Clawback (8 page)

Hank's mother, Linda, was a war widow whose Marine Corps husband had perished in Desert Storm. After her husband's untimely death, Linda had come home to Sedona with her seven-year-old son to live with her parents. Over the next few years, in both Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, Bob had been honored to take the boy under his wing and be there as a stand-in when it came time for overnight campouts and other designated father/son occasions. After Linda remarried, Hank had dropped out of scouting. Bob knew Hank had hired on with the local police department, but until that moment, he had no idea that he'd been promoted to detective.

“How's it going, Mr. Larson?” Hank asked.

Obviously their old relationship as Boy Scout and scoutmaster still held sway in Hank's head as well as in Bob's. That was a relief.

“Not so great,” Bob admitted.

“For us, too,” Hank said. “Sorry to leave you here so long, but . . .”

“I get it—a double homicide, a messy scene, people you know. It's tough on everybody.”

“I'll be recording this interview,” Hank said.

“Before you do, you might want to take me down the hall to a restroom,” Bob warned him. “Otherwise I'm going to piss all over this chair.”

W
hat's going on?” Sister Anselm asked as soon as Edie Larson's call ended.

“It's my dad,” Ali explained. “He took off earlier today—much earlier—without telling my mom where he was going or when he'd be back. He's still among the missing, and my mother is worried sick—enough so that she just asked me to come home.”

“You do that, then,” Sister Anselm said. “I'll be glad to sit in for you and ‘woman the phones,' as it were. Before you go, tell me if there's anything pressing that needs handling, and I'll do my best.”

Ali flashed her friend a quick smile. “I'm guessing that your best will be plenty good enough.”

Once in her Cayenne, Ali called B. Most of the time her calls tracked him down in some distant corner of the planet. This week, however, he happened to be at home, or close to it. He was spending most of his days and parts of his nights in Cottonwood at the corporate headquarters for High Noon Enterprises.

At the moment, he and his newest recruit—Lance Tucker, a teenage computer hacking prodigy hired straight out of juvenile detention—were putting together a copyright application for Lance's latest piece of coding genius, something he had developed on the side while he was supposed to be working on his freshman-level computer science classes at UCLA.

“I promise I won't be late for dinner tonight,” B. said when he answered his phone. “Leland is making meat loaf, and I'd never be late for that.”

“I wasn't calling about dinner,” she said, “although I'm glad to know you'll be home at a reasonable hour. I was really calling to ask you to do something for Mom. Dad has gone off everybody's radar since sometime this morning. He's not answering his phone, and she's worried sick. I was hoping you could turn on the device tracking app on Dad's phone and find out where he is. My best guess is that he's had car trouble in that old jalopy of his. He's probably broken down somewhere out in the back of the beyond.”

“No problem,” B. said. “I'm doing something else right now, but I'll put Stu or Cami on it right away.”

Stu was Stuart Ramey, B.'s second in command at High Noon, and Cami was Camille Lee, Stuart's relatively new assistant.

“Where are you?” B. asked.

“On my way home from Flag,” Ali said. “See you when I get there.”

A few minutes later, Ali was on I-17, headed south. She considered trying to call her father's number in case the only calls he wasn't answering were ones from his wife, but then she thought better of it. As Ali accelerated to highway speeds, she still considered that what she had said earlier to her mother—that Bob had gone off to look after one of his “guys”—was the most likely scenario. But it wasn't until she saw the highway sign saying
SCHNEBLY HILL ROAD EXIT ONE MILE
that she decided to do something about it and go see for herself.

Ali had been to the homeless encampment on many occasions over the years, often accompanying her father when Bob went there—especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas, when he handed out food and clothing, served with a side of holiday cheer. Obviously she knew the way.

After turning off the freeway and leaving the exit behind, she left the bright June sunshine behind as well. Within a few hundred yards she was under a gloomy canopy of ponderosa pines and driving a confusing maze of narrow dirt tracks. There were road signs designed to keep her on Schnebly Hill Road itself, but none directing her toward the camp, which she knew was perched on the edge of the Mogollon Rim not far from where Schnebly Hill Road plunged off down the mountainside into the valley below. Fortunately, Ali's father had taught her to read the secret codes left in subtle small mounds of rocks stacked along the shoulder on either side of the road. For those in the know, the rocks were as good as street signs.

