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  “Graham made threats against several of the witnesses in his trial. You were one. I told you that.”

  “They weren’t shooting at me.” She refrained from adding you idiot, but could hear the words in her voice. “They were shooting at Anna.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “As I had rescued her from a mob only a half hour before, yes, I pretty much do. It had to be one of Ned’s gang. Those people are frustrated and angry way, way past desperate.”

  “So is Graham. He never intended to go without a fight.”

  “How would anyone in Graham’s gang know where to find me? I’ve never been here before and had no plans to stop. Anna and everyone else at Sterling frequent this place every day.”

  Jack wouldn’t let up. “They followed you.”

  “No, they followed her. I’m so far down on Graham’s list of enemies they wouldn’t get to me until next year. They’d take you out long before me.”

  “You’re the whole case. The prosecutor believes that, so you’d better trust the defense team does as well.”

  “Criminals don’t assassinate forensic scientists! That kind of thing only happens on TV.”

  “Distressed home owners don’t assassinate Fed regulators, either! Anna doesn’t even work for Sterling.”

  Riley held up both hands. “Kids, kids. Let’s agree to disagree on the theory of this and—”

  “They can’t figure that out, and even if they can they may not care. You didn’t see this group up close and personal. Their lives have been decimated. They are ready to get blood on their hands.”

  Jack said, “You need to—”

  “I don’t even blame them,” Maggie continued, and to her horror she heard the tremble in her voice that told her tears weren’t too far away. “Sterling is horrible. They prey on people over and over and have no remorse. They’re doing the wrong thing and they know it and they do”—she looked at Jack—“nothing. They don’t stop.”

  He shut his mouth with a snap.

  Maggie tried to shut hers, with less success. But she forced herself off the topic of personal responsibility to say, “As if Anna hasn’t had enough shocks today. First she finds her friend’s mutilated body.”

  “Mutilated?” the EMT repeated, with some interest.

  “Then she’s nearly lynched, now this. It’s a wonder the poor girl is even coherent.” To the EMT she advised: “You should prescribe a sedative.”

  “Thanks for the confidence, but I don’t have the authority to write script. Not an MD.”

  “That’s too bad.” She knew she was babbling in the aftereffects of shock, but she couldn’t help it.

  “My bank account thinks so, too.”

  Not willing to concede an inch, Jack said they would drive her back to the station. In cuffs if necessary, his tone implied. They would pull up their car to the end of the ambulance to lessen the distance—

  “No! Not until I get some stuff out of the car.”

  “It will be towed. Your purse and camera will be—”

  “Tyra’s tapings and fingernail scrapings,” she told him. “I’m not leaving without them.”

  *

  Rick Gardiner had his feet up on his desk, coffee cup on his blotter, chair tilted back, a legal pad in his lap, but despite this relaxed stance he might actually be getting somewhere. Scribbles appeared on the pad as he asked questions of a homicide detective named Daley who worked out of the Maryvale precinct in Phoenix, Arizona. After being transferred around by a few brusque types, Detective Daley (“no relation to the Chicago Daleys”) seemed willing to chat at length about the run of vigilante-type killings they’d had roughly four years before.

  “Of course at the time we didn’t know they were connected. Just seemed like lowlifes shooting lowlifes, you know?”

  “Sure. Here too.”

  “Between the meth labs and the coyotes and the flow of drugs over the border, we’ve always got plenty of guys turning up dead. It actually used to be worse, back before the housing market bust. When it did, I think a lot of our more fringe-type transient dwellers moved on and the homicide rate went down.”

  “Yeah? Here too. Well, first it went down and then when the economy sucked it went up and now it’s down again.”

  “But the woman with the elderly people—that was weird. Not in the normal pattern of dealers and cartels. An outlier, that’s what they call that. I never forgot those old people—who could?—but we didn’t connect her case with these murders.”

  Rick noticed his captain in the hallway, in conversation with a lieutenant, and swung his feet down before the captain turned.

