Cry Wolf (4 page)

“I don’t know. Why? You don’t?”

“Don’t just go with what’s in here,” Frank said, touching a ghostly finger to his forehead. He pressed his finger to his bellied-out Sansabelts. “You gotta go with what’s in here.”

“In your pants?”

“
Jesus
, you’re getting a mouth on you. Your
gut
. Do you give your new partner that kind of crap?”

“I’ve changed.”

“Changed?”

“I’m more confident now. I know what I’m doing.”

“Then why do you need me?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who—”

“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to bounce things off me. But hey, if I’m not appreciated, I can go.”

And he faded away.

Laura stared at the spot where her former partner and mentor sat last. The bed was messy, but no messier for having Frank sit there. He was gone, except for a trace of his godawful cologne.

What had he asked her?

What do you think of Perrin?

Simple question. Who
else
would she be thinking about?

Laura started at the outside of the room and worked her way toward the center, taking photos of everything. She looked but didn’t touch; the unmade bed, the toothbrush on the clamshell sink in the bathroom, a squib of toothpaste in the sink. Toilet seat up. She took note: how long had he been married? Not long enough to adopt the habit a lot of married men did. Or was he just a rebel?

She smiled at that.

Was that how you proved you were a rebel in modern society?

She looked at the clothes jumbled in the suitcase.

Hiking clothes on a chair. Medium-expensive, she thought.

No Samsung Galaxy S III phone.

They would subpoena Sean Perrin’s phone records, which would give them access to every call he made or received. Even if the killer removed the SIM card or turned the GPS off and the phone was lying in a landfill somewhere, the calls would still be listed up to that point. They might not find everything, but it was a good place to start.

Anthony had already put a call in to the Las Vegas Metro PD to get the ball rolling. It would take a few days, but they would get the information in the long run.

Three framed photographs sat on a side table; a beautiful woman and two beautiful children.

Absolutely beautiful children. A stunning woman. Model-stunning. They could have been in Lands' End ads.

The photos were sunny. The faces were happy. Healthy. Scrubbed faces, American as Madison Avenue could make them. But they still looked like real people.

He’d caught them unawares, almost. Like he’d said, “Hey! Look here!” and his wife had turned to look at him. A quick smile.

The kids on the grass, watching ducks in a lake. Beautiful, beautiful kids. A boy and a girl.

Sean Perrin had quite a family, and quite a resume. Special Forces. Financial consultant. Whistleblower.

Maybe that was the key. He’d crossed the wrong person and now he was on the run.

He’d told Barbara Sheehey that he was married to a Ford model from LA. He’d told Cody Sheehey he had an estranged sister in Tucson.

His car was a rental.

Lots of undercurrents there. Lots of things that stood out, and piqued her interest.

Laura thought he’d been sitting in his car in the hours between eight and eleven, although she’d need confirmation on that from the M.E. She thought he was there after dark, because it would be more likely no one else would be there.

He’d sat there in the car and for some reason, closed his eyes. And then someone came along and shot him execution-style.

Laura said to the empty room, “Whoever you were running from, looks like they caught you.”

Fresh from his helicopter adventure, Anthony joined Laura at the cabin. Laura stood back and watched him look at the contents of the room. She wanted to see what caught his eye.

He went for the luggage.

“Nice clothes. Not too expensive, but nice.” He looked at Tess. “His watch was a knockoff made to look expensive. You know where he worked?”

“Mrs. Sheehey’s son, Cody, said he was a financial advisor.”

“In Vegas?” He answered for himself. “Probably. You want me to do that part? See where he worked and what was going on with him?”

Laura knew he liked that aspect of police work best. Back at the squad bay, kicked back in his swiveling chair, on the phone. Romancing people into telling him their darkest secrets.

“He has a sister in Tucson,” Laura said. “Apparently they’re estranged. We’re gonna have to run her down, too.”

Anthony had his phone out, checked it. “Shoot, no cell phone service.” He pocketed his phone. “I’ll go back to the farm and see what I can find. Insurance card, stuff he had to enter for Enterprise.”

“Why’d he rent a car?” Laura asked. “Why not drive his own?”

“Got me. You want me to help you here?”

