on Route 2 from Blue Mesa. The tree had arrived on December 15th, and he and Charlene had hosted a tree-trimming party that next Saturday. Mulled cider and popcorn strings, ornaments of blown glass, and an angel for the top. He was a man who thrived on traditions but had to make them himself.

  While he was disappointed in Nicole’s home—it was small and ordinary, something lost in the blink of an eye—he was impressed with its location. He understood the need for solitude, that it was a place where problems were solved and new ideas birthed, but he wasn’t able to sustain it long for himself. He needed to move, talk, have fun, and there wasn’t any life in a held breath.

  “We should move on.”

  The words came from the driver, and Benjamin knew them to be true. He paid well for the advice, but he didn’t always like it. His eyes cut back to the house, perched on a small, rolling hill, and he wondered if wildflowers grew in the fields around it in the short summers. Did Nicole keep a garden? Did Jordan? Benjamin had always wanted that. A small vegetable garden. But once he had it, he’d found that he was not suited for the work. The most he did now was watch from the second-story window as Rico weeded and harvested, loading tomatoes and broccoli and romaine into the cook’s woven basket.

  “Yes,” Benjamin agreed.

  Nicole wasn’t home. The driver had a portable police scanner, and there was chatter about a murder out on one of the lakes. A kid. It was amazing, how slow the police were in picking up the clues.

  He knew nothing about the missing sisters.

  He gazed at the windows of the common ranch house—three bedrooms, two baths, probably—and wondered if Jordan was inside, in one of the lit rooms. If so, what was he doing?

  Benjamin had a son. He didn’t want one. He’d never really gotten to be a kid himself, and he lived his life now spoiling himself as much as he could. He had a lot of toys and a housekeeper who baked cookies and purchased his favorite treats from the store. But he found it convenient for business to announce that he had a family. A wife and son. In his circles, no one expected to actually meet them. Charlene was always a pleasant surprise.

  “Yes,” he said again, stronger. “Go.” There would be time later for this.

  The tires spun on the icy surface of the road for a moment, and the sky was so close with cloud cover that Benjamin felt like he was being condensed, pressed down to the level of the earth.

  “To the resort?” the driver asked.

  “I’m hungry, Benjamin,” Charlene said.

  Benjamin kept a package of pistachios in a coat pocket. He never shared these. He never allowed his stomach to be empty. People close to him thought he had ulcers. Benjamin never denied it, but he would never tell, either, that he kept the pistachios so that he never again felt the burning pangs of hunger. That more than anything else could pull him back into his childhood and into memories that weren’t sweet.

  “That bar and grill we tried the first night,” Benjamin decided. It was barely four o’clock in the afternoon. Too early for dinner, but he had an errand to run first anyway. A solo venture this time. A king-of-the-mountain experience awaiting him. “I’ll drop you back at the hotel, and you can dress for dinner,” he said.

  He sat back against the leather and turned his head for a parting glance at the small house perched on the small knoll and the small life Nicole lived inside it. And he knew he would come back for a closer look. Soon.

  “I bet that trout is good,” Charlene said. She leaned her soft body against his, and he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. Encouraged, she ventured further. “That was a tiny house, Benjamin.”

  “Small and tidy.” And he hated that word. Tidy meant everything in its place, and he wasn’t very good at that. Which was why he planned ahead. Why he had dump sites and escape routes mapped out. It was why he’d hooked up with Charlene to begin with—she was a natural with details. He saw the big picture and she made the pieces fit together, like a puzzle.

  “We have such a big house,” she went on. “And a backyard that goes on forever too. Jordan would love the pool and your car collection.”

  All the things he’d wanted growing up, but bigger.

  “And maybe you’ll meet your match at the foosball table. You think you can convince Jordan’s mother to let him come visit? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Taking care of a kid wasn’t nice. It was give me this and get me that. It was I’m hungry. I’m wet. I want Mama. It had been a huge hassle eight years ago. But the boy was grown now. Maybe it would be different. And it would be nice to torment Nicole. That was what he’d come for. Location for the auction had been his choice, so long as he could highlight the tangible benefits. And he was a big believer that all work and no play made Ben a bad boy.

  “You want to play house, Charlene?”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a little boy, a mini Benjamin, to take care of for a while.”

