And West Is West (17 page)

All this research was what Eddie likes to call her
undue
diligence. For example, the interview with Aldridge was an investigative dead end that turned out doubly useless since there was no legal or practical way for an imprisoned father to claim his daughter's body.

The best option remaining is that Zoe Leston's ex-fiancé will bury her. Dr. Porter Coombs had sent Leston more than a few emails over the past weeks, but having been in Brussels on the night Leston died, he's no suspect; Sarah had finally reached him at a conference in San Francisco. Coombs will be arriving on a morning red-eye to officially identify the body.

Sarah Chen would ask Winter to do the ID if he weren't so high maintenance. Right now, ignoring her unsubtle goodnight, Winter remains firmly seated before her.

“But,”
Winter says, letting the word hang. “
How
could she have drowned in a bathtub?”

As Sarah knows from many years of this, Winter is attempting to refute the unlikely aspects of the death in order to deny the death. It would be more convincing if she just showed him the body. Yet even she is not that
merciless
.

“The toxicology report isn't in, but we found Ms. Leston's fingerprints on several pill bottles—pain meds that belonged to someone else.”

“Oh,” Winter says—with a bit of realization, Sarah notes, as if pill borrowing was in the victim's character. “She went to sleep.”

“And sank down.”

“Who . . . Who found her?”

“The next-door neighbor. Her tub overflowed.”

“Don't you mean the downstairs neighbor?” Winter says, trying to catch Sarah out on a detail that will bring his friend back to life.

“The water leaked under the hallway door. This was an old railroad flat. It has a kitchen bathtub.”

“Oh,” Winter says. “This was in Zoe's new place?”

“Not hers. She was apartment-sitting for a friend—the friend with the back pills. She's out of the country. Had nothing to do with it.”

Winter looks away from Sarah, though not at anything. If eyes were lasers, his stare would burn through the three city blocks of brick and concrete that separate them from where Leston died. “That tub shouldn't have overflowed,” Winter says.

This is an intelligent observation. Sarah senses that Winter must be thinking that she's done a cursory investigation into the death. She represses her irritation and responds. “There was a rag stuffed in the overflow drain.”

“Uh-huh. Is there anything else I should know?”

Sarah maintains her patience, barely. “Incense sticks and candles.”

“Incense and candles?” Winter's eyes return to Sarah's. “You mean she did a . . .
ceremony
?”

“Or she just wanted to relax in a bath.”

“Detective Chen, I'm asking you if Zoe committed suicide.”

She was afraid Winter's reasoning would end here. The survivors of an untimely death always agonize over what might have prevented it, over their last minutes with the deceased and what understanding phrase or kind gesture might have changed things. Their guilt becomes an apology for their failure to stop their friend from dying. As Chen knows well, all of this second guessing is inevitable. None of it does any good.

And so it would behoove Winter not to torture himself with this possibility. In this the survivor's and the detective's interests are aligned; Sarah does not wish to consider Zoe Leston a suicide either. Frankly, if the death was not a murder, an accidental drowning makes for an easier report than an uncertain suicide. Either way the woman is deceased, and since she has no family there is less of a need to go after absolute answers. But Sarah has hesitated too long in answering Winter's question.

“So you can't tell me if she took her own life,” Winters says, almost triumphant. “You don't really know if she did it on purpose?”

“She left no note,” Sarah tells him.

Winter's gaze scolds her for not increasing his survivor's guilt. She knows what he wants—to feel not helpless, to feel as if, even though the situation is hopeless now, he
might
have been able to change his friend's destiny.

Then Winter's face loses its tension. His pupils dilate. “Before we said goodnight . . . Zoe mentioned reincarnation. I'd told her she needed to start over.” Winter's eyes refocus. “I may have—”

“Mr. Winter,” Sarah interrupts, “we can only accurately speculate from the
physical
evidence. Ms. Leston left no note and she drowned after taking a cocktail of drugs that are abused recreationally. Often we imagine that we have more influence over others than we do, but you were simply old friends who discussed random topics. Do not read too much into them. A grief counselor can explain this better.” Sarah pushes the psychologist's business card toward Winter. “But there is one more thing I can tell you. There was a clean, folded bath towel by the tub.”

“A towel?” Winter does not comprehend Sarah's point.

“Well, if Ms. Leston had planned to stay in the tub,
why
the fresh towel?”

