Cry Wolf (5 page)

“How old was she?”

“Mid-to-late twenties, but she looked older than that. Her name was Aurora Johnson. She had a Las Vegas DL and one hell of a rap sheet,” he added. “She was a prostitute.”

Laura and Anthony hit the road early the next morning. Early for Anthony was eight a.m.

Laura picked him up at his home, which was kind of on the way, and they hit Phoenix on Interstate 10 just in time for rush hour.

It was mid-afternoon by the time they pulled in to Winslow. The police department was situated along old Interstate 40, a white cube of a building on a one-way street.

It wasn’t far from the Meteorite Inn on State Route 99. They drove by there first.

The land around here looked like tanned deer hide. There were railroad tracks nearby, and a road that zigged, then zagged, and stuck like a postage stamp in the right angle was the motel. The side to the street was a jigsaw of colored rocks, most of them dark brown, some muddy yellow, pink, blue, red—all natural rock colors from the area. Wafers of flagstone were stacked at the base. Someone had put real care into this, but the result was ugly. And old.

“It’s a long way from McDonald's,” Laura said.

Anthony nodded. “You just maybe think we’re on a wild goose chase?”

“Probably. But a woman did die here.”

“The Meteorite Inn. Looks like it was
hit
by a meteorite. If a guy stood on this corner, the girl in the flatbed Ford would’ve driven right by. I’ll bet people rent by the month.”

Laura looked at the old motel. There was a cluttered look to some of the rooms—doors open, old cars outside. It did look like people were camped out there. “You think they were hiding out?”

“Could be. You can’t get more out of the way than this.”

“But the woman died from a drug overdose. Maybe he wasn’t running from anything at all in Vegas. Maybe he just met the woman here and paid her for sex.”

“It’s a theory,” Anthony said. Hands on hips, he stared out at the bleak side of Winslow.

“But that would be a coincidence,” Laura said.

“Yeah—and I know how much you don’t like coincidences.”

“Coincidences are rare. Besides,” she said. “Sean Perrin was killed by a pro.”

They met with Greg Wyland, the detective who investigated Aurora Johnson's death at the Meteorite Inn. Wyland was tall like Anthony, so the two of them towered over Laura, even though she was pretty tall, herself. Wyland looked boyish, with a pale blonde buzz cut and startling blue eyes.

He showed them the file.

Aurora Johnson did have a sheet—prostitution busts and drugs.

The crime scene photos were shocking. There was blood everywhere, mostly from Johnson running into things, like the dresser where she ended up, head smashed into the bottom drawer.

 
“Ketamine and PCP,” Laura muttered, looking at the sheet. Anthony leaned over her.

Even dead, Aurora Johnson was a beautiful young woman. She was twenty-four years old. She looked like she might be a mixture of Hispanic, African American, and perhaps Asian. In one of the close-up shots, Laura noticed a tattoo on her forearm: a bullet. Just the black silhouette, but it was unmistakable. “Did LVMPD send a photo of her?” Laura asked.

“Yeah.” He pulled it up on his desktop.

It was the first time Laura had seen a mug shot that was actually flattering.

“Jesus,” Anthony said. “She’s a knockout.”

Even the cloth they used to drape under her chin looked elegant.

Aurora Johnson had been arrested for possession of drugs twice and prostitution three times.

Laura said, “All these arrests were from two years ago or earlier. Since then, nothing.”

“Somebody looking out for her?” Anthony asked.

 
“Cedric Williams,” Wyland said. “A.K.A. WMD.”

“His name is ‘WMD?”

“No,
A.K.A.
WMD. Supposedly he’s a rapper.”

Laura knew that rappers in Vegas were pimps in actuality. Like the guy in Vegas who was shot and killed on the Strip awhile back, blowing up a taxi in the process.

Anthony said, “Stands for ‘also known as’?”

Wyland shrugged. “That would be my guess. She definitely had protection—my contact at LVMPD said she was A.K.A.’s bottom girl.”

Laura knew that a “bottom girl” was the Most Valuable Player in the pimp-hooker world. She was trained to run the business, make sure the girls did what they were told, groomed to perfection and schooled to be a high-level prostitute worthy of the high rollers who wanted the best. “So what’s she doing dying of a drug overdose in a dump like the Meteorite Inn?”

They went back to the motel with Wyland. Perrin and Johnson had stayed in room 10, right near the backside of a bar and facing a Dumpster.

“This was over two weeks ago,” Wyland said, after coming out with the key to the room. “The place has been cleaned up.”

“Probably not all that much,” Anthony said. He covered his eyes against the lowering sun and stared at the room down at the end. “I can picture this. Fade In: a fleabag motel on the edge of town.”

Wyland glanced at Laura.

“Anthony writes screenplays in his spare time.”

“This would be a good setting for a zombie movie,” Wyland said helpfully.

The room had not been repainted, but the walls had been scrubbed. There were some dark reddish stains in the carpet, but the carpet was multicolored and they were hard to see.

“It doesn’t look bad now it’s dried,” Wyland said.

“But you don’t suspect homicide?” Laura asked.

Det. Wyland shrugged. “The coroner said she had enough drugs in her system to kill her. All the flailing was consistent with that. Hard to believe, I know, but he’d seen it before.”

Laura wondered who’d come up with the cocktail like that. Was it Aurora Johnson herself, or someone else?

Sean Perrin?

It was possible.

