Cry Wolf (3 page)

His complexion was mottled strawberry and cream—like her partner Anthony, he didn’t seem to tan. Black curly hair, a broad face like his mother.

He was wiping his face and sniffling.

Laura said, “Hey.”

He swiped at his nose and looked at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m Detective Laura Cardinal. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Mind if I sit? My feet are tired.” She motioned to the post and rail fence.

“Free country,” he said. He threw more gravel, picking it out of one cupped hand and flinging it.

Laura sat. She stared at the quaint, rustic cabins. Must have been built in the twenties, her guess. As she recalled, they didn’t even have satellite TV here. She sat and listened to the pinging of gravel on gravel. Got down, got herself some gravel, and started throwing it herself.

“What are trying to do? Pretend you’re just like me to get me on your side?”

Smart kid.

Laura swiveled her head to look at him. He looked straight ahead, but she knew he was aware of her scrutiny.

“I’m going to level with you,” she said. “I’m here to find out who killed Sean Perrin, but I need help. I need cooperation or we might never know who did it. You were friends, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you might know stuff nobody else knows, okay? If you were any kind of friends at all—”

“We
were
friends. Good friends!”

“Then maybe you can help me find out who did this.”

He stared straight ahead. “You’re scamming me. You’re just trying to get me to—”

“What? Talk about him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a problem with that?”

She saw a tear shine his eye, spill down his cheek. He shoved his fist to his eye and swiped hard. “Shit!”

Looked at her defiantly.

Laura said, “‘Shit’ is right.”

He slid off the fence. “I’m going for a walk.”

She remained where she was. He started walking along the road. Got about twenty yards from her and turned back to look at her. “You coming?”

Later, Laura would realize that that was the moment she hit the Mother Lode.

Or more accurately, she’d put together the first section of the jigsaw puzzle that was Sean Perrin.

Laura liked jigsaw puzzles. They framed her thinking in an entirely different way. If she was trying to work out a seemingly unsolvable problem on a case, she would pick out a jigsaw puzzle and set up the card table on their screened-in porch.

The jigsaw puzzle took her mind off the subject at hand. Just thinking about something else allowed her mind to range free. Her long-deceased mentor, Frank Entwistle, had told her that sometimes you had to step away from a case and let it work on the subconscious.

When she worked a jigsaw puzzle, her brain was busy concentrating on the mechanics of fitting one piece to another. She’d work on one section, putting together several of the more obvious pieces, until that section played out. Then she’d look around for other pieces that might connect, and start a whole new section. Eventually they would inch toward each other until she zeroed in on the last piece.

By not thinking about her job, she let her mind rest. And often, her mind broke through barriers and she would end up with a revelation.

Cody and Laura took a trail to Madera Creek down below the cabins. Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop.

Sean Perrin had spent a lot of time hanging out with Cody.

He was former military—Special Forces. He showed Cody some interesting fight moves—what Sean called “basic stuff”—and told him stories about firefights in the Korengal Valley, and the time most of his platoon was wiped out.

He had a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

After the military Sean worked for a defense contractor, but quit when he realized how dirty that business was.

Sean told Cody his own son’s name was Cody, but he was a lot younger.

“What about his daughter? What was her name?”

“Tabitha—Tabby for short. His wife’s name’s Gina. Are they coming out here?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t yet contacted the next of kin. Did Sean mention anyone he had a problem with? From around here?”

“He said he was estranged from his sister in Tucson. That means they didn’t talk, right?”

“Do you know her name?”

He shrugged. “He just called her ‘Miss Priss.’”

They’d find her.

“What else can you tell me about him?”

Cody was picking his way from boulder to boulder, every once in a while tossing sticks into the creek.

“He lived in Las Vegas. He worked for a . . . I dunno, I forget. A bank? He said he was a . . . ” He screwed up his forehead. “
financial consultant
.”

“Anything you can remember about that?”

“He said . . . he said he got fired because he flagged an account, something about a well-connected mob guy. He said he was on the run.”

“On the run?”

“He said he had to leave his family behind because he might put them in danger. From the mob guy.”

Laura said, “Did he have a phone?”

“Oh, yeah. A Galaxy S III. Don’t you guys have it?”

Laura knocked on the other doors, but judging from the number of cars in the lot—hers, the Forest Service ranger’s truck, and Barbara Sheehey’s station wagon—most of the guests were out.