“I’ve got it covered.” She believed in people doing what they did best. Anthony was good at everything, but he excelled at data collecting and doing his legwork back at the squad bay. She suspected that in down times, he was coming up with movie pitches and treatment ideas, but he was the best talker she’d ever seen on the phone. He could tease answers out of anybody. In person, though, he came off as overbearing. He towered over people, and some folks—most of them older—were intimidated by his bald head. This, she knew, was the reason he often adopted a porkpie hat. It made him look slightly goofy, but it took away the edge.

Just then tires crunched on gravel.

They went to the open doorway. A young woman dressed in skimpy running shorts and a clingy top emerged from a metallic yellow Ford Focus hatchback. She bent gracefully into the back for a bag of groceries, and stepped up onto the low porch to her cabin.

Anthony said, “On second thought, maybe I should stick around and give you a hand.”

Her name was Madison Neville.

Laura couldn’t ever remember looking that good. She felt a moment of regret, and then layered it over with her sterling career as a homicide detective, her superior sharpshooting skills, her interrogation chops, and her fiancé of three-and-a-half years.

Anthony stood back from the girl, porkpie hat cocked over one eye, looking casual, but Laura could tell he was in love.

“Sean? He’s dead? Really?” Madison asked after setting her groceries down on the small table in the pocket kitchenette. She stared at them both, her eyes like amethyst jewels.

“Did you know him to talk to?” Laura asked her.

“Yeah. I thought he was pretty nice.” From the look on her face, she might as well have said, “for an old guy.”

Embarrassed that they might think there was anything romantic between this twenty-something girl and a forty-three-year-old man?

At the age of thirty-seven, forty-three didn’t seem as old to Laura as it used to.

Normal.

Laura would never know for sure. She was going on instinct and the experience of seeing countless death scenes. But she was pretty sure Sean Perrin hadn’t seen it coming.

Literally.

Back at the squad bay, Laura got on the phone and spent a couple of hours calling motels in Winslow. She’d winnowed down the motels to within walking distance of the McDonald's at 1616 North Park Drive.

From Google Maps, she was able to see the area from above and also from Street View. The land looked as if it had been cleared for building, and new stores were going up near an old neighborhood. There were several motels in the neighborhood—an Econo Lodge, a Quality Inn, and a Motel 6.

Laura called the Winslow PD, identified herself, and talked to the desk sergeant there. She asked if there had been any shootings at the motels on Park near the interchange approximately two weeks ago.

“No shootings near the main drag.”

“None near the McDonald's on Park?”

“Not in the last two weeks.”

“How about before that?”

She could tell he was looking. “I’ll have to get back to you. Can you describe what you’re looking for?”

From the mouth of a congenital liar
, Laura thought. “We have a homicide victim here in southern Arizona, a white male forty-three years old, name: Sean Perrin.” She described him and the story he’d told Terry Delmonte—the woman who was with him, his trip to the McDonald's for breakfast, his discovery of the woman dead in the room. “We believe he was driving a 2006 Dodge Viper Red Clearcoat.” She read off the VIN number.

“You say he’s a homicide victim? Anything else we should know about him?”

“He’s a mystery to us,” Laura said. “But he was shot once in the head at close range with a .22. No evidence at the scene. Shot in his car.”

“Sounds like a hit.”

“Which is why I’m following this lead.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire? Can you describe this woman?”

“This is a guess, but she’s probably between the ages of twenty and forty. She would be a resident of Las Vegas. The name I was given was ‘Aurora’. She might have gone by another name. The last name, but not sure: Tattaglia.”

Laura knew the name was a shot in the dark. She was on shifting sands here. She thought about elaborating, but realized she’d only dig herself in deeper.

“So you’re sure he said McDonald's?”

“Yes.”

“There’s only one of ’em here. I’ll check and see if there’s a homicide in a motel, but I don’t recall anything like this.”

Laura thought:
all you can do is try
.

She got a call back the next morning.

“No record of anyone shot to death in any of the motels near the McDonald's,” the desk sergeant, Manny Contreras, told her. “But there was a death that fits your time frame. A woman died of an overdose at the Meteorite Inn.”

“The Meteorite Inn?”

“Yeah, it’s an old motel, kind of off the beaten track, but if they were hiding out as you say . . . ”

“A drug overdose? You sure?”

“To tell the truth, at first it did look like a homicide. She must have flailed around some, hit her head against the bed board and also on the chest of drawers. Turned out it was a drug overdose. Ketamine and PCP in her system, which fits with what we found.”