On the way back to town, Nicole made a left turn onto State Route 49 and skirted the lake for several miles, driving the same roads Beatrice’s mother had claimed to have driven the night of the incident. The snow had stopped falling and the cloud cover was dense. Beyond the picnic areas and the scattered boat ramps, the lake stretched out like an oval platter, longer than it was wide. Called the Lake Road by citizens and visitors, it was the first road cleared after a snowfall and the only road other than Merry Weather that required a closure permit for celebrations or construction.
It was popular day and night, summer and winter, and so she knew that Mrs. Esparza had lied to her. In two hours of driving its winding ways, searching for her distraught daughter, she had to have passed a car or two. And probably a lot more than that. Tourists returning from the mountains, locals returning from work. It was common for the Lake Road to be a loose string of bobbing yellow headlights well into the evening. She would have remembered that.
Another problem with Mrs. Esparza’s story: it was impossible to drive a complete circle around the lake. The road began and ended at a thick copse of trees, with more than a quarter mile of wild Montana separating the asphalt.
Nicole believed that Beatrice had called her mother and that Mrs. Esparza had left the resort afterward. But she didn’t know where the woman had gone. She hadn’t searched for Beatrice, not on the Lake Road. She had taken the rental out that night. Joaquin had said so and Daisy had confirmed it. He had shattered his mother’s alibi—the moonlight run—and Mrs. Esparza had just as easily tossed it aside. But for what?
Facts about the case were slowly unraveling the family’s stories, and neither Joaquin nor his mother seemed concerned about that. They were protecting something or someone. They’d lied to do it, covered for one another, and didn’t care that Nicole knew it. And it all led back to the scene of the crime. She slowed the Yukon and gazed through the passenger window at the sheeted surface of the lake. It had a ghostly glow, reflecting what little sunlight burned through the cloud cover. Beatrice had run—a stumbling gait—over hillocks and drifts and onto the lake. Chased by an assailant who was both stronger and taller—the stride measurements showed this; the markings around her neck confirmed it. And that seemed to knock both Dr. and Mrs. Esparza out of the suspect pool. Neither was tall enough. They weren’t the killers, but was one the watcher?
If Joaquin had killed his sister, would Mrs. Esparza protect him?
Had Joaquin answered his sister’s SOS after all?
Could it have been Joaquin who had pulled out of the resort parking lot last night in the rented Tahoe? There was more than one way to enter or exit the building. There were, in fact, seven. Daisy might have seen Mrs. Esparza leave out the front door. She might have watched the Tahoe disappear down the winding driveway. But Daisy couldn’t confirm Joaquin’s whereabouts last night. The young man could have been crouched in the back seat, undetected.
But the roofie and the condom. The spilled evidence, the hasty attempt made to pick it up. That wasn’t Joaquin.
He had spoken honestly about his family, about his own transgressions and his parents’. He’d given a candid perspective of Beatrice, and he had given Nicole a viable motive—Nueva Vida. A discovery that could change the world. That would shake up medicine and possibly extend human life expectancy.
There was a lot of money involved in that—to be gained and lost. And there was more. If Esparza was right: if he was the father of such a miracle, he would be exalted. Mrs. Esparza would have no worries about her station in life. It would definitely be a pinnacle existence.
Family or fortune? The field was opening, the suspects multiplying. Who among the Big Pharm companies would have the most to lose if Nueva Vida was a viable cure?
Nicole adjusted her speed. The road on the north side of the lake was always more treacherous in the winter. Though it was salted and sanded at regular intervals, ice still formed and increased the likelihood of a wipeout. The trees here were thicker, too, and crowded the shoreline. On the other side of the road, the geography was dramatically different—the earth sloped sharply downward, then leveled out, and it was here that yet another wind farm had been built. It was the biggest in Toole County and the most dangerous. Three deaths so far had occurred since its ceremonial opening four years before, each incident grisly and the result of weather and malfunctioning machinery. When the conditions were right, when the wind off the slopes met the currents of a storm front as it moved in, a vacuum was created that was strong enough to pull a man off his feet. It was now mandatory that anyone working the turbines did it by tether line.
She followed the curve of the road until she was parallel to the Huntington Spa. She had to guess, because the resort was not visible from that distance, not through the thickness of the trees. She knew that several paths led from the resort to the lake, most of them made by snowmobile and cross-country skiers. She watched for the trailheads, and when she found them flowing into the road, she slowed the Yukon more.
None of the drifts had been disturbed. No one had recently come down from the Huntington, crossed the street, and entered the lake area.
She leaned more heavily on the gas pedal.
In the dead of winter, trees along the shore often split from the sheer cold and fell onto the ice, only to be consumed by the lake at first thaw. The school hockey teams cordoned off a section, set up goals and bleachers and portable heaters, and played their games outdoors. Speed skaters were drawn to the open expanse of the lake, and a fishing hole had been drilled through the frozen surface near its eastern shore.
There was activity, but never at night.
She let the engine idle and stared at the lake. Their crime scene was out there, and beyond it the homes of the affluent as well as luxury rentals.
She called Lars.
“What’s up?”
