The Laura Cardinal Novels (45 page)

The discussion centered on the canvass of the houses near Cataract Lake by officers Tagg and Wingate .

According to Tagg, a few people had heard three or four (there were conflicting stories) shotgun blasts around ten o’clock at night. The time was generally agreed upon because two families in houses just north of the campground had been watching the local news at ten.

Tagg said, “The people I talked to heard it, but they didn’t do anything.”

“Why not?” Laura asked.

Tagg shrugged. “A lot of hunters around here. The locals hear plenty of gunshots in rural areas.”

“At ten o’clock at night?”

“There’s folks that’ve been known to jacklight deer.”

What Josh Wingate had said.

“Plus a lot of people hear gunshots, they try to talk themselves out of it,” the chief said. “They’re not sure they’re gunshots, tell themselves it’s a backfire.”

Laura knew that was true. She also knew most people hearing gunshots would stay inside for safety reasons. Because they didn’t go out to see if it really was gunfire, they were often too embarrassed to call it in. No one liked to be thought of as a busybody.

After the police officers left for their shift, Laura, Richie, and the chief sat down and talked it through. She gave the chief what she knew—the rough timeline of the events, that Dan and Kellee had gotten married, and that they had not told Dan Yates’s family.

“The parents had no idea they were in town,” Richie said. “They cooked up this whole thing and their family didn’t even know.”

“I think Shana knew,” Laura said.

Loffgren said, “You do? I know they were close. Dan was always looking out for her. Little things you’d see. Dan was in and out of our house a lot when he was a kid, and a lot of times he brought her along.”

“I bet that went down well,” Richie said.

“She had one hell of a fastball, as I remember,” Loffgren said. “So what do you think this is? You have any ideas?”

“Could be a stranger,” Rich said. “Somebody just did it for kicks. It happens.”

“Kids?”

“Could be,” Laura said, “although whoever it was sanitized the scene. That doesn’t sound like kids.”

“Could it be a serial killer?” Loffgren asked. “Random shooting for whatever reason, but he covers his tracks? Maybe this is his ritual.”

They’d already run it on VICAP, but had found nothing similar. Random shootings, yes, plenty of them. But nothing like this. “If there were others, it could point to that,” Laura said. “We don’t have enough information at this point to know. You’re aware that agencies only report to VICAP if they’re in the network—and a lot of the smaller agencies aren’t.”

“We just got on ourselves last year.”

Laura said, “The kind of person who’d walk around a tent shooting inside without looking to see if his victims are dead doesn’t fit with the cunning it would take to cover up tracks, take his shell casings. Unless he knew them
too
well and didn’t want to see what he’d done.”

Richie rubbed the tip of his nose. “I notice you said, ‘guy,' Laura. Why be exclusive? It could be a female.”

“It could.”

“But unlikely,” Loffgren said.

Richie leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “I don’t know. Women these days are as capable as men. That female serial killer in Florida, the one they made the movie about? And on our side, you know, what Laura herself did.”

“That was good work,” Loffgren said.

“You know it. She makes the rest of us look bad.”

Laura ignored that. “Chief, I don’t think it’s a woman running around with a shotgun. Sure, there are women out there who could do it, like from the military, maybe someone from one of the ranches around here, but it’s a less likely scenario than the other. While I wouldn’t rule anything out, going down that road too far would be counterproductive, in my opinion.”

Loffgren looked from one to the other and sighed. “We’ve got to put our backs into this. Dan was a good kid—the best kind of American—and from what I hear, so was Kellee. They didn’t deserve this.”

“I agree,” Richie said.

“It’s hit our family pretty hard—hell, everybody in town is upset about this. This is a small town and everybody knows each other. I want whoever did this.”

He didn’t say it, but Laura got his intention loud and clear.

Whatever’s going on between the two of you, don’t let it get in the way
.

One thing you could say for Richie Lockhart’s car, it could corner. Laura found herself enjoying the curvaceous drive down off the rim, in and out of the moonlight shadows alongside Oak Creek.

At the northern end of the canyon where the trees were thickest, they bottomed out in a turn. Before them, on the left, a wooden sign grew out of an island of zinnias and petunias, lit from beneath: TAYLOR’S CREEKSIDE CABINS.

