by Emery Hayes
Or did she? Truman was dead. Nicole had stopped at her desk long enough to find his obituary online. A witness to the sound of gunfire, to its flame against the night sky, to Benjamin’s face, in profile, some fifty feet across a shadowed street and to his hasty retreat, Truman had given a statement to Nicole. She had filed it, knowing it was circumstantial at best. But a jury loved living evidence, a live play of Q and A. It had been one more seed in a planter’s box. Now dried up and blown away.
She stopped midhall and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Jordan had to know. If Benjamin had the balls to show up here, what else might he do? The connection rang twice and was picked up by Mrs. Neal.
“Checking in,” Nicole said, after greeting the woman.
“All quiet here,” Mrs. Neal promised.
“I hope it stays that way.”
Nicole felt the shift in the woman’s awareness before she heard it in her voice. “You have reason to think it won’t?”
“I have a concern,” she admitted. “A visitor in town. Jordan’s father.”
“I’ve never heard you speak of him, and I figured that’s because he wasn’t worth mentioning.”
“Only as a matter of precaution,” Nicole agreed. “Don’t answer the door tonight.”
“I’ll check the locks now.”
“I’m probably being overcautious.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I won’t be back till late.”
“That’s okay. I took down that stack of board games you had in the closet. I think we’re on for Sorry and Parcheesi.”
Nicole smiled as an image of Jordan’s disgruntled face simmered into her mind’s eye.
“He puts up with me, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Neal said.
“He adores you.”
“For five minutes here and there.” She heard Mrs. Neal call for Jordan, and then she said, “He’s a good boy.”
The best, Nicole thought.
“Hey, Mom.”
His voice was light, not weighted by a single concern, and Nicole liked it that way.
“How was Legos?”
“Cool. Two hours, four hundred forty-three pieces, and every one of them had to be used.”
She didn’t know how the rules were made or what made them so challenging, but Jordan loved the planning and building aspects of Legos. He had already started lobbying for a two-week summer camp combo of engineering and Legos, and Nicole knew she would send him.
“What did you build?”
“That duel scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with Solo and Skywalker on the laser bridge. I’m calling it ‘Animosity Between Friends.’”
“Way cool.”
“Yeah, but that’s not why you called,” he said. “And it’s not even five o’clock. Too early for your check-in.”
“You’re right. I have ulterior motives.” She paused and looked for words that would make the announcement easier, then cast them aside. Jordan knew to expect honesty from her and that sometimes words had bite. “Your father’s in town.”
There was stillness over the line as he processed that.
“In Blue Mesa?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” The air had become thin in his throat, and it showed up in the feathery quality of his voice.
“I don’t know yet. And I don’t want you to be afraid. I want you to be prepared.”
Jordan had only shadow memories of his father, more remembered emotion than actual time spent with the man. He feared his father, and it was a clawing in his gut that climbed up his throat—that was how Jordan had described it to her at seven years of age when he brought up his father in conversation. Nicole had validated his feelings by giving him small pieces of the past, gentling the words as best she could. But trauma had a way of settling in, of never allowing the mind and heart to erase it completely. The flashes of fear had lost their frequency, taking him by surprise less often, but were forever just under the surface.
“He came by the station,” she told him. And had left his name. Benjamin had known it would make them spin. He’d probably driven by the house too, because he liked to watch people squirm, and he got off on it when he was the one pushing the needle through the spine of a butterfly. “I spoke to him. Let him know we aren’t interested in a family reunion.”
“A direct assault,” Jordan said. There was more weight in his voice. He didn’t want to be afraid of his father.
“Did you want to meet with him?” Nicole didn’t like offering; it made her stomach tilt and put a buzzing in her ears. But maybe it would ease the terror that sometimes haunted her son.
Jordan seemed to consider it. The silence between them became ponderous for a moment.
“No,” he said. “I have nothing to say to him, and I don’t think he’s here to see me.”
“He’s good at pulling the strings on a marionette,” she reminded him. But yes, a bold move for Benjamin. And that made Nicole nervous. He wasn’t here to see his son. He wasn’t here solely for his connection to Esparza. He was here to poke Nicole and see how far he could push her.
Nicole had been honest with Jordan. She’d told him about his father, the drug dealer of the rich and infamous. A more appropriate job for a man who liked to watch people implode didn’t exist. She’d also told him that it had taken her too long to pry the man’s fingers from around their son’s throat. She’d been a different woman then, under attack at work and vulnerable to Benjamin’s charm. In hindsight, she remembered bruises she’d wanted to believe had come from toddling falls, and she had heard cries of hunger and distress she’d thought were the result of Benjamin’s carelessness. But at the first concrete evidence of abuse, Nicole had launched into action. She’d stared at it until her eyes burned dry and her heart lodged in her throat. And then she’d vowed to do everything necessary to save her son.
Honesty. She relied on it to keep their world in balance.
