Parking on O.K. Street and setting the emergency brake against the steep incline, Joanna climbed out of the Blazer. Next to a narrow concrete stairway marked “ 116” was a sturdy wooden lean-to that passed as a garage. Inside was a blue Ford Escort, but a silver Taurus station wagon was nowhere in sight.
Climbing the flight of thirty-two steep stairs took stamina. Joanna was breathless by the time she reached the top and found herself standing in a postage-stamp-sized yard perched on the flank of the mountain. Inside the yard stood a small frame house. Carmen Flores came to the door before Joanna raised her hand to knock.
“Come in,” she said. “Lewis still isn’t here.”
“Have you found a note or anything that might give us a clue about what he’s up to or where he went?”
Carmen shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.
“Can you tell what he was wearing?”
“His work clothes are all in the closet. I checked.” “He goes hunting, doesn’t he?” Joanna asked.
Carmen’s face suddenly brightened. “Maybe that’s it,” she offered eagerly. “It’s whitetail season right now, isn’t it? That’s probably what happened. Lewis went hunting and just forgot to tell me about it. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that on my own.”
The woman seemed to be grasping at straws, but Joanna didn’t want to be responsible for snatching away Carmen Flores’ last vestige of hope. “Where does he keep his limiting gear?” Joanna asked.
“In a little shed out back,” Carmen said. “I It, keeps every thing out there in a trunk except for his guns. Not as much clutter that way. Come on. I’ll show you.”
The shed out back had an open padlock hanging from a hasp. Inside was an empty steamer trunk. “See there?” Carmen said triumphantly. “It’s all gone-his vest, boots, cap, everything. I’m sure one of his buddies must have called to invite him on a hunting trip, and he didn’t have time to let me know.”
“Doesn’t he carry a cell phone?” Joanna asked.
“He left it home or else he forgot it,” Carmen said. “He does that sometimes. I found it just a little while ago, still on the kitchen counter, sitting in its charger.”
Joanna was sure the phone had been left behind deliberately, and she was equally convinced that the hunting trip Lewis Flores was on had nothing to do with whitetail deer. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell Carmen Flores what she feared to be the truth. Not just yet. She also knew she couldn’t afford to wait around the Floreses’ house to find out if she was right. Too many lives were at stake.
“I’ll tell you what,” Joanna said as she watched Carmen carefully replace the lid on Lewis’ empty steamer trunk. “Why don’t I leave you to handle things here. I have one or two other matters to clear up. Is there anyone who could come stay here with you tonight-your folks, maybe?”
Carmen shook her head. “Mother can’t get up and down the stairs anymore. That’s why she and Daddy moved out of the house to begin with. I might call my sister, though. Rose could probably come over. But really, there’s no need. I’m sure Lewis is out hunting. Just wait. He’ll turn up around midnight with a big buck strapped to the luggage rack. I’ll spend the whole weekend making tamales.”
“All the same,” Joanna insisted, “I think you’d better have someone here with you.”
“Okay,” Carmen agreed. “I’ll call Rose and see if she can stop by.”
Mulling over what to do next, Joanna made her way down the long stairway. As soon as she was back in the Blazer, she called Tica on the radio. “What’s the word?”
“I got those two addresses and dispatched deputies to both. They reported that no one answered the door at either place. There were no lights on and no sign of struggle, but the afternoon papers were still in the driveways.”
“Afternoon but not morning,” Joanna observed.
“Right.”
“That probably means both Brainard and Childers were home this morning, but they haven’t come back tonight. Are the deputies still there?”
“Yes.”
“Have them check with neighbors and see what time Childers and Brainard usually arrive home. Also have them ask if there have been any unusual goings-on around either address earlier today.”
“Where will you be?” Tica asked.
“In the car. I’m going to head on out to Sierra Vista myself. I have a bad feeling about this one, Tica. Flores went out dressed to go hunting, but I’m afraid he isn’t looking for white-tail deer. Where’s Dick Voland, by the way?”
“He called in a little while ago after he and the other deputies left Oak Vista. He said he was going home and to call him only in case of a crisis.”
“Nothing happened out there today?” Joanna asked.
“Nothing at all,” Tica responded. “The monkey wrenchers didn’t show. Once Chief Deputy Voland told me he was taking the rest of the evening off, I put Frank Montoya on notice that he’s on call. He’s standing by his radio.”
“Can you patch me through to him?”
“Sure. Hang on.”
Seconds later, Frank Montoya’s voice came through the radio. “Glad to hear from you,” he said. “I was just going to give you a call. It took me most of the afternoon, but I finally managed to track down that Becker stuff. Want to hear it now or later?”
“Go ahead.”
“Jonathan Becker was a police officer in North Las Vegas. It’s a separate entity from Las Vegas proper, sort of like the city of Tucson and South Tucson. Becker had put in eighteen years when his son signed on as a rookie. The son and some of the other North Vegas cops got caught up in some bad stuff. What the son thought was a sting turned out to be the real thing. The kid went to his dad and told Becker what he was into. There was a big internal-affairs investigation and supposedly the kid was going to break blue and testify. Before that happened, though, he was found dead, floating face-down along the shores of Lake Mead. After that the IA investigation went nowhere, and the other dirty cops skated.
“Sometime after that, Becker quit the force and went after the other guys on a freelance basis. He finally found out enough that he was able to blow the whistle on them. They fought fire with fire and tried to frame him for attempted murder. That’s where the conspiracy-to-commit deal came from. He was picked up, arrested, printed, but never charged. The next thing anybody knew, the Internal Affairs investigation was reinstated. Four officers in all left the force. Two of the dirty cops went to prison for murdering Becker’s son after Jonathan Becker testified against them in court. Shortly after their guilty verdicts, Becker reportedly died in that one-car roll-over. According to the obituaries, his remains were cremated. There was a memorial service for him in Kingman, his hometown.”
Frank paused. “That’s it?” Joanna asked.
“That’s it. What does it sound like to you?”
“Phony as a three-dollar bill,” Joanna replied. “My guess is he disappeared into the Federal Witness Protection Program.”
“Bingo,” Frank agreed. “And that’s what I’ve been doing all evening-pulling strings to find out whether or not that’s what happened. It turns out we’re right. Becker went into the program and stayed for the better part of a year. Then he let himself right back out again-a little over a year ago.”
“Which is about the time Farley Adams showed up in Tombstone. That means he’s pulled two disappearing acts instead of just one.”
“If you take what happened Sunday into consideration,” Frank said, “it sounds more like three.”
“Let’s go back to the Witness Protection Program. Don’t they pull prints once someone goes undercover?”
“Usually. At least, they’re supposed to. I’m guessing, though, that some wise-ass up in North Las Vegas-one of the dirty cops’ pals-figured things the same way we did-that the Feds were hiding him. Whoever it was had enough pull to put Becker’s prints back into circulation on the off-chance that one day Becker’s prints would show back up in the system.”
“And now they have,” Joanna mused. “When Alice Rogers turned up missing, he must have realized that we’d come to him looking for answers. He also knew that if we did even the most limited of background checks, it would lead to more and more questions. And straight back to North Las Vegas, where someone is still harboring a grudge and looking to kill him. Which brings us right back to the mysterious Detective Garfield.”
