Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (31 page)

Straining her eyes against the darkness, Laura walked down to the corral and past it to the tack room, sliding the heavy door open and grabbing a halter and lead rope.

The gate to that pen was open. Laura wondered if Grady was out here, waiting for her. Straining her eyes in the moonlight, looking for any movement that might signal an attack, she went back to the tack room and filled a half bucket full of horse pellets. She walked out into the desert and shook the bucket, but remained watchful.

Thinking that if anyone did come at her, she could use Calliope's bulk to her advantage. Horses were big and unpredictable when spooked. People who were not used to horses would be intimidated by their size, the proximity of their feet and teeth.

She had to remind herself, though, that Grady wasn't an average person. His fear threshold was much higher.

As she haltered Calliope and led her to the pen, Laura heard the sound of tires on gravel even before she heard a car engine. Two cars drove onto the ranch in the space of a few minutes. The first one went straight up to the main house an eighth of a mile away, where the Spanish Moon Cantina was—probably ranch guests coming in after a night in Tucson.

The other set of headlights turned in the direction of Laura's house. She doubted anyone was coming by her place. Pete, the ranch manager, lived just beyond her on that road, and his girlfriend often came by around this time.

The car that had gone to the main house reappeared and followed the lane around by Laura's place. All the ranch roads looped in together, connecting the main house, guest ranch
casitas
, and the older outbuildings that had been built when the place was a working ranch early in the last century. The car slowed at the dogleg near Laura's house, the red taillights hazy by dust and distance, and then was screened from sight by trees near the wash.

Then it was quiet. Laura could hear a cricket somewhere. It had cooled a little, and a soft breeze brushed her cheek. The moonlight clad everything in pale grey-white. She looked in the direction of her house, which gleamed white as a bone beyond the thicket of mesquites in the front yard. The big trees at the left side. Moonlight pooling off something white just outside the dark mass of the trees' shade.

She heard a car door close, then another. Sounds carried out here.

Laura was still looking at her house, and as her eyes became adjusted to what she was looking at, a shape materialized under the tree. A car. From the shape of it, a cop car, plain-wrapped. Who would come out here at this time of night? Jaime?

She squinted, but couldn't see into the porch; it was too dark. She assumed someone was there. She heard a knock, the iron door rattling in the frame.

As Laura walked briskly in the direction of her house, her ears registered the muted sound of another car door closing. She heard Jaime's voice saying, “Can … me a piece of paper? … on the seat. I'm gonna leave her a note. She's gonna want … about this.”

A figure left the shadow of the porch, walking down the steps and out the creaky gate to the sheriff's car. Not Jaime. Someone smaller, slimmer. Disappearing into the darkness, the shade of the big trees. Hard to see anything, but Laura thought that the person who was not Jaime was almost to the car when she heard it—a big
whomp
!

Transfixed, Laura's unbelieving eyes saw parts of Jaime Molina's car shoot skyward in a spout of flame.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Getting there took an eternity. She could not look away. The big pine was dangerously close to her house. If it ignited, the house would go up, too. And then she realized that one whole side of her house was missing, the kitchen and the living room and the roof—gone.

The image crowded out thought. All she could do was run in that direction as fast as she could. As she ran, information began squeezing through the panicked bottleneck of her brain, recording what she saw briefly before escaping into the ether.

Objects burning, everywhere.

The car chassis in the dirt, tires burned away.

People she knew, tossed on the ground like broken dolls.

Questions clamoring:
Was Jaime dead? Would the gas tank go?

She couldn't think about the gas tank. Her mind already shutting down on itself again, so she burned herself up running. Breath burning, legs burning. Her thoughts once again turning to stuttering impulses blinking on and off before her eyes.

Until she was there.

Fires burning themselves out. Jaime, lying facedown on her front porch. Scorched. Avulsions on his naked, blackened back. Looming above him, part of the porch roof was canted sideways, the rest of it seeming to have slid off the supports, red clay tiles everywhere.

The car a charred, twisted wreck, a body lying by the passenger side door.

A body.

Dead. She could tell that from here. How she knew Jaime was living and the other one was dead, she wouldn't have been able to say.

The dead one was Chris. Jaime's niece. They'd been laughing over Mexican food only a few hours ago, Laura thinking she'd make a good cop. She could tell it was Chris by the clothing and the sling and the ponytail. The clothing mostly ripped from her body, her scorched flesh.

Dead. Nothing to animate her, nothing there at all.

Laura couldn't do anything for her. She saw a flicker in her side vision. The mesquite tree a few yards from the porch was on fire. She couldn't stop to fight it now. She had to get Jaime out of there.

He moved. He was alive. Laura ran to him and tried pulling on his arm. “Jaime! Jaime! Can you hear me? You have to get up!”

