Triple Exposure (16 page)

Sunday, March 9

Marlene’s breath rushed from her, an explosion of relief. Finally, they had a location. A real, confirmed location where her mother had been. And better yet, it was right here in Albuquerque, where Marlene had spent the past few days searching fruitlessly. She’d been almost ready to pack up and leave, frustrated beyond measure with her mother, who appeared intent upon remaining missing.

“Marlene, honey, are you
crying
?” Dan asked over the cell phone.

“No, no.” She wiped her face and gripped the steering wheel of an SUV she could no longer remember renting and struggled to recall the smell of him, the warmth and solidity of his arms wrapped around her. “I’m just a little overwhelmed, that’s all. I’ve spent three weeks chasing shadows.”

Or chasing
ghosts
, she thought with a shudder. From Wilmington, Delaware to Tulsa, Oklahoma, she’d been stunned to find her brother’s former “friends” as dead as he was. Surely, it must be coincidental. It
had
to be, for the last of the group, the one now residing in this city was very much alive, working as a construction manager for a builder
of suburban custom homes. On the pretext of talking over old times, she’d convinced him, during a brief phone call, to meet her for coffee this morning near his work site. She only hoped he’d tell her that he’d neither seen nor heard from her mother.

“Three long weeks,” Dan said, his voice reminding her he wasn’t happy about running the house hold and tending both boys on his own. Though he’d made a valiant effort not to dwell on it too much, he’d dropped hints that he would have to work a lot of overtime to pay the mounting bills.

Marlene—who had long since lost track of the days—glanced down at the address she had jotted in the white border at the masthead of today’s
Albuquerque Journal
. Her stomach knotted, and a rush of adrenaline quickened her pulse. “So the police are sure it’s really her?”

“Oh, yeah. The detectives brought over a surveillance photo from the ATM. It was grainy, but it sure looked like your mother.”

She breathed again, and Dan reported, “She stopped by around eight thirty yesterday morning, got a cash advance on one of her credit cards.”

“Her first mistake.” The newspaper slipped from Marlene’s trembling hands and collapsed into a jumble at her knees. Up to this point, her mother’s debit and credit cards had not been used. “So how did she look?”

“Hard to tell. Those images—they’re only black and white, and this one was kind of fuzzy, like the camera lens was grimy. No other people in the photo, so she’s probably traveling alone.”

“That’s what that clerk back near Tulsa told me.” The motel had been of the sleazy variety, an old motor court built off a highway whose prominence had given way to a more modern freeway years before. The kind of down-on-its-luck, mom-and-pop place where no one minded cash customers, whether they stayed for an hour or a week. Or three days, in the case of Mary Alice. Marlene had been a
week behind her—until the police had brought Dan the news of this break. Though it seemed clear Mary Alice had left of her own volition, the authorities had taken her disappearance seriously. Not because of
who
she was, they had been careful to emphasize, but because she was considered at risk due to what they were calling a “mental defect.”

“How was she dressed?” Marlene asked next. Though she’d expected warmer weather, it was still cold in Albuquerque, a bitter cold that rode the gritty wind. “Was she wearing a jacket? Did she look upset, disheveled?”

She left the most important question unasked.
Does she look
completely unhinged? Maybe even homicidal?

“I’m sorry, Marlene. I don’t really remember, except she had on some kind of floppy hat—maybe that one you gave her last Christmas.”

“The gray one? Kathy sent that,” Marlene corrected automatically as she mentally filed the detail.

“Listen, honey, I know this news is encouraging, but your mother may have been picking up more cash because she was about to leave town again. Which reminds me…In the background of the surveillance photo, you could see the back end of a vehicle. Something big and dark and boxy. Definitely an SUV.”

Leave it to Dan, a mechanic at a luxury car dealership, to notice the vehicle, yet recall almost nothing of her mother’s facial expressions, clothes, or grooming.

“I’m pretty sure it was some sort of Jeep,” he added, “probably an oh-six or seven Commander.”