  Charlene worked her hand down his arm until her fingers twined with his, but she said no more about it. She wasn’t exactly a butterfly in terms of her attention, but she wasn’t a badger either.

  “I think I’ll order the seared trout,” she said, and sank back into silence.

  20

  French-curve swing gates forged from wrought iron blocked the entry to the home King was renting. The house had gotten its name from the big-horned bull silhouettes that decorated each grille. The setup was a show of wealth and exclusivity, and was not padlocked. When the county plow made it this far along the Lake Road, it cleared the driveways of citizens who paid extra for the service—but the gates had to remain unlocked. Nicole climbed from the Yukon, slid the latch, and opened the gate wide. She was the first to arrive.

  The driveway was a straight shot for a hundred yards, then veered sharply west, toward the lake and through a copse of dense tree cover. The pines were frosted with snow, and drifts were piled up on either side of the drive. Shades of white and gray blended and added a layer of charcoal to an already darkening sky. The isolation wasn’t lost on Nicole, nor was the fact that people paid extra for that luxury with reason. From Gatling’s description of the man, it was a safe bet that King wasn’t a recluse. He’d come to Montana knowing that the need for secrecy was paramount. Big Horn was the perfect place for clandestine meetings where medical advancements were proofed and bartered for.

  The paved drive made a final curve before it broke into a secluded plot of land where the house stood along with several outbuildings, including a three-car garage and barn. Behind the house were the pool, changing cabana, and sauna. Nicole idled at the bend and pulled her cell phone from her coat pocket. She dialed Lars.

  “How far out?”

  “Four minutes. Wait for me.”

  He knew she just as often proceeded alone as waited for backup. The department was too thin to send personnel out in pairs. But they didn’t deal with murder every day, and they handled kidnapping even less. The case was fraught with obvious danger, but vulnerabilities as well. Nicole had to assume that two children were, if still alive, held prisoner in the house. Would King find it less threatening if Nicole arrived alone?

  She thought so. She also thought it was entirely possible that King had summoned Mrs. Esparza the night before, when Beatrice beca
me uncooperative. Good girls don’t do this. Don’t do what? Rebel? Disobey their parents? Nicole did not believe that Beatrice knew more than her mother about the great doctor’s cure. Had Alma Esparza realized that her position in the world could be about to skyrocket but teetered on the brink, depending on the cooperation of a reluctant fourteen-year-old girl?

  Or was Nicole wrong about the mother? She wondered if the woman had made it as far as the home. Had she asked for her children? Had she connected with Beatrice, even for a few moments, and calmed her distraught daughter? Or had she found King and Beatrice and a situation she wasn’t able to handle? And was that when the calls to her husband began?

  Had she feared, or had she fought?

  For herself, or for her children?

  Nicole had experience in hostage negotiation. Some training from when she was with the Denver PD.

  She shifted the Yukon into gear, and the tires spun on the icy surface of the road, a sharp whine, before they gripped pavement and the vehicle jumped forward.

  The house was huge. Seven bedrooms, each with its own bath. A cook’s kitchen and three family areas, including a game room and a formal dining room. The roof of the barn peaked behind the three-car garage. Pastures were contained by a white slatted fence and were empty of livestock. The barn probably held more toys than tools.

  Nicole stopped where the driveway branched. With no tree cover, she was as exposed as a turkey in the gallows, but she climbed from the Yukon without hesitation.

  Show no uncertainty, she reminded herself.

  The guy who’d built the house had a thing for the number three. Three levels. The front facade had three pairs of French doors—two on the second level, one on the third—that opened onto expansive balconies. The roof was peaked thrice, once front and center, then once to either side, with those peaks being set back from the first. The home was elaborate, designed for show and entertaining, but with its stone masonry and leaded glass set in iron millwork, it was also a fortress.

  Nicole glanced at each of the front-facing windows but saw no small faces peering out. The windows were not covered and reflected back, dark and empty. Stone stairs led to a double front entry. Her boots crunched in the snow as she advanced, but she never made it off the driveway. A set of French doors on the second floor opened, and the man from the photo with Beatrice stepped out. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. His shirt, red and tailored, was open at the throat, and the tails flapped in the wind. His hair was dark and disheveled. He had a drink in his hand and gestured with it.