For Sarah the towel was the most important detail. Her observation, however, leaves no impression on her witness. As he walks out, he leaves behind the psychologist's card. Clearly, Winter wants his guilt.

CHAPTER 34

Texas

Daugherty, behind mirrored lenses, brakes hard to follow the patrol car ahead to a stop on the shoulder.

Pyle, in the passenger's seat, perks up. “Sure been wondering where the ass end of nowhere began.”

The agents step out of their rented Taurus and stand on a desert blacktop nine miles west of Cairo, Texas. The landscape is a scrubland rimmed by distant mountains, uninteresting except for a few pyramid-like hillocks in the middle distance. After a few seconds the hot breeze blasts the car's air-conditioning out of their suits. The county deputy who led them here is sauntering toward the agents. He removes his Stetson and dries the sweat on his brow with a shirtsleeve before pointing the hat at a pickup tilting on a rocky berm well off the road shoulder.

“There she is,” he drawls.

Pyle grins nastily at the deputy. “Yep, thar she is, Sheriff,” he says. Pyle's sunglasses reflect the deputy's into mirrored infinity.

“The FBI appreciates the assistance, Officer,” Daugherty says neutrally, breaking up the stare-down.

“It's deputy,” the deputy says to Pyle. Then he returns his hat to his head and looks at the desolate road, which travels to the horizon in both directions. “You all have fun out here,” he says and goes back to his vehicle, U-turns up a swirl of dust that overtakes Daugherty and Pyle as they walk toward the truck.

“Maybe you should ease up on the caffeine?” Daugherty says. Pyle has been chugging Red Bulls since they got on a 6 a.m. at LAX.

“Maybe you should have let me take her at the house. We wouldn't be chasing her skanky ass across the country,” Pyle says. They've both been up half the night, ever since word reached them about the abandoned pickup on Texas Route 90.

“We weren't sure that was her,” Daugherty reminds him. “Besides, her dog would have chewed
your
ass.”

“I would have handled the bitch,” Pyle says.

“Not without stitches.” Daugherty's seniority gives him the final word.

The pickup is unlocked and inside the cab Daugherty smells something sweet—burnt antifreeze. “She must have blown a head gasket,” he says.

“Yeah, well she can blow me,” Pyle says. He starts tweezing hair samples from the headrest. “It's her,” he says holding a strand to the daylight, as if he's able to sight-read DNA.

“That could be dog hair,” Daugherty says, noticing the mats of blonde fur on the passenger's-seat upholstery. “This is all we're going to get here. You done?”

“I am now,” Pyle says, slipping an old Rand McNally from the driver's-door pocket. He shows Daugherty. The atlas is folded to page 121, Louisiana.

IN THE DUSTY
heart of Cairo, Pyle, as he always does at roadside cafes, orders a chicken sandwich on toast without the chicken.

“Very funny, mister,” the waitress says not blinking. She's about forty-five and with enough ultraviolet damage to make her face just this side of scary. “That would be toast in my universe.”

“Sorry, ma'am,” Daugherty says. “My partner's been out in the sun too long.” He shows her his federal ID and a photo of Technical Sergeant Jessica Aldridge. “Face ring a bell? She's lost a little weight. Won't be in uniform. Travels with a dog.”

The waitress places her hands backward on her hips. “What kind a dog?” she asks.

“The kind that huffs and puffs and will blow your fucking house down,” Pyle says.

“Honey,” the waitress says while placing the knuckles of one hand on the table and leaning toward Pyle's face, “that's what's known as a wolf.”

“So you saw her,” Pyle says, not asks.

“Didn't say.”

“She was here first thing when you opened yesterday morning.”

The waitress lifts a drawn eyebrow. “How would you know?”

“Go ahead,” Daugherty says, not hiding his curiosity about Pyle's insight.

Pyle, kind of sadly, looks at his partner, the stolid hopeless investigator who, unless he collapses on the job, will be locked into field work until retirement. “It takes about twenty hours to drive here from California. We know Aldridge left the garage in Redlands in the morning. That means her truck broke down late at night. She wouldn't have walked an unlit desert highway. She would have waited until dawn.” Pyle looks back at the waitress. “Right here is the first open shithole she would have reached.”

Right
, Daugherty thinks. He could have put all that together, given another few minutes and a distance calculator. But Pyle is the one who suggested they not stop at the other two restaurants they passed entering Cairo because neither served breakfast.