Sean Perrin was a liar, after all. But the story he told, coming back with breakfast for himself and the woman he was on the run with, made sense. If he’d come back and seen her dead, looking bloody and beaten, he might have run. He said he was on the run with Aurora Johnson. He might have thought the people chasing them had caught up with them.

If
there were people chasing them.

Aurora Johnson was Cedric Williams’ bottom girl. She would have been valuable in many ways. And she would have known a lot about his business.

Maybe for once in his life, Sean Perrin had told the truth—at least about running away with Johnson.

As they parted ways with Wyland, Laura glanced around and saw a Mexican place that advertised breakfast down the block.

If Perrin was a congenital liar, he could have easily substituted the McDonald's for another restaurant. Why he’d lie about that, she couldn’t fathom. Maybe just out of habit.

Who knew what labyrinth his thinking process ran through?

They tried that place, but no one remembered Sean Perrin from two weeks ago. Why would they? Unless he engaged one of the servers in conversation and started lying.

“There’s another one,” Anthony said. “Way down there, see?”

This place, Arturo’s, boasted breakfasts Mexican and American style. A sign board out front proclaimed, Yes We Have Menudo!

Laura glanced up and down the street at all the bars. “Good place for it,” she said.

They had the photo blown up from his drivers license, and had shown it many times.

But this time, they hit paydirt.

The server, a skinny young girl with startling turquoise eyes, said the man had tipped her big, which was why she remembered him. He flirted with her, too.

“Not in a bad way,” she said. “He was friendly.”

“Did he eat here?”

“Yes, he did. But he also bought some food for his girlfriend.”

“His girlfriend? Can you remember exactly what he said?”

She thought for a moment. “He said she liked to sleep in, but they had to get on the road and he wanted to wake her up. He ordered coffee and a breakfast burrito to go.”

“Did he now?” Anthony smiled his most charming smile. “Did he say anything else?”

“He said he had insomnia. He’d been up most of the night walking around.” She thought some more. “Oh, and he was on his way to a car race in Phoenix.”

“What kind of race?”

“NASCAR.”

“In Phoenix?”

“Yes. He said he was a driver. He even gave me his autograph on a menu.”

“Do you have it here?”

“It’s at home.”

“You said he was up all night?”

“That’s what he said.”

Laura stared out the plate glass windows stretching across the front. Aurora might have been off drugs when she worked for Cedric Williams, but she’d obviously wasted no time getting back in the groove. At least that’s how it looked right now.

As they walked outside, Anthony said, “My sister’s boyfriend watches NASCAR. He goes to Phoenix every year. In
March
.”

“Might as well put a sign on the door to that motel room.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“‘Sean Perrin Was Here.’”

They’d asked for Detective Wyland to copy them on the police report, as well as the coroner’s findings. He told them he’d send all the information by email. They were on the road to Flagstaff by four in the afternoon, and it was almost dark by the time they reached Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

There was no red Dodge Viper in the parking lot, as expected.

The person at the desk was not the person who rented the car to Sean Perrin. The transaction itself was dry and offered no new information, except to corroborate that Perrin had indeed rented the car.

“Who managed the transaction?” Laura asked.

The young man looked down at the signature. “That was Colin. Colin Ferry.”

“We’d like his phone number.”

“I dunno . . . ”

“Hey, we’re cops. You want to call the manager and ask?”

“Nuh-uh. Colin’s the manager. I guess it’s all right.” He wrote down the number.

“Thanks,” Laura and Anthony said at the same time.

Looked at each other. Only three months on the job together and they were beginning to click.

They walked outside under the sodium arc lights and checked the parking lot. No red Viper.

“You think he ditched it around here?” Anthony said.

“Probably.”

“Impound.”

“They’re closed. We’ll have to call tomorrow.”

Laura punched in the number for Colin Ferry—no rest for the weary.

He lived not ten minutes from where they were. They drove to his apartment—a place that tried to look tropical and upscale but came across as a little desperate, and knocked on his door.

Colin was tall and heavy, kind of like a redwood tree. Or a hippo. Or a redwood tree that had mated with a hippo. His jaw was broad, almost like mandibles. He had just come back from a swim, judging from his wet swim shorts and the towel around his neck. He stood out on the landing, shivering a little in the towel over his shoulders.

But he didn’t complain about it.

They stood in a little knot, because his wife had just managed to get their newborn to sleep and he wanted to keep things quiet. Standing under the light above the door, moths flying patterns around them, crowded into the broad leaves of a banana tree from one story down, Colin described the man and woman who had signed for the car.

“He looked like your average middle class guy on vacation. Shorts, T-shirt. I see them all the time. Tired and kind of crabby. I would have forgot him if it wasn’t for the woman. Jesus, she was a knockout.”

“Can you describe her?”

He did, in great detail, down to the top that showed off her midriff and the skinny jeans.

“Anything about them that bothered you?”

“Not really . . . ”

“Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Anything that struck you? Good or bad?”

“Other than how hot she was? I wasn’t looking at the
man
.”

“Anything? Did they mention where they were going?”

“No. I will say he was in the pain in the ass category.”

“How so?”

“We went out to look at the car, you know, for him to look it over and check for scratches, paint, that kind of thing. He was the type who spent, like, an hour going over the car. Must’ve took a hundred photos with his phone. I’m talking like even a speck on the paint. The undercarriage, too. His girlfriend or wife or whatever, she looked annoyed.”