A rustic country store faced out to the road. Laura guessed that at one time there had been gas pumps out front.

The sign above the door said TAYLOR’S CREEKSIDE COUNTRY STORE: EST. 1924. Behind the store were several cabins reached by landscaped paths, the thick ground cover shining from recent watering. Fanning out, the farthest cabins stood among a smattering of ponderosa pines; she could see the cozy glow of lights here and there. Judging from the cars in the parking lot, the place was full up.

They stepped out into the crisp night air. Laura could smell earth and flowers and hear the sound of the crickets. The nicest thing, though—she looked up and could see the stars.

Looking around, Richie said, “Quaint, huh?”

Laura prepared herself as they walked up the steps to the store. Two notifications in one night—a great introduction to hell. The bell over the door tinkled as they walked in. A pretty, middle-aged Asian woman sat on a stool behind the high counter on the left of the tiny store, underneath a buzzing Marlboro sign.

Laura glanced around. There were three aisles stocked with condiments and snacks—the condiments all in small jars and bottles. A cold drink case spanned the wall on the opposite end from the counter—beer, wine, soft drinks, bottled water. She noticed a revolving paperback rack and a tiny section for video rentals. The video tape boxes were faded from the sun. A white, four-door cold case took up half the wall to the right of the cash register. It could have been original with the building. One of the doors was cluttered with snapshots of fishermen displaying their catch, hunters holding up the heads of deer that could no longer hold them up for themselves, and a man posing with a red-white-and-blue plane: FLY THE GRAND CANYON—HIGH PINES CHARTER FLIGHTS—GLENN TRAYWICK, PROPRIETOR.

Richie asked the clerk if they could talk to Jack Taylor.

“What is this about?” the woman asked, eyes wary.

He showed her his wallet badge. “We need to talk to him about his daughter.”

“Kellee? What’s wrong?” The woman leaned against the counter, the whole of her small body taut. “Is she all right?”

“That’s really a matter for—”

Laura said, “You know Kellee well?”

“She’s my stepdaughter. Is she all right?”

Her face was pale, her black hair like silk, tiny blue threads catching the light.

“We’d like to talk to you both. Can you reach your husband?”

In the fish-belly white glare of the Marlboro sign, the woman's’ face looked stark with fear. She picked up a walkie-talkie from under the desk. “Jack? Jack, come to the office. There’s … someone here you need to talk to.”

An older man’s voice, amiable and slightly hoarse, said, “Be right up.”

His voice comforting; the kind of voice that automatically allayed fears. The woman held the walkie-talkie to her ear long after he had signed off.

Her hand was shaking, her eyes dark. She watched as Richie wandered to the back of the store to look at video tapes, then turned to Laura. “I have to know. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Laura had to answer her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Taylor—”

A weak smile. “Megumi.” She held out a soft white hand—decorum in the middle of grief. “So she is dead.”

“Yes, ma’am. She died last night.”

“I had this feeling.”

“Why? Why would you have that feeling?”

“I thought it might have come back.”

Laura was about to ask her to elaborate when the bell above the door rang. A tall, seventyish, gray-haired man entered, ducking his head to avoid the lintel. “Megumi? What’s going on?”

He had an open, tanned face, lined from sun. Blue eyes that held a degree of calculation in them. He wore a plaid flannel shirt tucked into gray trousers, a hand-tooled leather belt with a sand-cast silver-and-turquoise buckle in a wheel shape—Navajo. Arms loose at his sides, he looked like someone who was used to hard physical work. He reminded Laura of her father, a schoolteacher who could fix anything and loved outdoor work.

Laura told the Taylors everything. When and where Dan and Kellee were found, the fact that they had eloped to Las Vegas.

Richie remained at the back of the store, engrossed in old video tapes. Letting her do the heavy lifting.

The man, Jack Taylor, didn’t react the way she expected. He accepted it immediately, seeming to have skipped part of the spectrum—shock, denial, anger—and landed on sad.

“It’s ironic,” he said.

“Ironic?”

“Kellee nearly died three years ago. She had a brain tumor. The diagnosis was … they said … it was inoperable.”