He moaned, turned his scorched face to look at her. She didn't think he saw her, though. She would have to get him down the steps, roll him—use his gravity to get him farther away from the house. She pushed and pulled him to the steps and then over.

He rolled like dead weight onto the grass.

Laura grabbed his arms and arranged them over his head, grasped them hard. Pulled. He barely moved.

She realized she needed to keep the fire from getting to the roof. She ran to the faucet, which was near the untouched side of the house, and aimed the hose at the roof. Heard cars coming. Aware of vehicle parts twisted and burning on the road. Aware of Christine's body face down on the ground. Aware of Jaime lying in the grass.

He would be in shock. He needed a blanket.

She dropped the hose and ran to her Yukon, which was still intact.

Locked.

Her keys in the house. Her cell phone in the house.

Cars coming from the Latigo, the main ranch house. Sirens in the distance.

Suddenly, an engine roared close by. A car accelerating, the sound receding as she got someone to aim the hose at the roof and looked around for a blanket.

Laura found herself staring in the direction of the retreating taillights. All these cars coming to the fire. Who would go at a time like this?

Far away, taillights winking out in the darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

What Laura thought about that nightmarish night, and the next day, and the day after that, as she went through the motions of her now-shattered life, what she thought about was this: The mamba had come for her at last.

The black mamba had come for her, and it had almost killed her. But in failing to destroy her, the mamba had killed Christine Lujan instead.

That was the thought that hounded her as she went through the days after the explosion. It was what woke her up at night, the only vivid image she had from the fire and the aftermath, Chris Lujan lying facedown in the dirt beside the burning car. That image was the one continuous loop that ran through her mind, the only one that mattered in a parade of gray, dull, insubstantial thoughts and acts that consumed her waking hours.

Christine Lujan had died in her place. The mamba had gotten the wrong Broken Wing Sister.

Jaime was hospitalized with burns over forty percent of his body. The morning following the explosion, Laura called Jaime's detective sergeant, Rudy Valenzuela, to ask how he was. He told her Jaime was in the Burn Unit at St. Mary's Hospital. He told her Jaime's vocal chords were damaged and he could only communicate by writing on a pad. He used the terms hydrotherapy, vacuum-assisted closure techniques, and therapeutic laser for pain. Laura understood the basics of these techniques, but didn't want to think about it—her mind kept flying away. The main thing, as she understood it, was to avoid infection.

She also understood this: It was still possible Jaime might not survive.

No one but his immediate family could see him. That didn't stop Laura from driving out to the hospital and sitting in the waiting room.

A few times she saw a middle-aged woman and two young women going in and out of the Burn Unit on the fourth floor. The first time she saw them, she felt like slumping down in her chair. She doubted Mrs. Molina would know who she was anyway. Not by sight.

It was possible that Mrs. Molina didn't know of Laura's culpability. But Laura knew, and that was enough. She had been the one to attract evil to the Molina family; she had been the one who had attracted Sean Grady.

Three days after the explosion, Laura finally thought to call Detective Toch about Grady. She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her before. She put it down to shock.

When she was finally able to reach Dave Toch, Laura got another shock.

“He skipped,” Toch told her.

“What do you mean, he skipped?”

“Well, we're pretty sure he skipped.”

“He fly to Canada?”

“We had those tickets in our possession. But he's gone. So's his girlfriend. For all we know, they went to Mexico. It's a straight shot to the border.”

“When was this?”

“He's been gone since last Wednesday.”

The car-bombing was on Friday. “Why didn't you call me?”

“We've been busy here.” He paused. “Sorry about that.”

Sorry about that
.

Laura put the phone down, unsure of what to think. Had he planted the bomb before he left? Why would he choose Jaime's car? The only other explanation: It wasn't Grady. Laura had been sure it was Grady, that he'd followed Jaime and Chris to the ranch, thinking Chris was her.

Positive that Sean Grady was the mamba.

Another thought came to her.
If Grady wasn't the mamba, then who was?

St. Mary's Hospital had gobbled up the surrounding desert in its growth over the years. But here and there in the hospital were tiny squares of ground open to the sky, rocky grottoes with religious statuary. Laura spent most of her time in one grotto in the company of a plaster Virgin. Laura wasn't a religious person, but she believed in God. She figured that praying to Mary for Jaime's life was as good a use of her time as any.

She did not go in to work. This was not her choice; she was on leave. But it didn't seem to matter much.

Laura found she couldn't make the most basic decisions. She knew she needed to make arrangements to move Calliope closer to where she would live, but didn't know where, because she didn't know where that was. She did rent a storage facility near DPS, packed boxes, rented a van, and moved furniture—and she did it until she fell into bed exhausted every night.