The Advocate - 02 - The Advocate's Betrayal (29 page)

She tried to stand. “Just lie still. The paramedics are on their way.” There was a gentle touch on her arm and a woman’s voice. “I’m Aloma. I work for the lodge.” Sabre looked into the concerned face of a woman in her early fifties; her short chestnut hair was just starting to gray and lay tightly against her head, accentuating her olive skin. The woman put something under Sabre’s head to cushion it from the pavement.

“Luke…” Sabre’s voice was quiet. Her throat parched. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth. The woman leaned in closer to her. “Boyfriend Luke…at bottom of canyon…may be shot.” Sabre licked her lips and tried to go on. “Help him.”

“Your boyfriend was shot?”

“Yes. Help him.” Sabre could hear sirens in the distance. The crowd had grown larger. There were people standing all around her. She saw a man trying to move people away.

“Over here,” Aloma yelled. A man in a brown suit walked up. “This woman says her boyfriend was shot at the bottom of the canyon.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the man said and hurried off.

“Water. I need water,” Sabre said between parched lips.

Aloma stood up. “I’ll be right back. You lie still.”

Sabre lay there watching the commotion around her, seeing heads peeking around the cars trying to get a glimpse of what was going on. The sound of the sirens grew louder. Sabre pushed her body over a few inches to her right in an attempt to sit up. It took too much effort, and she suddenly realized the pain. She hurt everywhere. She lowered herself back down just as Aloma returned with a bottle of water.

Aloma knelt on the pavement; placed her hand under Sabre’s head, tilting it slightly upwards; and put the bottle to her lips. “Just a sip at a time,” she said as she gave her the water in small doses.

“Luke?” Sabre asked.

“Someone is taking care of it. They’re sending a helicopter down.”

The sirens were suddenly very loud and then stopped. Sabre could see the red lights blinking. When two paramedics approached, Aloma stepped back; they loaded Sabre on a stretcher and then carried her to the ambulance.

One hour and thirty-five minutes of interrogation later, after many questions with the same answers and a few phone calls verifying his information, JP was escorted to the plane. He wondered as he boarded if the big, blond guy had made his flight. He expected he was probably in lockup; tact didn’t seem to be his strong point.

The flight itself was uneventful, and Bob was at the airport when he arrived.

“How was your flight?”

“Fine, except getting on was a bitch. Have you talked to Sabre?”

“No. Just what do you think is going on?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. I know Lucas lied to Sabre about where he was going. He certainly seemed at home in the environment he was in. He was with another woman, but I don’t know if they were ‘together’ together. He was in the same house where I think Betty lived as a child, but I don’t know for certain. And then I was beaten up, which may or may not have anything to do with Betty or Lucas. There are just too many unanswered questions.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Since we can’t reach Sabre anyway, I’m going to go home and get a good night’s sleep. Then in the morning, I’m going to get up, go buy a new cowboy hat, and figure this out.”

Five hundred ninety-six dollars and fifty-one cents later, JP walked out of Wild Bill’s Western Emporium in El Cajon wearing a new black Stetson Silverton 6X and a pair of Tony Lama’s Full Quill Ostrich boots. The boots were on sale.

JP was rested, dressed, and eager to find out what was going on with Betty and Luke and whether or not they were connected. He called Bob and asked him to meet up at Jitter’s Coffee Shop in La Mesa.

JP bought coffee for both of them, took a seat outside, and waited for Bob who arrived within a few minutes.

“So, what did you need to show me?” Bob asked.

JP took out a folder and handed him a drawing he received in his email. “Look at this.”

“Looks like a drawing of a house, a very nice house. Whose is it?” Bob asked.

“This is the house Luke was staying at in Chicago.”

“So?”

“So I got the drawing from a woman named Mary Lou in Bristol, Wisconsin. I had her email it to me this morning. The picture was drawn by a young girl about thirty-five years ago named Edith Underdahl. She was Mary Lou’s best friend and she moved with her mother to Chicago when she was seventeen. Her mother was a maid in this house.”

“And you think Edith is Betty?”

“It’s just too coincidental to not be. Think about it. I follow a lead on Betty and it takes me to where Lucas is staying in Chicago when he’s supposed to be in Dallas. What do you think?”

