Clawback (28 page)

“Yes. Alberto Joaquín was the yard guy at Dan Frazier's house in Paradise Valley. The owner of the landscaping truck, Alejandro Joaquín, was Alberto's employer, but he's also his brother.”

“Our facial rec provided enough identification for you to do a next of kin notification?”

“I don't believe in throwing people under the bus,” Dave said pointedly. “I used the victims' driver's license photos for those. Alejandro told me that Alberto didn't show up for work on Tuesday morning, and neither did his company truck. Alejandro didn't report the truck as missing or stolen at the time because he knew a charge like that would violate Alberto's probation and send him straight back to the slammer. Alejandro thought Alberto was out tying one on and that, when he sobered up, both he and the truck would be back.”

“Being in jail would have been better than being dead,” Ali said.

“I mentioned to Alejandro that there was a possibility Alberto might have been involved in two homicides up in Sedona. As soon as he heard Dan Frazier's name, the poor guy almost had a stroke. Went all pale and short of breath on me. I thought he was going to croak out on the spot. Eventually he came around, though, and that's when he told me. A.J. Landscaping has crews working all over the valley. They've handled the landscaping on Dan's Paradise Valley house for the past three years.”

“So, Alberto was part of the work crew?”

“He
was
the work crew.”

“But why?” Ali asked. “Why would he turn on his employer like that, to say nothing of betraying his own brother? And what's Jeffrey Hawkins's connection to all this? Did he work for Alejandro, too?”

“No, he didn't,” Dave answered. “At one time, Alberto and Jeffrey were cellmates at a private prison up by Kingman. They were both out on parole and evidently hooked up again, maybe just for old times' sake, or maybe for this job. I can't tell.

“At any rate, Alejandro told me that Alberto spent a lot of time at Wheels Inn, one of the rougher biker bars on 43rd Avenue. He liked going there because it was within walking distance of where he lived, three blocks from his rented mobile home. Alejandro said Alberto walked back and forth because he couldn't risk having another DUI on his record.

“I checked with the bar,” Dave continued. “The bar manager showed me the security footage for Friday. Turns out Alberto was there most of the evening. Early on it was business as usual, with him just sitting alone at the bar, guzzling one beer after another. Then he left for a while—9:58. When he came back into view at 10:35, guess what happens? All of a sudden, Alberto morphs into Mr. Gotbucks, flashing a fat roll of bills and buying rounds for the house.”

“So somebody gave him a fistful of cash,” Ali breathed. “Do you think the money was a down payment, and it really was murder for hire?”

“I do indeed,” Dave said, “and one with a fairly short timeline. Alberto makes the deal on Friday. On Monday evening, he and his pal Jeffrey somehow gain access to Dan's home in Paradise Valley. According to Paradise Valley PD, there was no sign of forced entry. Evidence suggests that they overpowered Dan. There were signs of a struggle inside the house, and it's clear the place had been ransacked. Maybe it was just a robbery, but the detective I spoke to said that what he saw suggested it was more likely the intruders were looking for something specific.”

“Which they must not have found,” Ali interjected.

“Correct, at least they didn't find it there. By Tuesday morning I'm thinking the bad guys admit defeat. Since whatever it is they're looking for isn't in the Paradise Valley house, they load Dan into the truck and head off for Sedona, hoping to find it there. According to E.D., there's some evidence of a search there, too, mostly before the deadly altercation in the kitchen. Once that happened, the killers took off in one hell of a hurry—with or without what they wanted—probably because of your dad's unexpected arrival on the scene. By midafternoon that same day Alberto and Jeffrey are shot dead in the gravel pit.”

“In other words, as soon as Alberto and Jeffrey made good on the hit, whoever hired them took them out, too.”

“Not a lot of evidence to back up that theory so far,” Dave said, “but that's how it looks to me.”

Ali thought about that. “Did Alberto walk to the bar Friday night?” she asked.

“Yes. The security footage shows him arriving and departing on foot.”

