Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Short Stories

Pony Rides

The BlueLight Special

Copyright © 2013 by Margaret Falk. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by Breakaway Media

Tucson, Arizona (USA)

www.breakawaymedia.com

ISBN: 978-1-939145-14-7

130914

For my good friend, author Christopher Smith, who encouraged me to catch up with Laura Cardinal and find out what she’s doing now – thanks, Chris!

1: The Crime Scene

Laura Cardinal was just finishing up breakfast when she got the call.

Her sergeant, Jerry Grimes, said, “You like Madera Canyon?”

Of course she liked Madera Canyon. Madera Canyon was situated in the Santa Rita Mountains, a beautiful area south of Tucson, oak woodland, wild turkeys, cozy cabins, great hiking, and lots of birds. But Laura knew that Jerry wasn't inviting her to a picnic.

Laura Cardinal was a homicide cop.

Matt looked at her from across the breakfast nook, a question in his eyes.

She nodded.

He nodded back, got up from the table and motioned toward the back door. Going to feed the horses. Laura's fiancé was the philosophical type. One, he didn't resent the time-sucking nature of her job, having been a fire fighter with the Tucson Fire Department for eleven years, and two, he could keep himself entertained—one of the many traits they shared.

Jerry said, “I called Anthony and he'll meet you there. You know the parking lot at the top? The trailhead to Baldy?”

“Which one?” There were three parking lots terraced down the hill.

“The top one—near the restroom. Google Map it.”

“As we speak,” Laura said, scrolling through her phone. “What happened?”

“There's a guy in a car. Shot in the head. A group of hikers were on their way to the trailhead when one went back to her car to get something. She spotted him and they called it in. A ranger there secured the scene. Ran the plate—the car is a rental, rented to a Sean Perrin, of Las Vegas, Nevada.”

Laura watched Matt walking out to the pipe corrals. Their two horses were peering over the fence snorting and nickering. Breakfast!

If only everyone could be so easily pleased.

It looked like her breakfast would be a homemade muffin on the fly and coffee in a to-go cup. She had a row of to-go cups on the top shelf of the dish cupboard. “What about Pima County Sheriff's?” she asked. As a criminal investigator with the Arizona Department of Public Safety—Arizona’s state law enforcement agency—Laura was often called out to assist other jurisdictions in their homicide investigations.

“That part of the canyon is Santa Cruz County and Coronado Forest. Santa Cruz is the one asking for the assist. They're short-handed, what with the border troubles and you know the furloughs just came down. They knew they could use us so they asked.”

Saturday Morning going down. Going, going, gone.

She should have hated working on her day off, but a part of her was already on the case. Already anticipating what she would find, already wondering how a guy from Nevada got himself shot in one of the prettiest places in southern Arizona.

She drove into the Madera Canyon Recreation Area just before nine a.m. First thing she saw as she passed the Madera Canyon Cabins on the right was the colorful dragonfly streamer hanging from the rustic wood sign.

This morning, she'd awakened to Matt kissing the dragonfly tattoo above her shoulder blade. It was safe to say he really liked her dragonfly tattoo.

Amazingly, considering her previous track record, Matt had been admiring her dragonfly tattoo for three-and-a-half years. Her love life had been like riding a bicycle—she'd had several tries, bit the dust a whole bunch of times, but finally she was riding like a pro.

She loved the feeling. But even after all this time, Laura wondered if this was a dream. The love stories she'd written for herself over the years had always ended badly, so it amazed her that love could actually be easy and fun.

She was just beginning to trust that.

The road wound through the canyon. The shadows were deep, the grass catching the sun like spun gold, the oaks dark but glittering where the sun touched their upturned leaves. Deep blue sky. Laura felt sorry for the poor soul who'd passed away and missed a day like this. She drove past a few cute little four-wheel drive vehicles, people walking along the road in shorts, lots of birders in hiking gear and carrying walking sticks.

Laura drove slowly, taking photos of the vehicles and the people she encountered.

At the top she drove up past the first parking lot level, then the second. The road to the top terrace was sealed off by yellow tape. A U.S. Forest Service truck and two Santa Cruz County SUVs were parked alongside the road leading up to the higher tier. A deputy with a clipboard stood in front of the crime scene tape.

The public restroom was just inside the entrance to the lot to the left of the parking spaces that faced the rocky, oak-covered hill. Two spaces away from the restroom was a newer model silver Mercedes. One look at the license plate told her it was a rental.

Laura pushed the tail of her lightweight jacket to the side so the deputy could see her shield. She introduced herself.

