The A List

by Jance, J. A.

  26

  Lyons, Oregon, December 2016

  The onset of a persistent cough and episodes of shortness of breath had prompted Rex’s regular GP to refer him to the internist they’d seen today. The doctor had listened to Rex’s chest, studied the X-rays, and then ordered another round of tests. Scheduling an MRI would be next up on Kaitlyn’s agenda. The doctor hadn’t come right out and said so directly, but she was pretty sure he suspected lung cancer. So did she.

  Kaitlyn turned the key in the ignition and then used the wipers to clear away the accumulated snow. If there was this much snow in the lowlands, it was bound to be worse up in the mountains.

  “I wish you kids would hurry up and have kids,” her father muttered as she pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. “The doctor made it sound like this could be serious, and I’d like to see a grandkid or two before I cork off.”

  Talk about their getting pregnant was a sore subject. Jack and Kaitlyn both wanted kids, and they’d been trying. So far it just wasn’t happening. Considering her experience with Dr. Edward Gilchrist’s fertility clinic, she sure as hell wasn’t going to try going to one of those.

  “We’re working on it, Dad,” she said, and let it go at that.

  The rush-hour storm made for stop-and-go traffic all the way through town. Jack went into work early and got off at three. That meant that most likely he was already home. At least they both wouldn’t be caught up in this seemingly endless traffic jam.

  “If this weather is gonna stick around for a couple of days, we should probably stock up on groceries,” her father suggested.

  Getting the hint, Kaitlyn sighed. Buying groceries in the Pacific Northwest with a snowstorm bearing down was always a free-for-all, and it would make the trip home that much later.

  “Why don’t you just come stay with us in Mill City for a day or two?” she asked.

  “No way,” he told her, “absolutely not. I’d rather be home in my own place.”

  With a reluctant sigh, she turned in to the Fred Meyer parking lot. “What all do you need?”

  “Just the usual—bread, milk, a couple of frozen dinners, and maybe a few paperbacks if they have any.”

  Available grocery carts were hard to find. She finally followed a shopper out into the parking lot and grabbed her cart as soon as she finished loading groceries into the car. Inside the store the shelves in the bread aisle were already picked clean. Ditto for the fridge where the milk should have been. Kaitlyn made do with a selection of the frozen dinners and containers of microwavable soups. For bread she bought several packages of refrigerated rolls that he could heat up in the oven. In the book section, she managed to score a single western and two murder mysteries. The shopping excursion, which should have taken ten minutes under normal circumstances, took forty-five instead, and while she waited in line at the check stand, she called Jack to bring him up to speed.

  “Why won’t your dad come here?”

  “Because he’s old and he’s stubborn,” Kaitlyn answered.

  “Isn’t that the truth!”

  Rex was still awake when she returned to the minivan and loaded in the groceries. Once she turned on the engine and the vehicle started warming up, he immediately dozed off again. His sleeping in the car like that was another cause for worry, but it was also a huge favor to her. Given the road conditions that night, his propensity for backseat driving wouldn’t have been welcome.

  There was still stop-and-go traffic the rest of the way through town, and out on Highway 22 it was white-knuckle driving every inch of the way. A snowplow with flashing orange lights rumbled past her heading east. If the Department of Transportation was dispatching snowplows to clear the highway, that most likely meant the road through Lyons was already toast, and the narrow track up the canyon to her dad’s place would be even worse. Still, home was where her father wanted to be, and given the way the doctor’s appointment had gone, she was determined to get him there.

  Having grown up in the mountains, Kaitlyn was accustomed to the hazards of wintertime driving. She knew how to put on chains, but she wasn’t looking forward to doing it. Fortunately, when she turned off Highway 22 and crossed the newly sanded bridge over the North Santiam River, she found that a group of guys from the local Grange were out in force, installing chains in exchange for small donations.

  When Tommy Robins, the guy in charge, approached the minivan, Kaitlyn rolled down her window. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “Pretty bad and getting worse,” he said. “Beyond this point, you’ll need either chains or four-wheel drive.”