“From what you said about the time stamp on the video, he wasn't gone long enough to go very far. Do you think he met up with someone in the parking lot?” Ali asked.

“I think that's likely, but whoever it was parked well beyond the range of the bar's security cameras.”

“What about traffic cams?”

“We've asked for help in getting a look at those, but the bar is inside the Phoenix city limits. We're from out of town. In other words, our request isn't exactly a top priority.”

“Which traffic cameras are we talking about?”

“The ones at the intersections of 43rd and McDowell and 43rd and Osborn.”

“I'll ask Stu.”

“He can access other jurisdictions' traffic cameras?”

Ali knew for a fact it was true, but she didn't want to say that straight-out. “It's possible,” she hedged.

“Well, then,” Dave said, “any help you guys can give us in the traffic cam department will be greatly appreciated.”

Dave had just gifted Ali—and trusted her—with a good deal of confidential information he'd been under no obligation to share. He hadn't asked for anything in return, but she felt she owed him something all the same.

“We found a memory card earlier today that may throw some light on all this,” she said quietly.

“Found?” Dave asked.

“We didn't actually find it,” Ali allowed. “Haley Jackson, Dan Frazier's office manager in Sedona, found it, and she's the one who gave it to us. According to Haley, Dan sent Millie on a mission to deliver the card to their safe-deposit box in Sedona on Friday morning. Even though they were both coming home to Sedona later that day, he insisted she drop the card off earlier than that, telling Millie that he wanted to ‘keep it out of the wrong hands.' Millie evidently stopped by Haley's office on her way to the bank—that's how Haley knew about it. And that's where Haley found the card this morning—at the bank in their safe-deposit box.”

“How did she gain access to that?”

“She's Dan and Millie's executrix.”

“Tell me about the memory card. What's on it?”

“No idea. Haley tried to look, but she says it's password protected.”

“I wonder if that's what Alberto and Jeffrey were after—the memory card,” Dave mused. “Where is it now?”

“On its way to High Noon in Cottonwood to see if someone there can hack into it.”

“But why would Haley Jackson hand it over to you just like that? Are the two of you friends?”

“Not at all. I think Haley feels responsible because so many people lost their life savings with OFM. I had told her earlier that's what High Noon is all about right now—finding and recovering as much of OFM's missing money as possible. She suspects the card has something to do with the money, and so do I.”

“And there's a very good chance that the money has something to do with the murders,” Dave added thoughtfully.

“Right.”

“So how soon will you know what's on the card?”

“That depends on how long it will take for Cami to hack into it.”

“Cami again?”

“What can I say?“Ali returned. “The girl's got talent.”

“Are you sure she's not up for grabs?”

“Not on a bet.”

“What about the traffic cams?”

“I'll ask Stu to look into that,” Ali said. “When it comes to traffic cams, he's the one with the network of contacts.”

“Thanks,” Dave said. “Appreciate the help.”

“You're welcome.”

“So how about if we do this?” Dave offered. “If I find something that leads in the direction of the missing money, I'll pass it along to you. And if you run across something that might help me solve my two homicides, you'll do the same. Deal?”

“Didn't we already make that deal,” Ali asked after a pause. “But it still stands. You scratch High Noon's back, we'll scratch yours.”

J
essica found what she was looking for barely a mile after turning on to Beaverhead Flats Road. There was a slight rise followed by enough of a curve that the two-lane roadway was posted with
NO PASSING
signs in both directions and divided by two solid yellow lines. Just beyond the curve was a dry wash complete with a culvert and a concrete bridge abutment.

There was no oncoming traffic visible in either direction, so Jessica made a quick U-turn and recrossed the culvert. After yet another U-turn, she parked on the shoulder twenty yards or so on the far side of the abutment. This was old hat to her—an instinctive study in physics and geometry, because she had certainly never set foot in any of those math or science classes back in the old days in El Centro, California.

