LC 02 - Questionable Remains (32 page)

"Indeed?" said Lindsay, taking a bite of ice cream.

"I said yes, I found some things I liked very much," he
said, and Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Anyway, they went out
the back, and I reckoned that they had a private parking lot
behind the store. I left as quickly as possible without causing suspicion, though I don't suppose that would have mattered. I was in luck. Around back was a place I could hide
behind the Dumpster. I got a good shot by the car with the
telephoto lens."

"Perfect."

"I think so. We'll get it developed and send it off."

They drove to a one-hour photo store and waited for the
print to be developed, and Lindsay sent it by same-day service to Agent McKinley with instructions.

"Expensive," commented Derrick. "I hope they spring
for it."

"Right now I don't care," said Lindsay. "I want this over
with as quickly as possible."

Derrick reached for her hand and held it. "Are you feeling better?"

"I'll be all right. I may have to sleep with a night-light on
for the rest of my life, but I'm all right. Where to now?" she
asked.

"Dinner and dancing. We are going to relax the next couple of days before I have to go back to Cold River."

Derrick had found a small restaurant that had dancing.
There weren't many people there, the band was lousy, and
the lighting was too bright, but it was a welcome change
from the past few days and for a few hours Lindsay forgot
about Ken Darnell, Denny Ferguson, and caves. She laid her
head on Derrick's shoulder on the way back to the motel
and fell asleep. She jerked abruptly awake when they
passed a car with its lights on bright.

"You okay?" asked Derrick.

"Fine. Are we about there?"

"Almost."

They slept late in the morning and ate a late breakfast
in the motel restaurant. Lindsay kept looking at her watch
as she ate, wondering how Agent McKinley was faring,
wondering if he got the photographs. He'd said he would
take care of it himself. Had he? The Lambert farm was not
that far.

"You can't let it go, can you?" said Derrick.

Lindsay didn't realize she'd been gazing off in the distance and that Derrick had been trying to tell her about Cold
River.

"I'm sorry. No I can't. Not until I know who did this to me."

"You still think Kelley Banks was involved?"

"Yes, she's the one who knew Denny Ferguson. His body
type is not unlike Ken Darnell's."

"What about Ferguson's escape? How did she arrange
that?" asked Derrick over his coffee. "It's not an easy thing
to do, I imagine. I'm not saying you're wrong about her.
It's just that breaking someone out of jail's a tricky
process."

"I don't know. Maybe Ferguson did it himself and she
took advantage of it. I haven't figured that out yet," Lindsay
admitted.

"Okay. How did they do the dental x-rays?" asked
Derrick.

"I don't know that either. Maybe Kelley had Ferguson see
her dentist and somehow changed the name on the charts.
Maybe the fingerprint will provide a clue."

"I don't know, Lindsay. All this sounds too complicated
to me. I think you need a simpler hypothesis. I just can't see
her coming up with the plans and follow-through necessary
to break him out of jail and alter the records in a dentist's
office," said Derrick.

"If she had the help of her uncle Ken and his wife, Jennifer, she must have been in on it-and with their money,
she could have pulled it off," answered Lindsay.

"Still . . ." Derrick was unconvinced. "What motive
would Kelley have that would be worth the risk?"

"Money," answered Lindsay. "The combined insurance
policies were worth over a million and a half dollars.
Perhaps more. Kelley's just three years out of law school in
a struggling practice. She probably had lots of school loans
to pay back. I imagine her uncle and Jennifer didn't have
too hard a time tempting her."

"Maybe," said Derrick.

"Look," said Lindsay. "Lets go to a lake, rent a boat, and
relax all day. I promise I won't even think about any of this.
It will just be the two of us having a good time, and you can
tell me all about Cold River."

Derrick smiled and picked up the check the waitress left
on the table. "Sounds good to me."

It was dark when they arrived at the motel. Lindsay felt
relaxed and pleasantly tired. "I saw that Tremors is on TV
late tonight," she said.

"Haven't you seen that a dozen times?" asked Derrick.

"Yes, but it always cracks me up."

