J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“He isn’t armed,” I said. “He flew up with carry-on luggage only.”

But after a moment’s thought I knew that idea was bogus. The last time I saw Jaime Carbajal, he hadn’t had a car, either. If he could get himself wheels, he could lay hands on a gun.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll need a description of his rental car along with license information.”

“I don’t have that right now,” she told me. “But I’ll have it by the time you call me back.”

I called Mel as soon as I was out of the house. “You’re going to have to cancel that mani-pedi after all,” I said. “I need you to meet me in Gig Harbor.”

“Why?”

“Because Jaime Carbajal has gone off the reservation,” I said. “He’s on the warpath and looking for Miguel Rios.”

“He never should have been a part of that first interview,” Mel said. “We both knew better. We should have put a stop to it.”

That was true, of course. It was also too little too late.

When Joanna changed clothes, her first wardrobe choice that early April afternoon would have been a pair of comfy jeans and a sweatshirt, but the way things seemed to be going, she settled instead for a freshly laundered uniform. On her way back out the door, she stopped in the office long enough to grab Derek Higgins’s memory card out of her home computer.

She was backing her Crown Victoria out of the garage when Agent in Charge Bruce Delahany called her back.

“What the hell is going on down there?” he demanded. “I thought you told me a little while ago that you were working on a case over in Bowie. Now you say it’s Washington State. Which is it?”

“Both,” Joanna said. “The answer would be both.”

“Who’s going to see Rios? And why?”

“Jaime Carbajal is one of my homicide detectives. His sister, Marcella, was found murdered a little over a week ago. Jaime is under the impression that Rios may have been responsible for what happened.”

Joanna’s comment was followed by a long stark silence. It went on long enough that she began to wonder if she had lost the connection.

“Hello,” she said. “Agent Delahany, are you there?”

“I’m here,” Delahany said at last. “Are you telling me Marcella Andrade is dead?”

It wasn’t the response Joanna had expected, and she didn’t remember having mentioned Marcella’s last name. That meant the agent in charge of the DEA’s Tucson office was in on all this.

“When did it happen?” Delahany asked. “Where?”

“Somewhere outside Seattle,” Joanna said. “In the mountains east of there. She had been dead for months with her body buried under the snow. They found her last week when the snow melted. The M.E. up there made the identification day before yesterday using computerized dental records.”

“Damn,” Delahany muttered. “I kept hoping like hell that she’d made it, but they got to her, too. Damn!”

“What do you mean, ‘got to her, too’?” Joanna echoed. “And who is ‘they’?”

“The cartel,” Delahany said. “The Cervantes Cartel. Who do you think I meant? They apparently have people everywhere, including inside the California State prison system. That’s why I pulled the task force out of the field and back into my office. I wanted to be able to control who had access to what we were doing and how. I didn’t want people to know where we were getting our information.”

“And where was that?” Joanna asked.

“Marco, of course,” Delahany replied. “Who else? The intel he gave us was invaluable. We heard rumors that the cartel had wised up about his turning against them. Then we heard rumors that they were planning a hit on him down in Lancaster. That’s why we moved him to Wild Horse Mesa.”

“In hopes of taking him out of harm’s way?”

“Yes,” Delahany said. “You can see how well that worked out for us and for him. They still managed to get him. Marco had told us that he was worried about Marcella’s safety, but by then she had already gone underground. Since we couldn’t locate her, I didn’t think they’d be able to find her, either.”

Wrong again, Joanna thought. “I still find it difficult to believe that Marco Andrade was working with you.”

“Well, he was,” Delahany declared. “The information he gave us was just a starting point. We’ve been building on it and putting the pieces together for months now. We’ve been planning a major takedown. In the next few weeks we expect to hand down a series of indictments that will take key players out of the Cervantes organization all over the country. And that’s what your detective-what’s his name again? — may be putting at risk.”

“Carbajal,” Joanna said. “Jaime Carbajal.”

“If he happens to spook one of them, he could spook them all. By the time we have our warrants in hand, the crooks will have disappeared.”

“Is Miguel Rios part of all this?”

“Of course he’s part of it,” Delahany said impatiently. “Miguel Rios is a major player. From what we’ve been able to learn, he pretty much runs the cartel’s prostitution interests in the Pacific Northwest. He also has the reputation of being the organization’s chief enforcer. Never caught and never indicted-up till now.”

Joanna thought about that. Wasn’t that what Beau and his partner were investigating-a whole series of dead prostitutes in Washington State?

“What do you mean, enforcer?” she asked aloud. “I’ve heard that the Washington State Attorney General’s office is investigating a series of murders involving prostitutes. Might this Miguel Rios be involved in those?”

“If they were his girls and they stepped out of line? Absolutely,” Delahany replied. “I’m telling you, Rios is a very dangerous guy and we’re close to shutting him down, but we can’t afford to have a Lone Ranger trying to take him out prematurely. Please, Sheriff Brady, talk to your detective. Ask him to back off. Beg him to back off. You can tell him from me that I swear we’ll nail Rios and his pals eventually, but we need some time-a few more days. A week at the outside. But right now, today, we’re not ready.”

Delahany’s words made sense, but Jaime Carbajal was already in motion. If he’d made up his mind to go after Rios, Joanna doubted there was anyone on the planet who could dissuade him.

“All right,” she told Delahany at last. “I’m not making any promises, but I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I need to make another call.”

But Agent Delahany wasn’t ready to hang up. “About Marcella,” he said. “Where exactly is the body?”

“In Ellensburg, Washington,” Joanna said. “In the morgue at the Kittitas County medical examiner’s office. I believe the remains are due to be released on Monday.”

“Will the family be bringing the body back to Arizona?” Delahany asked.

“Yes,” Joanna answered. “That’s why Jaime flew up there yesterday-to bring her home to Bisbee for burial. Why?”

“Regardless of what happens with the brother and Miguel Rios, please let the family know that my people and I deeply regret their loss. You can tell them from me that we’ll help with bringing Marcella home. It’s the least we can do.”

Joanna was surprised to hear the sound of genuine regret in his voice.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll let them know.”

“And one more thing,” Delahany added. “About that homicide situation over in Bowie-the one your guys are working on?”

“The Lester Attwood case?” Joanna asked.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Delahany said. “Once the dust settles on all this other stuff, you can let your detectives know that I’m pretty sure we have some surveillance videos that will help you sort out what happened there.”