Clawback (25 page)

“Ali Reynolds and Camille Lee, of High Noon Enterprises,” Ali said through a mouthpiece cut into the glass barrier. “We're here to see Detective Drinkwater.”

“May I tell him what this is about?”

“Yes,” Ali said. “It's about the Frazier homicides. We'll wait.”

Less than a minute later, Eric Drinkwater marched into the lobby. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I already told you I won't tolerate any further interference.”

“We've uncovered some evidence we thought you should know about,” Ali said sweetly, making no reference to their recent altercation. “Our intention is to offer assistance rather than to interfere.”

“Who's we?” he demanded, glancing in Cami's direction for the first time. “And what kind of so-called assistance do you have in mind?”

“Let me introduce my associate, Camille Lee,” Ali said smoothly. “She's a High Noon operative. She did some investigating on her own earlier this morning, and I think you'll be interested in seeing the results.”

Drinkwater shook his head. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly, doing a better job of concealing his emotions than Ali would have expected. “Let's get this over with.” He glanced back at the clerk. “Is the conference room open?” She nodded, and he set off toward the other end of the lobby, leaving Ali and Cami to follow.

“A conference room rather than an interview room?” Ali asked. “That counts as a step in the right direction.”

She could tell by the stiffening of Detective Drinkwater's shoulders that he had heard the comment. Too bad. The man was a bully, and she was pushing back.

He ushered them into a small conference room next to an office marked
CHIEF OF POLICE
. Once they were inside, he slammed that door shut behind them and then stood in front of it with his arms folded belligerently across his chest. The agreeable guise he'd worn in the lobby evaporated once they were out of the public eye.

“Show me,” he said.

As far as Ali was concerned, this was Cami's show. Ali stayed in the background, allowing Cami to tackle Drinkwater head-on. “You're too tall,” she pointed out. “If you want to see what's on my iPad, you'll need to sit down here next to me.”

Sighing with frustration, Drinkwater reluctantly took a seat while Cami produced her iPad and called up a file. “This starts with the phone tracker record.”

“What's a phone tracker?” Drinkwater asked.

“High Noon is a high-profile company these days,” Cami answered. “In order to protect both employees and their families, we see to it that all electronic devices are equipped with the latest in presence technology.”

“What technology?”

“Presence,” Cami replied. “It allows us to know where an individual is and to follow his or her movements in real time. Those movements are also recorded so they can be accessed later if necessary.”

“Look,” Drinkwater said impatiently. “How about skipping the engineering lecture and just showing me whatever it is you've got?”

“Yesterday, when Mr. Larson went to the home of Dan and Millie Frazier, his phone was equipped with state-of-the-art tracking. What you're about to see here will show you the record of his movements overlaid on a satellite view of Sedona.”

With the iPad on the table in front of her, Cami pressed the arrow to start the video sequence and then pushed it over in front of the detective. “Please notice the time stamp in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The blue dot is Mr. Larson. At 8:58 a.m. he leaves his unit at Sedona Shadows on foot and follows the corridor to a side entrance. He exits the building and walks to the parking lot, going directly to his designated parking place. Once he's in a moving vehicle, you'll notice that the phone movement speeds up.”

“How do I know the blue dot on the screen has anything at all to do with Mr. Larson?”

“Keep watching,” Cami advised. “I'm going to fast-forward through the next section while he's driving from Sedona Shadows to the Fraziers' place. You'll have a copy of this, so you'll be able to see for yourself that he makes no stops along the way. This is where he enters Dan and Millie Frazier's neighborhood.”

“He didn't just drive to their neighborhood,” Drinkwater objected, still peering at the scene. “He drove to their house.”

“No,” she said. “When I said he drove directly to their neighborhood, that's what I meant. See here? The vehicle turns on to Elberta Drive and stops. Notice that the time stamp says 9:29. Again, I'm going to fast-forward, but Mr. Larson's phone and most likely his vehicle remain in that spot near the end of the street for the better part of twenty minutes. Only then does it begin moving again, first continuing up the street and turning in to the Fraziers' driveway. That occurs at 9:50. Now watch what happens next.