They changed clothes and curled up on the bed with their
backs against the headboard, supported by pillows, and settled in to watch the movie. Lindsay laughed herself silly.
Derrick, merely amused, shook his head at her and smiled.
During a commercial, he went to the vending machine and
brought them back cold drinks.

"All right," he said, opening a can and handing it to her.
"You've been good all day. I know you want to talk about it."

"What?" she said, smiling and sipping the cold drink.

Derrick ignored her. "Pitt and Hillard died first, and
probably in the same place, probably the cave, probably at
the time they were reported missing."

"It looks like you've been wanting to talk about it, too,"
Lindsay said.

"I do," he said.

Just then the phone rang. It was Agent McKinley. "Hello,
Lindsay. You put the place in quite a buzz up there."

"Yep. Did that."

"I've got some news for you. You were right on the
money. I got the picture of Ken Darnell from Grace Lambert
like you said, and our people made estimates of size from
the car he was standing by, blew up the face to actual size,
and did the same with Craig Gillett. My guy said that you
can't change some measurements, just as you said, like
pupil to pupil. They are virtually certain it's the same guy. I
saw the images superimposed. He's had a nose job,
implants in his chin and jaws, changed his hair color, and
taken up weight lifting. God, those people are thorough.
How did you get onto it?"

"Several things came together. Grace Lambert has Indian
ancestry, and it shows up in her bone structure and teeth.
When Craig smiled, I noted that he has edge-to-edge occlusion. That's more common among Asians and Native
Americans. It just clicked the other day after we discussed
Carabelli's cusp. And when the nurse I saw after the cave
experience suggested that a little sandpaper would erase
any scarring on my face, that got me to thinking about Ken's
so-called skiing accident in Colorado just before he disappeared two years ago. His sister, Grace, talked about how
banged up he was. I realized that he could have been recovering from plastic surgery and just pretending to have gone
to Colorado and had an accident. The broken leg during
their visit could have been an act."

"You sure do draw a lot of conclusions from one look
inside people's mouths, don't you?" Agent McKinley said.
Lindsay thought she detected a hint of incredulity in his
voice.

"Yeah, occupational hazard, I guess. What are you going
to do now?"

"I've called the police in McMinnville. They'll arrest Ken and Jennifer Darnell and hold them for the FBI. The Darnells
are implicated in four murders now. I've alerted the insurance companies. They are happy, as you can imagine."

"The Darnells have probably already left town," Lindsay
said. "People who plan as meticulously as they do would
already have an escape plan laid out."

"I don't doubt it," he agreed, "but they'll be found."

"I suggest that you might look for a way to check Kelley
Banks's financial records," said Lindsay. "I'll bet she paid
off her student loans and had money to invest. She's Denny
Ferguson's attorney and Ken Darnell's niece. She has to be
in on it."

"Poor Grace," said Lindsay, when she had hung up the
phone. "This isn't what she expected. I've no doubt she'll
regret the day she ever asked me to look into this for her."

"Look at it this way," said Derrick, putting an arm around
her. "Her brother is alive. You found that out."

"Yes, but this business is going to upset the whole family," she said.

"Are you thinking about the little girl?" asked Derrick.

"Marilee. Yes. She's so cute and so smart. But she's not
my little girl." Lindsay sounded wistful.

"You know, Lindsay-" he began.

"What?" she asked, sensing where he was headed.

"Now is not the time," he said, and Lindsay didn't pursue it.

They were quiet for a while, content to watch television.

"What was the purpose in waiting so long to have the
bodies discovered?" Derrick asked after a while.

"I suppose to completely divert suspicion. Jennifer was
already well off. They could afford to wait for such high
stakes," said Lindsay. "Maybe, too, they didn't have another body. They're not that easy to come by, you know, ones
that won't be missed or be identified as someone other than
who you want it to be. They have to be the right sex, the
right size, the right age, the right ethnic group. I guess they thought a convicted escaped killer who fit the description
would be ideal. Kelley sure had me fooled. She seemed to
really care about her client."

"Are you so sure about her involvement?"