  “These people were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Human beings left to rot in place while they were still alive. I’ve worked child murders that didn’t freak me out as much as that place did. I’d been kind of on the outs with my son—he’s my only kid—but after that I called up and mended ways. Took a while, but someday I’ll need someone to give a shit if I have a bedsore eating through my leg, you know?”

  “Yeah. Do you have a description of this woman?”

  “A vague one. There was one old lady there still coherent—she hadn’t been there that long—and she said white female, thirty-five or forty, long dark hair, brown eyes, maybe five-six. It took us four days to get that out of her, plus a name: Ethel Barrios. But if such a person existed she did it without a legitimate driver’s license, a credit card, or a phone.”

  “How’d you find them?”

  “My old buddy Anonymous Tipster.”

  “Female or male?”

  “Male, nine-one-one said. Low voice, no accent. So this dark-haired bitch wound up dead in your city?”

  “Looks that way. Right next to our victims, who sound like carbon copies of yours. Now I’m looking for the guy who shot her.”

  “When you do, pin a medal on him for me.”

  “I’m okay with that. You said you had about five cases that maybe sounded like the same guy?”

  “Only in that all five took three twenty-twos to the back of the head and were found outside. Their pals and their enemies all disavowed any knowledge, but of course they would. I worked one of them, and … was weird, I’ll admit. Another outlier.”

  “Why?”

  The captain entered the maze of detectives’ cubicles and Rick hunched over his legal pad, making notes about things he didn’t even need notes on. He wrote “.22” and “5 cases—Daley.” Always best to look busy when the captain was around, even when the man had ridden a desk most of his career and wouldn’t know how to catch a bad guy unless you hog-tied said bad guy first and erected a big red arrow next to him.

  “This one dealer turned up dead. Really bad dude, made El Chapo look like Hello Kitty. But his inner circle would never have had the guts to move against him, and if they had they would have bragged about it and used it to cement their position as the baddest mother. Instead, his guys seemed lost without him. The gang fell apart, and their territory absorbed into other groups. And his enemies—again, if they had done it they’d be twirling signs on street corners to brag about it. Nothing quite seemed to fit, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do. Any hints of who the shooter had been? If it wasn’t one of the usual group?”

  “Not a peep. Everyone on the street seemed even more clueless than we were.” Rick held the phone away from his ear as the guy coughed hard enough to macerate a lung. “Sorry. Don’t believe them when they tell you this dry air is so good for your sinuses. The dryness just means you breathe in more dust. Anyway, meant to say after your reporter called, we pooled our suspicious cases and found one where there might be something sorta like a witness.”

  He’d be leaving the reporter’s role out of his report, Rick knew. Then he perked up and not only for the captain’s benefit. “A witness?”

  “We had a coyote—obviously, in my area, we have a lot of them, a guy who sneaks people over the border. Sometimes they simply do the job, sometimes they hold up on one side or the other unti
l the crossers or their families cough up more money—”

  “I know what a coyote is,” Rick snapped.

  If Daley noticed the pissiness he didn’t give any sign. “So this guy took money from the illegals, brought them over a section of border that’s in the middle of nowhere in a four-wheel pickup that he and a buddy had modified. They put extra shields and super-tough stuff along the undercarriage so this thing could go over the desert like a tank, but they could ride it on the streets and it would look like a totally ordinary truck. Except with crappy gas mileage.”

  “And he—”

  “He’d bring the illegals and dump them out at a city park—or at least he’d dump the adults and the kids who belonged to them. But there’re always a few unaccompanied minors, you know, whose parents shove them into the chute to get them out of whatever hellhole they’re living in. They’re supposed to hook up with relatives on this side or tag along with their fellow crossers. So this coyote would say he had friends who worked in legal aid, specializing in getting children classified as abandoned children and political refugees, etcetera, put them on the path to getting legalized. But it only worked for abandoned children, no adults or families, blah blah. So the other crossers scatter like coues and he’s left with a few unattached kids.”