“We’re going to have to move the crime scene tape much farther out,” she told the deputy, whose nameplate read RICKEL. She motioned to the trailhead and the road leading into the picnic ground adjoining the parking lot. “There are so many ways the killer could have come in here—or left.”

“Sounds good. ” Rickel was a carrot-top with freckles.

Laura nodded to the trailhead. “Someone could have come down from there and surprised the victim. We're going to have to rope off the area and look at footprints.”

It would be an enormous undertaking. And she’d have to do it all herself until her partner arrived. The fewer people traipsing around a crime scene, the better.

Laura donned latex gloves. She used to keep her hands under her arms, a habit she developed to make sure she didn't touch anything, back before everyone had access to latex. But the advent of unlimited space on the new cameras allowed her to document everything, and so now she kept her hands free. Now she photographed everything.

The blacktop was recently resurfaced. There were some tire marks here and there from general use. The Mercedes was parked nose-in to a concrete curb.

Laura started way out from the Mercedes, looking down at the parking lot. It was clean, no debris, no trash. From there, she proceeded to the restroom and checked both of them out. Photographed the interiors, made a note that the trash would have to be emptied and gone through.

She eye-balled the flurry of footprints, most of them partials, covered up by other footprints, and photographed them. Photographed the weeds, grass, leaves, and bushes on the trail. Called out, “Has anyone been up this trail since you got here?”

The deputy yelled, “No!”

Laura was aware of the people down below, gathered beyond the tape.

Finally she zeroed in on the car and its occupant.

The man's head had snapped backward, and he'd slumped back so that his left shoulder was propped precariously against the seatback. His head had come to rest in an impossible position if he'd been alive, canted back by gravity, the column of the neck propping it up. The shoulder harness had kept him in that position and rigor had sealed the deal. The rest of his body had collapsed against the seat in an artless, sack-of-potatoes way.

The bullet came from a small caliber weapon—a .22. He'd been shot efficiently, in the triangle between the eyes and the bridge of the nose. One puncture from the gunshot and plenty of stippling—

Shot at close range. Maybe from a foot away, through the open window.

In your face.

“Whoever you are,” Laura said to the killer. “You knew what you were doing.”

All signs pointed to a hit. An execution. Efficient, economical, bloodless, no overt evidence, except for what ballistics would have to offer and possibly shoe prints if they could see them, and of course threads, hair, skin—whatever they could vacuum up.

She thought he might have been waiting for someone.

Either that, or he was foolish enough to buzz down his window and talk to a stranger who ended up killing him.

Time of death had yet to be established, but Laura thought he was probably killed some time in the night. Sunglasses on the dash. He hadn't been wearing them, which meant it was probably dark at the time he was shot. The bare legs poking out of his hiking shorts were darker than the rest of his body, shading down from flesh color above the knee to brick red and finally to deep purple at the ankles. Hypostasis. The heart stopped pumping, and blood sank down to the lowest point. Knees bent, right foot stretched a little closer to the accelerator.

A bee zoomed past. It was getting warm already. An insect bit her ankle.

Two other things soon became apparent: the victim still had his wallet, and if he'd had a cell phone, it was gone now.

2: The Victim

In the wallet was a DL and several credit cards. Also the receipt from the car, rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Flagstaff two weeks ago.

Presumably, the renter was Sean Perrin, forty-five, blue and brown, five-foot-nine, no glasses.

This trued up with the man in the car.

Just then Anthony Lake showed up.

“So what's kicking?” Anthony asked, then answered for himself. “Not that guy.”

Cop humor.

He leaned over and peered in. “Efficient.” Straightened, rubbed his shiny bald head. Anthony was in his early forties, a string bean of a guy, tall and pale because he avoided the sun. “Let me guess, a .22?” he asked, cocking his head. “Perfect kill shot. His eyes are closed. Looks to me like a hit.”

Laura pointed out, “His eyes are just shut. Not squeezed shut.”

Anthony nodded to the wallet. “Where's he from?”

“Vegas.”

Anthony stepped back. “Nice wheels, for a rental.” He removed his sunglasses and polished them with a handkerchief he carried for that purpose. “I can see it—he's on the run, big trouble in Sin City, he lights out for the boonies, ditches his own car along the way. Scary stuff going on in Vegas. You remember that shootout by those pimps who were supposed to be rappers a while back? Big collision on the Strip and boom! That was one hell of an explosion. Maybe that's the kind of thing we have here. This guy thought he got away, but it always catches up with you.”

