He paused, shifted in his chair, so freaking busted, it wasn’t funny. “They told you?”
“Why, no, Swopes, they didn’t. Instead, they waited until the guy knocked the fuck out of my dad and readied him for spaceflight with duct tape then tried to kill me with a butcher’s knife.”
He shot out of his chair, cursing when he spilled coffee in his lap. Apparently nobody had called him. “What?” he asked, swiping at his jeans. “When? What happened?”
“I can print my statement out for you, if that would help.”
He sat back down, eyeing me warily. “Sure.”
I printed my statement, happy that all the work I’d put into it wouldn’t go unnoticed. He took it, read my four sentences for a really long time that had me wondering if he was dyslexic, then looked back at me. “Wow, that’s a lot to take in all at once.”
“It was for me, too,” I said, the sarcasm dripping from my tongue unmistakable.
“You cut his throat?”
I leaned toward him, my voice menacing as I said, “I do things like that when I’m angry.”
He worked his jaw a moment. “How about I come back later?”
“How about?”
As he strode out the door, he paused and turned back. “We need to interview the previous owner of Cookie’s Taurus. She’s going to be home late this afternoon. You in?”
I unglued my teeth to answer. “I’m in.”
“I’ll leave the info with Cookie. Right now, I have a phone call to make.”
When I gave myself a minute to calm down, I realized that an anger had come over Garrett just before he left. An explosive kind of anger one would be wise to steer clear of. I’d have to find out who’d rained on his parade later.
“Mr. Kirsch is expecting us this afternoon,” Cookie called out from her office, since the door separating our offices was open. “His wife is out of town, but he said he’d be happy to talk to us about the Hana Insinga case.”
I stood and walked to the doorway. “It’s almost three hours from here. We should probably get on the road.”
“He asked that we bring the case file.”
“Of course.”
We packed up and headed out the door for our journey to one of the most beautiful places on Earth: Taos, New Mexico.
“I handed Garrett Mistress Marigold’s e-mail address and gave him the short version,” Cookie said when we jumped into Misery. “He’s going to e-mail her, try to get her to spill about why she wants the grim reaper to contact her. But for now, I could tell you dirty jokes on the way, if that would help cheer you up.”
I turned the key with a smile. “I’m okay. Just annoyed.”
“You have every right to be. I’m annoyed and I wasn’t attacked. Or slashed open with a butcher’s knife. Stevie Ray Vaughan?”
We both looked down at my stereo, slow grins coming over our faces. “This should be a good trip,” I said, turning it up. Any trip starting out with Stevie Ray was good.
Most PIs would simply call the former sheriff of Mora County instead of driving three hours, but I could tell much more about a person with a face-to-face. There would be no question as to what Mr. Kirsch knew about the case by the end of the day. If he knew his son was involved in something illicit, I’d know. Maybe not the finer points, but I’d have a good idea if he was involved in any kind of cover-up.
Cookie worked the entire way, gathering intel and making calls. “And you worked for Mr. Zapata seven years?” she said into her phone. Mr. Zapata was our murdered car dealer, and she was speaking to one of his former employees. “Mm-hm. Okay, thank you so much.” She closed her phone and cast me a weary gaze. “I hope when I die people only remember good things about me as well.”
“Another testament to Zapata’s pending sainthood?”
“Yep. Same story, different day.”
“Whatever they did back in high school,” I said, taking a right on Mr. Kirsch’s block, “nobody but nobody is talking about it. At least we know one thing about this group of kids.”
“What’s that?” she asked, making notes on her laptop.
“They were all really good at keeping a secret.” I pulled into Mr. Kirsch’s drive. “Where did you say his wife is?”
Cookie closed her laptop and looked up. “Wow, nice house.” Most houses in Taos were nice. It was an expensive place to live. “She’s up north visiting her mother.”
“You know what?” I asked, climbing out of my Jeep. “When this case is over, I vote we join her. I mean, north is a good direction.”
“We should go to Washington State.”
“Sounds good.”
“Or New York,” she said, changing her mind. “I love New York.”
I nodded my head. “I only like New York as a friend, but I’m in.”
Congressman Kyle Kirsch’s father looked as though he had been a force to deal with in his day. He was tall and lanky, solid muscle even now. He had graying sand-colored hair and sharp cerulean blue eyes. Retired or not, he was a law enforcement agent through and through. His stance, his mannerisms, every unconscious habit pointed to a long and successful career bringing down criminals. He reminded me of my own father, which forced a pang of sadness to surface. I was so angry with him and yet so concerned. I decided, for the good of all present, to focus on the concern. We were going to have a long talk, the two of us. But for now, I needed to know if Mr. Kirsch was involved in Hana Insinga’s disappearance.
“I remember the case like it was yesterday,” Mr. Kirsch said, his eyes scanning the file like a hawk eyeing a meal. I doubted much got past him. “The entire town banded together to find her. We sent search parties into the mountains. We had flyers and bulletins in every town for a hundred miles.” He closed the file and settled his startling gaze on mine. “This, ladies, is the one that got away.”
Cookie and I glanced at each other. She sat beside me on a leather sofa, her pen and notebook at the ready. The Kirsches’ home was decorated in the blacks and whites of Holstein cows and the subtle tans of the New Mexico landscape. The decor was a charming mix of country and Southwest.
I could feel the pain in Mr. Kirsch’s heart, even after all this time. “The report said you talked personally to every single high school student. Did anything stand out? Anything you didn’t think important enough to put in your report?”
His mouth thinned into a solid line. He unfolded his towering frame and stepped to a window overlooking a small pond. “Lots of things stood out,” he admitted. “But try as I might, I just could not put my finger on what any of it meant.”
“According to witnesses,” I said, taking the file folder and opening it on my lap, “Hana may or may not have been at a party that night. She may or may not have left early and alone. And she may or may not have walked to a gas station down the road from her house. There are so many conflicting testimonies, it’s hard to put the pieces together.”
“I know,” he said, turning toward me. “I tried for two years to put them together, but the more time went by, the more vague everyone’s stories became. It was maddening.”
Situations like these always were. I decided to go for the gold. At that point, my gut told me the former sheriff had nothing to do with any cover-up, but I had to know for sure. “In your report you say that you interviewed your son, that he had been at that party, yet he was one of the students who said he never saw her there.”
With a heavy sigh, he sat across from me again. “That’s partly my fault, I think. His mother and I were on vacation that weekend, and we basically threatened his life if he left the house. At first, he said he didn’t go to the party for fear of getting in trouble. But when I had several kids tell me he’d been there, he finally admitted he’d gone. However, that was about all I could get out of him. Just like several of the others, I was getting mixed signals. Odd mannerisms I couldn’t get a handle on.”
Mr. Kirsch was telling the truth. He was no more involved in Hana’s disappearance than I was. “Sometimes kids are covering up other things they think they will get in trouble for that have nothing to do with our case. I’ve