  “Cooze?”

  “Coues. They’re deer, white-tail deer. Only found in this area.”

  “Huh,” Rick said. “Can you hunt them?”

  “Yeah, in season. They’re small, though, not like those horse-sized things you guys have up there. Anyway the crossers go off and leave the kids with this nice coyote, see?”

  “Not good,” Rick guessed.

  “You could say that. He locks them in his basement, in these cages. Rapes, starves, screws with them in every way possible mental and physical, like they’re his own personal ant farm and he’s got the magnifying glass. Boys, girls, he don’t care. The ones we found were between nine and fourteen. The people they crossed with, they’d be off trying to make their own lives, not hanging out with this coyote, who might come to the attention of authorities at any moment. If family members in Mexico ask questions he’d say the other crossers found a family to take them in but he didn’t know where. Even when the kids’ families got suspicious what could they do? Call the police and tell them they were having trouble with their personal smuggler? We figured one of them took care of him themselves. It would hardly be the first time.”

  “That sounds more logical than—”

  “Except all the cages were full. If a family member had offed the guy, surely they would have come back to spring the kids and skip a nine-one-one call to the PD.”

  “Did the children give you anything?”

  “Not much. Most of them wouldn’t say a word in any language, but one did. Not right away. Department of Child Safety took the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t give us someone to contact in either country, and this one little girl got comfy enough with her caseworker to tell her about a man who had come to the house and taken the coyote away. She said the coyote showed him the cages, sort of bragging about them all friendly-like, but then the man pulled a gun on the guy and they went away. Next thing she knows the cops are breaking in the doors and she never sees the coyote again.”

  Rick said, “That’s our guy. Kills the coyote and calls nine-one-one for the kids.”

  “A real humanitarian.”

  “This girl got a look at him?”

  “They came right up to her cage. But she was only about seven then, without a word of English. She said he was a big guy, white, with brown hair. That was it. And since she barely weighed forty pounds I’m pretty sure every man in the universe would be ‘big’ to her.”

  Rick thought fast. “Can you get in touch with her? This girl?”

  “No idea. I can check with DCS, see if they know where she went. But it’s been five years—she’s probably bounced between ten different relatives by now, might even be back in Mexico.”

  Rick didn’t give him more time to talk himself out of it. “I’d really appreciate that. If you do find her I can e-mail a sketch.”

  “You’ve got a sketch?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t bother to explain it came from his ex-wife. “If this girl could take a look at it, confirm or deny that it’s the same guy, it would help a lot.”

  “That’s a long shot. She’d be twelve or thirteen by now, might not remember much.”

  “Long shots are all I’ve got at this point,” Rick grumbled before ringing off. He left his hand on the phone, drumming the fingers of the other on his face, realizing that even if he could confirm that his guy had been in Phoenix, it didn’t necessarily help him find where the guy was now. But it would justify his salary and, therefore, and most importantly, would be good for Rick.

  “Getting somewhere, Gardiner?” his captain asked. The guy had stopped next to his desk; Rick had been so involved he hadn’t even noticed.

  “Maybe so, Cap,” he told the idiot ass-kissing social climber, with no little amount of satisfaction. “Maybe so.”

  Chapter 20

  Mr. Fourtner had returned to the rather plush offices of Carter & Poe and could see them now, but still Jack and his partner had to wait ten-plus minutes in the small reception area. Riley, who never passed up anything free—candy, coffee, snacks, or especially alcohol—had promptly availed himself of the Keurig-type machine. He chose the most exotic-sounding dark roast and opted for the heavy porcelain mug instead of to-go paper. Jack paced a slow circle around the soft leather couch; its color matched the coffee. He had a bad feeling they were about to waste more time. Sidney Fourtner rated Sterling’s financial products, which allowed Sterling to easily sell such financial products for a healthy profit. Several sources had said those ratings were not justified by any facts on this plane of reality. To reconcile those two sides, Sidney Fourtner would no doubt launch into the same sophisticated gobbledygook that all these types used for one reason and only one reason: to hide the truth of where the money came from and where it went. And maybe the even worse truth that they weren’t sure themselves. They could bet Fourtner wouldn’t admit that Joanna Moorehouse had bribed him to give her securities triple-A ratings when they didn’t deserve them.