“Let's take a look at the rest of his receipts,” Laura said, trying not to smile. Anthony was a good cop, it was just that he saw every homicide through two lenses—what they could piece together to make a case, and how he could use it in one of the screenplays he liked to write in his spare time. Fortunately, the case always came first.

Very carefully, she teased out each receipt from the wallet with tweezers and photographed them one by one, including a receipt from Madera Canyon Cabins.

So Sean Perrin had stayed here in the canyon. He had not driven up here for just the day. That narrowed it down. Otherwise he could have come in from Tucson, or Nogales, or Green Valley, or some other place. That meant that he had interacted with someone here, if only the person who ran the credit card and gave him the key to his cabin.

He could have been planning to meet someone at the trailhead.

Anthony had sketched out a possible scenario, describing it like he was pitching a script.

He even framed the scene with his hands.

“Maybe the guy was parked here—waiting for someone? He fell asleep? And boom! Somebody just shot him point blank. What do you think?”

“You think it was the person he was waiting for?”

“Don't know. Probably. But what if he was waiting for someone and somebody just came by and popped him? For the hell of it? Could be an either/or kind of situation.”

“Both of them make good theories. But why?” Laura reached into her pocket and unscrewed a small can of lip balm, rubbed it on her lips. Arizona was beautiful in the spring, but dry.

Anthony shrugged. “That's the million-dollar question.”

3: The Madera Canyon Cabins

Anthony went up in the DPS helicopter to survey the crime scene. He would be looking for anyone who might be hiding and could be seen from above. Viewing the terrain from a height would give him a perspective they did not have right now. It might shake loose an idea or two.

Probably for his next screenplay.

Laura saw the crime techs out. She oversaw the transfer of the body to the M.E.'s van, and after that, the transport of the car to a flatbed truck headed for Tucson, then followed them down the canyon road. She turned off at Madera Canyon Cabins.

There were a lot of ways to describe the cabins scattered near the road. Quaint. Rustic. Americana. Charming.

Growing up, Laura used to come with her parents to Madera Canyon, but only for the day. She always looked longingly at the cabins, wishing they would stay there just once. It was like a little wonderland, like the houses you might see on the North Pole, especially the one time they'd come out around Christmas. They drove back in the evening and the Christmas lights had come on—all blue.

Set back a little from the road, with wild grass and low fieldstone walls and oaks and bird feeders and walnut trees, the little glade seemed enchanted. Amazing that it had not changed one iota in all these years.

Last October Laura and Matt had stayed here for a couple of days, shutting out the madness of the world. Shutting out the manic quality to the teeming streets and freeways, the strip malls and chain stores and restaurants and traffic they encountered every day in their jobs.

Laura parked on the lane into the property and headed for the sign marked OFFICE, past the colorful dragonfly. A breeze blew through, shuffling the oak leaves like cards.

Seven small cabins and a house belonging to whoever ran the place. The porches were recessed in shadow at this time of morning.

Time to learn more about Sean Perrin.

Laura recognized the woman in the office. Broad muffin face, dark black hair falling into a pageboy, bangs, squarish frame glasses. She wore a T-shirt with the Madera Canyon Cabins logo—a cabin in the woods. She moved in flurries—clearly rattled. She’d been crying.

“Are you with the Sheriff’s?” she said, unable to take her eyes from the shield on Laura's belt.

Laura introduced herself. “Is there a place we can talk?” She nodded at an older couple looking at knick-knacks on the gift shelf.

The woman's eyes grew large. She put her hand to her mouth. “So it's true?” She whisked around, tramped over to a closed door, threw it open, and motioned Laura inside.

What Laura got was gossip, which was useful, but often unreliable. It would take time to unravel. The woman who ran the cabins, Barbara Sheehey, insisted on moving around the small office. The space was cramped—a cheap desk, a couple of cheap chairs. Old double-doored steel cupboard. This was the back room where nobody came. No pine-finished floors or cheery curtains in here. Just a sliding glass door out to a washer/dryer. Sheehey opened boxes containing woodsy knick-knacks for the shelves in the front room and kept from looking at Laura.

Upset, but who wouldn’t be?

They got the basics out of the way. Sean Perrin had been there almost two weeks. He had the middle cabin across the parking area.

“I thought there was something wrong with him,” Sheehey said. “And I’m not alone.”

“Something wrong with him?”

She swiped at her bangs. “He made me nervous, is all.”

“Nervous?”

“I dunno. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But I can tell you he was full of sh—excuse me, full of it.”

“About what?”