Bob sipped his coffee. “How do we find out if Betty and Edith are the same person? Can you check her fingerprints? And haven’t the cops already done that?”  

“That may not work because they weren’t taking fingerprints of babies when she was born, and if she never had a driver’s license under that name it wouldn’t be in the system, unless she was arrested for something.”

“So, what do we do? Ask Betty?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. It’s time to confront her, but since I can’t reach Sabre I wanted to run it by you.”

“JP, if you’re right about this, then Luke is somehow involved.”

“And Sabre might be in danger.”

Bob tipped his head and raised his eyebrows. “Do you think Luke killed John?”

“I don’t know, but he lied about being in Chicago. Why would he do that? Even if he was having an affair, what difference would it make what city it was in?”

“And he spotted you and had you beat up?”

“Possibly. Some pretty tough guys hang out at Paceco’s—that’s the restaurant I followed Luke to—so it could’ve been just paranoia from someone else who didn’t want their business known. I’m just not sure.” JP shrugged. “So should I question Betty?”

“Absolutely.” Bob finished his coffee, stood up, and laid a tip on the table. “Did you watch the news this morning?”

JP sat his empty cup down. “No, why?”

“They arrested my client, Kurt K. Kemp, this morning for the murder of that young gay man who was killed in Perris a few weeks ago. They charged both of the Kemps with first degree murder.”

“Sabre believed they were involved in that murder because of something the kids had said. She got the investigation started. I guess that takes care of your trial.”

“They’re so crazy they’ll probably still want to fight it.” They walked toward their cars. “Hey, do you think I should bill for watching the news this morning?”

Sabre woke to the smell of disinfectant, her arm connected to an IV. Her muscles ached, but her body was rested. She glanced around. The bare eggshell walls in the private room stared back at her. The only color came from the bouquet of flowers on the stand next to her bed.

“Are you awake?” Luke said, as he walked in the room.

“Luke!” Sabre’s face brightened with the sight of him. “You’re okay. Are you okay? You look okay.”

“I’m okay,” he said, leaning over and kissing her eager lips. “How do you feel this morning?”

“Much better. I think I just needed some liquid.” She stroked his face. “What happened down in the canyon?”

Luke squeezed her hand and then explained. “That guy held a gun to my head for a while, but then he went to tie me up and I was able to get a punch in. That really ticked him off, so he hit me with the gun and knocked me out. When I woke up I was tied to his dead buddy and couldn’t move.”

“The other guy was dead? Did I kill him?” Sabre’s voice choked up.

Luke shook his head and squeezing her hand said, “No. He’d been shot.”

“I heard the shot. I was sure it was you. All I could think of was going for help. I started up the mountain hoping I could meet up with someone along the way, but everyone was gone. I barely made it to the top and that big guy grabbed me. If it hadn’t been for that security guard I’d probably be dead now.”

Luke gently kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her chin. “Thank God.”

“How is the guard? There were two of them. Do you know if they’re all right?”

“One of them was hit in the right shoulder, but he’s going to be okay. I’m sorry, Sabre, but the other one didn’t make it. Apparently, he was dead before he reached the hospital.”

Although Sabre fought the tears, they still wet her cheeks. “He was trying to save me. He did save me. It just isn’t fair.”

The tall, blond doctor walking up to her bedside reminded Sabre of her brother she so badly missed. “How’s my patient this morning?”

Luke stepped back while the doctor examined her.

“You tell me. May I go home?”

“Probably.” The doctor examined her eyes, listened to her heart, and had her squeeze his hand. “How do you feel?”

“Just peachy. May I go?”

“Have you been up this morning?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s see how you do. Stand up.” He took her arm as she stepped out of bed. “Do you feel weak?”

“Not so much.”

“Take a few steps.”

Sabre walked to the end of the room, turned around and walked back, and smiled. “Well, Doc?”

He looked at his chart again and then at her. “I’ll sign you out, but be careful the next few days, and drink lots of liquids.”

By ten o’clock Luke and Sabre were heading west toward San Diego. Sabre, eager to get home asked, “Do we need to stop or can we make this in one day?”