  “Chain me up, then,” she said, clicking open the luggage compartment. “The chains are in back under the floor mat.”

  Just then a dark-colored Toyota 4Runner swung off the highway and flashed by, almost clipping Tommy in the process.

  “Asshole,” Tommy muttered. “Somebody will be digging him out of a ditch before the night is over.”

  On the passenger side of the car, Rex stirred. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Putting on chains,” she explained.

  Tommy was running the show, which meant he wasn’t doing the actual work. “Hey, Tommy,” Rex said, “how’s it going?”

  “It’s okay now,” Tommy allowed, leaning against her window frame, “but that ice storm is supposed to hit any minute. You’re lucky you got here when you did. Once there’s a coating of ice on all this snow, there’ll be hell to pay. When it starts to get real bad, we’re shutting down. You gonna stay up on the mountain with your old man?”

  “No,” Kaitlyn answered ruefully.

  Tommy looked across her at Rex. “You sure you’ll be all right out there all by yourself? It might be a day or two before anyone can get to you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Rex told him. “I’ve got food, books, plenty of wood, and a generator. I’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.”

  Once the chains were on, Kaitlyn paid what was owed and drove on. With a good six inches of snow on the ground and more falling, the chains made all the difference. Kaitlyn turned off 226 and headed up the McCully Mountain Road. Due to a lack of guardrails, locals sometimes referred to that stretch of roadway as “Killer Mountain Road.” Once they got to the house, it took time to operate the chair lift, wheel her father inside, and unload and put away the groceries.

  To facilitate Rex’s care and give him a measure of dignity, Jack and his pals had redesigned his bedroom space to allow the use of a remote-controlled lift that made it possible for Rex to get himself in and out of his chair, on and off the pot, and into and out of bed. By nine o’clock, when he was tucked in for the night and Kaitlyn was ready to go, she was able to leave him there with a totally clear conscience.

  On her way to the RAV4, she noticed that the snow had changed to freezing rain. Heading back down the narrow canyon road, she saw that the minivan tracks she’d left behind in the snow on the way up had completely disappeared. Four-wheel drive or not, she didn’t risk speeding. She was far too aware of the steep inclines that fell away from the roadway and down the mountainside to the right.

  Shortly after driving past the turnoff to the next-door neighbor’s place, she noticed a vehicle shooting out onto the slender roadway behind her. Driving far too fast and with the headlights on high beam, the speeding vehicle pulled in directly behind her, following almost on her bumper—close enough that the headlamps themselves disappeared, leaving a blinding glow that made it difficult for her to see what was in front of her. She couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle it was, but it had a high profile.

  “Asshole,” she muttered into her rearview mirror. “What the hell’s your big hurry?”

  It was probably another mile or so to the next driveway where she could pull in and let him pass. In the meantime he’d just have to be patient.

  Just then the vehicle nosed even closer and bumped into her from behind. It wasn’t a hard hit—just a gentle nudge, not enough to do any damage but enough to scare the hell out of her. Gripping
the steering wheel and trying to avoid going into a skid, she tapped on the brakes, but nothing happened. Instead of slowing, the RAV4 seemed to pick up speed. Not only was the guy literally on her bumper, he was shoving her toward the cliff.

  Moments later Kaitlyn’s SUV plunged off the side of the road and tumbled down the mountainside. It flew through the air for some distance before landing nose down, and then it continued moving, turning end over end three times before finally coming to rest at the base of a towering second-growth tree. The plunge down the mountain might have been accompanied by screeching metal and the sound of shattering glass, but pelting sleet muffled any noise. And if Kaitlyn screamed as she went over the edge, there was no one out in the forest on that frigid night to hear her.

  Far above her the black Toyota 4Runner that had shoved her off the roadway paused long enough for the driver to survey the carnage. He rolled down his window briefly and listened to hear if there was any sound coming from the wreckage. In the falling sleet, the night had gone dead quiet. The driver up above didn’t bother getting out to go check for survivors. That wasn’t necessary. His target might have survived the first impact, but not the subsequent ones.

