The Laura Cardinal Novels (56 page)

Louise had told her the boys lived with their father and his family, which essentially meant they were being raised by their grandparents.

She wondered at the dynamics. The younger child couldn’t be more than a year old. Who had made the decision where the children would be raised and how did that sit with the family on the other side of the equation? There was a lot more she needed to know about Shana Yates—her relationship with her brother not the least of it.

As Laura walked through the room, she pondered the situation. Despite the fact Shana was over twenty-one, she was not far from being a kid herself. Laura wasn’t surprised that the grandparents were raising her children, especially in the aftermath of divorce. Still—and maybe it was old-fashioned and sexist—she would have thought that the daughter’s parents would be the ones to raise the child.

Tucking her hands under her arms to avoid touching anything, she made a slow circuit of the room, just looking. Lots of junk, but a picture emerged. Shana was sloppy, immune to dust mites, liked pink, and was a closet environmentalist.

The calendar on the wall was from the World Wildlife Federation. Two posters on the wall: one of Eminem, and one of a wolf. A look at Shana’s bookshelves (many of the books piled one on top of the other instead of standing on end) yielded a book by Aldo Leopold and
The Monkey Wrench Gang
, by Edward Abbey, stacked on top of a dozen or so copies of
Cosmopolitan
and
People
magazines.

There were a few other books, mostly youth-oriented self-help, from
He’s Just Not That Into You
to
Christian and Young.
A book on feng shui—judging from the state of this room, Laura doubted Shana had ever even cracked the spine—and a book on horse training:
Lyons on Horses
. A dusty case of Avon products with her name on the label—was she an Avon Lady?

Country music and hip hop stacked haphazardly in a plastic bin. The country music CDs were from a few years ago, the hip hop, which was on top, the most recent. As if Shana had suddenly turned off country and switched to rap music.

All over the map.

A portable file box next to the bookshelf, a WWF decal on the side.

Donning latex, Laura opened the box. Three files, two of them labeled in Shana’s bubble-like script. Laura opened the one marked
Clippings
. On top was a cut-out from
The Williams News
on a fire at a Williams car dealership. Three SUVs had been burned to the ground. A black and white photo accompanied the article showing an SUV engulfed in flames against the night sky, firefighters launching a thick stream of spray from their fire hoses. The article was dated June 13.

Laura scanned the article. An accelerant had been used—gasoline—and an environmental group, the Earth Warriors, had sent an e-mail to the paper claiming responsibility.

The Earth Warriors. She’d never heard of them. She glanced around the room, at the nature calendar, the posters,
The Monkey Wrench Gang
.

Was Shana a member of the Earth Warriors?

Laura went back over her conversations with Shana, and couldn’t remember one reference to the environment. If you went by stereotypes, Shana would have more in common with the ranching families than environmentalists. She grew up here in Williams, not a bastion of liberal thought, and her off time had been spent at horse shows and rodeos.

Which reminded her: Something was missing.

There were no photos of Mighty Mouse. No ribbons, no silver bowls, no belt buckles.

Had Shana taken them with her? Or had she decided to put that part of herself away? Sometimes it was less painful to close a door, so you didn’t have to think about the life you once led. Laura was no stranger to that. In the eleven years since her parents’ death—after she had sold the place and stored her parents’ possessions—she had gone by the house exactly once, on an impulse.

Shana had sold the horse, the trailer, all her tack to Mrs. Wingate.

If she had closed that chapter in her life, was she about to close another? Could she have left for good?

Laura had searched the room, the closet, and had found no luggage, matching or otherwise. Shana had definitely planned to stay more than one night, and her closet was only a third full, her dresser drawers close to empty. Planning for an extended stay?

She had taken off without telling anyone.

Laura looked at the file box again. There were no other clippings other than a follow-up article on the SUV burning.

