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The Jeep’s headlights hit Lydia’s beat-up Chevy first then a late-model Corvette with South Dakota plates as John pulled into the drive. Coming to a stop, he scanned the area. Lights in the trailer were out. The place had a deserted feel. He didn’t like it. Gun in hand, he eased out of the Jeep, leaving the headlights on.
Staying out of the headlight’s beams, he scanned the interior of Lydia’s car. Zora’s purse lay on the passenger seat. John’s heart beat ratchetted up. Zora wouldn’t leave without her purse.
The Corvette was clean, except for a bottle of water in the console. He tried the passenger door. Unlocked. The interior light didn’t come on. Opening the glove compartment, he found the registration. Danny Matisse was the registered owner. John studied the late-model sports car—its shiny, unmarred surface. How could the kid afford this automobile?
John eased the door closed. He walked around the trailer, his boots squashing knee-high grass as he looked for other exit routes.
He came up short.
Zora’s car sat among the weeds at the rear of the trailer.
He swallowed against a dry throat. Where was everyone? He knew damn well they weren’t all sitting inside a dark trailer.
Retracing his steps, he banged on the front door. “Police. Open up.”
No answer.
He turned the knob. The door creaked opened.
Darkness yawned as he stepped inside.
“It’s John Iron Hawk.”
Roaches scurried out of John’s flashlight beam. The place reeked of months-old body odor and garbage and something else. Something foul.
Death.
John swallowed against the fear that rose like bile in his throat.
He listened. Not a sound.
His mouth set in a tight line, flashlight targeted straight ahead, he edged down the shadowy hall, his weapon up and ready.
Slow and steady.
His nose drew him toward the room at the end of the short corridor, but first he checked the bedroom on the left. Empty. Then the bathroom on the right.
He checked quickly behind the plastic curtain that surrounded the grime-ringed tub. He closed the door on that fetid space.
As he stood in the threshold of the second bedroom, the smell of blood, shit, and urine rose like a malodorous cloud, almost choking him.
The flashlight’s powerful beam circled the room. Blood spattered the walls. The beam fell across a body.
His heart lodged in his throat, John advanced into the space.
Danny Matisse lay sprawled on a bloodstained mattress, throat slit from ear to ear in a garish grin.
Kneeling at the boy’s side, John placed two fingers on the boy’s carotid. No pulse. Pooled blood had settled under his neck. He’d bled out. Sitting back on his haunches, John studied the boy’s face—a face twisted in the grimace of death.
Icy manacles of panic clamped around John’s chest and squeezed. Danny was dead. So where were his daughter and Zora?
∞
Zora’s head pounded in sync with the pulsating bass of a song. Someone was singing—the sound like cats in heat.
The hum of an engine and the roll of tires on pavement vibrated through her body. She opened her eyes slowly.
A green glow reflected off glass. Darkness pressed in from outside. Her cheek stuck to the vehicle’s leather seat as she tried to turn her head. On the second attempt, she caught enough of the flat back window to realize she was in a truck.
She tried to lift her arm. She couldn’t move. Her pulse spiked, making her head hurt even more.
Where...? The image of a man’s face—eyes cold and dark—startled her.
Like flashes from a strobe light, the memory came rushing back to her. She’d been outside the trailer. She’d been looking for Laurie.
She slowly inhaled and exhaled, trying desperately to calm her racing heart. When she inhaled the second time, the hint of strawberry wafted up from below her. Laurie’s shampoo.
Zora scooted to the edge of the seat, trying to mask the sound by using slow movements.
A form lay unmoving on the floor. Oh, my God, is she—
The music shut off.
She held her breath.
“How we doin’ back there?” an unfamiliar male voice asked. The laughter in his tone said he didn’t care how they were doing.
A groan echoed up from the floor of the vehicle—a sound between a whimper and a sigh. Zora closed her eyes in relief. Laurie was alive.
“Who—who are you? What do you want?” Zora’s voice came out in a ragged whisper.
He only laughed then raised the volume on the music.
∞
After calling Iles and the coroner, John moved his Jeep to block the road leading up to the trailer. This would keep anyone from barreling onto the property and destroying any tracks.
He’d spotted four different tire trends—ones from Lydia’s old Chevy, Zora’s car, the Corvette, and an unidentified heavier vehicle. He surmised there weren’t more tracks because no one had been on the property for a while. Any old tracks would have been washed away by wind or rain.
When he was satisfied with what he was dealing with, he got Oscar on the phone. He gave his deputy a quick rundown on what had happened.
“He’s got Zora and Laurie?” his deputy asked.