Even here on what was relatively flat terrain, the road surface was washed out and rough enough to make Ali grateful for having four-wheel drive. How bad conditions would be farther down Schnebly Hill Road was anybody's guess.

A few stray spots of dappled sunlight alerted Ali to a piece of blue tarp or maybe part of a tent off to her left that indicated she was nearing the camp. At a tiny wide spot in the road, she pulled over and parked. She had exited her vehicle and was turning to click the door lock when she heard the distinctive racking of a shotgun directly behind her. The hair rose on the back of her neck. A spike of adrenaline shot through her body, leaving her fingers tingling as she spun around, hands in the air. She turned just as a huge man materialized from behind the trunk of a nearby tree.

He was large enough that his arms seemed to dwarf the twelve-gauge, making it look like a child's toy in his meaty paws. If ever there was a mountain man, this guy was it. Wild red hair, ten inches long and sprinkled with gray, stood out from his head in a wild, tangled afro. The explosion of hair, combined with an equally unkempt two-tone beard, added to the effect, making him even more giantlike and that much less human. In addition, he was missing several front teeth.

He wore a faded plaid flannel shirt, ragged around the cuffs, and a pair of threadbare jeans. Layers of duct tape were wrapped around the soles of his boots, literally holding body and sole together. The fact that both boots lacked shoelaces of any kind meant that they flopped loosely on his immense feet with every step. Even from ten feet away, Ali could smell the rank stink of sweat, grime, smoke, and rough living.

“If I was you, missy,” he growled, waving the shotgun in her direction, “I'd get my ass back in that fancy-shmancy vehicle you're driving and get the hell out of here.”

Ali stood for a long moment, peering down the barrel of what she had no doubt was a fully loaded weapon. She forced herself to take a deep breath before attempting to speak. “I'm here looking for my father,” she said, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt.

“If your daddy is up here with us,” the mountain man told her, “then there's a pretty good chance he ain't interested in being found. Now get going.”

“You don't understand,” Ali said. “My father doesn't live here. His name is Larson—Robert Larson, but he goes by Bob. He comes here to help out sometimes. He's been gone from home for several hours. Since we can't reach him, my mom and I were wondering if maybe he came up here.”

The effect of her words was instantaneous. The barrel of the shotgun lowered. “Sorry, missy,” the man said at once. “My sincerest apologies. I had no idea you were Corpsman Bob's daughter. I been out here keeping watch on the road for three hours now, and I ain't never seen him. He might of come up the back way, though—up Schnebly Hill. He does that sometimes, you know.”

The adrenaline that had been holding Ali upright receded as quickly as it had come. For a moment she felt a little weak in the knees. Not trusting her ability to stand on her own, she leaned against the car door for support.

“Yes,” Ali agreed, when she found her voice. “He does like to come up the back way.”

“Want me to check for you?”

Rather than reaching for a cell phone that probably wouldn't have worked anyway, the man pulled a walkie-talkie out of his shirt pocket. “Hey, Tom-Boy,” he said. “It's Luke. Anybody seen Corpsman Bob around here today?”

“Nope, neither hide nor hair,” came the scratchy reply. “He generally checks in with me first thing.”

Ali thought about the eleven cliff-hugging miles of Schnebly Hill Road between the homeless camp and Sedona. Her adjustable-ride-height, four-wheel-drive Cayenne was nimble and responsive, but even in it, the switchback riddled trip down from the Rim would be a challenge. Depending on road conditions, the descent might take as long as two and a half to three hours. A glance at her watch told her it was already going on three. If she drove that way and left immediately, she'd be lucky to make it back to civilization by evening when herds of elk would be on the move. And if she happened to find her father's crashed Bronco somewhere along the way, what would she be able to do about it? Most of the trip she'd be out of cell phone range. No, given the circumstances, the freeway was probably her best bet.

“You think Corpsman Bob's lying out there dead or hurt bad somewhere down on Schnebly Hill?” Luke asked.

