The Laura Cardinal Novels (39 page)

He looked bemused. Oblivious to Laura.

Laura said, “What about Musicman?”

Startling him out of his reverie. “Musicman?”

The train was coming.

“Weren’t you going to bring him here? To see Summer?”

“What? No.” He shrugged. “You can’t do everything.”

“But he defied you.”

Wheels ticking on the tracks, louder and louder.

“Can’t do everything,” Galaz repeated, uncertain.

The train upon them now, the rumbling shaking the room. A sweeping wall of sound, so big that for a moment it obliterated all thought. They were in the maw of sound.

Concentrate!
She had to try one more time for the knife. She straightened out her fingers as far as they could go and pressed down on the handle, edging it to her by pushing the handle down against the wood.

The thundering in her ears. Fear pushing its way up into her throat. “Musicman wins, then” she said.

“He won’t win. He won’t get Summer now.” Galaz unscrewed the cap and sloshed some of the liquid on the floor. The smell hit Laura, the rank high smell of pure gasoline.

The thing she feared most was dying in a fire.

Summer, whimpering with fear.

Get your fingers around—

Galaz produced a silver lighter from his pocket. Paused. Laura could see he was still working it out in his mind, seeing the evidence the way the fire marshal would see it, the detectives, the ME.

Get your fingers around the knife—

The sound of the train abating now, the wheels the noisiest part.

Laura curled her fingers. It hurt like hell, but fire would hurt worse. She closed her eyes and with an act of will, squeezed. The knife was in her hand. She’d have to rush him, but she could barely move.

She’d just have to aim herself at him, keeping the point of the knife to the front.

Five feet away.

She clenched her muscles even more, the pain excruciating.

Galaz’s back toward her. Splashing more gasoline on the walls, the windows.

Harnessing her adrenaline. Clamping down on muscles already stressed beyond the breaking point. Take a deep breath.

Now.

When Buddy heard the shot, he reacted immediately. Drawing his weapon, he tried the metal door, but it was locked. He stared at the windows, looking for the weakest point. The panes were fashioned of glass and wood, and in some places the wood strips were broken.

There would be no element of surprise. They’d see him coming.

Then he heard the train. He realized the tracks went right behind the warehouse. All he had to do was time it right. He doubted anyone would hear the breaking glass.

He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his gun. Picked the place where the wood had splintered, where there were stress fractures.

Waited.

The train coming, coming, the rumbling getting louder and louder until it enveloped him in an ungodly roar— Now.

Laura pushed off from her feet and launched herself toward Galaz, flat end of the knife handle jammed into her side to keep it steady, using her body as a projectile. Trying not to think that it could poke her own guts out.

Landing far short, crashing on her hands, her knees, her chin, her hand cut, the knife skittering harmlessly across the concrete.

Galaz spinning around, his face a mask of surprise.

The stink of gasoline everywhere.

“You actually think—“

Shock in his eyes as a gunshot exploded through the small space, the momentum spinning him around and flipping him backwards into the wall.

Head cracking—an awful sound. Holding his side, his mouth open and working.

In his hands, the lighter.

Manicured fingers flicking.

A rough male voice yelling, “Drop it! Do it now!”

Laura recognizing the voice, but not sure—

An incandescent moment when metal struck flint, ignition. Spark—a runnel of flame swirling up Galaz’s arm to his waxy face and up the walls.

The delight on his face turning to terror.

A blur beside her: Buddy Holland going to his daughter.

Laura thinking:
Shackles
.

Buddy from cop to father, his face twisted in terror as he ran to his daughter, pulled at her shackles, saying, “Keys keys keys!”

Frank Entwistle, peering down at her. “You okay?”

What do you think
? But she didn’t say it.

“What about Mickey?” Entwistle asked.

“Mickey?” What about him?

Entwistle nodded toward the man lying in the doorway. “He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?”

Then she remembered: Mickey bending down to check Summer’s shackles.

Suddenly, a loud whoosh! Galaz lit up like a burning straw man, sheets of flame spreading to the roof, the whole place getting darker, almost black. Boiling black smoke on a river of flame—
Concentrate! He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?