John stared at Lydia’s car wondering what had possessed Zora to come out and confront Laurie and Danny in the middle of the night. Couldn’t she have waited on him? What had been the hurry?
“It appears so. Both cars are still here, and Zora’s purse is on the front seat. I can’t see her walking away willingly and leaving credit cards and her phone in an unlocked car.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Oscar said sheepishly.
“We need to identity the other vehicle. From the tread size and depth of the tracks, it was probably a truck or SUV. We can zoom in on that angle once the tech casts the tracks. Go to the Starlight. Find out from Hank when Danny arrived if anyone was with him and if anyone driving a truck visited him or was seen around the property.”
“On it. I won’t let you down,” Oscar said, his voice solemn.
John wondered if his deputy was remembering the dig Thomas Crow had gotten in during the town hall meeting.
“I know you won’t.”
John pocketed his cell then walked back to the Corvette. After pulling the registration from the glove compartment, he compared the address to the one the boy had used when he registered at the motel. They were the same.
He’d just finished checking Zora’s convertible for his daughter’s cell when the sound of approaching cars reached him. He made it to his Jeep just as the crime scene techs pulled up.
“Man, you’re keeping us busy,” Ricky Lamont said as he pulled equipment out of the back of a van marked with the county insignia.
John grunted. “One body. In the trailer. How long before Wingate gets here?”
Ricky shrugged. “No clue. What’re the details?”
John put a clamp on his anxiety. He needed all his wits to do the job and not miss anything because his family was involved.
“Dead male in the trailer and two missing females. One female came in the Chevy.” He pointed to Lydia’s older vehicle parked up closer to the trailer. “There’s another vehicle to the rear of the trailer. The other female came in that one. That Corvette in front of the trailer belongs to the deceased. There was a fourth vehicle probably belonged to the murderer. I need the make and model of that vehicle yesterday.”
“Gotcha.” Ricky nodded. He motioned to another male, and they marched up the drive.
“Stay to the right,” John shouted.
Without turning, Ricky waved his acknowledgement of the instructions.
John walked down the drive. He’d had his fill of the stench of death. He’d wait for Iles on the road.
∞
After finishing his conversation with Oscar, John pocketed his cell. Hank hadn’t seen a truck or SUV around the motel, and no one other than Laurie had visited Danny since he’d arrived.
Even from the road the area around the trailer was lit up with LED lights like a bonfire. Wingate, Iles, and Watanabe worked inside the trailer with the body. Outside, Ricky and his assistants scurried around like ants, dusting the cars for prints and casting molds for tire and foot impressions.
Danny’s address burned a whole in John’s pocket. The kid was the key. Whoever had murdered him had done it in a pretty vicious manner. A very personal manner. Danny knew his killer. The same person who’d killed Cheyenne Henry and buried her body at the quarry had probably also killed Danny. When John solved one crime, he’d solve the other.
Once he found out what Danny had been into, he’d find Laurie and Zora. Because the two had not left the trailer willingly.
The sound of a trunk being popped halted John’s progress toward his service vehicle.
“Any idea why your girlfriend and sister’s cars are here?” Iles’ voice brought John up short. Gritting his teeth, he turned to face the FBI agent.
Iles yanked off his latex gloves and threw them into the trunk of his sedan.
John bit down on his impatience. The agent was just doing his job. “Danny and my daughter had a relationship last summer. According to my sister, my daughter borrowed my girlfriend’s car to come visit him.”
“You didn’t approve of the relationship?”
Was he so easy to read? “No.”
“How long have you known the deceased?”
John narrowed his eyes. This was beginning to sound like an inquisition. “Almost five years, off and on. His father was the tribal council president before his death.”
“Hmmm...” Iles turned to look up the drive. “So why is your sister’s car here?”
John followed the direction of his gaze. Ricky’s ass stuck out of Lydia’s Chevy. “I think Zora came here to retrieve her car.”
“What was the hurry? Why didn’t she wait until your daughter returned home?”
John shrugged. He’d asked himself the same question.
Ricky walked toward them. “Zora Hughes had a plane to catch at eight this morning. He held up the evidence bag with Zora’s small purse in it. “There’s a Precheck printout in the bag.”
Iles’ lips moved, but John didn’t hear the words. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“That explains why she couldn’t wait. Where was she going?”
Before John could get his stiff tongue to work, Ricky said, “New York.”
Iles eyed John. “You didn’t know?”
John shook his head. “She—” He cleared his throat. “She’d mentioned flying to New York for a possible job, but I didn’t know she was leaving tomorrow.”
John couldn’t tell if it was pity in the agent’s eyes or smugness.
