Cold to the Bone

by Emery Hayes

  Benjamin was irritated. He’d thought a lot about his meet with Nicole in the weeks before he’d left for Montana. He’d made it the stuff dreams were made of. Only it hadn’t gone down that way. Nicole wasn’t afraid of him. She was as strong as she’d been on that last day in Denver. Maybe more so. Nicole wasn’t a woman who trembled. She didn’t flinch. Nicole was a fighter. She was everything he was not, and he hated that about her.

  Across from him, Charlene lifted her wineglass. She breathed in the bubbles from her spritzer and rubbed her nose. He used to think that was charming, but today everything was off. And it wasn’t just Nicole. Things were shifting with the Big Pharm players. He answered only to one, and she’d given him loose rein. Until last night, when everything had gone to hell.

  Killing the girl hadn’t been enough. She was the evidence. Evidence that could be replicated. They had needed to take out the father too. He’d suggested that but had been ignored. And now the dominos were falling. Benjamin didn’t like that. He was a believer in eliminating small problems before they became big.

  “You’re not eating,” Charlene said. It was true. It was 5:40, and he didn’t like dinner before eight o’clock. Outside, the sky was in full darkness, but that made no impression on his body’s clock. He had work to do later that would interrupt his usual routine. A job they hadn’t planned, a meeting he didn’t look forward to. Esparza. The whining doctor. But Benjamin was king of the coax. He’d get the man into a state of agreement, or he’d kill him.

  “You need to change,” he told Charlene.

  She wore an outfit that started as a halter top and flowed into pant legs that were loose and liquid. He liked what the material did when she walked. He liked the way the top exposed her shoulders. But it was wrong for their destination.

  “What?” A small frown rippled across her face.

  “People will remember you. We need to blend in,” he said. Their success here depended upon their ability to get lost in the crowd.

  When he’d planned the Big Pharm round table, he’d convinced himself that he could pull off the biggest deal of his career right under Nicole’s judgmental nose. But he wanted her to know he’d done it. That he had the intellect and the balls to do it. And his weakness for her esteem might have fucked up the whole operation. That made him mad.

  “She got away from you, Charlene. That wasn’t good.”

  “No.”

  The plan had been to kill Beatrice Esparza in King’s house and tuck her into bed like she was sleeping. Charlene had suggested the master bedroom, to cast further aspersion upon the man. He’d be to the police not just a sore loser but perhaps guilty of child abuse. It would put just enough shade on the man; the police would have to dig deeper while Benjamin and the remaining round table packed up and scattered, back to life as usual.

  “Tell me again how that happened.”

  “She was arguing with King, and she ran.”

  But there was more to it than that. Charlene was terrible at harboring guilt. She couldn’t look in his eyes. And she was full of excuses and platitudes. And diversions.

  “The ME’s going to find the marks,” she said. “But he won’t know what they are. Not beyond surgical scarring.”

  They weren’t worried about the bruising left by strangulation. Murder was trivial in this case. This had always been about Nueva Vida.

  “He’ll know, if Esparza talks about his work.” And even if he didn’t. The incisions on the girl’s body would be investigated. By then, of course, there would be no one left to blame.

  Certainly not him. His job was to broker the deal. To make sure the bidding was carried out and that Geneva was the winner. He’d done that. The only thing that remained for him to do was deliver Esparza. Then Benjamin’s reputation as a top-shelf drug dealer would be solid. And that would happen tonight. A country-bumpkin ME wasn’t going to pry the secrets out of Beatrice Esparza’s body before midnight, and by then Benjamin’s bank account would be busting at the seams and he would be floating above the clouds. He picked up his smartphone and tapped into his favorite flight app. Kalispell to San Francisco to Hawaii and eventually Bora Bora. He selected and paid for a single seat in first class.

  26

  “What do you see?” Nicole asked.

  Lars walked back to midtable and tapped a photo. “Surgical scarring,” he said. “It has to be. Thin, straight, all the same width and length.”

  “Nicely done, right?”

