Clawback (2 page)

Glancing at his watch, Bob realized that Edie and Betsy would soon be finishing up with water aerobics and might return to their unit any minute. To everyone's surprise, after arriving at Sedona Shadows, eightysomething Betsy had taken to Edie Larson and to water aerobics like nobody's business. The two women were fast friends now, relishing their daily sessions in the pool along with a shared interest in a set of mutual great-grandkids. And once the aerobics session was over, they often returned to Bob and Edie's apartment for what Betsy and Edie both referred to as “forenoon coffee.”

Right that moment, Bob wasn't ready to face either one of them. It was going to be hard enough to tell Edie about the situation. Doing so in front of a third party was utterly unthinkable. Besides, what Bob really wanted to do was track down Dan Frazier and punch the guy in the nose—or, at the very least, give the jerk a piece of his mind.

Standing up, Bob grabbed his keys off the table by the door, and headed for the vintage '72 Bronco that—due to his skill as a mechanic—still ran like a top. Bob's aging Bronco and Dan Frazier's recently purchased Mustang were only six years apart in terms of model years, but no one would mistake Bob's workhorse vehicle for a showpiece. The Mustang was a low-mileage, highly polished, spoiled brat of a car, best used in fair-weather conditions only. The Bronco, on the other hand, dented but dependable, was a one-owner, four-wheel-drive beast that had gotten Bob out of more than one tricky off-road situation. If the odometer—the one thing that didn't work—had still been functioning, Bob estimated it would have turned over for the fourth time well before this.

Not wanting to encounter the women on their way into the building, Bob double-timed it down the hall in the opposite direction and let himself outside through a side entrance near his assigned covered parking spot. As he drove the few miles and many roundabouts on his way to Dan's place on the far side of town, Bob realized this was probably a fool's errand. Jason McKinzie had most likely run for the hills well in advance of the collapse, and Dan Frazier might have pulled a similar stunt. Still, going to Dan's place gave Bob a good excuse for not facing Edie right then and there and having to give her the bad news.

Dan Frazier's Sedona residence on Elberta Drive was modest in terms of Sedona's current real estate market, which tended toward the McMansion end of the housing spectrum. The house dated from an earlier time in his career, from when Dan had just started working for his father's insurance agency, and from an earlier era in terms of housing design. The in-town location meant it was long on convenience and had reasonably good views. Still, this one was little more than humble pie when compared to the spectacular hillside residence Millie and Dan occupied in Paradise Valley. That one came complete with a four-car garage. The one in Sedona was two cars only.

Once Bob turned off onto Elberta Drive, he stopped two houses short of the recently installed rolling gate at the bottom of Dan's driveway. For a time—a period of several minutes—Bob simply sat there with the car windows open and the engine running, trying to consider what the hell he was going to say to this man who had once been his friend: How could you do this to us? How dare you do this? What the hell kind of friend are you? None of those seemed adequate to the situation at hand.

At last, having had time to cool his temper and resolving to remain civil, Bob finally put the Bronco in gear and moved forward. Arriving at the end of the driveway, he was surprised to see Dan's rolling gate standing wide open. It was one of those that required the use of a remote. Installed after the purchase of that prized Mustang, Bob never remembered seeing it left open before—day or night.

As Bob crested the driveway and jammed the Bronco into park, one of the two garage doors began to rise. Once it was open, Bob saw that two cars were parked inside—Dan's Mustang and Millie's Volvo XV60. He more than half expected that one or the other of the vehicles, unaware of Bob's presence, would slam into gear and come speeding out of the garage. Realizing that any resulting collision was bound to be harder on either of Dan's upscale vehicles than it would be on the aging Bronco, Bob braced for a crash.

Except nothing happened. Neither of the two vehicles moved. The backup lights didn't come on, and there was no sign of life inside the garage. After waiting for the better part of a minute for someone to emerge, Bob finally gave up, shut off the engine, and exited his own vehicle. Only when he entered the garage did he hear the low rumble of the Mustang's idling V-8 engine, but no driver was visible behind the wheel.