“She a deserter?” the waitress asks.

“She'll be the chicken in my chicken sandwich,” says Pyle.

“Uh-huh. I get it. None of my damn business. So what're you boys eating for real? Or are we just going to chat?”

Pyle takes out his notepad and clicks a pen. This, Daugherty knows, is just for show because Pyle remembers everything.
“Rita,”
he says, stretching out the name. Though the woman wears no name tag, Pyle's leap isn't much of a mystery. The sign outside says
RITA'S
and aside from her there's only a cook working the joint. Pyle, writing in his pad, points his chin at a lipstick-stained water glass on the table. “I don't think your dishwater's hot enough. And that ticking exhaust fan is probably dropping metal flakes onto your grill. There's a lot here an inspector might thumbs down, even in South Texas. Probably cost you ten grand to make it all right.”

Rita keeps her defiant stance a few seconds more before she sighs and slides her knuckles off the table. “She came in yesterday. Not in uniform but carrying a knapsack. I gave her a bowl to water her dog and served her some eggs.”

“Then what?”

“Asked about the post office.” She nods to a clock behind the counter. “Closes in ten minutes. Up the street. Left at the Exxon.”

Daugherty leaves a five-dollar tip for the water and follows Pyle out the door to the Taurus. “Was it necessary to crawl up her ass like that?” Daugherty says.

“That or I could have stuck my finger up yours and mine. I'm from Arkansas, but this is still my territory. These people hate feds in a way
you
don't want to imagine.”

At the post office Daugherty and Pyle get no hassles from the local postmaster—being a government employee he's amenable to cooperation. They learn that after buying a postage-paid postcard, Aldridge had inquired about transportation out of town and that takes the agents next door to the Western Union, which serves as the bus depot. There Aldridge learned she couldn't buy a ticket for her dog on any bus line or even for the Amtrak that stops nearby in Alpine.

“She asked if there was a pet-friendly motel in town,” the Western Union man says.

At the Thunderbird Inn, Aldridge with her dog had checked out seven hours before, at the same time as a couple with a Subaru Outback and a Labrador. But this is all the kid at the front desk is willing to reveal.

Pyle gestures the boy nearer and Daugherty can barely hear his partner's schoolmasterish warning. “Now, either we subpoena you as an uncooperative witness or you accidentally print a duplicate of Mr. and Mrs. Subaru's hotel bill and put it in the trash. Then go for a slow walk around the block. When you come back, we'll be gone and all will be forgiven.”

The desk clerk begins stroking his fuzzy upper lip as if it's a pet mouse. Meanwhile Pyle and Daugherty exit to watch dust devils in the street. When the clerk walks by them, they go back to the unattended desk, which is monitored by a camera.

“Where'd he go?” Pyle asks loudly. After a little pretend waiting, he moves to the side of the desk and takes a wad of Kleenex from a box. “Fricking desert dust,” he says and makes a show of blowing his nose and looking behind the desk for a place to dump the tissue. He tosses and misses the trash. But he's conscientious and cleans up the mess.

Out in the dust again, Pyle removes a crumpled sheet of paper from his jacket sleeve.

“HOW DID I
get your cell number? Well, Mr. Clayton . . .”

Before being stonewalled Pyle had extracted from his call that Mr. T. Everett Clayton, recent guest at the Thunderbird Inn, was returning to San Antonio with his wife from the Marfa Lights Festival and a few days of hiking in Big Bend. Pyle relayed the information to Daugherty, still at the wheel, by rephrasing Clayton's statements as if they were especially fascinating. Then T. Everett drops his bombshell: he's a semi-retired attorney.

“Mr. Clayton, let me pass you on to my superior,” Pyle says. He smirks while offering Daugherty his cell phone and Daugherty gives him the finger. Since they'd gotten Clayton's details from the Thunderbird via theft rather than warrant, Daugherty was leery about cold calling the man. But Pyle won the coin toss. Now they've hit the jackpot—a lawyer with too much time on his hands.

“Agent Daugherty here,” he says to the phone.

“Ah, Agent Daugherty,” says a self-satisfied, cross-examining voice. Daugherty pictures a fit man of seventy-one with flowing gray hair and a North Face jacket. “Why, exactly, is the FBI interested in my movements across South Texas.”