  “I’d let this doctor fix my face,” Lars agreed.

  He let his eyes drift over the glossy photos, pulling four of them from the pile and arranging them side by side. “Strange, the way the incisions are arranged. Almost like someone is keeping score.”

  Yes, on what had turned out to be the hip of the young lady.

  “You call MacAulay?”

  “Yeah. He confirmed the markings. All surgical.”

  The ME had accompanied the body back to the morgue in the early-morning hours and prepped her for storage. Then he had gone home to bed and had approached the victim fresh that afternoon, after his morning office hours. He would get back to them when he was done en suite. Meaning he would do a thorough exam that took a painstakingly long time and then summon her.

  She stepped back and took in the photos as a whole. They had come in slowly from the forensic techs, pulled from a locked cache on the victim’s cell phone. Each was dated and time-stamped, so arranging them accurately was not a problem. After wading through the images, discarding those that didn’t seem to have relevance to Beatrice’s murder, they were left with thirty-two shots that told only part of the story. There were gaps, days and weeks of the vic’s life not represented in the pictures.

  But the photos made some things solid for Nicole. They showed her the greed and power that had surrounded the girl leading up to her death. Many revealed the same polished, suited men who Nicole believed were players from the Big Pharm round table, and she had sent these photos out to deputies, hoping to find them among the skiers and holiday revelers. But nothing yet.

  She moved six pictures so that they were grouped together. Michael King, an older, suited woman, and four men who appeared in multiple shots over several occasions. Each of them posing with their victim. “What do you think of this?”

  “The round table?”

  “I think so.”

  The night of Beatrice’s eighth-grade graduation. What should have been a family gathering to celebrate their victim’s accomplishments had been turned into a pony show.

  Nicole tapped the image of the older woman with Beatrice. She had a solid build, with short hair styled away from her face. She wasn’t smiling. Concern filled her eyes.

  “Who is she?”

  “Someone who refused to play the game?” Lars guessed.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They’re posing but not touching.” No arm around a waist, inches of air space between their shoulders. “And the woman’s frowning. She’s worried about something.”

  “Maybe this is the woman Joaquin spoke of.” The grandmotherly pharm exec who had dismissed the idea of working with Enrique Esparza. “Maybe she changed her mind when the cards were on the table. When she realized there was too much at stake not to play.

  “We need to find her.”

  “A priority,” she agreed. “What do you think about this?”

  She walked to the end of the table and removed another photo. It had been taken on the mountain four days ago. It showed Dr. Esparza, skis and poles and bright sunshine. He was talking to a couple. Benjamin and Charlene.

  Nicole knew that Benjamin was five feet seven inches tall. Charlene towered over him by about eight inches. In the photo she looked at Esparza, neither giving nor receiving any emotion. She didn’t care that Esparza was unhappy, disagreeable, or anything else. Benjamin was smiling. “A meeting of like minds?” Lars said.

  “Except Esparza doesn’t seem to be in agreement.”

  “No. He definitely looks defens
ive.”

  “I believe Kenny,” Nicole said. “Esparza’s documents were forgeries.”

  Nicole had a deputy working on it. The FDA, being a government office, meant a lot of waiting, but she wanted the certainty.

  “And that wasn’t the limit of his deceit. What do you suppose they’re talking about here?” Back to the photo of Esparza with Benjamin and Charlene.

  “What everyone in their circle was talking about: Beatrice.”

  “But what specifically? Why meet with Esparza prior to the proofing and auction?” Was it even allowed?

  “Maybe there was a favorite, and it wasn’t King,” Lars posed. “Wouldn’t be the first time a dark horse entered a race.”

  Made sense. Nicole knew Benjamin was an easy sell if the money was right and the workload light. “No honor among thieves.”

  “If Esparza gave his daughter cancer,” Lars began, “then he cured her too.”

  “I’m waiting for MacAulay to confirm that.”