Oh, God. The Jeep. Marlene’s head throbbed as she thought of the murdered man in Tulsa. According to the newspapers, the police suspected a carjacking. His Jeep Commander—a dark green 2007 model—hadn’t been recovered. But Marlene couldn’t bring herself to voice the suspicion that was now becoming certainty. How could she do that to her mother, who so clearly needed help? Not incarceration or, even worse, a chase that might end in tragedy.

Marlene had to find her quickly. Stop her, and get her declared incompetent so she could legally take charge of her mother’s treatment.

“The Albuquerque Police Department’s been notified,” Dan told her. “Maybe we should let them take over from this point.”

“No,” Marlene snapped. “I’m driving to the ATM address right now. I—I’ll show people her photo at convenience stores and gas stations in the area, then look around for the kind of motels she’s been staying in—”

“Surely, the police are better equipped to investigate this—”

“I said
no
, Dan. The police here don’t know my mom, and I can’t imagine she’d be much of a priority. But she’s a priority to me. I know you don’t understand that, the way she’s been for so long.”

“I understand,” he said gently. “But I’m starting to get scared, Mar. Scared about you running all over the country, talking to people in bad neighborhoods and staying in seedy hotels to save money.”

“I’m not—”

“You are and we both know it. Probably living off cheap fast food, too, and feeling terrible by this time.”

He was right on all counts, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

“I’m worried about your safety,” he went on. “I’m worried about your health. But most of all, I’m worried…”

“What, Dan?” she prompted, afraid he was going to bring up their financial situation, or twist her guilt about “abandoning” their boys. Nervously, she picked up the paper and straightened crumpled pages.

“I’m worried—and Kathy’s called twice. We’re concerned that this search is starting to turn into some sort of crusade. That you’re in danger of slipping into the same type of obsession that’s destroyed your mother’s life. Don’t let it destroy ours, too.”

“I’m not her, Dan. I’m not. And for someone whose life
has more drama than the TV listings, my sister has a heck of a lot of nerve criticizing
my
behavior.” Marlene was still aggravated by Kathy’s refusal to accept any responsibility for their mother.

Marlene blew out a soft breath, missing her family so much that it felt like a blade twisting deep inside her. Were Dan and Kathy right? Was she, like her mother before her, turning her back on those remaining in favor of the one person who had forever slipped beyond her reach?

It’s not the same. She’s not dead. At least not yet
. And Marlene’s father, her dear father—how could she let him down by giving up when she was so close to where her mother was, or had been?

“A few more days,” she assured her husband. “If I haven’t found her by then, I promise I’ll come home.”

“Sure, Marlene.” The disappointment in his voice reminded her she had made the same promise last week. “You let me know when, because I don’t want to get the boys’ hopes up again, not until it’s certain.”

She ended the call, telling him she had to drive to Rio Rancho, a suburb to the north, to meet a man who might have seen her mother.

When he didn’t show, she tried to call him at his office but only got a voice mail. But the recorded message at least gave her the name of his construction company. By asking around, she was able to find the nearby neighborhood where he was working.

Which was how Marlene came to find his body, crumpled near the blood and hair-encrusted front end of a dark green Jeep Commander with Oklahoma plates.

Wednesday, March 12

When her cell phone’s ringing woke her, Rachel hesitated, mentally bracing herself for another ugly onslaught from her favorite psycho stalker. But the pearled sliver of sky showing through the window shutters announced that it
was morning, and the clock read 6:58 am. Since the psycho had never called at this hour, Rachel figured it was probably her dad with another of his get-right-back-on-the-horse-that-threw-you pep talks about flying. Lately, he’d started tossing off statistics citing the rarity of glider mishaps as compared to powered aircraft.

She’d almost rather start her day with Nut Case Woman. But when she glanced at the lit screen, she saw it was Harlan Castillo calling.

She’d gone to see him about her phone calls and found him still the same fireplug of a specimen she’d remembered, with his short limbs and barrel chest. At one time he’d been into weightlifting, and he still looked it, though the years had threaded silver through his black hair and deposited a slight paunch around his middle. Like a majority of the local residents, he prided himself—and had probably been elected sheriff—on his Mexican surname. But both his English and his blue eyes put that heritage several generations in the past.

