Dead Dry (23 page)

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Authors: Sarah Andrews

BOOK: Dead Dry
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MICHELE PHONED FROM COLORADO JUST AFTER THE last light of sunset had faded. “Attabury’s tougher than I thought,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked. “When I didn’t hear, I figured you had it sewn up.”
“I got him down for questioning, but he got Upton on me so fast my head was ringing. He admitted that the plane was his but said if it’s been to Salt Lake City in the past three years it was without him. He showed us a long, narrow black book like that should prove to us he wasn’t there.”
“His Pilot Log Book,” I said. “And he has a point there. They’re like a religious article … what do you call them, that name Catholics have for bones of the saints.”
“Holy relics. Anyway, it was quite a performance. Upton said to come back when we had something stronger than ‘a bunch of hearsay from a government agency.’”
“He was referring to the FAA.”
“The same.”
“A pilot not writing his hours down in his log book,
that’s cold. But it didn’t worry them just a bit that eyewitnesses at Million Air had him and McWain on the ground at Salt Lake International last Thursday?”
“No, it did not. Whoever flew that plane paid cash for the tie-down. And I couldn’t make McWain stick, because I haven’t put McWain’s mug shot in front of the ground crew, have I, because I don’t have a picture of what he looked like alive, do I? Upton too accurately pointed out that ‘white male in hiking boots’ was a rather broad categorization. So now I’m cooling my heels at the Motel No-Tell again, waiting for daylight, a judge, and the hope of subpoenas, so I can get at that airplane. I just hope he doesn’t have any football buddies on the bench, or I could be here awhile.”
“Tough luck.”
“Yeah. But of course if he was a whiner I would have had him last Friday at the Sedalia Grill. So anyway, can you come out here? The longer this takes, the colder the trail and the more time Mister Wonderful has to cover his tracks. Maybe you can subpoena
his
shoes and get some damned clay off of them.”
“What you’d want is some gravel from Point of the Mountain Quarry.”
“That would do nicely. Can you do that?”
I shook my head at the phone. “I think you’re getting things backward here. Remember, I’m a scientist at heart. I like my evidence straight up, not cooked.”
Michele growled, “I wasn’t suggesting that you salt him.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“
You
try sleeping in this motel. The walls are as thin as cardboard. I can hear the couple next door—”
“Spare me! And you want me to come sleep there, too?”
“Well, I thought a smart scientist like you could crack this case before lunchtime. You’ll be home for dinner with that pilot of yours.”
“Leave Fritz out of this.”
“Give me my dress back.”
“Sorry. I meant to launder it first.”
“Keep it awhile. It might help you get lucky. And try smiling once in a while, it makes you look human.”
I realized that I was grinning. Michele and I were having fun cussing each other out. “Okay, firebrand, I’ll see you there as soon as I can get a flight.”
“I already made a reservation for you. It’s the red-eye. You can just make it.”
“You think of all the amenities.”
“Rent a car at the airport, and get your butt down here. I’m going out for a while to keep Attabury under surveillance. If I’m out when you get here, call me on my cell phone. If I’m here, I’ll no doubt be awake unless Mister Olympus on the other side of the wall runs out of steam.”
 
THERE’S A BIG FIVE-POINTED STAR ALL DONE UP IN lights that glows on the top of the butte that Castle Rock is named after, and when it hove into view later that night I began to feel my fatigue. It was not only the hour but the year. I had seen that star so many times as I drove to college and back again that it was like a splinter in my psyche digging deeper with every year.
I pulled into the lot by the motel at 2:30 A.M. under a starry sky that had faded under the pollution of too many security lights left on around too many buildings.
The light was on in room 201, so I tapped on it softly and Michele opened the door. She was not only awake, she was still dressed. “Thanks for coming,” she said.
“Think nothing of it.” I yawned. “I left messages for my old friend Carlos Ortega of the Denver homicide squad before I got on the plane, as well as Tim Osner, who’s another kind of forensic geologist, just to give them a heads-up. In case we need some mystery moves. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. We could use a magician right now. Bet you dollars
to doughnuts our boy’s gone in the morning.”
“You think your pigeon will fly the coop?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why aren’t you parked by Centennial Airport where you can get a photograph of him leaving? Didn’t you give him the old ‘Don’t leave town’ lecture?”
“I did. I dropped by Centennial on my way down here and the smart boy had already moved the plane somewhere else.”
“And let me guess. He didn’t file a flight plan.”
“No, ma’am.”
“So it could be anywhere. In any of half a dozen private airstrips around here, tucked into a hangar where you’d never see it, or even across the border in Mexico by now.”
“Yeah, with him in it. He did a real nice job of giving me the slip half an hour after I called you. That boy knows escape and evasion driving.”
“No shit.”
“None whatsoever. I lost him on I-25. He pulled the old on-off trick.”
“Down one ramp and up the other to see if you were following him.”
“And I was. And there’s all that construction. And a stoplight that he hit just as it changed, and some old biddie between us slammed on her brakes like the good citizen she was. He’s good.”
“Damn.”
“Douglas County put an APB out on him. Hopefully, the state patrol will spot his car.”
“So where was your backup?”
“We’re out here in the tules, it would seem. I thought we were close to Denver, but this is a different county altogether. I was following him in the rental car. He was driving a BMW.”
“Well then, they’ll spot it easily enough.”
“Oh yeah? You want to know how many assholes drive
that make and model along the Front Range of Colorado?”
As common as cow flops on a feedlot
came to mind, but I said, “Well, get some sleep.” I went to my room, locked and chained the door, and got into the T-shirt I liked to sleep in. The air conditioner was noisy, so I turned it off, but then the highway noise started to grind on me, so I turned it back on. I turned out the lights and stared into the dark, or should I say half-gloom, considering all the light that was leaking around the curtains. After half an hour contemplating how correct Michele was about this motel, I switched on my cell phone to see what time it was and saw that there was a message waiting for me. I punched in the code to listen to it.
It was Fritz. “Hi, Em. Hey, Faye just phoned to tell me you were on your way back to Colorado. T-revor Rex wants me to fly him there tomorrow evening, so if you’re still around, why not give me a call? You know where I’ll be. In fact,
please
give me a call. Thanks. Good-bye for now.”
I listened to the message again, then turned off the phone and closed my eyes. The light and noise didn’t bother me half as much now. I fell asleep quickly and rested well.
 