“Mickey!” Laura shouted.

Buddy looking up, perspiration running down his face, glowing in the flickering light; his eyes like a wild horse’s.

Summer screaming.

Laura nodding at the man lying in the doorway.

Buddy, an acknowledging nod, then on the man like a jackal, coming up with a key ring, including three small ones—cuff keys. Buddy fumbling, Laura unable to move, Summer screaming screaming screaming—
Get out now
, her brain told her,but she had no answer for that. The air buzzing at her mouth and nostrils like a swarm of bees, sparks lighting on her, in her hair, panic scrabbling like rats in the walls, the fear pure and hard and all-consuming.

I don’t want to die like this.

Even with the incredible noise of the flames, she heard the click of the lock to Summer’s shackles. Buddy cursing, praying, his breath hitching. Summer whimpering.

Laura, trying to remember where the doorway was because the air was now black except for the oily flames. Crawling, pushing her body to move.

Buddy running past her. She didn’t see him, but heard his boots on the glass, felt the wind of his passing, something soft passing across her face—the dress?

Fire feeding on oxygen. Blowing toward her—she could feel it on her feet, her back. Going toward the air? Or was that wrong? She couldn’t think. Maybe she was going in the wrong direction. Where was the doorway?
I should have reached Mickey by now
. Her throat clogging up, her chest seizing with the need to breathe— Banging, loud voices.

“Police!”

People in the room. Noise, men, legs, guns, SWAT.

Eyes stinging. Harder to breathe. Gasping for air. She could be dead any moment. Grateful that she lay on her face away from the smoke, that they were here. They were here, they would get her out now.

Legs milling, but no one coming to her.

What about me?

Entwistle looking down at her, his expression sorrowful.

Someone else—SWAT?—crouching down. Then she was borne up and carried like a bird in the grip of a hawk, up and out into the air, rushing headlong through the hurtling dark, the clean bright stars overhead.

Five days, twelve interviews, three interrogations, and reams of paperwork later, Laura decided she’d had enough. She had to go home and not just for a few hours of sleep. They were at the point in the investigation where it was all mopping up and putting it in one place for the County attorney. Down the line, she would have to make another trip back to Florida to testify in a related case, the death of Andrew Descartes, but not now.

That was good. Laura could barely wrap her mind around Andy Descartes’s death. She had erred seriously in not asking assistance from SWAT. She could rationalize all she wanted about giving the Apalachicola PD the benefit of the doubt, and that was true to a certain extent. But the real reason she had gone in that day with Chief Redbone and his two officers was hubris; she did not want to give up control of her case.

All the pieces of her case were falling into place. Mickey Harmon had survived the shooting, and he was talking—about his friendship with Galaz and Ramsey that had spanned twenty years, his lucrative position as Galaz’s bodyguard, their blackmailing scheme. He catalogued a string of killings going back eighteen years, giving Victor the address of a warehouse in Phoenix where Galaz had plied his brand of sexual sadism while he worked his way up through DPS and planned a political career.

Dale Lundy—Musicman—confessed to killing four girls. He came off as beleaguered and confused. Laura thought his lawyer would argue for not guilty by mental defect, but after seeing what he’d done, she doubted any jury would go for it.

Victor was the lead on both the Harmon and Lundy interrogations. Laura sat in the room, watching Musicman, trying to figure the man out, but she couldn’t. He gave them nothing—nothing except his “poor me” act. Unfailingly polite, small, insignificant, hands folded prissily on the table, he reminded her of a decent, church-going lady mortified at being placed in such an untenable situation.

Laura asked him why he booby-trapped the tunnel.

He turned moist, frightened eyes on her. “Can I have a glass of water?”

After he had his water, she asked him again: “Why did you booby-trap the tunnel in your kitchen, but not the other house? What made you do that?”

He looked at her, uncomprehending.

She asked it another way. “You didn’t booby trap the front door, the back door, anything in the other house, so
what was your reasoning?
Why was that entrance so important to you when the others weren’t?”