  And why, Jack asked himself, had he and Riley been giving Joanna’s second-in-command, Lauren Schneider, a pass? If she really was Joanna’s right hand, then certainly she knew about bad loans defaulting right and left and the arrangement, if there had been one, with Sidney Fourtner.

  As soon as they were done there, he intended to head right back to Sterling. Joanna and Tyra had both known something that got them killed. If Jeremy did not make up the third point of a conspiratorial triangle—and he might—then surely Lauren had to be the most likely candidate for the slot.

  Meanwhile, he puzzled over the shot fired at the two women. Perhaps, perhaps, Maggie was right and it had been intended for Anna. The theory had a lot going for it. But he didn’t want her counting on it. Maggie tended to think that no one noticed her, when the truth was everyone noticed her. She tended to think that because she worked in forensics that made her invisible, that even if cops had targets painted on their backs every minute of the day it would never affect her. He knew her to be wrong. But what could he do and, reasonably, what could she? She could hardly stop coming to work, might even be more vulnerable alone at home. He kept pacing, his mind ping-ponging between the horns of this dilemma.

  “Detectives,” said a voice, and Jack turned. Sidney Fourtner immediately struck him as a fair-haired version of Jeremy Mearan: young, handsome, a body toned in the gym. But Fourtner strode with a confidence that Mearan didn’t yet have, and his cool appraising stare belied an arrogance that Mearan hadn’t yet developed. He was a Westminster blue ribbon winner compared to the puppyish Mearan. Jack disliked him instantly, the way any not-so-handsome guy dislikes a pretty boy, for whom the world opens like an oyster offering a pearl the size of a basketball.

  That Fourtner welcomed them
with a gracious hello only made it worse. “Please come in. Have a seat. Excuse my office, it’s a bit cluttered.” By this he meant two or three thin manila folders on the glossy wood of his desk. The rest of the spotless area was all tasteful décor and expensive furniture. A narrow but tall window showed them the Flats as well as a curious pigeon, looking in at them.

  “What can I do for you?” Fourtner asked as soon as they settled.

  Riley explained that they were investigating the two murders at Sterling. Surely he had heard about them?

  He had. “Terrible. And bizarre—women to be attacked in their homes like that. Do you think it’s a serial killer?”

  “It’s highly unlikely that he would randomly pick two women from the same company.”

  “No, I wouldn’t expect that to be random at all. But it could still be a serial killer, some psycho who works at Sterling.”

  “Do you have anyone particular in mind?” Jack asked, to see what he would say.

  “No … I rate their financial products. I don’t spend a lot of time in their office.”

  Riley said, “Or with Joanna Moorehouse?”

  He didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. “Joanna was more than a client. She was a friend. I’ll miss her.”

  “Is that allowed? To be friends with the head of a company you have to rate?”

  Fourtner smiled, with a touch of what seemed to be real sadness. It only made him more handsome. Jack wondered if money hadn’t been the only thing swaying him to Joanna’s wishes. “In a perfect world, no. But this is a relatively rarified field, especially in a smaller city like this one. Everybody knows everybody; you can’t help it. So yes, Joanna and I were friends.”

  “Or more than friends?” Jack suggested.

  “Did we date? Yes, occasionally. Not recently.”

  “Did you have a falling-out?”

  “No, not at all. Joanna …” That touch of sadness again. Either the guy was really good, or somewhere in there he actually felt an emotion or two. “… kept her feelings to herself. She never let anything interfere with business. We had a good friendship, but we had a great working relationship.”