Cry Wolf (7 page)

Laura looked at Anthony. “You think this is his sister’s house?”

“Could be.”

“So maybe he planned to go see her after all.”

Laura asked Mr. Zohar if Sean Perrin had ever mentioned a sister.

“Yeah, he told me she was loaded.”

“Loaded?”

“He told me she had a lot of money and a deadbeat husband.”

“Anything else?”

“He said he was worried because he tried to kill her once.”

“The husband?”

“Yeah. On a cruise, he said. Poisoned her food.”

Anthony cleared his throat. Laura knew what he was thinking:
Another lie from Sean Perrin
. Considering the problems cruise ships had been having of late, it was far more likely Ruby would have succumbed to a bad case of food poisoning.

“Did he say why?” Laura asked.

“I got the impression the husband didn’t want to wait around for her to die so he could inherit all her money.”

Laura pictured Ruby Ballantine at her store on 4th Avenue. She didn’t look rich to her. She wore clothes you’d buy at Kohl's. Laura knew, because she bought at Kohl's.

“Yeah,” Mr. Zohar was saying. “I would’ve loved to get a load of a sister of his. He said she was very athletic. If she looks anything like his wife and children . . . Are they all right?”

“Yes,” Laura deadpanned. She assumed they were alive and well, but of course they weren’t his wife and they weren’t his children. No need to tell Mr. Zohar that. She did ask, “Did you ever meet them?”

“Sadly, no. But I saw photos.”

Oh, yes. The photos. Laura smiled and thanked him.

From the look of his apartment, Sean Perrin seemed to be living on a very frayed edge. Most of the other residents were college students living in their first home away from home. The place dated to the seventies, hanging on by its fingernails to the forgotten part of town, several blocks from the Strip. The area was a jumble of pawn stores, dollar stores, and auto repair shops.

His place was neat but worn. There were the photos the sister claimed were from Huffpo, in cheap frames. He did have a nice TV and sound system, and a queen-sized bed. The carpet was not shag exactly but it was old-fashioned and cheap. If you were going to name it, the color would be “Dirty Tan”.

It was hard to believe, but his papers were neatly kept in files. Unfortunately, it was all run-of-the-mill stuff-—rent, cable, Internet, etcetera. The laptop LVMP had taken was still awaiting its turn at Forensics. The whole apartment was generic and had the look and feel of an old motel room. Even the bedspread was in motel colors—floral print, the teal and green variety, with a matching bolster. Again—circa 1970s Best Western.

They went through everything, although there wasn’t much of it.

“I wish to God we had his phone,” Laura muttered.

“No shit. This place looks like Mannix lived here.”

Whatever inner life Sean Perrin had, he’d shared with people in terms of lies and exaggerations and stories. But he hadn’t bothered to lie to himself.

“If this was a Sherlock Holmes novel,” Laura muttered, “It would be called,
The Strange Case of the Generic Man
.”

Anthony stared at the white popcorn ceiling. “Poor son-of-a-bitch. You see it all the time in this town. What a downward spiral. Even his ‘bottom girl’ was on a race to the bottom.”

“Someone came after him, though. He was running from something.”

The answer, she thought, wasn’t at work. And it appeared he had not known Aurora Johnson for very long. Whether it was chivalry or a need to impress someone, he’d gone off on a jaunt with Aurora Johnson, and she’d ended up dead of an overdose.

But who would follow him all the way to Arizona just to take his life?

And who would do such a bang-up job of it?

That hit showed real talent.

Anthony said, “Maybe it was a gambling debt.”

“If it was,” Laura said, “It would have to be a big one.”

They spent the next day and a half showing his picture to the croupiers and bouncers and managers of the casinos.

Many knew him to look at, but as a gambler he didn’t ring any bells. One floor man remembered him working the quarter slot machines.

“High roller,” Anthony muttered as they walked out of the air-conditioned but shabby Sultan Casino and into the blasting heat of a May afternoon in Vegas. The casino was one of the last remaining stragglers from the seventies.

“So what
do
we have?” Laura asked.

“What it looks like is he met Johnson somehow—maybe she turned tricks on the side, who knows?—and she asked him for help.”