“What about Matisse? Did he have any enemies? And if so, would they be good for this?”
“Before yesterday I hadn’t seen Danny Matisse since last year. Don’t know where he went or what he did or who he did it with.”
Iles raised an eyebrow. “No love lost between you and Matisse?” When John didn’t respond, Iles slammed the trunk closed then dusted his hands.
He glanced up toward the trailer. “I didn’t see any evidence that suggested whoever killed Matisse also killed the women.” His gaze whipped back to John, and he had the grace to grimace. “Sorry. But wonder why?”
John had wondered the same thing. If you were trying to get away from the scene of a crime, why burden yourself with two women?
“Do you think it was more than one person?”
Something about the probing intensity of Iles’ gaze made John hesitate before he answered. “There was only one person. A man’s work boot size eleven or twelve.”
Iles’ mouth twisted up at the corner. “Is that your Indian skills at work?”
John didn’t let Iles’ condescending tone bother him. “It is. He carried the women to his truck.”
Iles jerked in surprise. “How—”
“The foot impressions were deeper, indicating the person carried a load.”
“Got something for you.” The tech who’d been inside with the coroner advanced on them.
“What did you find?” Iles asked.
The tech thrust a gloved hand into the bag. “We found this between the floor and the mattress.”
He held up a black bra.
Iles took the bra and held it up like he was inspecting X-ray film. The cantaloupe-sized cups almost obscured the agent’s face.
The tech leered at the bra. “I’d like to get my hands around those.” When he realized neither Iles nor John smiled, he lost the grin.
It didn’t belong to Laurie. She’d inherited her mother’s nonexistent chest size.
“That bra could have been left at any time,” John said. “This was the regular hangout of a couple of young guys last year. Women probably went in and out of here like—”
“Cockroaches?” the tech finished.
John shrugged.
“You guys going to do a door-to-door search?” the tech asked, grinning again.
This guy had a one-track mind.
“That’s enough, Williams,” Iles said.
The tech dropped the bra back into the evidence bag and slunk away.
Iles slipped into his suit coat. “You by chance see Matisse cell phone in there?”
“Hadn’t even thought about it. Should have, though.”
The agent grunted and stared long and hard at John. Did Iles think he was lying? He didn’t care.
“You can’t work this case.” When the agent’s gaze met John’s, it was dead cold. “A conflict of interest.”
When John still hadn’t responded, the agent continued, “Any knowledgeable police officer knows that.”
John unclenched his molars and gave the agent a terse smile. “But I’m not a knowledgeable policeman, am I?” He stalked off toward his Jeep.
“I could have you arrested,” Iles shouted after him.
“You can try.”
∞
Three hours later John sat in Emma Bearkiller’s thirty-year-old truck outside Danny Matisse’s apartment in Rapid City. At five in the morning the area was quiet—cars parked on both sides of the narrow street.
The house, a large ramshackle affair, had been subdivided into small units. A chain link fence imprisoned the backyard. The neighborhood might have been nice forty years ago but now appeared to be home to people who paid rent by the week and hustled for jobs that paid in cash.
John slid out of the Nissan Hardbody and approached the house at an angle. He glanced back at the truck. “Don’t get any bullet holes in it.” Emma’s parting words still rang in his ears.
According to the car registration Danny lived in apartment number two. Wide steps led up to a wraparound porch and a faded green door that probably had been the main entrance once upon a time. Two doors on either side of the house led to the other apartments.
There were a lot of unanswered questions about the boy—who he worked for being the biggest one. Whatever Danny had been into was probably illegal.
John followed the sidewalk around to number two. The unit appeared dark. He listened at the door for a minute. When he didn’t hear any movement, he pulled out two tools from his inside breast pocket. Kneeling he inserted a tension wench in the key lock to hold down the first pin, then inserted a pick to push down the next pin. He repeated the process until all the pins were down, and the lock clicked opened. It took less than five seconds.
He eased open the door, stepped in, and closed it quietly behind him. He listened. Nothing. Not even the sound of a clock. But the faintest scent of perfume lingered in the stuffy apartment. A recent female visitor? He stood a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. A couch sat on one side of the room, a television opposite it, and a cut-out in one wall allowed him a glimpse into a galley kitchen.
He turned on a pen flashlight. Stepping further inside the apartment, he paused at the entrance to a short hall. Two doors opened off the corridor—one open and the other closed.
Bypassing the closed door, he peered into the other space—a bathroom.
He stood outside the closed door—hand on the knob—listening. Slowly, he turned the handle.
A woman sprawled naked, face-down, across a king-sized bed. Her long dark hair obscured her features. John waited for the rise and fall of her breath. When it came, he closed the door behind him softly.