She looked at the two other files. One was marked,
Someday
. Inside there were more clippings, but these were more in keeping with a twenty-one-year-old woman-child prone to dreaming big about the future. There was a photo of a Porsche Boxter, bright yellow, and one of a grandly rustic cabin—more like a lodge—overlooking a pristine blue lake, cutout from a glossy magazine, The place was called Big Bear Creek Lodge, situated on the Big Bear Lake in Montana. There were also sumptuous pictures of the interior—cowboy chic—and other photos of rooms taken of homes in Los Angeles, the Caribbean, and Aspen. There was a Hinckley picnic boat yacht, a swimming pool where you almost couldn’t tell where the water left off and the bay began. Expensive clothing, the kind of stuff you’d get on Rodeo Drive. Beautiful women walking down a red carpet, giving off the aura of untouchability. Laura recognized them: movie stars.

Shana thought big.

The last folder was unmarked, but contained magazine articles about recent environmental setbacks throughout the country. A depressing litany of dying rivers, toxic beaches, lost species.

Laura looked back at the
Someday
file. There was a schism between some of the things Shana wanted for herself (the rustic lodge, a moose head staring glassily from the wall coming to mind) and the atrocities to the environment.

Shana knew how to compartmentalize.

“She’d tell me if she was going to leave,” Louise Yates said.

“Her suitcases are gone.”

Louise touched her hand to her mouth. “I can’t believe I didn’t know.” She sat down on the brown tweed couch facing the fireplace, her face ash gray.

“I found her address book,” Laura said. “Can you go through it with me and tell me who she might have gone to stay with?”

Armed with Shana’s mobile number and the numbers of a half dozen of Shana’s friends, Laura drove to the Williams PD to compare notes with the officer who took Chuck Yates’s statement.

Officer Wingate, who had taken down the information, had just gone out on patrol. Laura arranged to meet him outside the Dairy Queen.

He was sitting in his car when she approached. He got out, and they sat down on a low wall that divided the parking lot.

“How are you doing?” he asked her.

“I should ask you that.”

“Okay, I guess.” He shrugged, looked at his feet.

Laura noticed he was freshly-scrubbed, but the flesh beneath his eyes were bruised-looking and his eyes were red.

He added, “It would’ve been worse a couple of years ago. Because he lived in Flag. Him going to NAU and me to the academy and becoming a cop. We didn’t see each other much, except in the summers.”

Trying to put space between himself and Dan. Laura understood why he had to do it. “I read your missing persons report on Shana. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

“Not much to tell. She probably just took off to clear her head.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Nah.” He ran his hand over his short-cropped hair. “When we were kids she used to tag along sometimes. Kind of funny, because they were born a couple of minutes apart. If you didn’t know them, you’d always think of her as Dan’s little sister.”

“Dan looked out for her?”

“Yeah. Of course there were times he saw her as a monumental pain in the ass.”

“They were still close?”

“Probably. He was always the one she turned to if she needed anything. I wouldn’t say she was a clinging vine exactly, but she usually got him to do what she wanted.”

“How so?”

“She was kind of a drama queen, you know? Used emotional blackmail to get her way. More than once Dan had to go rescue her. Get her out of some scrape or another.” He scratched his neck. “One time she got stranded at a bar when the guy she was with drove off and left her. Neither one of them were of legal age yet, but Dan had to go into the Buckhorn Bar to get her.”

“Do you have any idea where she would go?”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t know her all that well. She had a friend named Heather she used to hang around with.”

Laura looked at her list. Heather was on it.

A small car went by, stereo thumping so loudly it resonated in Laura’s gut. The back windshield emblazoned with the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Josh Wingate said, “I heard you found a shell casing. That ought to help a lot.”

“Only if we have a suspect.”

“That’s what I figured.” His eyes continually scanned the street; a cop’s eyes. Always on alert. “You have anything else? I’m really hoping you can catch this guy.”

“Not much. You heard about Luke Jessup. I’m still trying to find him.”

“You know I was the one who took the report on that one, too?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t put too much stock in what he says. Sounded to me like he didn’t see much, if he saw anything at all.”

“You don’t think he’d make a good witness?”

He shrugged. “Just the feeling I got. I’ve seen him around town. He’s always buttonholing people about something. Usually it’s about being ‘saved.’ ”

Laura said, “Why did Dan major in Forestry?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it was a natural.”