Luke patted her knee. “Whatever you feel up to, honey. I’m fine with driving the distance if you can make the ride.”

“I feel pretty good.” Sabre picked up her cell phone. “Dang.”

“What’s the matter?”

“My phone is dead. I should call Bob and let him know I’m okay. He’s probably worried.”

Luke looked at her and smiled. “Bob is just fine. He knows you’re with me, and he doesn’t know anything about the incident last night, so he has no need to worry.”

“That’s true.” Sabre stared ahead.

“But you’re welcome to use my phone if you feel the need to talk to him. Just don’t stay on it long because I don’t have a lot of juice, either, and you never know if we might need it in an emergency.”

Sabre reached for the phone, then stopped. “You’re right. It can wait. I’ll call him later.”

“Whatever you think. Why don’t you put your seat back and sleep. We’ll be home before you know it.”

As he drove down the open highway, Luke brought number six up on the CD display and punched it in. Michael Bolton blasted the first line of “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,” waking Sabre. She sat up, startled, looked quickly at Luke, and then smiled. “You may as well shoot me as scare me to death.”

Luke clenched his jaw, shrugged his shoulders, and winked. “Sorry,” he said, as he turned the volume down.

Jails all smell the same, like urine and disinfectant
, JP thought, as he sat waiting for the guard to bring Betty to the interview room. Although his work had taken him into many jails and prisons, he had only spent one night in a jail prior to this trip to Chicago. Young and foolish and on leave from the Marine Corp, he tried to take on four sailors in a bar; after all, he was a marine. A fat lip, a bloody nose, and one free night in the Graybar Motel later, he’d learned his lesson. It takes two marines.

Betty entered. She looked older. “Hi Betty. Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah.” She looked at JP’s face. “What happened to you?”

“Wrong place, wrong time.” JP reached into his file and took out Edith’s drawing. He held it up for Betty to see, watching her facial expressions as he raised the paper. “Pretty nice drawing, wouldn’t you say?”

Betty’s eyes closed for just a second. Her neck stiffened. “Very nice.”

Her reaction was minimal. JP surmised her many years of deception had taught her to not react. She was good. “It was drawn by a woman named Edith Underdahl.”

Betty looked down. Then just as quickly she looked JP straight in the eye. “She’s quite the artist.”

JP needed to know how good she was at this game. How far was she willing to go with her lies? Would she sacrifice Sabre? Or maybe she wasn’t Edith and he had hit another dead end. He asked, “Do you know who killed John?”

“No.”

“Was it you?”

Her head jerked up. “Of course not. I loved him.”

“Are you Edith?”

“Me? Edith?” JP did not respond. After a few seconds, Betty continued. “No. I’ve given you my information and who John really is. And what does all this have to do with whoever killed John?” Betty seemed a little irritated. “Why aren’t you looking for his killer instead of showing me drawings of castles?”

“You’re right. I just keep hitting dead ends with John, er, Jim. Did he have anything in his past that might lead to this? After all, he did change his name and fake his death.”

“I told you, that was to avoid the IRS.”

“The IRS doesn’t usually kill people who don’t pay their taxes. They have a hard time collecting if they do.”

“I know. I’m just saying there was no one else.”

JP stood up. “If you think of anything, no matter how insignificant you may think it is, please let me know.”

“Sure, and will you tell Sabre to come see me?”

“Of course.” JP saw Betty’s mouth turn down, her shoulders slump, and sadness fill her eyes.

JP called Sabre on his way back to his house. It went straight to voice mail. “Sabre, please call me as soon as you get this. I have some information about Betty’s case I need to run by you.” Just as he hung up, he received a phone call from Bob. “Have you heard from Sabre?” JP asked.

“Yes. She just called. They’re on their way home from the Grand Canyon.”

“The Grand Canyon? But she’s okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. We didn’t talk long because she was using Luke’s phone and it needed to be charged. Sabre’s phone was dead, and they wanted to make sure they had a phone if they needed one.”

“Did she say how long they’d be?”

“Two or three hours. I think they were almost to Barstow.”

“Good, that gives me enough time.”

“Time for what?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’d let you help me, but I may need you to represent me.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. JP, don’t do anything stupid.”