She told him about Beatrice’s phone call and how both Joaquin and Mrs. Esparza had blown off the mother’s alibi. She told him about Alma Esparza leaving the resort to search for her daughter and the inconsistencies in her story.
“You think they could have been in on it together? Joaquin and his mother?”
“It doesn’t feel right, but it’s possible.”
“But the roofie and the condom,” he pointed out.
Yeah, that.
“We have two predators. Maybe more.”
“Two sets of prints.”
“And a lot more besides,” she said. “Not in on the chase, but in and around the scene.” The lake was a popular place. Plenty of old prints. Some fresher, but it was impossible to know when they had been made or by whom.
“And a growing list of motives,” Lars said.
“Date rape, sibling rivalry, financial ruin—and we’re not talking just one or two pharm companies.”
“If the cure is a miracle.”
Had their vic’s death been a spectator sport?
“The brother fits the physical profile,” Nicole said.
Even if she didn’t like it. Instincts were sometimes skewed by emotion. So while Joaquin didn’t feel right as the killer, Nicole knew she could be wrong.
She took another look at the lake. McMansions of natural wood and stone lined the shore not a mile from where she idled in the cruiser, and from somewhere among them Beatrice had run for her life, making it as far as the lake before she was stopped. “I like Alma Esparza for the watcher.”
“Me too,” Lars agreed. “She really didn’t want us separating the family.”
“Strength in unity.”
“And control.”
“There’s something off about the timing,” she said. “Even when Joaquin was tossing aside their alibis, he was lying through his teeth about last night.”
“The movie, popcorn, and hot cocoa?”
“Yeah. Simple details. Believable. I think it happened, just not last night.” And the itch she’d felt earlier as she’d driven away from her first meet with the family began to scratch toward the surface. Words and faces swirled, and events began to take shape. “No, there was no movie last night, no popcorn,” she said, “because Beatrice left the resort for Christmas dinner, just as Daisy reported, and she never returned.”
“Proof?”
“I met a young man at the resort this afternoon. He knew Beatrice. He said she was on her way to a party Christmas night. First dinner with the family, then off to a party. Beatrice and her sisters.”
Her sisters. Saying it aloud, putting the youngest Esparzas together with their older sister at a time and place that correlated with the vic’s disappearance, created a free-fall sensation in the pit of her stomach and a trickling of bile up her throat.
“Her sisters too?” Lars repeated, and she heard the dawning dread in his tone.
“And they were dressed up like princesses.” The words were tight, her breath thin. She had missed it. Her first pass at the family had been at four o’clock in the morning, and it had been entirely reasonable that Sofia and Isla were sleeping. Besides, the mother had claimed the girls had colds. Plausible. Nicole had bought it. But now, a half day into their investigation, with pieces sliding slowly into place, a different picture was emerging.
“Fifteen fucking hours,” Lars said.
Wasted time. It didn’t bode well for the girls. If they were being held against their will, if the person who had killed Beatrice had the same intentions for the youngest Esparzas, Nicole and Lars were already too late.
“We never saw them,” Nicole said. But had she known to look for it, she would have seen evidence of their absence—the three parkas hanging in the closet that should have been five. “And it didn’t seem off. Not until now.”
“Why didn’t they tell us? When Beatrice turned up dead? Why not then?”
“Because Sofia and Isla hadn’t,” Nicole said.
“They had reason to hope.”
“Or thought they did.”
“Right.”
And that explained the hold on the family, the restraint that Nicole had sensed from the very beginning. “We need visual confirmation,” Nicole said. “If possible.” She put the cruiser in gear and rolled forward. Snow crunched under her tires. “You’re closer to the Huntington.”
“Already moving,” he said.
“I’m staying here.” She cut a U-turn and headed back toward the boat ramps. “Call me after you’ve made contact.”
“Will do.”
“Get a visual. Ask them their names. Use their ski passes for confirmation.” If they were wrong, that is—if the girls were in the hotel room, tucked into their beds with boxes of tissue and chicken noodle soup. And if they weren’t … Her feeling of dread thickened. Instinct flared. How she wanted to be wrong.
“I know the protocol.” His words were thick with breath, and she could tell he was outside then, jogging toward his cruiser.
“I know you do.” She heard his car door slam shut, his engine turn over. Too little, too late. “You have Esparza in the box?”
“Waiting about as patiently as the second hand of a clock.”
“Good.”
She hung up and slid her cell phone into its holder on the dashboard. Snow plows had left upwards of four feet of drift, even at the entrances to the ramps—no one used them in the winter. Nicole cut across the mound at an angle. Her back tires spun, caught, spun again. She got out, used her miner’s shovel to dig herself out, and finally pulled up to a metal pole and post. She used a heavy set of clippers to cut through the Schlage and then stood for a moment, pondering the sweeping shoreline.
She knew the terrain well. Eight years of crime and recreation around this lake had made sure of that. From where she stood, their crime scene was due west, lost beneath new snow. She thought about Beatrice out here, no coat, knowing she was in trouble. But smart—was she smarter than she was compassionate? Or had her soft heart betrayed her? She had turned and faced her killer. She had looked him, or her, in the eye—the markings on her throat showed that—but were her last words ones of love or fear? Had she pleaded for her life, for the lives of her sisters? Or had she realized it was already too late?