"She has to be in it. The Denny Ferguson connection can't
be a coincidence."

"Anyway," said Derrick. "It's over for you."

"Yes," said Lindsay. "It's over for me."

ROBERTO LACAYO KNEW they were getting close to the place
where he had to make a decision: go to Santa Elena or go with
Piaquay. He was beginning to appreciate the beauty of this land.
Perhaps he had appreciated it for longer than he had been willing
to admit. Why had he not escaped long ago, headed to the far south,
looking for a Spanish fort? Because traveling alone in this land
is dangerous, he said to himself, but that wasn't all of it.

Piaquay stopped to make camp. It was earlier than he usually
stopped for the day, but Roberto quit trying to guess how he made
decisions. He watched the Indians in their usual practice of building rock pedestals on which to put their possessions, dragging up
a log to sit on. They never altered their habits in some things. In
others, such as building a fire to cook their food, they sometimes
did and sometimes did not. Roberto never understood why, and
they would not tell him. It came as a surprise to him how much lie
wanted them to like him.

He found a log he liked and could drag, and lie placed it near
them. They sat and ate while Nayahti told stories of the things he
saw while he was traveling. Roberto could understand a little of
what he said, enough to know he exaggerated, but he also knew
that Indians were born storytellers, constructing long, wonderful
narratives about places and animals, war and hunting parties.
Later, Kinua played his pipes. Roberto looked up at the green
canopy above him. It was like a cathedral. He closed his eyes and listened to the high-pitched melody drift around him. It was unlike
the music of his homeland. It reminded him of the deep forest,
green ferns, and flowing rivers of this land. He wondered if that
was what they thought about when they composed their music.

The music stopped, and Roberto opened his eyes. It had grown
dark, and his companions were making ready for sleep. Roberto
felt lazy. He also felt he had to answer a call of nature. He rose
from his log and walked into the woods.

He had just finished his task when he suddenly found himself
flat on the ground, a knife poised above him. His attacker was a
mere shadowy figure, but he heard the French curses. Roberto
tried to talk to him in the little French lie knew.

"Are you lost, as I? I can help you!"

Surely the man was mad to attack in the dark. They fought, but
he was strong, very strong, and Roberto was tired from the day's
travel. Then, just as suddenly as the man appeared, he was gone.
Roberto sat up, blinking back the blood running into his eyes from
a cut on his forehead. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and saw
that Piaquay had pulled the man off and slit his throat.

Roberto was breathing hard, gasping for air. Piaquay hauled
him to his feet and dragged him back to camp.

"Sleep," he said.

"What if there are more?" said Roberto, feeling his ears, realizing both of his lobes were torn and one of his earspools gone. He
winced as he thought he would have to cut the dangling tissue in
order to look normal.

"There are no more. Sleep." Roberto then saw Quanche and
Minque silently slipping back into camp.

In the morning, when the sunlight filtered through the green
canopy, Roberto and the others examined the dead man. There was
a fog in the woods, and the air was cool. Roberto shivered as he
looked into the face of his attacker. He had fair skin and hair and a
wispy beard. The man was half naked and thin. A madman,
thought Roberto, probably lost or held prisoner, perhaps tortured by the Indians or the Spanish. It could be either. He was
French. Roberto had felt the man's fear the night before. He felt sorry for him now. He understood how this strange land could
drive you mad with fear and loneliness, until you learned how to
live in it.

"I will bury him," said Roberto.

"Why not let the coyotes have him?" asked Piaquay.

"He was lost and afraid. I will bury him."

To Roberto's surprise, his companions helped him dig the hole.
They first softened the ground with sharp sticks, then found wide
thin stones to dig out the dirt. With all of them working, it did not
take long.

Roberto laid the Frenchman out in the grave, bowed his head,
and muttered a Latin prayer over him. He knelt and put the rosary
in the dead man's hand.

"This will help you, my lost friend," he whispered.

They covered him with dirt, and Roberto piled as many rocks as
he could find over the grave.

"Your beads," said Piaquay. "They were sacred to you."