Clawback (4 page)

“Sure thing,” Carmen said. “I'll be glad to. I saw what they said on TV,” she added. “It sounds bad.”

“Yes, it does,” Haley agreed. “We just have to keep the faith. I'll call you if anything changes.”

Leaving half her oatmeal uneaten, Haley stood up and began clearing the table. “The fact that people have lost their money isn't your fault, you know,” Gram said, “so don't hold yourself responsible.”

“But I am responsible for some of them,” Haley countered. “Over the years I've sent plenty of Frazier Insurance customers over to the investment side.”

“It's still not your fault,” Gram insisted. “You're not the one who ran the company into the ground. Somebody else did that.”

With tears springing to her eyes, Haley hurried across the room to give her grandmother a quick hug.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You're the best.”

Realizing that television crews might be present at the office, once Haley finished loading the dishwasher, she went back into the bedroom and changed into something dressier. It was while she was taking another crack at her makeup when Haley thought again about her conversation with Millie Frazier on Friday morning, the one about the memory card that was probably, even now, hidden away in Dan and Millie's safe-deposit box.

Haley remembered the part about it containing something from work that Dan didn't want to fall into the wrong hands. When Agent Ferris had shown up at the office, issuing orders and laying down the law about the search, he had mentioned thumb drives specifically, but presumably the ones in question had been thumb drives on the premises rather than somewhere else. And whose hands exactly constituted the “wrong” ones? Maybe Agent Ferris himself was on the wrong side of that equation.

Finished retouching her makeup, Haley reached for her purse and key ring. And there it was—the third key to Dan and Millie's safe-deposit box. Dan and Millie had given her the key when they had named her to be the executrix of their wills. They had entrusted her with the key along with the expectation that she would faithfully carry out their wishes. For right now and until she heard otherwise, that memory card was safe with her as well.

I
t was hot in the backseat of the patrol car—unbearably, ungodly hot. At first the car had been parked in the shade, and the windows were cracked open, but it was June in the high desert. With the car now in full sunlight, Bob felt like he was imprisoned in an oven.

He hadn't argued with the two cops who had arrived on the scene first and in separate patrol cars when they cuffed him and locked him inside. After all, they were young guys, still wet behind the ears. Bob suspected that when it came to dealing with homicide scenes, both of them were newbies.

As a consequence, they tried to do everything by the book. They knew from the 911 call—a call Bob himself had placed—that they were being summoned to a double homicide. And he, of course, was the very first person they laid eyes on at the scene, someone with blood on his clothing and on his hands. They took one look at him and ordered Bob to get on the ground, which was no easy accomplishment for a guy in his seventies who had spent all his working life standing on his feet, hour after hour, while running a commercial kitchen.

At that point, Bob had known that handcuffs would come next, and they did. After that, though, he figured they'd at least talk to him and give him a chance to tell them what had happened. He expected them to ask a question or two, and listen to his side of the story. Nope, not them. Instead, they hauled him to his feet like a bag of potatoes and then half dragged, half carried him to one of their two patrol cars.

When it came to television, Edie tended to watch
48 Hours
and
Dateline.
Bob preferred
Cops
. He loved watching how patient officers talked their way around guys with no driver's licenses who claimed that the stolen car they were driving belonged to a good friend of theirs and that the drug paraphernalia in the glove box or under the driver's seat wasn't theirs, either, and they had
no
idea how it got there.

Bob had watched all those programs, so he thought he knew what to expect. He was anticipating a period of casual de-escalating chitchat on their part: Do you have any weapons on you, sir? Anything in your pockets that might hurt me? Any drugs in your possession? What seems to have happened here today?

But these young whippersnappers weren't experienced enough to do de-escalation. They patted Bob down, relieving him of his Swiss army knife, his wallet, and his bloodied cell phone in the process. Bob thought all of this was an overreaction on their part, but again he tried giving them a break. With his hands still behind his back, they ducked his head to clear the door, chucked him into the backseat of the patrol car, and slammed the door shut behind him. Then they started toward the garage.