  “But listen to this,” Lars said. “Esparza implanted his daughter four times. That keeps with what Kenny said too. And if each time the cancer sample was bigger, a different kind, a tougher-to-beat cancer, that explains why the vic got sicker for longer as the months passed.” As Joaquin had reported and the girl’s diary entries seemed to reflect. “So even if Esparza carried out his medical trials without government approval, he had a viable cure for the disease. A cure that could, potentially, apply to other diseases.” He hooked her gaze, his own hard and penetrating. “Maybe what Esparza has is the base cure for every human ailment.”

  The thought was staggering. Improbable. And the discovery perhaps already lost.

  “Do you think he wrote it out? Scientists keep journals of their work, right? They hypothesize and test and have to put results somewhere,” she said.

  “He made a point of telling us that it was locked inside his mind. One of his precautions. But there’s no way he could come up with something so big without keeping a record of it.”

  “So we move this away from the family?” she posed. “We start digging into those who would be hurt the most.”

  “Big Pharm,” Lars agreed. “This group.” And he slid the photo of Esparza with Benjamin and Charlene into the pile.

  “We need to find the other players,” Nicole said. “At least the two who are here in Toole County.”

  “One of them must be the highest bidder,” Lars said.

  “And maybe with Benjamin’s help.”

  Her gaze lingered on the older woman. She was different from the others. Worried, on edge. Angered? “I’d like to talk to her.”

  * * *

  Nicole passed cold storage for the small suite of rooms that held MacAulay’s morgue.

  He looked up as she approached. “I expected you sooner.”

  “You take a look at King yet?”

  “I did.” He turned and leaned back against the table. “He didn’t kill Beatrice.”

  And that gave Nicole pause. “He confessed.”

  “He lied.”

  “You can prove that?”

  “Three-quarters of an inch,” he said. “The pads of the thumbs that choked the life out of Beatrice Esparza measure exactly three-quarters of an inch.”

  “But King’s don’t,” she followed.

  MacAulay shook his head. “Not even close. King was stocky, with thick hands. The pads of his thumbs measure one and one eighth of an inch. I took several impressions, different angles. There’s no wiggle room there.”

  “Damn.”

  The killer was possibly male, but not King. The killer was five feet ten to six feet three inches. He weighed no more than 165 pounds. And he had slim hands.

  Had it been jealousy or rejection? Either could result in murder.

  Or was it fear of financial ruin?

  Of their current pool of male contestants, that made their killer either Joaquin or Kenny King.

  Or Benjamin and his wife, Charlene, hired by the Big Pharms. Not just broker but executioner too?

  “And the perpetrator wasn’t wearing gloves. This was skin-to-skin contact.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Latent print.” And he smiled. “In the bruise pattern. They’re never admissible in court, and there isn’t enough to provide an identity pool. Just enough so we know the killer used his bare hands.”

  “Who am I looking for, MacAulay?”

  “A pharm company not in the running,” MacAulay posed. “Or one that wants to keep the status quo. A family member who didn’t believe in what Beatrice was doing. Or was jealous that her altruistic ways outshined the behavior of an average human being.”

  “Strangulation is personal.”

  27

  Patience was not a virtue. Not in a homicide investigation.

  Patience allowed a lead to run cold and a case to enter deep freeze. They were on a collision course with the midnight hour, and statistically speaking, that meant their chances of finding their killer would take a nose dive. Nicole sat in the driver’s seat of the Yukon with the engine idling and steam from the exhaust billowing around the vehicle. Sometimes you had to slow down, like when a thought was bordering your awareness. Exactly what she hadn’t done in the Esparzas’ hotel room, when she should have noticed the absence of the girls’ coats in the closet Mrs. Esparza had flung wide open.

  It was 5:40, and in the dead of winter that meant the sun was already hidden behind the mountains and the sky was a sketch in charcoals. The lights inside the station were a somber yellow glow that didn’t quite reach Nicole where she remained with her vehicle, her memory playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with her consciousness.

  Her conversation with MacAulay had her reaching back into that hotel room. Had her rummaging through images like they were snapshots in her hands. But which of his words had triggered that search, and what in particular was she looking for?

