J. Jance - Day of the Dead

“All right,” the rep said brightly, coming back on the line. “There weren’t any Excels, but I can have a Bravo there at nine-thirty. So that’s one passenger departing from Pinal Air Park.”

“Wonderful,” he said.

“Any special catering requirements?” she asked.

“Scotch,” he told her, letting out his breath. “And plenty of ice.”

“Cars? A hotel?”

“Have a car meet me at the executive terminal in Mexico City,” he said. “I’ll decide on the hotel on the way.”

Brandon’s arm was bothering him again. He had forgotten about it for a while, but now it was aching like crazy. And the Suburban’s air conditioner didn’t seem to be pumping out enough cool air. Nerves, he told himself. And it was true. When his cell phone rang a few minutes later, Brandon jumped as though he’d been shot.

“Where are you?” Brian asked.

“Stuck in traffic northbound on Oracle at Orange Grove,” Brandon replied. “At least he’s not on I-19 headed for Nogales.”

“If he’s going north on Oracle, Stryker’s most likely going to his ranch,” Brian put in. “It’s The Flying C on the far side of the Tortolitas. That’s the address listed on his driver’s license-101 Flying C Ranch Road. Are you having any difficulty maintaining visual contact?”

“Are you kidding? We’re crawling along at such a snail’s pace I could walk fast enough to catch up, but I’m also in the Suburban. I’m five or six car lengths back. I’m high enough to see him, but I doubt he can see me. How about you?”

“PeeWee and I just left the department. With all the construction at I-19 and I-10, we’re taking surface streets. It may take us a while. Do you want us to use the siren?”

“Don’t bother,” Brandon said. “Traffic’s too heavy for that. I’ll keep you posted, but give me that home address again, just in case. I’ll key it into my GPS. That way, if I do end up losing him, I’ll still have some idea where he’s headed.”

After ending the call, he started messing around with the GPS controls. The obligatory warning came on, telling him not to make adjustments to the system while the car was in motion, but there was no danger of that. The Suburban was stopped cold at a traffic signal. As soon as the GPS system had located the address and mapped it, Brandon called Brian back.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “The Flying C is off Highway 79. It’s in Pinal County, not Pima. What’s going to happen if Bill Forsythe finds out you’ve strayed into another jurisdiction?”

“We’re just going to ask a pair of suspects a few questions,” Brian said. “No big deal.”

But Brandon knew that once Sheriff Forsythe heard what was going on, there would be hell to pay.

The lunchtime rush was mostly over. Diana and Lani sat at a table in the far corner of the room while Lani picked at her food.

“I never saw a Mexican combination plate you didn’t devour on sight,” Diana said to her daughter. “Is something wrong?”

Lani looked at her mother-her Mil-gahn mother-and shook her head. Lani still didn’t understand the terrible dread she was feeling-dread brought on by that vision of the flesh disappearing from Gayle Stryker’s face. And if Lani couldn’t understand it, there was no way she could explain it to her mother.

“I’m worried about Dad,” she hedged at last.

“Don’t be,” Diana said with absolute confidence. “Your father’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

Not without help, Lani thought. She pushed her plate away and gave her mother what she hoped was a convincing smile. “I’m full,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

She wanted to be back home-back in her room with the door closed. There, at least, she’d be able to sit on the floor with her legs crossed, hold Looks at Nothing’s crystals in her hands, and sing the song that had come to her earlier. As a medicine woman, it was all she knew to do. As a daughter, it was the best help she could offer.

Staying at a discreet distance, Brandon followed Larry’s LS 430 through Catalina, past Saddle Brook, and then off onto Highway 79 at Oracle Junction. When Larry slowed and signaled for a left-hand turn at Flying C Ranch Road, Brandon took his foot off the gas and then drove by with his face averted in case Larry happened to look in his rearview mirror. Brandon continued on up the highway another half mile or so before pulling another U-turn and parking on the shoulder.

Taking out his phone, he called Brian. “Where are you?” Brandon asked.

“Just past Oracle and Orange Grove,” the detective returned. “Traffic is the pits. We finally had to put on the lights and siren.”

“Don’t worry,” Brandon said. “Everything’s cool. Larry just pulled off Highway 79 onto Flying C Ranch Road. My GPS says that’s a dead end, so he’ll have to come back out eventually. I’m parked up the road a few hundred yards. When he comes back out, I’ll see him, but he won’t see me.”

“Sounds good,” Brian said.

“I’ve been thinking about all this while I’ve been driving,” Brandon added. “Larry was all upset when I brought up the possibility of his being the father of Roseanne Orozco’s baby. I’d talked to him about Roseanne yesterday. He kept his cool then, but the paternity issue threw him into a blind panic. If you and PeeWee can apply the screws…”

“With pleasure,” Brian returned. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Okay,” Brandon told him. “I’ll hang tight. See you when you get here.”

Larry’s phone rang again as he drove up Flying C Ranch Road. When he checked the readout and saw that it was Gayle, he didn’t answer that time, either. Obviously she knew now that he had left the office and was trying to track him down. Too bad!

He was still shaken by the phone calls to CitationShares, still astonished that she would betray him like that. He had always worried it might happen, though he had never really thought it would, though now it had. Gayle had turned on him, just as she had turned on Erik LaGrange, but with one big difference: Larry had figured out what was up in time to get his own damned plane. Gayle was on her way out of town; so was he.

When he drove into the yard, Gayle’s Lexus was nowhere to be seen. He had half expected that she might have beaten him here and he’d arrive to find the ranch house already reduced to rubble, but it wasn’t. She probably lied to me about that, too, he thought bitterly. She probably never planned to blow it up at all.

That was an appalling possibility. What if somebody stumbled into the basement room with its restraints and shackles and the rest of his equipment? He stopped the car. For a space of time he was too shaken to get out. He had cleaned things up as best he could, but he knew enough about current crime scene investigation to realize that tricky alternate-light sources could locate blood droplets that were invisible to the naked eye.

What should he do? If Gayle wasn’t going to destroy the evidence against him, should he try to do it himself?

No, he decided finally. Get the notebooks and get the hell out. Go wait at the airport. No one will ever think to look for me there…not at Pinal Air Park.

So Larry Stryker hurried into the house and on into the study. He’d had a wall safe installed there, behind one of the big oil paintings. And because Gayle had no idea the safe existed, it had been the right place for him to keep his notebooks.

He was upset enough that his hand shook as he worked the combination. It took three tries before he got it right. Swinging the door open, he grabbed up the notebooks. He shoved them into the open briefcase on his desk and slapped the lid shut. He turned back to the safe to close it and return the painting to its place.