“Wait,” Bob called after them through the bars welded to the frame. “Don't you want to know what happened?”

“I think we have a pretty good idea of what happened,” one of them said, and away they went.

Time slowed to a crawl. The fire truck and ambulance came and went. More patrol cars, some marked and some not, arrived on the scene, and so did the medical examiner's van. Bob's hands were still cuffed behind him, and periodically they fell asleep, stabbing him with needles and pins. There was no way to sit comfortably. Sweat poured off his face. Flies and wasps, attracted no doubt by the scent of the blood on his clothing, found the partially opened window and flew in for a visit. As for the coffee Bob had consumed much earlier? That proceeded to run its course. He needed to pee in the worst way. For guys of a certain age with enlarged prostates, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

After what seemed an eternity, one of the younger uniforms reappeared and climbed into the driver's seat.

“Hey,” Bob said. “Can you let me out for a minute? I need to take a leak.”

“Sorry,” the cop replied. “That'll have to wait until we get back to the department.”

They entered the police department complex through the sally port. By then it was too late in the “take a leak” department, making Bob Larson's humiliation complete. He was led into what he assumed to be the booking room with a very visible dribble of urine running down the inside of his pant leg.

The cop removed the cuffs. “You want to use the restroom now, before we take the photos?”

“You're a complete jackass,” Bob growled at him. “And no, I no longer need a restroom. As you can see, that ship has sailed. You said you wanted photos? Go ahead. Let's get this the hell over with.”

They took photos of him in his bloodied clothing. Once they finished with that, he was directed into a room to strip off his outer clothing—shirt, belt, pants, shoes, socks, and watch. To Bob's dismay, everything—including the urine-soaked pants—were handed over to a very young woman, an evidence clerk, whose name badge said
CARLOTTA SIMS
. She stowed each item in clear evidence bags which she carefully labeled and sealed. In the meantime, Bob was handed an orange jail jumpsuit and a pair of plastic sandals. He could tell by simply looking at the sandals that they were far too large for his feet.

Minutes later, when Bob shuffled out of the restroom dressed in his orange jail togs and clumsy sandals, he was relieved to see that the pushy young cop was gone. The evidence clerk then used a digital camera to photograph his arms, neck, and face.
Probably looking for signs of a struggle or scratches
, Bob surmised. Of course there weren't any of those. Surely, sooner or later, someone would finally figure out that he wasn't responsible.

Once the photos were taken, Carlotta ushered Bob down the hall and directed him into what was clearly an interview room—a Formica table attached to the wall; three plastic chairs; a mirror that was obviously a two-way; a video camera mounted to the ceiling; an immense wall-mounted clock, like the ones that used to be in school classrooms, complete with a sweeping second hand.

“Can I get you anything?” Carlotta asked.

“A telephone so I can let my wife know where I am.”

“Sorry,” she said, “no can do.”

Bob had slurped water from the faucet into his mouth by hand while he'd been in the restroom changing. But after baking in the car for so long, he was still dehydrated. He was also hungry. “A bottle of water, maybe?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

When she closed the door, the automatic lock clicked shut behind her. She returned in less than a minute—according to the ticking clock—bringing bottled water.

When the door closed for the second time, he glanced at the clock again—1:05. That's when he realized that lunchtime at Sedona Shadows was almost over, and he had failed in his mission—Wanda Farmer's birthday cake was still in the bakery at Safeway.

“Edie's going to kill me,” he muttered aloud to himself.

Someone listening in on that derisive comment might have assumed that Bob was talking either about his losing his retirement funds or else ending up in a jail interview room. All he was really talking about right then was the damned birthday cake, because Bob knew Edie would be fit to be tied.

“C
rap,” Alberto Joaquín muttered to Jeffrey Hawkins, his partner in crime. “Coming away without that damned SD card means we blew it big-time. What the hell do we do now?”