“Because he cared about the environment?”

“He wasn’t a tree-hugger, that’s for sure. But he loved to hunt and fish, be outdoors. But I wouldn’t call him an environmentalist.”

“What about Shana?”

“What?”

“Was Shana an environmentalist?”

“Shana?” He looked at her, snorted. “I never heard her talk about it, if she was.” He wiped his sleeve across his face. “Of course, I haven’t seen her lately. Any wind could blow her—she was always getting excited about some damn thing or other, like, this was
it
, you know? This was what she was going to do. When she married that guy, the one she had those kids with? He belonged to est or eck or something like that—she was convinced that was the be-all and end-all. Threw herself into it, headfirst.”

“She still into it?”

“I doubt it. That was just one in a whole string of fads. She was gonna join AmeriCorps, but nothing ever came of that. Usually it was because there was some guy involved.”

“You mean in the group?”

“Yeah. Dan was always worried about that. How she didn’t seem to have any core. He said the only thing she ever stuck to was barrel racing. But that’s not totally true. No matter what was going on in her life, she always stuck to Dan.”

Back at Williams PD, Laura asked to see the report for the arson at Jimmy Davis Ford. While she waited, she made some phone calls with limited results. Heather Olson, the friend Josh Wingate told her about, apparently didn’t own an answering machine. After eight rings, Laura hung up.

Heather lived in Flagstaff and attended NAU. Maybe Shana was staying with her. A nice thought, but things rarely worked out that way.

She tried two other of Shana’s friends and got voice mail messages for both. When she called Bobby Burdette, she got a message saying the number was unlisted. She hung up. Next, she ran him on NCIC. Two convictions: one for domestic violence—he had pleaded out and spent three months on probation— and one for a series of small-time burglaries. He’d graduated from Florence three and a half years ago, presumably walking the straight and narrow since then.

Domestic violence. According to the records, he had grabbed his girlfriend and shoved her head in a toilet.

Why a girl from a nice, religious family would take that, Laura didn’t know. From what Laura had heard, Shana was needy, but she also called the shots when she wanted to. Using her vulnerability to get what she wanted. She certainly controlled her brother that way.

Go figure. Love—or what passed for love—manifested itself in strange ways.

Officer Tagg appeared with the report on Jimmy Davis Ford. “Not much to it,” he said apologetically and left.

The report was pretty much straightforward. Although the Earth Warriors had contacted the Williams paper to take credit for the fire, there had been no arrests.

Laura looked at the lab report. The accelerant used was gasoline, but the special kind of gasoline used for boat engines. The three torched SUVs were all Ford Excursions, brand new, each one estimated at $36,000 to $50,000.

The name Earth Warriors had been run on NCIC and VICAP, but there were no matches. Was it a new group? Or a made-up name to throw the investigation off?

Back at the motel, Laura fired up the laptop and looked for the Earth Warriors on three different search engines. She came up with only one reference, and that was a blog by a guy named Peter Sage, who apparently had a limitless appetite for writing about everything and anything, none of it the least bit interesting. Laura was almost cross-eyed by the time she found the words “Earth Warriors” buried in a two-page paragraph.

“… a guy named John something-or-other. I heard he was in an ecoterrorist group called the Earth Warriors or some such thing, in the
sixties
, if you believe that. Janet said he loved avant garde art, her stuff in particular, and bought several pieces …”

She backed up and read the beginning of the sentence. Janet, apparently, had sold a house in Ojai for the man named John. From the context of the blog, she got the impression that this had happened some time in the early nineties.

She scanned the blog for further references, but after learning more than she ever wanted to know about water lily cultivation, gave up. She did send Peter Sage an e-mail asking her to contact her.

So, going by what she had just read, there had been an Earth Warriors ecoterrorist group in the sixties in California. Laura wondered if the new group had stumbled on the name somewhere or if they came up with it on their own. Either way, she doubted the 1960s Earth Warriors were still going, especially since she hadn’t found any references in legitimate media.