Streetlight seeped under the blinds in the kitchen. No dishes littered the sink. The space was tidy—tidy probably because of the woman, not because of Danny. The kid proved he could live comfortably in squalor.
As John backed out of the small space a paper flapped on the refrigerator door. He moved closer and scanned the sheet with his pen light. It was an intricate drawing of a tattoo. A tattoo that struck a chord in his memory.
∞
Zora jerked awake. The swish of tires over asphalt had faded.
They’d stopped.
She raised her head, trying to see between the bucket seats. The motion made her head swim and her stomach twist.
A blast of cold air brought her back to awareness. The truck’s weight shifted and then a car door slammed. The driver had gotten out of the vehicle. She and Laurie needed to go. They needed to run.
From her prone position in the back of the truck, she could see tree tops swayed in a rapidly graying sky. Dawn.
She sank down into a murky miasma. Need...to...run...
More cold air made her shiver as rough hands tugged on her arms, pulling her halfway out of the truck. Someone pulled Laurie out from the other side.
“Handle the merchandise gently,” a female voice commanded.
“Don’t know if you want this one,” a male voice said. “She’s a little old.”
A woman’s dark eyes peered down into Zora’s face. Upside down the face appeared bony, almost skeletal. “She’ll do.”
I’ll do for what?
Zora caught one glance of the trees swaying crazily in the cold breeze above a white porte cochere before she was shoved back inside the truck. The driver climbed into the front seat.
Outside, the woman’s voice faded as she walked away. “Take her upstairs to the blue bedroom. I’ll send for the doctor.”
The truck rumbled to life.
“Wait. You can’t leave,” Zora mumbled. We can’t leave without Laurie.
Stone crunched beneath the truck’s tires as it barreled out of the drive, throwing Zora against the back of the front seat and into the console. The hard surface dug into her side. On her knees, she could only pray. Pray John came quickly.
∞
The girl slept the sleep of the innocent.
John flipped the wall switch.
“Turn off the light, Danny?” The girl slowly turned her head on the pillow. Without opening her eyes, she blew long dark strands of hair off her face.
“I’m not Danny.”
The girl’s eyes popped open. Her right hand scrambled frantically under her pillow.
John was beside the bed and had his hand clamped around the girl’s wrist before she withdrew her hand. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need answers.”
She stared back at him, blue eyes dilated and wide with panic.
Keeping his gaze glued to her, he reached with his left hand for what lay hidden under the pillow. He extracted a 9mm handgun. Not as innocent as he first imagined. He tucked the gun in the small of his back next to his own weapon.
“Sit up slowly. Place your hands where I can see them.”
She did as he’d ordered.
“Who—what—?” Her fingers frantically clenched and unclenched, flashing chipped red nail polish.
He identified himself. “Who are you?”
“Marti.”
“How do you know Danny?”
“He and I...” She glanced over to the other side of the king-sized bed.
Fuck buddies. He had no delusions about Danny Matisse. After what he’d learned about the boy last summer, nothing surprised him. Had he been stringing Laurie along, making her believe he cared about her? If he weren’t already dead, John would have killed him.
“I don’t know where he is.”
“That’s not the info I need.” He threw the drawing at her. “What’s this?”
She picked up the sheet. “Something he found on the Internet. He wants to get this tattooed on his neck.”
His gut twisted with the suspicion that grew. If Danny was interested in this tattoo, he’d gotten himself into serious crime. John had seen this symbol when he’d been a detective on the Minneapolis force. If he remembered correctly, a guy he’d hauled in for extortion had this or a similar tattoo on his neck. That guy—now dead—had been in the Russian Mafia.
“Do you know who he works for?”
She shrugged.
“He drives an expensive sports car that he didn’t have last year. Who does he work for?”
“You know Danny?” She scooted to the end of the bed.
“Knew him.”
Her face clouded in confusion.
“He’s dead.”
Her complexion became as pale as the sheets she sat on.
“Someone killed him on the reservation. That’s why I need to know what he was into.”
“I don’t—”
“Whoever killed Danny took my daughter.”
Marti’s body tensed. “I can’t... He’ll come after me.”
Blood roared in his ears. “Who will come after you?”
Her lips clapped down mutinously.
His own building panic threatened to choke him. He breathed into it. Fear wouldn’t help him find his daughter or Zora. “Just give me a name.”
“They’d—”
“Just a name.”
Her gaze flew around the room as though the answer to her dilemma could have been picked out of the air.
“I can hold you as a material witness.” He didn’t have the time to drag her back to the reservation. Each tick of the clock increased the chances of bad things happening to the two people he loved the most.