“Knowledge is power. I’m telling you so you have that. He’s in town, but I’m the one he wants.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
It wasn’t. “He doesn’t stand a chance,” she assured him, and heard Jordan’s next breath, drawn easier.
“Yeah. He must like punishment.”
Nicole had told him about their last confrontation, leaving out most of the details, emphasizing the life-or-death decisions that had been made that day.
“I’m ready for him, Jordan.”
“I know.”
“And so are you, if it comes to that.” Over her dead body.
“I’m a brown belt,” he reminded her.
“Your father is a sapling in comparison.”
Jordan liked that, and when Nicole said good-bye, it was with a lighter heart.
Her footsteps echoed on the linoleum. Forensics was at the end of the hall.
Arty saw her coming and left his place at the proton microscope and the purple cashmere sweater belonging to Beatrice Esparza under the red light to meet her at the door.
Her blood rushed with the threat of Benjamin’s presence in a place he didn’t belong, her place, but it was matched by the urgency to find and apprehend Beatrice’s killer.
Nicole scanned her ID and waited for the door lock to release before she pushed through. Fingers tapped on computer keys and gases escaped applicators as tests were run.
“Good to see you up here, Sheriff.”
“What do you have for me, Arty?”
Arthur Sleeping Bear was the head of forensics. He saw in numbers, in planes and angles and trajectories. He was the only person she’d ever encountered who could stand at a crime scene and predict to within millimeters the trajectory of a bullet simply based on the movement of the wind. He was fond of T-shirts that carried scientific slogans. Today’s was I have a Mind for Matter.
“If I had something, Sheriff, you’d have heard from me.”
She knew that many of his hunches became truths.
“Let me into your mind, Arty,” she said. �
�Let’s talk in maybes for now.”
He didn’t like to speak prematurely and was seldom moved to do so.
“You talk theories; we speak in facts,” he reminded her.
“She was fourteen years old. He played with her. Let her think she could outrun him. And then he picked her up and whispered in her ear. I don’t think he was singing lullabies.”
His lips pursed, and the lines around his eyes puckered as he considered her request. He surprised her.
“Because it’s a child we’re talking about, Nicole,” he said. “And because you appeal to my heart and not my head.” He motioned her deeper into the room toward Beatrice’s purple Prada bag under an ultraviolet light. Plastic covered a small area of the leather.
“A latent print that doesn’t belong to the victim. But it’s incomplete. From here, we might get lucky.”
Nicole nodded.
“Come see this.”
Three shallow pans each held a thick plastic bag of what looked like snow.
“We’re letting it melt,” Arty said. “Decompensation at an accelerated rate, given that it’s inside and under the heat lamps.”
“What are you hoping to find?”
“Skin. A piece of nail torn from a finger—victim or perp—or mucus from a running nose—that’s far more common and just as easy to plumb for a DNA profile.”
The techs had scooped the snow from around the body, from under her head and hands and feet. Eventually, all of the snow Beatrice Esparza had been lying on, and that from within a small perimeter around her body, had been shoveled into bags and transported in coolers back here to the lab. Their geographical location meant they had top-notch equipment and investigators trained in cold-weather anthropology.
Nicole walked toward the pans. A piece of Plexiglas stood between her and the active experiment. The scene was sterile. And, per protocol, a small camera bolted to the ceiling filmed every riveting moment of melting snow.
“I’ll take anything I can get,” she said.
“Then how ’bout this, Nicole,” he said, and turned. She followed him to a small table and a microscope. “Take a look.”
She did. The prepared slide showed irregular lines and bubblelike shapes.
“What is it?” She stepped back and looked into his broad face.
“The killer’s spit. It froze on her face.”
“How do you know?”
“Initial DNA study shows it’s male.”
King’s? Probably; the man confessed. But the case wasn’t closed until evidence proved it. And this could be it. That felt good.
“What else does it show?”
“The sample is small, but I think we’ll get blood type. And from there, maybe a marker or two unique to the killer.”
A break in the case. “How long?”
“Tomorrow morning. I have it running on an expedited schedule. I hear there’s some evidence waiting for you downstairs,” he said. “Unpleasant, but maybe it will light a path for you.”
“What is it?”
But he shrugged. “It didn’t come from my department. Computer forensics scored this one.”
24
Snow angels. His sisters had spent the morning playing in snow that Kenny King had shoveled into the sun-room, and that made him a good guy in the sheriff’s mind. Joaquin almost choked on the thought. Kenny had wanted more from Bea than friendship. She’d been a prize that all three had fought over—their own father and Kenny and his father. Each of them had wanted more from Bea than she had been able to give. But it was too late to mention that now. He’d stood in the waiting room at the county hospital, with his mom and his sisters, when Cobain told the tale of finding his sisters, safe and sound. She was impressed. He could tell, because for the first time since he’d met her, she smiled.
Sofia and Isla were fine. The doctors had examined them.
Kenny King had watched over them, had kept their spirits up. He was a good brother, and that was the only thing Joaquin liked about him.