Ali bit her lip before she answered. “That's what we're afraid of. I could try driving that way, but I'm worried about it taking too long.”

“Likely it would,” Luke said, “so don't you be thinking about doing such any thing. One guy here, Owen, went through a hell of a divorce. All he got out of the deal was his Jeep, which he owns free and clear. He don't have no insurance on it and no license, neither, so he don't take it out on the highway. But if Corpsman Bob's life is on the line, he'll head down Schnebly Hill Road in a heartbeat.”

Ali handed over one of her business cards. “If Owen finds anything and wants to be in touch, here are my phone numbers.”

Luke took the tiny card in his huge, grimy paws and held it up to squint at it for a moment before stuffing it into his shirt pocket right along with the walkie-talkie.

“Will do,” he said.

“Thank you, Luke,” Ali murmured as she opened the door of the Cayenne. “Thank you very much.”

T
he gravel pit was deserted when Alberto and Jeffrey arrived at five past three. “He stiffed us,” Alberto fumed. “The asshole stiffed us. He isn't even gonna show. And why here? This place gives me the creeps.”

It didn't help that on the way down from Sedona there had been a Silver Alert posted for someone driving a white Ford F-150, which happened to be the same kind of vehicle they were driving. The plate license didn't match theirs, of course, and it was unlikely that someone who was the subject of a Silver Alert would be driving around in a company truck loaded with landscaping equipment. Still, anything that sent additional scrutiny in their direction was worrisome.

“Come on,” Jeffrey told him, getting out of the truck. “Have a cigarette. Don't get yourself all worked up. He'll be here. Maybe he's just running late. Maybe there was traffic on I-17 or an accident.”

Standing outside in the triple-digit temperatures in the gray expanse of gravel pit wasn't fun, but standing in the heat was better than working in it, Alberto told himself. With his skills as a landscaper, he knew he could get a job almost anywhere, no questions asked and no papers needed, either. This time, though, wherever he ended up, he was determined it would be someplace a hell of a lot cooler than Phoenix.

They were a long way off the freeway, but the low rumble of traveling semis carried across the raw desert. Gradually, the steady noise seemed to settle Alberto's frayed nerves. Once they had the money in hand, that's what they'd be doing—hitting the road. As for the truck? It was Alejandro's, of course, but maybe one day Alejandro would forgive him. After all, isn't that what big brothers always did? They forgave you no matter what.

Ten minutes later, a dusty tan minivan nosed its way into the gravel pit. “See there?” Jeffrey said triumphantly. “I told you he'd be here, and now he is.”

“But is he gonna fall for it?” Alberto whined, as if one solved problem had instantly been replaced by another. “What if he has a computer along, plugs in the drive, and figures out we've brought him a blank?”

“Will you please just shut the hell up?” Jeffrey demanded. “If you're so worried about all this, maybe you'd better let me handle it.”

They waited, standing side by side, until the van stopped with the sliding passenger door directly in front of them. It was a nondescript older-model Dodge Caravan that someone had taken the time and trouble to turn into a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. Slowly the rear door rolled open. Next a silver-haired man, seated in a wheelchair and wearing cataract-style sunglasses, appeared in the doorway. When he pressed a button, a heavy-duty metal plate emerged from the floor of the vehicle and then gradually lowered both man and chair to ground level.

“Are they dead?” he asked.

That had been part of the deal. Even if Dan Frazier had told them exactly where the SD card was and handed it over, the contract had stipulated that neither Dan nor his wife would live to tell the tale.

Jeffrey stepped forward, assuming the role of spokesman. “They're gone,” he said. “We saw to it.”

“No witnesses?”

“None. We did it right.”

“Weapons?”

“Knives,” Jeffrey said. “We got rid of them along with the gloves and the gowns.”

“Great. Where's the drive?”

“Got it right here, sir,” Jeffrey said deferentially as he pulled the tiny device out of his shirt pocket. He was relieved to see that the man was empty-handed. There was no laptop visible. He wouldn't be able to check on the drive until after Alberto and Jeffrey were well on their way.