“A name. Then I’ll drive you somewhere where you’ll be safe.” He didn’t know where that would be but he’d come up with someplace.
She snorted. “You can’t protect me. No one can.” She hopped off the bed and hurried to one of the two doors in the room. John swiftly followed, ready to detain her if necessary.
She dragged out a cracked leather satchel and starting dumping clothes from a hanger into the bag.
The fact his presence didn’t stop her from packing told him she feared these people more than she feared him.
“Milo. That’s all I know.”
“How can I find him? Does he live here in Rapid City?”
She zipped up the bag, then pulled her night shirt over her head and tossed it onto the bed. Her small breasts bobbed as she crammed her legs into jeans she’d pulled off a rocker in the corner.
“I don’t know much about him. Don’t want to.” Her voice was muffed by the T-shirt she pulled over her head. “He creeps me out.”
Was this Milo Danny’s killer? It took a different type of person to kill someone close-up. Most killers liked the distance a gun gave them.
“I’ve only seen him a couple of times. Both times he drove a black truck.”
John’s pulse quickened. “Big tires?”
“Yeah. And shining hubcaps. He loves that truck.”
“Make, model?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. Just big and black. Domestic, I think.”
“What does he look like?”
Pausing as she slipped a narrow foot into a boot, she said, “Tall. About your height. Big.” She puffed up her shoulders. The motion made her hop to keep her balance.
This was moving too slowly. “Long, short hair? Coloring?”
“Short hair. Almost a military buzz cut. Dark brown hair and eyes.” She shrugged. “That’s all I can think of. Just creepy with dead eyes.”
“Thanks.”
Finished dressing, she stood in front of him, hand out, palm up.
He raised an eyebrow.
“My gun. I need it.”
“You know how to use this?” He patted the gun in his waist band.
“Danny taught me.”
Danny had been busy in the last year. To John’s knowledge, the boy hadn’t known about guns. He’d done a lot of growing up in the year since he’d left Little River. He’d also fallen into a deadly crowd. That crowd had cost him his life.
∞
Zora woke with the overwhelming urge to vomit. Nausea rose from the pit of her stomach, sending a rush of heat like a lit match to engulf her body. Sweat beaded cold on her face.
She lay on her side on a bare mattress. A sour smell that made her stomach pitch and roil wafted up from the thin material beneath her.
She moved her head. Two figures—a woman and a man—bent over someone whose combat boots hung off another mattress.
Laurie?
She must have made some sound because the pair glanced over at her then turned their attention back to Laurie. After dropping awkwardly to his knees, the man, old and gray-haired, pressed a stethoscope to John’s daughter’s chest.
“Laurie?” Zora tried to stand but only managed to lift her upper body off the mattress. The room spun. She plopped down and barely had time to turn her head to the side before she threw up. Her stomach convulsed, and the stench of her own vomit burned her nose.
As she lay limp and panting on her makeshift bed the voices of the two carried on around her. She tried to focus on their words.
“...gave her too much.”
Elderly and stooped, this was not the burly man who had seized her outside Mac’s trailer. She tried to push down the panic that threatened to make her thoughts skitter around like jelly beans in a dish. Who were these people? Why had they taken her and Laurie?
“...can’t do anything about that now.”
Moving her head slowly, Zora’s gaze traveled over the room. Mattresses lay scattered haphazardly around the space—mattresses with bodies on them.
“We have to move her.”
“Why?” the woman asked.
“Because I can’t properly care for her in this—this place.”
“You’ve taken proper care of the others in this place.” The words shot from the woman’s mouth like bullets. “You’re the doctor. Can’t you give her something here to counteract the drug?”
“Too dangerous,” the old man said.
“Useless male,” the woman muttered.
“What will happen if this one dies?” The words were spoken as a question, but the tone of the doctor’s voice said the two knew the answer.
No. No. Fear and panic clawed at Zora’s chest. Laurie couldn’t die.
“When we get to the house I’ll start an IV. The fluids will flush the effects of the drug out of her body.”
The woman grunted. “I’ll get Milo to bring her to the house.”
House? What house?
When they parted, she could see the girl who lay on the mattress was as still as death. Her eyes were closed, her face pale and ashen beneath the bronze tone of her skin.
It wasn’t Laurie.
Cold dread settled in the pit of Zora’s stomach. Her gaze swiveled, searching, taking in the scattered mattress, the limp occupants. The drugged occupants. But where was Laurie? Then she remembered what she’d thought was a dream. Laurie being pulled from the truck, and the vehicle leaving without her.
Oh, God. Where was John’s daughter? Where was Laurie?