He gave a small shrug.

“I just felt like it.”

I just felt like it
. Laura had tried staring into his eyes, but there were no answers there. If she’d hoped for an explanation for Andrew Descartes’s death, something real she could hold on to that gave this tragedy some kind of design, she wouldn’t get it from Dale Lundy.

Buddy Holland was placed on administrative leave by the Bisbee Police Department. An Officer Involved Shooting investigation was the least of his troubles. Luring Dale Lundy to Bisbee would likely cost him his job. Fortunately, he had his pension from TPD. He was a young enough man he could find a good job somewhere in law enforcement.

“I hear Dynever Security is hiring,” he’d joked.

He told Laura he was moving back to Tucson so he could be close to his daughter.

Laura had seen a lot of him lately. Summer had to give her statement, and Buddy was there with her. They went back and forth to DPS, to the courthouse—Buddy, Summer, and Beth.

Laura found herself envying Buddy Holland his family. Watching the bond between them. She remembered what it was like to have that kind of love, the love of her parents.

It wasn’t over yet for them, though. Summer would need a lot of help to overcome what she had seen, what she had experienced, first at the hands of Musicman, and then Galaz. Unharmed physically, but emotionally devastated. Left alone in that room with the photos of the tortured women—knowing she would be next. Laura thought with time Summer would heal. She would need counseling and her family every step of the way, but she could heal.

Laura went to Jay Ramsey’s funeral. It was sparsely attended. She recognized the younger brother, whom she had met only once close to twenty years ago. She noticed no one was with him—not a wife, not a child. He looked lost. Laura felt an odd kinship with him. He had no family left. She could tell from the shock on his face that he had never expected to be alone in this way.

He gave her a Post-it note that Jay had apparently intended for her. It had been pasted to his computer, Laura’s name scribbled at the top. Below that it said: “Barbara Stanley” followed by a phone number. And the words: “Calliope’s Music, 9 yr. old TB mare”.

Laura thanked him and took the note, putting it in a special compartment in her wallet. She didn’t know what to do with the information right now, so she would leave it there until she did.

After attending the funeral that morning, the fifth day after the Chiricahua Paint Company fire, Laura gathered up some of the paperwork that had yet to be done and told Victor she was going home.

“See you tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so.”

She headed home to the Bosque Escondido, after stopping at a little store squeezed into the middle of a strip mall on the south side.

“Where should I put the dishes?” asked Tom, carrying the box up onto the front porch.

Laura knew which dishes he meant. Cheap china, a brown and yellow design of bees and flowers. Tom had gotten them from a grocery store give-away—buy so many groceries and pay a dollar for each dish. They went well with his two jelly glasses. “Couldn’t we store those?”

“Sure. I’ll put it with my sheets, my rug, my couch—“

“This is
my nidito
. You’re just—“

“What? What am I?”

He stood there, looking at her, still holding the box. The man she had invited to live with her.

She thought of her nice FiestaWare. Thought of them nested one into the other, their fine sold colors, dark blue, green, tangerine, dark red. Okay, so there would be bees and flowers, too. She sighed. “Okay. Put them in the cupboard near the fridge.”

Still holding the box, he bent awkwardly and kissed her on the forehead. “You’re doing pretty well.”

“You think so?”

“You’ve lived alone for a long time.”

“So have you.”

“But I’m not territorial like you are.”

It was true. As he let the screen door close behind him, Laura realized this would not be easy. When she’d agreed to try it, in the middle of the night three days ago, it had seemed absolutely right. Love was love. It was supposed to conquer all.

But she’d seen him leave towels on the floor of his bathroom.

The morning after Tom Lightfoot moved in, Laura awakened to rain tapping on the roof just before dawn. It seemed to her that the temperature had dropped ten degrees. She crept out of bed, careful not to wake him. Looking down at him and thinking that this was how it would be from now on. She found herself thinking of Buddy and Beth. Were they healing the rift between them? Or would Buddy get a place nearby and hover around his daughter like a guardian angel?