The place was quiet. Just the occasional blurt of the radio in the ranger truck. She talked to the ranger, David Bolings, in the mellow sunlight, as he ate a sandwich he’d gotten from the Subway in Continental.

Small talk, mostly, but she did learn this. Bolings wasn’t first at the scene, but he’d arrived shortly thereafter.

“So I high-tailed down here as soon as we found out it was a secondary crime scene,” he said.

“Anyone coming and going?”

“Not since I been here. Quiet as a tomb, except for the boy.”

“You know the Sheeheys well?”

“Pretty much. The kid’s pretty cool. Mrs. Sheehey has a temper, but she’s got it rough taking care of this place by herself, so who can blame her?”

“Have you met any of the other guests?”

“The birders. Just to say hi to. Oh, and I’ve noticed the girl.”

“The girl?”

“Maybe not a girl. She looks like she’s in her early twenties. I guess that would be out of girl territory?”

Laura ignored that. “Ever talk to her?”

“No. She’s been here for a week or so. A looker. Don’t tell my wife I said that.” Wink.

Okay, he didn’t wink, but he might as well have.

“Did they all leave?”

Bolings shrugged. “No idea. You want me to go in with you?” He nodded toward Perrin’s cabin.

“No, thanks.”

The fewer people in a crime scene, the better.

He looked a little put out. “Okay, then. Just give me a holler if you need me.” And he went back to his sandwich.

For the second time today, Laura donned gloves and booties. She stepped onto the porch and into the deep shade. Cool, almost chilly. Even though it was very warm in the sun.

It was like moving into another sphere.

She thought of it as the victim’s place to go to ground, to be himself. His home, or the place where he stayed if he was on the road. Where he kicked off his shoes, where he slept, where he showered, where he watched TV.

This was a venue that always changed from circumstance to circumstance, but in one respect it remained the same. It now belonged to her. She owned it. She owned whatever she could learn from this secondary crime scene, and she would try like hell to make no mistakes. A bell, once rung, reverberates.

This was where the majority of her successful homicide investigations really started.

With the victim’s den.

The room was paneled with an oak or pine veneer, and dark. The cream-colored curtains—cheap and nubbly—turned the outside sunlight into a garish orange glow that seeped around the edges and gleamed off the walls.

The bed was unmade and a suitcase sat on a folding luggage rack near the bathroom. A robe hung on the bathroom door.

Laura was looking at the suitcase when she felt the room temperature change. One moment it was warm, and the next, cold enough to raise goosebumps.

Her eye went to the mirror on the bathroom door. More specifically, to the
reflection
in the mirror on the bathroom door.

A man sat on the edge of the bed.

The last time Laura saw Frank Entwistle she’d suggested he read up on ghosts to get an idea of how they conducted themselves, since he seemed to do such a slovenly job of it.

He looked old and tired. Like a deflated balloon in his Sansabelt slacks circa 1989. Cheap button-down shirt, blazer, Hush Puppies loafers, a Daffy Duck tie.

Lately Frank had taken to wearing cartoon character ties. The first time she’d seen him in one, she thought it had been due to indigestion brought on by some pork ribs.

But it turned out to be a trend.

“Scare you?” he said.

“That ship sailed a long time ago.”

“Thought you could benefit from my encyclopedic knowledge and razor-sharp instincts, kiddo. That’s why I’m here.”

“You know what I think?” Laura said. “You miss it.”

“I’m dead. I don’t miss anything.”

Laura said, “I missed you—can you believe that?”

“Sure I believe it. Just didn’t think you’d want me showing up, since you finally got a man. Thought it might embarrass you if I showed up at the wrong time.”

A considerate ghost. Go figure. An old-fashioned, considerate ghost. Laura felt as if she’d stepped into a
Mad Men
episode, if the characters in
Mad Men
wore cheap clothes.

Frank said, “Does he know about me?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“He doesn’t think you’re crazy?”

Laura thought about it. “No. I think we’re beyond that. He
knows
I’m crazy.”

Frank smiled at that, then rubbed his tired-looking face. “Probably should keep it that way. I just wondered what you thought about this guy. Perrin.”

“I’m not sure. The boy who lives here said he was in Special Forces.”

“You really think that?”