  Strangulation is personal.

  And she supposed that was true. Unarmed, an assailant could be reduced to the menial labor of murder. Some probably preferred it, got off on proximity and the power of taking life. But it wasn’t the norm. It wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t choice.

  Nothing personal … Joaquin’s words tangled with MacAulay’s.

  Beatrice. Nicole’s mind suddenly lit on it. There had been no outward signs of the victim’s presence in the living space the family shared, except for her journal. No snow boots at the door, sweaters thrown over the back of a chair. No books or magazines that would appeal to a teen girl. No jewelry taken off and left on the coffee table. No sign of Beatrice at all.

  And yet she was remembered by hotel staff. She’d been a regular, passing through the lobby, drinking cocoa and roasting marshmallows on the patio.

  Nicole needed back in that hotel room. She needed to confirm what she suspected, that when Beatrice Esparza disappeared, she’d done it fully packed and with no intention of looking back.

  Nicole cut the engine and slid out of the Yukon. She walked into the squad room just as Lars was rising from his desk, cell to ear. He hung up, shrugged into his coat, and said to her, “Forty-five.”

  As in percent. Their chances of apprehending their killer fell by forty-five percent once a day stood between them and the crime.

  Nicole nodded in acknowledgment. “Where are you headed?” she asked.

  At this time on an average day, his answer would be that he was going home. Unless his daughter had a volleyball game, but then he would be slipping into his sweat shirt, Blue Mesa High School stamped on it with the raging-bull mascot breaking through the ball, and not into his parka.

  “Judge Williams signed the order,” Lars told her. “The kids will be questioned by a court-appointed child psychologist tomorrow morning.”

  “And you’re going to deliver the order yourself?”

  He nodded. “You want to come?”

  “I was headed there anyway.”

  He held her gaze as he finished buttoning his parka. “Why?”<
br />
  “I didn’t see Beatrice Esparza in their hotel room,” she said. “It wasn’t just the absence of her coat, her purse. There was almost a complete absence of the girl.”

  Lars thought about that, nodding slowly. “Yeah. I didn’t see anything that screamed teenage girl.”

  “Except her journal.”

  “You think she forgot that?”

  “She could have left it on purpose. Some kind of statement. I don’t think it matters. Not as much as the fact that she packed up and left.”

  “And what made her do so.”

  “Exactly.” She turned and walked with him toward the door. “You drive, and I’ll tell you about what I learned from MacAulay.” They headed out of town and into the ski resort area, passing signs for Deer Run and Jagged Ridge as they waded deeper into the tourist hub. Lars already knew that King was not their killer. She had called that in. Now she told him about the suture lines and MacAulay’s discovery—the crater where a cancerous tumor had been but miraculously disappeared.

  “What did Esparza say about his discovery?” Lars posed as he searched his own memory. “Something about the bad cells having a change of heart and turning into cheerleaders?”

  “Champions,” Nicole corrected. “He said they championed the body.”

  Nicole settled into her seat. She wondered about Esparza’s discovery. If he had found a way to turn back time and disease, certainly there would be more activity around the doctor. Protections and demands. Why wasn’t he hidden away, like Oz, behind a shroud of secrecy?

  “There’s a flaw,” she decided. “In Esparza’s discovery.”

  “Always,” Lars agreed. “Or getting it into clinical trials would have happened.”

  “But even with its flaws, it’s big enough to stir up the pharm companies.”

  “They eat guys like Esparza.”

  “You think it’s happened before?”

  “They like to keep the tempo steady,” he said. “When we were going through Amber’s treatment and recovery, I got the feeling that there was a measured pacing with medicine, with discoveries and allocations—who got what drug and when. There are people deciding every day who will live and who will die, and it all comes down to money. A cure for cancer—” The thought settled on Lars in a deep frown. “That would shake up the world. A way to turn every sick cell into a super cell? Pharm companies would be reduced to aspirin pushers.”