  After a minute or so, he took his foot off the brake and eased on down the road on snow that was already topped by a thin layer of ice. Vague humps showed where distinctive tire tracks might have been left earlier, but there were none there now. And between now and the time someone came looking for the victim, these tracks would be completely obliterated as well, and that was just how the killer wanted it—as though he’d never even been here.

  27

  Mill City, Oregon, December 2016

  Back home in Mill City, Jack Holmes watched the clock and the weather reports and worried. By nine the temperatures were falling and the snow had turned to freezing rain. Soon every road in the county would be covered by a layer of treacherous ice.

  Kaitlyn had called him from the grocery store in Salem around seven. He estimated it would take at least an hour for her to get from there back to her dad’s place above Lyons, depending on traffic and on whether or not she’d had to stop and put on chains. Then it would take time to arrive at Rex’s place and get him offloaded and settled in. By Jack’s estimate Kaitlyn should have been on her way home from there by around eight thirty, and certainly no later than nine. On a good day, the seven-and-a-half-mile drive took around fifteen minutes. On a night like this, it would be longer, but still, by nine thirty he was pacing the floor.

  Jack could have tried calling, but he didn’t. The roads were too iffy tonight for Kaitlyn to be talking on the phone and driving at the same time. “And if she’s stuck somewhere and needs help, she’ll call.”

  That’s what Jack told himself, but by ten o’clock he was having a hard time believing it. Where the hell was she? By ten fifteen he lifted his temporary call ban and tried dialing her number. Naturally the call went straight to voice mail. There were spots along McCully Mountain Road where you could get a cell signal, but Rex’s place didn’t happen to be one of them. At ten thirty and frantic with worry, Jack dialed Rex’s landline. His father-in-law’s muffled answer said he’d been awakened out of a sound sleep.

  “Did Kaitlyn decide to stay over with you?” Jack asked.

  “Stay over?” Rex responded, instantly awake. “No, not at all. Isn’t she home yet?”

  “She’s not, and I’m worried sick. What time did she leave?”

  “A little after nine,” Rex replied. “What time is it now?”

  “Ten thirty.”

  “You’ve tried her phone?”

  “She doesn’t answer. It goes straight to voice mail.”

  “Have you called the cops?” Rex asked.

  “Not yet,” Jack said, “but I will now.”

  Wanting to calm himself before dialing 911, Jack sank into Kaitlyn’s chair and was astonished to discover that she’d left her iPad at home, on the charger and almost out of sight, tucked between the seat cushion and the arm of the chair. By the time he finished dialing, he had the device in hand with Kaitlyn’s Find My Phone app up and running.

  “911,” a woman responded. “What are you reporting?”

  “It’s my wife,” he said. “Her name is Kaitlyn Holmes. I think she might have been in a wreck. She left her father’s house on McCully Mountain Road outside Lyons an hour and a half ago. It’s not quite eight miles from his house to ours in Mill City. I’ve used her iPad to locate her phone. It appears to be a little over a mile or so from her dad’s place. It seems to be close to the road but not on the road. The problem is, she isn’t answering. My calls go straight to voice mail.”

  The operator took Jack’s name and phone number. “We’ll send someone out as soon as a unit becomes available,” she told him, “but the roads are such a mess tonight, we’re completely backed up.”

  The words “as soon as” weren’t nearly soon enough for Jack Holmes. Once off the phone, he got dressed, bundled up against the freezing rain, and headed out. The weather was appalling. Other than his Jeep Cherokee and an occasional snowplow, there was no one else out driving—not on Highway 22, or on Highway 226, or even on McCully Mountain Road. If there had been tracks on the road earlier, they weren’t there now. Jack inched his way up the steep incline in low gear, stopping every now and then to compare his position with the blinking green dot on Kaitlyn’s iPad that supposedly indicated the location of her phone.