THURSDAY MORNING, HUGO ATTABURY WAS NOWHERE to be found. He had not returned from his drive the evening before. He was not answering his home phone, his office phone, or his cell phone. His wife had not seen him. His office manager had not heard from him. His cell phone rolled over to its messenger service instantly, indicating that it was not even switched on.
“This won’t help his case,” Michele said.
“If you find him,” I replied. We were eating breakfast at one of those archaic places just off the interstate that serve overcooked eggs, dispirited hash browns, greasy toast, and burnt coffee to people with too much inertia and too little gastronomic insight to drive a block further off their route. “So I’ll get to work anyway. I thought I’d give Julia a call
and ask her if she can fill me in on some of the politics around the Arapahoe aquifer.”
“Just don’t tell her anything she could repeat. We don’t want that angle out on the grapevine. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am. And what about Gilda? Where is she in all of this?”
“I forgot to tell you. She’s disappeared, too.”
“What
is
it with these people? You mean
disappeared
disappeared, or just not at home?”
“I’ve been up to the ranch looking for her, and her golf cart’s there, but she’s not. And no one’s seen her, or at least, no one who’s seen her since Tuesday is talking.”
“What are you thinking?”
Michele shook her head. “I can’t quite figure it. She told
you
—not me, I don’t rate—that she wasn’t going to sell the ranch for development, but I don’t believe that for a minute. But if she wants to win her lawsuit that would make her the heir, then you’d think she’d be sitting on that place like it was the golden egg.”
I said, “Well, what about all the rumors that organized crime is behind all this? The moves they make don’t always make sense to people like you and me.”
Michele made a gesture like she was swatting flies. “Everybody keeps saying that, and yes, the FBI has been looking at the Wildcat Estates development project, but that’s because they were looking at that earlier development project that was voted down, and they’re thinking that some of the same money is behind this one. But still I think it’s the local muscle that killed McWain. They’re all covering for each other, and we’ve got Attabury red-handed saying he wasn’t in Utah when we know he was. So how complicated does this have to be? Attabury flew him there and killed him and flew home. Gilda’s probably racked out in a health spa somewhere getting her cellulite gold-plated. She’ll be back.”
Fatigue settled in around my brain like lead. I was not feeling as positive about things as I had been the night before.
I looked out the window to the sky. “Well then, leave a message on her cell phone and wait for her to come to you. You don’t want to go out to that ranch in anything less than a four-wheel-drive today. It’s not looking good out there. The clouds are building up.”
“So it might rain. So what?”
“The soils are riddled with bentonite. That’s a swelling clay. You get it wet, and it turns to grease.” I pointed south along the mountains, as if we could see past the buildings. “And it’s too early for the thunderheads to be building. These mountains form what’s called an orographic high. The way the air rises and condenses around them, they seed their own clouds. You can about set your watch by the afternoon thunderstorms around Pikes Peak, which is less than fifty miles away. But this is different. These clouds are rising too early; it looks like some kind of front, which can make things messy, eh? So wherever you or I go today, we should keep in touch, because it won’t take very much rain to turn that road to snot and spin you into a ditch. Check in every hour by cell phone, okay?”
“Whatever.”
I stared at her. Had she slept at all? “Why didn’t the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department send someone out here with you?” I asked.
“
You’re
here.”
“That’s not enough, and you know it. They sent you out alone last Friday, too. Is that standard procedure?”
“No. My partner’s in the hospital, and the other two detectives are on that big LDS case. The one with the missing girls. The church finds it embarrassing and—”
I nodded. “Wants it solved fast. So a wayward gentile geologist from Colorado isn’t considered all that important, and they sent—” I managed to shut my mouth before I said any more, but Michele finished my sentence for me.
“The rookie. Not to put too fine a point on it.”
“Sorry. Well, where are you off to?”
Michele glanced at her watch. “The county courthouse
opens in five minutes. I’m off to find a warrant.” She grabbed the check and headed to the counter.
I dialed Carlos Ortega again but got his answering machine. I tried Tim Osner’s office, which was the only number I had for him. He was not in yet. I left a message saying that I was in Castle Rock wondering if he was up for a red clay hunt. As long as I had some waiting to do, I figured I might as well do what I was actually trained to do, collect trace evidence and analyze it.
Then I phoned Julia.
“You sound like you’re on a cell phone this time,” she said. “Does that mean you’re back in Colorado?”
“I’m in Castle Rock,” I said.
“What are you doing there?”
“I have some forensic samples to try to match. I was wondering if you could tell me how to find a few things.”

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