“Morning, Sheriff,” she said. “You’re up and at ’em early.”

“I don’t believe the woman harassing you is here in Marfa,” he said without preamble.

Stretching, she pushed her sleep-tossed hair from her eyes. “You’re sure about that?”

“I’ve been asking around all week. Checking out hotels, the inn, anyone who rents a casita. Talked to people at the cafés, the bookstore, even at the grocery store,” he said. “No one’s seen anybody suspicious. Especially not a lone female who can’t be accounted for.”

Rachel was grateful he’d taken her complaint seriously enough to check around. She’d heard Patsy make a number of disparaging comments about her ex through the years, but to Rachel, he seemed both competent and genuinely concerned. Troubled by the timing of her crash, he’d been quick to talk to the NTSB investigators, who felt that her hard landing was probably related to a defective canopy
latch and not to carelessness as Dr. Thomas had implied. Every time she thought about him saying,
Worry takes a lot of
mental energy; it’s fatiguing. And denial, even more so
, she wanted to call him back to shout, “
I told you so!
”

But to do that, she’d have to talk to him, and it wasn’t worth the aggravation. Nor the cold pit that opened in her stomach each time she remembered what else he’d had to say.

“Did you check the RV park?” she asked the sheriff. “And what about the lodges outside of town, like the hot springs down near—”

“Have you heard from her again since last week?”

“Not another word,” Rachel admitted as she grabbed the brush she’d left on the dresser and pulled it through her hair. Or tried to.

“Maybe she thinks she scared you into crashing,” he suggested, “so she’s left town to go on about her twisted little life.”

“That’s a charming thought.” Holding the phone with her chin, Rachel worked to separate a tangle with her fingers. “But I could live with it if I thought she’d stay away.”

“It’s also possible she was never in the area in the first place.”

“What about the train whistle?” Rachel winced as she pulled too hard and tore free several hairs. “Surely, you’re not telling me that was some kind of coincidence. That wherever she was calling from, there was a train at the same time.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind. I was thinking, Ms. Copeland—”

“Rachel,” she automatically corrected, reverting to West Texas informality.

“I was thinking,” Harlan went on, “stress can warp the way we see things. Or hear or smell or—”

“I get your drift.” A paranoid suspicion, blasted through her consciousness.
Impossible
. “You’re thinking I imagined the whole conversation.”

“I’m not saying that. Patsy—” There was a sudden shift in his voice, a tension that made Rachel glad she hadn’t been there when Patsy and Harlan spoke for what might have been the first time in twenty years. “—
Mrs
. Copeland corroborated that a woman’s been harassing you by phone. But it might be possible that the whistle you
thought
you heard—”

“I
heard
it,” Rachel insisted.

“You said you were upset when you recognized the voice, right? Probably a little scared, too—I know I would be.”

“I was
angry
, mainly,” she said before admitting, “and yes, I was upset. So I’ll admit it’s possible I might have imagined that train whistle coming from the phone when I was really only hearing the one here. But you’ll have to admit I could be right about it, too.”

“You might be,” said Harlan. “Now I want you to promise to call me if you hear or see anything suspicious. And I’m serious as a heart attack about that. Your stepmother says she’ll have my cojones if I cost her another child—”

The brush flipped out of Rachel’s hand and clattered to the wood floor. She didn’t know which shocked her more, the idea that Patsy considered her her child, or the possibility that she’d once had another. Unable to contain herself, Rachel stammered, “You—you mean that you and Patsy had a—?”

She cut herself off, appalled by what she’d blurted out. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that wasn’t any of my business.”

“Patsy and I were never blessed with children.” Regret hung like a pall over Harlan’s voice, though Rachel knew he had three strapping sons—all talented football players at the high school—by his second wife. “As for the rest, it’s all old business. I shouldn’t have brought it up. And if you’re thinking of asking Patsy—I wouldn’t poke that particular anthill. She was always the type to keep the past in the past and her private troubles private.”