Daugherty reverts to
Dragnet
mode. “Sir, this is not about you. We're interested in a Jessica Aldridge, though she may be using an alias. Mid- twenties. Heavily tattooed. Severely underweight. Traveling with a German shepherd. Sound familiar?”

“And what's she guilty of?” Clayton asks a little too quickly.

This stumps Daugherty because Jessica is not actually wanted for any crime. “You should know that among other things, she's a car thief.” Technically this is true—the truck Aldridge abandoned is registered to one Brian Newton, deceased.

A silence over the phone gives Daugherty seconds to consider the invasion of privacy suit Clayton might file against the FBI . . . and the possibility of losing his pension. Then a barking breaks from the receiver and another dog starts up in syncopation.

“Sorry, Daugherty,” Clayton says through the hubbub. “I'm going to have to call you back.”

“Don't hang up,” Daugherty shouts. “Sir!” There is dead air. After he redials and gets Clayton's voicemail he tosses Pyle's BlackBerry into his lap. “Keep trying till you get an answer.” Fleeing dusk, Daugherty drives them out of Cairo.

Finally, after forty minutes, during which Pyle has been pressing his phone's redial key, Daugherty sees him cup the BlackBerry to speak through the road noise. With the speedometer hovering at 110, the Taurus is vibrating in Daugherty's clenched hands like the space shuttle during reentry. He can't hear a damn thing his partner is saying. “That Clayton?” Daugherty mouths.

Pyle uncups the phone. “His dumb bitch wife! I got through on the home number!”

Daugherty slows the car to eighty and angrily gestures for Pyle's BlackBerry, wondering how he'll explain his partner's crack to Mrs. Clayton.

“Don't sweat it. She's getting T. Everett,” Pyle says as Daugherty puts the phone to his ear. “Plus it's on mute.”

Fumbling with the device Daugherty nearly drives off the highway. He can hear Clayton helloing as he tries to unmute the call. “Fuck this fucker!”

“Pardon?” T. Everett says.

“Nothing, sir. Just talking to my partner. Agent Daugherty here.”

“Ah, yes. About that dropped call. There aren't many cell towers out on 90.”

Steadying the Taurus Daugherty cuts to the chase, “Regarding Jessica Aldridge.”

“Oh, right. Jessica. Yes. We gave her a ride. Sweet girl. You said she stole a truck. But she says a friend bequeathed the vehicle to her. There seems to be a misunderstanding, probably on your part.”

“Mr. Clayton, I didn't want to panic you when I called earlier, but this young woman, I'm afraid, has killed several people. In cold blood.” Daugherty doesn't elaborate that this was when Aldridge flew drones. He's learning from Pyle how plastic facts can be.

“Jesus,” Clayton whispers, his self-satisfaction dissolving.

Daugherty hears a woman's voice, Mrs. Clayton no doubt, “What's wrong, Teddy?”

“That girl,” says Clayton. “She's wanted for multiple murders.”

“Oh my God!” says Mrs. Clayton. “She knows our address.”

Daugherty lets the couple's anxiety rise before refocusing them. “I'm assuming you dropped her off since we spoke.”

“Not five minutes away.”

The wife's voice becomes shrill. “I hear someone outside. We have to call 911—”

“Dammit, let go of my arm,” Mr. Clayton says. “I'm helping them get her!”

So much for the Claytons' empathy. Jessica is no longer Jessica to them. She's a
she
and a
her
. She's no longer the unjustly accused car thief but a transient killer ready to serve them up with fava beans and Chianti. Something bangs, perhaps a door. Daugherty can no longer hear the wife's screeching.

“Agent Daugherty . . .”

“Yes, sir.”

“My disconnect earlier. I didn't know the seriousness of this woman's offenses.” Clearly T. Everett's lawyerly brain has taken over. He has grasped that his earlier silence could make him guilty of aiding a fugitive, of obstructing a federal officer on a capital case.

Daugherty gives him his out. “Like I said, I hadn't told you anything, sir.”

“When you called she wanted me to drop her off right away, at Castroville. But I shut off my phone. She's here in San Antonio. The Motel 6 in Market Square. It's pet friendly. That's how she met us. Because of Skittles.”

“Skittles?”

“Her shepherd. She was stuck in Cairo because none of the bus lines allowed dogs. She said there was no way she was going to leave Skittles behind. Of course we would give a ride to a person like that, an animal lover.”