  When he finally drew even with the indicator on the iPad, there was no sign of any kind of police presence. Jack was the first to arrive. Parking in the middle of the road, he turned on his hazard lights, climbed out of the Jeep, and gingerly crept close enough to the edge to be able to see over the side. By then, the freezing rain had tapered off and finally stopped. Overhead, the cloud cover was breaking up, showing distant stars here and there while the temperature dropped even more. Far below, Jack’s eyes were drawn to a tiny red dot. Instantly he knew exactly what he was seeing—the fading glow of a dying taillight.

  Hoping beyond hope that Kaitlyn was still alive, he didn’t hesitate. Slipping and sliding on his butt, he made his way down the steep slope, yelling her name as he went. “Kaitlyn, Kaitlyn, can you hear me?” But in that snow-covered, icy landscape, his voice seemed to go nowhere, and there was no reply.

  When he reached the driver’s door, the glass was completely blown out. The dashboard lights, like that one remaining taillight, provided a dim and ghostly illumination as he peered inside. Kaitlyn was still strapped into the driver’s seat. Her eyes were open. Her head hung loosely at an awkward angle. Jack reached inside to take her pulse, but as soon as he touched her icy skin, he knew it was too late. She was gone.

  He fell to his knees in the icy snow and covered his face with his hands. “No!” he howled skyward. “Nooooo!” His anguished cry was answered by the wail of an arriving police cruiser, nosing its way up the mountain.

  Later on, people would note that the arriving cops made no effort to preserve the crime scene, not that anyone realized at the time that it was a crime scene. Even had they attempted to do so, it would have been hopeless, because Mother Nature herself had already obliterated most of the evidence. According to the broken clock in the dashboard, the RAV4 had crashed to earth at 9:20 P.M. During the subsequent investigation, a snowplow driver heading out to clear Highway 226 reported almost colliding with a dark-colored SUV ten minutes or so later. The vehicle, speeding onto the highway without hesitating at the stop sign, had careened off McCully Mountain Road and onto 226, almost T-boning the larger vehicle.

  “It would’ve been a lot worse for him than it was for me,” the driver said.

  Since there was no way to tell if the unidentified vehicle had anything to do with Kaitlyn’s accident, that part of the investigation went nowhere.

  The first cop on the scene, Deputy Les Kinsey, happened to be someone who knew both Jack Holmes and Rex Martin personally. Needing to clear the area to make room for arriving emergency vehicles, Kinsey advised Ja
ck to drive to his father-in-law’s place up the road. While a team from the local volunteer fire department extricated Kaitlyn’s body from the wreckage, Kinsey conducted his initial interviews with both Rex and Jack Holmes in the living room of Rex’s home.

  Neither man had much to say. Kinsey had Rex recount the details of their day. Kaitlyn had driven him into Salem to see a doctor, and they’d stopped on the way home to pick up some groceries. No, she’d had nothing to drink, other than a cup of coffee she’d purchased in Fred Meyer. As for Jack’s day? He’d been at work at 5:00 A.M. and left for home at 3:00 in the afternoon. He’d made dinner—macaroni and cheese—and had kept it in a warming oven so it would be ready for Kaitlyn to eat when she arrived. He had been at home in Mill City at the time of the accident and had called Rex from there sometime around ten thirty.

  And that was that. A few days later, the Linn County ME delivered his autopsy findings to the sheriff’s department. His report revealed that although Kaitlyn Holmes had suffered blunt-force trauma, the actual cause of death was a broken neck. Her manner of death was termed “accidental.”

  With that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office labeled the case closed.

  28

  Folsom, California, March 2017

  Once she finally had the right name, Hannah’s search for Kaitlyn had been relatively easy. Lyons, Oregon, was tiny, and Mill City wasn’t much bigger. The real difficulty had been inserting someone into the area who could carry on discreet surveillance long enough to sort out the target’s movements. Luis’s preference was to keep as much business as possible inside the family—the hits and the money both. Eventually Gloria tapped the Bakersfield cousins to do the job, and they pulled it off without a hitch.