“What happened?”

He opened his hands. Calloused and rough; hands used to work. “It went away. Like that. Just … evaporated.”

“They did so many tests,” Megumi Taylor said. “MRI, CAT scan, blood tests. But it was gone.”

“The doctors couldn’t explain it,” said Taylor. He leaned against the counter, sagged. A big man bending under the weight of the unthinkable. Except he
had
thought about it, thought about it a lot. “It always felt like we were living on borrowed time. We even had a plot picked out in the cemetery in Sedona. She wanted us to celebrate her life, to have a life afterwards.”

Megumi said, “She’s … she was Jack’s only child.”

“My wife died when she was little. She grew up here, helping me around the place in the summers, and then she went to college …” He wiped at his nose. “She landscaped this place, you know that? Just a kid in high school.”

His tears falling on the counter.

Laura waited, feeling that familiar sinking in her heart as she absorbed the pain of others.
I’m like a shock absorber
, she thought.
One that doesn’t work so well
.

Richie had stopped browsing and stood quietly. Listening to the pain in Jack Taylor’s voice.

Laura asked them if they knew Kellee was planning on getting married.

“I knew she wanted to,” Taylor said. “She loved Dan. He was a nice kid. You could do a lot worse. Responsible, serious. Although I worried about the religious aspect.”

“Religious aspect?” Richie asked.

“The Yateses. Chuck is very active in the Southern Baptist church. Nothing wrong with that, but …” Jack Taylor took Megumi’s hand in his. “We’re not big on religion. We both think …” He looked at her. “There’s been so much misery in the world because of religion. Although you could say what happened to Kellee was a miracle.”

Laura thought, but didn’t say, that it was strange that God had spared Kellee from death three years ago, only to allow her life to be taken now. Laura understood their ambivalence. Although she believed in God—she just
did
—she had a hard time understanding where He stood on things.

She’d seen the unspeakable. Hard to fathom, a loving God.

Jack Taylor did not look up, but stroked Megumi’s tiny hand with a giant, callused thumb. “Now I’m glad they did get married. Maybe that was what Kellee was waiting for.”

They stopped off at a freeway exit for some fast food and sat in the car under the sodium arc lights of the Burger King. Laura tried to eat healthily at home, but whenever she went on one of these trips, all bets were off. On the road, a McDonalds Big Mac or a Jack in the Box Supreme Crescent offered unique comfort. Even the smell of fried food acted on her like a soporific drug.

Laura was glad Richie was driving. On the way back to Williams, she closed her eyes and listened to the deep, throaty engine, to the hum of the tires on the freeway as they left Flagstaff and drove out onto the high northern Arizona plateau, feeling the accumulated psychic weight of this day.

When they drove into Williams, it was going on eleven. Too late to call home. Tom got up early—a habit for both of them. What Laura really wanted to do was ask him about this morning. She wouldn’t do that, though. How could she frame it without sounding whiny and insecure?

Laura was convinced that if she just heard his voice, she’d know immediately if he just hadn’t been in the mood—which was fine—or if it went deeper than that.

It was too late to call, so it was a moot point. She was relieved, but also just a little bit more anxious, because not calling put off the moment of truth a little longer.

On the way into town, they detoured by the Williams PD. The yellow-brick building on the main drag was quiet, the lighted alcove open to the street, one lonely guy behind the window inside. He recognized them, though, celebrities that they were.

“The chief called in awhile ago,” Officer Donnelly said. He had thick glasses that magnified his pale eyes and a comb-over of dyed brown hair. He handed Laura a “While You Were Out” slip with Loffgren’s home number on it. “He said to go ahead and call as late as you want.”

She called from the station, Loffgren picking up on the second ring.

“Thought you should know about this. There have been three reports of road-rage incidents between here and Las Vegas in the last couple of months. One on 93 just north of Kingman, two on I-40. The Mojave County Sheriff’s Department investigated all three. The investigator’s name is David Fellows. He’s on duty tonight. I’ll give you the number.”

“Two of the incidents were pretty typical,” David Fellows told her when she reached him. “Someone gets cut off, the other guy flips the bird, it escalates. Fortunately, nothing came of either one of them.”