“As you can see, the blue dot is hovering over what seems to be a building of some kind—a building that turns out to be the Fraziers' two-car garage. The blue dot remains over the building as long as the phone is inside the building. Now, up in the corner, you'll see a second time stamp. That's from the 911 recording. You'll see the blue dot move as the phone goes from the garage to the house. You should be able to hear the voice-over of the 911 call. Now, as the the time stamp on the phone tracker video turns over to 9:52, you'll notice a second time stamp appears on the screen accompanied by the voice-over.”

Ali winced when she heard the desperation in her father's cry. “We need help!”

As Cami continued to walk the detective through the video, Ali watched disappointment register on Eric Drinkwater's face as he realized the case he thought he was building against Bob Larson was going up in smoke along with any chance of his making a quick arrest.

“How did you get a copy of the 911 tape?” he wanted to know.

Cami shrugged. “We asked, and they gave it to us,” she said. “So where would you like me to send your copy of the video?”

“I guess you should send me a copy and one to the chief as well,” Drinkwater said at last, pausing long enough to write down the necessary addresses for Cami's benefit.

“We'll need to have our experts review the tapes, of course,” he added. “For all I know this whole phone tracker story may be completely bogus. What if you made the whole thing up? Now, if show and tell is over . . .”

“Not quite,” Cami said calmly. “We should probably take a look at the other videos.”

“You have more?” an exasperated Detective Drinkwater demanded.

“Several, as a matter of fact,” Cami said with a smile as she queued up the next one. “My understanding is that Mr. Larson indicated to you that he remembered seeing a truck loaded with landscaping equipment parked near the Fraziers' house when he arrived there yesterday morning.”

“As I said, we looked into that and found no evidence to suggest that a rig matching that description had been seen anywhere in the surrounding area.”

“Maybe you didn't look quite far enough,” Cami said. “Here are two sets of time-stamped security footage from the Apple Tree B & B just down from Elberta Drive on Jordan. The first one shows a rig very much like that driving southbound on Jordan past the B & B at 10:01 a.m., which would be while Mr. Larson was still on the phone with the 911 operator. You'll notice that the video resolution on that south-facing camera leaves a lot to be desired, but when I went looking for the same vehicle going northbound here's what I found.”

First she ran the enhanced version of the footage time-stamped 7:33 a.m. “You'll notice that at this point there are three passengers inside the truck. What you're seeing now was enhanced several times in order for us to run it through our facial rec program. It turns out Dan Frazier is the man sitting slumped over in the front passenger seat. The other two individuals are ex-cons with extensive rap sheets. The driver is a guy named Alberto Joaquín, and the guy in back is Jeffrey Hawkins. As you can also see, the enhanced version clearly shows a company logo on the door—A.J. Landscaping.”

Drinkwater studied the two photos and jotted something in a notebook. “All right, then,” he said grudgingly. “I'll look into it.”

“Actually,” Ali said, “there's one more thing.”

“What?”

“About those two suspects—they're both dead.”

“What?”

“Earlier today they were found shot to death in a gravel pit north of Sun City. Dave Holman is investigating.”

“Why the hell didn't you say so to begin with?”

“Because we wanted you to have the whole story.”

“What are the chances your father hired these guys, and then showed up at the crime scene to report the crime in an attempt to throw us off track?”

“You don't give up, do you,” Ali said.

“I don't get paid for giving up.”

“What about my dad's Bronco? How soon will you be releasing it from the impound lot?”

“I'll have to get back to you on that. We'll be having our experts review all of this. Releasing that vehicle will take some time.”

“I'll just bet it will,” Ali said sarcastically, then she turned to Cami. “Come on. We're done here.”

“In other words,” Cami muttered as they made their way back to the lobby, “don't hold your breath about getting that Bronco back anytime soon.”