“Hey, Dan,” Bob called. “Are you in there?”

For a time there was no answer, then, over the hum of the engine, he heard a faint call. “Help me. Please.”

The call for help seemed to be coming from the car, so Bob sprinted forward. Only when he was even with the Mustang's driver's side door did Bob realize there was a lone occupant inside the vehicle. Dan, seated behind the wheel, was slumped over onto the passenger seat in an unnatural position that left none of his head showing over the seat back. Both of Dan's eyes had vivid bruises around them, standing in sharp contrast to the pasty gray coloring of face. His lips were cut and swollen. Someone had clearly beaten the crap out of the man. Then Bob's eyes were drawn to the bright scarlet stain spreading up and down a once spotless white shirt. Dan held one hand tightly against the wound, as if trying to stem the flow, but it wasn't working.

Bob had served as a corpsman in Vietnam. He knew his way around bloody wounds, and he knew way too much blood when he saw it. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. “We need help!” he barked into the phone when an emergency operator answered. “Man down and seriously wounded. Can't tell if he's been gunshot or if it's a knife wound.”

“Knife,” Dan managed weakly through clenched teeth. “They both had knives.”

“Make that a knife wound,” Bob corrected. “And there were two of them.”

With his phone still on speaker, Bob spat out Dan's address. Then, with the call still active, he slipped the device into his shirt pocket, freeing both hands so he could reach inside, hoping to help apply pressure on the wound even though he already suspected that the damage was too severe. The wound was bleeding profusely. The stain was spreading at such an alarming rate that Bob doubted it was survivable.

“Do you know who did this?” he asked. “Where are they? What happened?”

“Tried to go for help,” Dan mumbled weakly, batting away Bob's suddenly bloodied hand. “Go check on Millie,” he urged. “Please!”

“Millie?” Bob asked. “Where is she?”

“House. She's in the house.”

“Help is coming,” Bob assured Dan as he backed away. “I'll go check on her.”

After first switching off the Mustang's engine, Bob raced into the house through a door that opened from the garage directly into the laundry room. There were bloodied footprints staggering from side to side and leading from the kitchen into the garage, and there were bloodied smears across the faces of both the washer and dryer as well as on the opposite wall. Most likely Dan had come this way, in a desperate attempt either to escape the carnage or to summon help. Bob registered the stains on the floor and reflexively tried to dodge them, but he was too focused on moving fast to avoid them entirely.

Once through the laundry room, he came to an abrupt halt and stood aghast and unmoving in the kitchen doorway. Millie Frazier lay facedown in the center of the room in a rapidly expanding pool of blood.

Horror-struck, Bob didn't know what to do first. Should he check for a pulse that most likely wasn't there or simply retreat the way he had come? Then, in the sudden silence, a tiny voice spoke to him from his pocket. “Sir, are you still there? Emergency units are on the way.”

“There are two victims,” he said. “The one in the garage, a male, is a stabbing victim, and the one in the house is a woman. She's been stabbed, too. The man's still alive. I think this one's already dead.”

That was the moment when Millie Frazier shuddered. Until then, Bob had been sure she was dead. Darting across the room to where she lay, he slipped in pooled blood and fell forward. When he came to rest, he was lying facedown on the injured woman's back. Appalled that he might have exacerbated her wounds, he heaved himself off her and scooted to a spot where his face was near hers, close enough so she could see him.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

Her eyes blinked open, but they were dazed and out of focus.

“It's me, Millie. Bob Larson. I've called 911. Help is on the way. They'll be here soon. Who did this to you?”

For a moment her eyes seemed to register recognition. “Bob?” she mumbled. “Where's Dan?”

“Out in the garage,” Bob answered. “He's still alive.”

“He's a good man,” she whispered. “Tell him I love him. Be sure to tell him that.”

The focus faded from her eyes. Her impossibly shallow breathing became even more so.

“Stay with me,” Bob pleaded, taking her hand and willing her to live. “You've got to hang in here. Help will be here soon.”