“You mean, help me skip town, honey, the mafia is after me.”

Anthony shrugged. “He fancied himself a player. Swashbuckling was right up his alley.”

Laura covered her eyes and squinted against the lowering sun. As usual, Vegas was teeming with tourists. “So he tries to help the damsel, and when he goes out for a walk in the wee hours of the morning, she’s doing God knows what.”

“Yeah, only God
does
know what. PCP and Ketamine.”

“So he thinks what she told him was true—that her boss was after her, that she really was his bottom girl and he knew how that went—”

“Only this time, it wasn’t like that. ‘Cause she wasn’t a bottom girl, just a low-rent accountant like him—”

“Two liars.”

“Yeah, they were made for each other.”

They drove back to Tucson, both of them too tired and deflated to talk much. Laura checked her phone. No messages. No silver bullet that would solve this case.

“Now I know how those oil men felt in the olden days,” Anthony said as if reading her mind. “Drill drill drill, and all we get is a dry hole.”

“True,” Laura said. "Mr. Big Shot wasn’t big—all he was, was shot.”

The shooting didn’t make sense. Why was he shot execution-style? Who was he meeting at the trailhead?

It was impossible to say whether or not he closed his eyes out of terror or maybe just to enjoy the cool mountain air in his little piece of paradise. His face looked relaxed, there had been just the hint of a smile on his face. Laura had studied the crime scene photos and again came back to that small smile.

Technically,
forensically
, it didn’t mean a thing.

Everything stopped immediately when the bullet entered his brain. The point of entry made sure of that, even though the bullet itself would have ricocheted all over.

As they drove in silence, Laura tried to put herself in Sean Perrin’s position. He was sitting in his car somewhere between eight and eleven at night—their best estimate. Was he sitting there just enjoying the night, or was he meeting someone? And if he
was
meeting someone, who would that be?

“He must have heard them walking up to the car,” Laura said to Anthony. “Unless he was just closing his eyes and taking it all in, and they sneaked up on him. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“If he was meeting someone, what might he be meeting them for?”

“A lot of things. Maybe he was going for a moonlight hike. Maybe he was meeting someone to buy drugs. But maybe he was just hanging out enjoying the evening and someone just walked up and popped him.”

“What? For fun?”

He shrugged.

“Or it was a pro.”

“It sure looked like it. But these days, you can learn anything on the Internet. Where to kill someone, what the best weapon is. Seems to me everybody on God’s Green Earth knows that contract killers like a .22. After CSI and NCIS and all those shows you could ask the man on the street and he’d tell you all about how those small caliber bullets ricochet all over inside the skull.”

“And no shell casings.”

“Yeah, one shot, perfectly-placed. Easy to pick up. Or maybe go whole hog and use a revolver.”

“His eyes were closed.”

“You know with the shock, his eyes could have closed when he was hit.”

She said, “I think he was meeting someone.”

“Which means it was either someone followed him to Tucson, met him there or was waiting for him. Maybe he pissed off someone in Madera Canyon.”

“Could be.”

“Or there was bad blood with his sister.”

“Could be.”

“Yeah,” Anthony said. “We are inundated with ‘could-bes.’”

It was late at night by the time Anthony dropped her off in the DPS parking lot and she headed home. It had been a long drive, and she was tired. The trip to Winslow and Las Vegas was a wild goose chase. They’d thrown snake eyes.

Perrin had lied about everything, and it all amounted to nothing.

She aimed her car down the freeway in the direction of the Rincon Mountains. The moon was full, hanging in the sky over the black hump of mountain range. She turned onto Houghton Road, hit the dirt road leading to the few scattered houses in the foothills, and parked outside.

Matt came outside to greet her.

She was hot, tired, her back—which was long—ached, and she felt soiled and shopworn. But Matt pulled her into his arms and for a moment everything was forgotten. All the failures, all the near-misses, all the disappointment. She felt tears come to her eyes. She felt such gratitude she had this man to come home to.

So happy.

He didn’t care that she was dirty. He kissed her as if she were Sleeping Beauty in the bower of roses, stroked her wind-snarled hair with love, kissed her deeply and in such a way she couldn’t wait for them to reach the bedroom.