Hands flapping in the air. “Oh, I dunno. Everything? You could tell he thought he was God’s gift. Always boasting about something.”

“Like what?”

“His wife, his two kids. They were perfect. His wife was a model with Ford Modeling Agency. Well, why didn’t he bring them on vacation with him? He left them in Vegas.”

“Is that why he was here? On vacation?”

“He said birding, but I never even saw him with binoculars. He just didn’t look or act like a birder. They’re a special breed.”

“How else was he . . . full of it?”

“I didn’t talk to him that much, thank God, I’m too busy working, you wouldn’t believe what a drain this place is on one person, but Cody—my son—seems to think he dropped out of Heaven.”

“What did Cody say about him?”

“Oh, God, what didn’t he say? All sorts of stories.” She waved them away along with a horsefly that zoomed in through the hole in the window screen. “I can’t remember half the stuff Cody’s been telling me. I have work to do. My husband died two years ago and saddled me with this place and yes, it’s a living, but it’s such a drain!”

“Can I talk to Cody?”

“Sure. Knock yourself out! It’s summer vacation, so he’s around.” She paused. “I just heard from Terry Barnett, he’s the ranger here with the Forest Service? So maybe Cody knows already.” She paused, touched her mouth again. “It’s gonna hit him like a ton of bricks.”

“You haven’t talked to him?”

“I just heard myself.”

“So they were good friends?”

“He filled Cody’s head with all sorts of stuff. Cody liked him—like hero worship.” Her face crumpled. “This is going to be so hard on him. Especially now, after Jack died.”

As Laura left the cabins office, the helicopter flew overhead. She squinted against the sun and waved.

She’d been up in helicopters looking down on crime scenes dozens of times, but was perfectly happy to let Anthony take over. The way the thing banked always sent a thrill of fear into her belly, and she guessed it always would. Anthony, on the other hand, looked at a helicopter ride the way her flat-coated black retriever, Jake, looked at car rides. He couldn’t get enough of them.

Yellow crime scene tape had already been strung around Perrin’s cabin and blocked off half the parking lot. Additionally, yellow tape had been sealed across the door. A Forest Service ranger named Dolan had parked his truck just outside the tape—she could hear reports on his radio. He was the responding officer, and would block entry to the scene.

Laura talked to him for a minute, told him she wanted to catch people first and get their accounts, and leave Perrin’s cabin for later.

She didn’t have to go far to find Cody. The boy was sitting on the low post and rail fence that fronted the road, throwing pebbles into the gravel parking lot.

His mother said he was eleven years old. He was big for his age, chunky like his mother. He wallowed in an oversize “Zombies Ate My Homework” tee—Xtra Large—and polyester sports shorts—like basketball shorts. Completing the ensemble were new athletic shoes.

His complexion was mottled strawberry and cream—like her partner Anthony, he didn’t seem to tan. Black curly hair, a broad face like his mother.

He was wiping his face and sniffling.

Laura said, “Hey.”

He swiped at his nose and looked at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m Detective Laura Cardinal. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Mind if I sit? My feet are tired.” She motioned to the post and rail fence.

“Free country,” he said. He threw more gravel, picking it out of one cupped hand and flinging it.

Laura sat. She stared at the quaint, rustic cabins. Must have been built in the twenties, her guess. As she recalled, they didn’t even have satellite TV here. She sat and listened to the pinging of gravel on gravel. Got down, got herself some gravel, and started throwing it herself.

“What are trying to do? Pretend you’re just like me to get me on your side?”

Smart kid.

Laura swiveled her head to look at him. He looked straight ahead, but she knew he was aware of her scrutiny.

“I’m going to level with you,” she said. “I’m here to find out who killed Sean Perrin, but I need help. I need cooperation or we might never know who did it. You were friends, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you might know stuff nobody else knows, okay? If you were any kind of friends at all—”

“We were friends. Good friends!”

“Then maybe you can help me find out who did this.”

He stared straight ahead. “You’re scamming me. You’re just trying to get me to—”

“What? Talk about him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a problem with that?”

She saw a tear shine his eye, spill down his cheek. He shoved his fist to his eye and swiped hard. “Shit!”

Looked at her defiantly.

Laura said, “‘Shit’ is right.”

He slid off the fence. “I’m going for a walk.”

She remained where she was. He started walking along the road. Got about twenty yards from her and turned back to look at her. “You coming?”

Later, Laura would realize that that was the moment she hit the Mother Lode.

Or more accurately, she’d put together the first section of the jigsaw puzzle that was Sean Perrin.