The school district liked to refer to its schools as welcoming and diverse, but not welcoming if you happened to be a blue-eyed blonde on a campus where Hispanic gangbangers wielded far more authority than any members of the faculty.

Jessica, named Mia Miller back then, had been fourteen years old when her Anglo mother had married a somewhat younger man, a migrant worker, and the two of them had . . . well . . . migrated. The couple had departed in the middle of the night, leaving Jessica alone in the house and totally on her own.

The rent on their two-room shack ran out four days later. A few days after that, the landlord showed up with an eviction notice in hand and a sheriff's deputy in tow. He had brought along a crew of workers who had emptied the place, leaving everything from inside the house—furniture, clothing, canned goods, dead appliances—out on the street, either free to a good home or else for the garbage collectors to pick up, whoever happened to show up first.

Jessica had been there that afternoon, watching the whole process from afar and helpless to stop it. After the crew left, she had raced to the trash heap ahead of the neighborhood vultures and gathered up what belongings she could, stowing them in some stray black plastic garbage bags that had also been left in the pile. Grabbing a grocery cart pilfered from a store two blocks away, she had left the abandoned house behind, pushing the cart with all her worldly goods stacked inside it—a few pieces of clothing, some canned goods that her mother had left behind, a bedroll of no known origin, a lumpy pillow, and a frayed teddy bear that had been her only companion for as long as she could remember.

She slept under a bridge that first night, finding camaraderie among the dozen or so homeless men and women—some older and some younger—who called the bridge home. They took her under their wings, showed her the ropes, and looked after her. They taught her where the soup kitchens were and turned her on to various homeless shelters where she could shower, clean up, and wash a load of clothes without having to answer too many questions. They taught her how to panhandle and made sure she didn't do it on her own without being under someone's watchful and protective gaze.

Where they couldn't look after her was at school—a place where the homeless couldn't go. She was small and apparently defenseless, so they taught her a collection of self-defense moves that toughened her up and made her resilient. The next time the gangbangers came calling, she handled it. Over time, she earned the gangsters' grudging respect along with a nickname, “La Rubia”—“the Blonde”—which she eventually shortened to Ruby.

She went to school every day. She didn't want to run the risk of a truant officer showing up at the address listed in her record only to discover that her family didn't live there anymore. She checked the mailbox every day, on her way back to the camp, deftly intercepting report cards, permission slips, and any other miscellaneous mail the school district happened to send out. She threw the report cards away, and forged her mother's name to the permission slips. She spoke Spanish like nobody's business and signed up for English as a second language, where the grades were easy to come by even though her blond hair and blue eyes raised a few eyebrows.

By the time she was fifteen and with the help of her gangbanger pals from school, she had a fake driver's license and plenty of connections in the world of forged documents—contacts that continued to serve her well all these years later. By age sixteen, she was earning a reasonable living as a car thief. A friend of a friend had hooked her up with a guy running an insurance scam. A guy inside the insurance company targeted high-end cars. Ruby's job was to steal the cars and wreck them in a believable enough fashion that the insurance adjuster (also in on the deal) could total them, and send the mangled remains off to a cooperating wrecking yard.

The whole idea was to leave as many salvageable and undamaged parts as possible. When it came to that, La Rubia was the best. As for grand theft auto? For a minor faced with trying to get by on her own, it paid a hell of a lot better than standing around panhandling on a street corner.

The guy who had pulled her into the racket had taught her the importance of leaving behind no evidence, so she was careful. When she went on jobs, she kept her hair tied back. She always wore latex gloves. And she was fine. Until the day she wasn't. That was the day a guy came running out of his house and caught her in the act of stealing his car.

She had pulled out her 9mm Beretta—a gift from the head honcho of the insurance scam—and plugged the son of a bitch. Then, leaving behind both the dead man and his unstolen vehicle, and unbeknown to her a single stray scrunchie, she had melted into the night. The guys under the bridge—the ones who had looked after her when she was begging at intersections—would have been shocked to learn that their “little girl” had turned into a stone-cold killer.