He could see, though, that it was already too late. After a moment, eyes that had blinked open at the sound of his voice stared emptily into space. Bob checked again for a pulse. This time there wasn't any. Scrambling to his feet, he slipped and fell to his knees. He had to grab hold of the countertop to pull himself back upright. Once on his feet, he dashed out of the room the same way he had entered.

In the garage, he leaned into the car and then stepped away once more. The wail of oncoming sirens cut through the silence, but Bob knew the EMTs would be too late twice over. Millie Frazier was gone, and so was her husband. The tiny voice of the emergency operator was still speaking to him from his pocket, demanding an update. Reaching for the phone, he simply ended the call, paying no attention to the bloody prints his fingers left on the face of his phone.

With sickening clarity, Bob Larson understood that once the cops arrived, they would find three bloodied people at the residence. Only one of them would be alive—the guy who had called it in—and he was the one who would most likely turn into the prime suspect.

A
s the sun came up over the Mogollon Rim to the east, Haley Jackson lay in bed, still tossing and turning. The day before, her Sedona-based insurance agency where she was the office manager had been shut down by agents from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Her boss, Dan Frazier, had given her no advance warning that the raid was coming. In the hours since, she'd tried reaching out to him over and over—to no avail. He wasn't taking her calls, and as far as she knew, he hadn't tried calling her, either. Without hearing from Dan or having some kind of direction from him, she had no idea what she was supposed to do next. What was she was supposed to tell her employees, to say nothing of the firm's anxious clients?

Try as she might, Haley still couldn't make sense of what had happened. Late in the afternoon, a group of men in suits had walked into the Frazier Insurance Agency and paused in front of the receptionist's desk. Although Haley didn't recognize the new arrivals, at first nothing seemed amiss. She assumed they were new in town and in the market for some kind of insurance coverage. As they continued to speak to Carmen Rios, the receptionist, however, Haley noticed the young woman growing more and more agitated. Finally, sensing something out of the ordinary, Haley left her own desk toward the back of the room and walked up to Carmen's.

“I'm the office manager here,” she said, focusing on the man who seemed to be in charge. “Is there something I can do for you gentlemen?”

“They claim they're from the SEC,” Carmen whispered, sounding worried. “They say we have to close the office immediately.”

“The SEC?” Haley asked. “You want us to close the office? What's this all about?”

The man standing directly in front of Carmen turned to Haley and extracted an ID wallet from his pocket. When he held it up for Haley's examination, she saw that it belonged to one Donald Ferris, a senior agent with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“All right,” she said. “I see that you're with the SEC, but I have no idea what that means or why you feel it's necessary to shut down my office. What's going on?”

“My understanding is that Daniel Frazier Jr. is the owner of this establishment. Correct?” the guy asked.

Haley nodded. “Yes, but he isn't in right now. If you'd like to leave a card . . .”

Ignoring her objection, Agent Ferris continued. “Mr. Frazier is also a duly registered representative of a firm called Ocotillo Fund Management, right?”

“That's true,” Haley began, “but . . .”

“Ocotillo Fund Management initiated bankruptcy proceedings earlier this afternoon. We've been directed to shut down this office and take custody of any and all applicable files. Since some of your insurance customers are also investment clients, we'll be taking them all.”

“You're taking our files?” Haley echoed. “As for Ocotillo Fund Management filing bankruptcy? This is the first I've heard anything about it. Besides, you can't just walk in here like you own the place. Do you have a warrant?”

“Funny you should ask,” Agent Ferris said, producing a document from an inside pocket of his suit jacket and handing it over. “You and your employees are to clear the premises at once. You may take personal items—purses, cell phones, tablets, and such, but all company files and equipment are to remain here. If anyone attempts to remove files via something like a thumb drive or other device, they will be found and confiscated as you exit.”

When he said the words “thumb drive,” Haley remembered briefly that Millie Frazier, Dan's wife, had stopped by the office on Friday morning. She had seemed exasperated and more than a little put out. “I had two appointments down in Paradise Valley later today, but Dan insisted that I cancel both of them and drive all the way up here to put this in the safe-deposit box,” she had grumbled, holding up a postage stamp–sized object.