Michael King was dead, as he should be. He’d chosen his daughter over Beatrice, and Joaquin wished King had died months, years, earlier. Before his family had ever had the chance to mix with him and his kind.
Kenny hadn’t called the family or police because, according to Cobain, he hadn’t known the girls had been held there against their parents’ wishes. Just as he hadn’t known Beatrice was dead. Cobain was the sheriff. She was supposed to dig deeper. So much for finding the truth, for delivering justice.
Joaquin sat in a chair in the small sitting area of their suite, his back to the window. The curtains were drawn, but behind them evening pressed against the glass. His father paced in front of the couch. His mother opened Styrofoam containers delivered from the grill downstairs and divided up food. Sofia and Isla sat at the dining table, drinking from cans of Coke. Tomorrow they would talk to a psychologist at the sheriff’s request. They would try to pry details from his sisters’ memories that would help them find a killer. Joaquin didn’t like it. He wanted it over. He wanted out of Montana.
The feds had been called; they had been en route, but the girls had been located before their arrival and had never considered themselves captives. The possibility of kidnapping was put in question. And in any case, the guilty had already taken his life.
But it wasn’t finished. All Joaquin had to do was look at his father to know it.
“Enrique,” his mother entreated. “Sit down. Eat.”
Not because food was a source of comfort, of care, because his mother wasn’t like that. Food was energy. And maybe that came from her childhood, when little was all they’d gotten, so what they chose had to work efficiently to sustain life. And the Esparza family was in trouble, the kind of trouble that drained a body’s resources, fast. They were all to refill their tanks and soldier on.
“There’s a way out,” his father said. “I made sure of it.”
“I don’t see it,” Joaquin said. He still didn’t know everything Bea had known. His father’s work was a threat to many, so the less anyone knew about it, the better.
“I told the police I never wrote down a single note. No formulas or lab reflections.”
“They didn’t believe you,” his mother said. “That can’t be done, and they know it.”
“But maybe they believe I shredded everything. And, anyway, they will never find the truth if I don’t lead them to it.”
His father stopped in front of the covered window and rubbed a palm over his forehead. Then he turned and faced them. Weariness made his eyes heavy, his lips tremble.
“If I make my discovery public, the need to suppress it is gone. And we will be safe.”
“Don’t throw it all away, Enrique. We are in this together,” his mother said. “Spread the pieces among us. Let us help carry them.
“You know nothing. You never did. Just me and Beatrice. We know where that got her. We know what will happen to me. And it ends there.”
“King knew,” Joaquin said.
“And he’s dead.”
“Yes,” Joaquin’s mother agreed, her voice reduced to a hushed whisper.
His father’s cell phone rang then. A series of notes that rose in scale, like the crying of a rooster. And Joaquin watched him tense, his shoulders and chin rising.
“Who keeps calling you?” Joaquin wanted to know.
His father turned and headed for a bedroom and privacy, but Joaquin blocked his path.
“No more secrets,” he said. “It’s not about you anymore.” This was about Bea and what they could do to help her now. “It never was.”
His father was slow to respond. “Okay, Joaquin. This is where you step up. For your family.”
His father held the cell phone in the palm of his hand and pressed speaker, and then he nudged Joaquin into a bedroom, away from his sisters, who already knew too much.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Esparza. I’m standing in the lobby of my hotel, and you’re not here.”
“I told you
I wouldn’t be.”
“And I told you how important it is that you follow through.”
“That is your opinion,” his father returned.
“You have your girls back, Dr. Esparza. Now it’s time to move forward.”
It was a woman’s voice.
“No. Not all my girls,” his father returned.
“I wanted Beatrice to live. Remember? I was the one who asked you not to do this. Not to your daughter.”
“And not to you,” Dr. Esparza said. “You were more concerned about yourself and Callon Pharmaceuticals than you were about Beatrice.”
Callon. Joaquin recognized the name and the woman’s voice. She had been to their home but had refused to work with his father. Apparently, there had been a change of heart.
“Let’s talk, Enrique,” she said. “Why not let Beatrice’s life count for something big?”
“The cost is too high,” his father said. “I will not meet with you. I will not give you my work.”
“Beatrice is dead. Will you feel any better when thousands who could have been saved are buried beside her?”
“Nothing can make me feel better, or worse.” His father hung up. He silenced his cell phone and dropped it in his pants pocket. Then he resumed pacing.
“Callon was the highest bidder?” Joaquin asked.
“Yes. And according to the rules, I am to hand over my work to them, but more than that, I am to work beside their scientists and re-create the super cell in their lab. Not so they can save lives. No. All this so they can save themselves.”
“How? What will they do with Nueva Vida?”
“Squash it. And me along with it.”
25
Charlene sat across from him at the tall bistro table. She’d ordered white wine and a salad that included seven of the super foods—antioxidants and slow-release proteins. She speared a forkful.