Alberto may have gotten the gig in the first place, and he was the one at the wheel of their parked pickup truck, but as far as Jeffrey Hawkins was concerned, Alberto was definitely not the brains of the outfit. They had stripped off their bloodied latex gloves and paper surgical gowns before leaving the crime scene. Jeffrey was the one with enough presence of mind to have pitched his knife in through the back window of the crappy old Bronco that had shown up unexpectedly in the middle of everything. With a little luck, maybe the cops would think the guy in the Bronco was the one responsible.

Everything else, including Alberto's knife, had been shoved into the black trash bag Jeffrey had been smart enough to bring along for that very reason. After leaving the crime scene, they'd used one of the shovels from the back of the landscaping truck to bury the bag two feet deep in the soft sand of a wash just off General Crook Trail south of Camp Verde.

As far as Jeffrey could see they had managed to avoid bringing any blood evidence back into the truck with them, although he worried there might be a few invisible blood smears on the floorboard. If they were there, however, they were also invisible to the naked eye.

The job had been simple enough. Alberto's job as a landscaper had made it easy enough to collect the victim, detain him, and try to convince him to hand over a microSD card that evidently contained something Dan wasn't supposed to have. Except it had taken far more convincing than either Alberto or Jeffrey had anticipated. When beating the crap out of the old guy hadn't done the job, Jeffrey had suggested they track down the wife and use her as a bargaining chip. That hadn't worked very well, either.

“Mrs. Frazier was a nice lady,” Alberto said. “I felt sorry for her.”

Jeffrey had noticed at the time that Alberto had a weak spot for the woman. Jeffrey was the one who had held the knife to her throat, thinking that a tiny pinprick of blood would be enough to bring the husband to his senses. What he hadn't expected was that a furious Dan Frazier would somehow lurch to his feet and launch himself into the melee. By the time it was over, Frazier and the woman were both down for the count. By then, Jeffrey didn't give a damn about the SD card. His only thought was to get the hell out of there.

“Frazier was a hell of a lot tougher than he looked,” Alberto said. “Who ever would have thought an old guy like that would have balls enough to tackle both of us at once? Now two people are dead, and we've got nothing to show for it.”

“Maybe not,” Jeffrey said.

Alberto gave his partner a quizzical look. “What do you mean maybe not? We were supposed to bring back that damned card, and we don't have it.”

“That doesn't mean we can't get one,” Jeffrey countered. “It won't be
the
SD card, but it will be
an
SD card. It's simple. We go to a drugstore, buy ourselves a brand-new one, and take it to the meet. We give the guy the card, he gives us our money, and we go on our merry way. By the time he figures out he's got the wrong one, we'll be long gone and so will his money. After all, since he's the one who ordered the hit, he won't be able to send the cops after us.”

Alberto had to chuckle at that. “I guess not,” he said.

“And if he tries anything at the meet,” Jeffrey continued, “what say we shoot the bastard right then and there? Two to one, buddy. You lose.”

Years earlier, when Alberto Joaquín and Jeffrey Hawkins had been assigned to the same cell in the Mohave Correctional Facility, a private prison near Kingman, numerous bets had been placed about which one would outlive the other. At the time, both of them had been new to the place. Hawkins with his blue eyes and dirty-blond hair was rumored to be a white supremacist, and Joaquín was thought to have connections to one of the Hispanic gangs. Much to everyone's surprise, the two men had hit it off and sorted themselves into a two-man gang all their own. They were tough enough and mean enough to hold out against all comers, and in the long run, no one had dared cross them. Now that they were both out and back on the streets, the same held true.

“So where do we get one?” Alberto asked.

“The camera department of a drugstore,” Jeffrey said, nodding his head back in the direction of the town they'd already passed. “Camp Verde must have at least one of those.”

“What if there are security cameras inside?” Alberto asked.

“So what?” Jeffrey asked. “We show up at the meet empty-handed, we get nothing. With the drive in hand, we're cool. Up against a chance of walking away with another ten K apiece or walking away with nothing, I say risking being picked up by a security camera at a drugstore in some out-of-the-way burg in central Arizona is well worth it.”