T
here were two matching strip malls, set a block apart, on the west side of Highway 179 in the Village of Oak Creek—Oak Creek Park North and Oak Creek Park South. The office of the Frazier Insurance Agency was located in the one to the south. Among the tenants in the Oak Creek Park North complex were Arizona First Federal Bank and Guido's. First Federal was where the Fraziers had done their banking for as long as Ali could remember. As for Guido's? When it came to quality pizza, it was the only game in town.

Haley turned in at the first Oak Creek Park sidewalk cut-in and stopped directly in front of Guido's. She went there first and ordered three large pizzas for pickup in twenty minutes before she entered the bank.

When she stepped inside, Annette Ogilvie, the manager, rose from her desk and hurried to greet her. “I'm so sorry to hear about Dan and Millie,” Annette said quickly. “What an appalling thing. If there's anything—anything at all—that we can do to help, please let me know.”

Expressions of sympathy still tended to sap Haley's emotional reserve. “Thanks,” she said with an acknowledging nod as she sank into the chair in front of Annette's desk. “I'm going to need access to their safe-deposit box, and I have the letter.”

“Of course,” Annette said.

Haley drew the two envelopes out of her purse and located the two letters of intent that named Haley Jackson as Dan and Millie's executrix. She handed them across the table to the bank manager, who barely glanced at them before handing them back. After all, Annette herself had notarized them.

“You brought your key?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Without saying anything more, Annette ushered Haley into a vault the size of a small bedroom. There she retrieved the box from its slot in the wall, and placed it on the table in front of Haley.

“I'm sure this is going to be tough,” Annette said, backing away. “I'll give you some privacy.”

Haley was familiar with most of the contents in the box, but she was surprised to see that the postage stamp–sized device Millie had shown her on Friday was the topmost item. Slipping that into the pocket of her jeans, she dug through the rest of the material. She removed the velvet pouch that contained several of Millie's more expensive diamond-encrusted pieces as well as Dan's father's Rolex watch, which Dan had inherited but never wore. Among the papers she found both Dan's and Millie's birth certificates. Toward the bottom she found the four life insurance policies, including the keyman one she had mentioned earlier to Eric Drinkwater. After jotting down the numbers, she set those aside and picked up the wills themselves.

She knew the documents had been drawn up, but she was unfamiliar with the provisions. Now, as executrix, she needed to know what the wills insurance policies themselves said and if there were any other named heirs or beneficiaries of whom she was unaware. She also needed to be familiar with all the provisions in the event of any possible lawsuits that might present themselves in the aftermath of the OFM collapse.

The intentions expressed in the wills were straightforward enough. Millie and Dan both named one another as their primary heir and/or beneficiary. Anything remaining in their joint estate after the death of the second to die was destined for a scholarship fund to be established under the name of Daniel and Millie Frazier at Dan's alma mater, Arizona State University.

After reading through the material, Haley put everything back in the box and called for Annette to come let her out.

“Everything's in order then?” Annette asked as she slipped the box back into its designated slot.

“Yes,” Haley answered. “As far as I can tell.”

It was only as she walked out of the bank that she remembered the tiny item she had hidden in her pocket. Rather than go back inside to return it to the safe deposit box, she kept right on going. Besides, if Millie had left the drive in a place to which Haley had ready access, whatever was on it couldn't be that big of a secret.

She picked up the pizzas, loaded them into the car, and drove back to the office. In her absence the girls had wrested order from chaos.
My girls now
, Haley reminded herself.

“Time for pizza,” she announced, putting the boxes down on the front counter where Carmen continued to be in charge of computer reassembly.

“Let me move this out of the way,” Carmen said moving the last of the computers aside.

The computer in question happened to be the one from Dan's private office—an aging Dell desktop that Dan had refused to replace even though it had required constant updating. With Carmen lugging the machine, Haley followed along and waited while Carmen went about plugging it in. This was the first time Haley had set foot inside the back office since Dan died. Once again, Haley's emotions got the best of her. When Carmen left the room, Haley remained. Sitting down in Dan's sagging leather desk chair, she sat quietly for several minutes, studying the sales plaques and framed diplomas and photos that decorated the office's wood-paneled walls. The photos alone turned out to be a gallery of the youth athletic teams Dan had sponsored through the years.