She climbed back into the Yukon. Lars was on rescue detail. Nicole had recovery, in case the Esparza children hadn’t been kidnapped but had been murdered like their sister. Her men had combed the crime scene, fanning out in ever-increasing circles, but they hadn’t known then to look for the bodies of two small children. Had they known the girls were missing, they would have expanded the search area, brought in more people.
Nicole moved the transmission into neutral and released the parking brake. The Yukon inched forward, tapped into the potential energy from gravity, and hit the ice at ten miles per hour.
In winter, the ice was thick enough, even at the center of the lake, to drive a car across the surface without fear of breaking through. Nicole allowed the Yukon to slow naturally. With little resistance, that placed her about fifteen yards from shore. She turned in a wide arc and straightened the Yukon. Lake Maria wasn’t big—three-point-three miles long, less than a mile across at its widest—and people were generally too nervous to venture too far out. She decided it would take two sweeps, executed slowly, to complete the search. Still, kids were small and easy to miss. And with the new snow that morning, she was looking for irregular shapes that could be bodies. A rolled shoulder, the tapering of legs. She peered through the glass, adjusted the strobe lights, and tried to push away the feeling of defeat crouching in the shadows.
Her cell phone rang. The screen saver was a picture of Jordan—five years old and wearing a small red pail on his head. His smile was wide, and he was all about pulling you into his world. He was still like that.
She hadn’t named him after Michael Jordan, but because she’d wanted a name that would work equally well for a boy or a girl. Reese, Taylor, and Peyton had made her list, but only Jordan was a place of miracles. The river, at the highest point of the season, had stopped flowing, had stacked up like a brick wall on either side of a group of believers, allowing them to pass through. And that did describe Nicole—she was a believer, in good and bad. She expected the unexpected. She was willing to be moved by love, although her son was her only proof of that.
She had circled the lake twice, then crossed its center in a series of switchback motions, and found nothing. Lars had already called—the Esparzas’ hotel room was empty. He was searching the grounds, talking to people.
She took one last, sweeping look at the lake from where she sat, back on asphalt and above the tattered yellow ribbon her department had used to protect the body of Beatrice Esparza and its surrounding geography, then pressed the icon of Jordan’s shining face and spoke. “How was the backgammon?”
“We played checkers,” he said. “Mrs. Neal is pretty good.”
“She didn’t let you win.”
“She sweeped me,” he admitted. “Three games.”
“And made grilled ham and cheese.”
“Yeah. That was good. What did you have, McD’s?”
“You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Jordan snorted. “You wouldn’t tell me about it.”
She had a healthy suspicion of fast food and wouldn’t so much as park in the lot of a restaurant with less than an A in the window. She’d waitressed her way through college and knew the difference the alphabet made on her plate.
But sometimes calories, even if they tasted like a cardboard box and called her soldier cells into formation, were all she had time for.
“I had the double box tops with extra cardio-blocking cheese and curly cancer-fries.”
He gasped and put enough drama into it that Nicole felt it. “That is so unfair.”
“You’ll live longer than me.”
“I’ll do that already.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“No, it’s the lack of love in your life.”
He wanted her to get married. Because he wanted a father, and because she needed a daily dose of “affection.” He’d caught a show on O about longevity and its link to human touch.
“Thanks, Dr. Phil.”
“I prefer to be called Dr. Oz. It’s way cooler.”
“Okay, Oz, what’s up?”
“You need any more info on Morgan le Fay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s all around town,” he informed her. “The dead girl and her father complex.”
“Morgan le Fay had a father complex?”
“Maybe. She had a thing with Merlin for sure.”
“The Great Magician?”
“Wizard. But yeah.”
“What kind of thing?”
“You know, like, she loved him. It wasn’t just about discovering his secrets.”
As Beatrice had loved her father? She might have been at the heart of his secrets, and she might have died because of them, but when Nicole thought about Beatrice Esparza and her father, the ew factor did not kick in. She hadn’t gotten that feel. Not from Dr. Esparza and not from Beatrice’s mother either. She thought about the photo of Beatrice in the embrace of a much older man. A man who held her maybe too closely. There was affection in the image, and it was mutual. But possession? No, not quite.
“What did you hear?” And from whom, Nicole wondered.
“We talked about her at Scouts earlier. Some of the guys knew her from the resort.” The winter season brought in the bulk of Blue Mesa’s economy, with the influx of tourists carving through the mountains and dropping money in the restaurants and gift shops. The employment rate saw an increase and the locals were upbeat. Most of the jobs went to housewives and senior citizens, a smaller portion to teens and college students returning for the holidays. “The dead girl was all about her father,” Jordan continued. “She spoke like he was a god, but they fought like dogs.”
“Who told you this?”
“Jackson Lambert. He works in housekeeping.”
She thought about going to see Jackson herself. “What did they fight about?”
“He wanted something and she wasn’t coming across,” he said. “It was weird, Jackson said. Like Beatrice held all the cards and the father was begging her not to play the deck against him. Those were Jackson’s words.”