TURNS OUT, THE White Pine County Sheriff’s Office is a beige, one-story, nondescript, no-frills architectural blah with dull red trim around its windows and doors.
But we didn’t see that for over an hour.
“Don’t look,” I said to Harper, trying to keep her from seeing what was in the car.
“Why not?” She muscled around me, bent down, and peered into the Altima. She straightened up fast. “Oh!”
“I said ‘don’t look.’ You should listen to me.” Gaping holes in foreheads are never pretty. This one hadn’t bled excessively, probably because the guy had died quickly and his heart quit pumping—but still. He lay face up, crumpled on the floor with his head against the passenger-side door, eyes open, staring into a different world.
I got out my phone, about to call 911.
Harper had backed away. Her face was pale, but then her eyes narrowed and she came closer and took a longer look. “Omigod, Mort. That … that’s the guy!”
“No, it’s not.”
“Not the guy in the restaurant last night. That’s the old guy who was driving me to Ely. The one who hit on me, then left me out there and took my bag and clothes.”
Time to slow down and think. I put the phone away.
“You sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure. This is the car I was in. Which might mean my bag is here, like in the trunk.”
“This’s a crime scene, honey. We can’t disturb it. We can’t touch anything.”
She bit her lip. “If it’s in the trunk, the police might take it and keep it for a while. I’d really like to have it. It’s not like it’s evidence or anything. It’s just a bag. It has my clothes and toothbrush and stuff, that’s all.”
I looked around, didn’t see anyone watching us, but there were a lot of windows in the neighborhood. I circled the car and looked in at the ignition. The keys were in it. A fob dangled from a short chain.
Damn. Maybe I could punch the trunk release without removing the keys, not touch many surfaces. If her bag was in the trunk, it shouldn’t be a crime to get it.
I went back to the truck and got a pair of nitrile gloves out of my duffel bag, first time I had occasion to use them. The driver’s-side door was unlocked. I opened it then said, “I’m not doing what you see me doing, Harper.”
“Got it.” She backed away and watched what I wasn’t doing.
I leaned in far enough to reach the fob, hit the button for the trunk, heard a faint thunk from in back, got out and beat Harper to the trunk, which meant I was the one who lifted the lid and found the folded nude body of Nevada’s missing attorney general, Annette Leeman, crammed inside—a woman who was also Harper’s mother.
I found her. Me. Mortimer Angel. The foremost finder of famous missing persons in the country.
Son of a bitch. I would never again open the trunk of a car that didn’t belong to me. And maybe not even if it did.
Harper had been behind me when I opened the trunk. Her legs gave out when she saw what was inside. Good thing I was close enough to get an arm around her and ease her to the grass beside the driveway. I lowered the trunk lid, didn’t latch it. In with Harper’s mother was Harper’s duffel bag, navy blue with a big white Reebok on the side.
She shuddered and made something of a whimpering sound then put her face in her hands, but didn’t cry. She took several deep breaths, sitting cross-legged on the grass, rocking slightly, looking down at nothing. I held her for a minute, but I had things to do before making a 911 call, a call that had to be made soon.
But not yet.
“You okay?” I asked. Dumb, but nothing I might have said at the moment would’ve been right. She needed time. All I wanted was a response of some kind.
She nodded.
My mind spun as I continued to hold her. This was a ripe mess. I wanted to close the trunk to make the police think they were the first to find Leeman’s body, but no way would Harper be able to feign surprise and shock when they did, not after she’d been hit with it for real. The trunk was going to have to remain open.
Not forty hours ago, the dead guy in back had left her at the side of a lonely desert road as night was falling. Harper’s fingerprints were most likely still in the car. It wasn’t my inclination, but the only thing I could think to do was tell the truth and hope the local police were smart enough to realize we had nothing to do with this. In general, that was a long shot. I wanted to get the hell out of Ely. We had to get through the next few hours unscathed and keep out of jail. I gave us a fifty-fifty chance.
This was complicated. It was still early morning, not yet seven fifteen. We had a room at Hotel Nevada under the name Stephen Brewer, an act that had subterfuge and guilt written all over it. But would that come to light if we didn’t mention it? Maybe not. Why would it? We had spent the night at a motel in McGill, miles away. A White Pine or Nevada state detective would want to know where Harper and I were when the Altima was parked in the driveway, so they would have to know about the Desert Rose Motel, room 15.
My brain surged onward, picking this apart. The room in McGill was registered to John and Britany Taggart—not to me or to Harper Leeman. Why? Because Harper and I were avoiding a big guy in a black Ram pickup truck who had been acting in a suspicious manner. “Britany Taggart” was a close friend of mine in Reno. I’d asked for help and she had made a reservation for me in case the guy we were avoiding knew my name. She used her credit card to get the room. That would have to do, but it was likely that we’d now burned Lucy’s Taggart ID as well as Brewer’s, so this was getting expensive. Too bad, but it was what it was. I might be able to use Brewer’s credit card as misdirection if it was being tracked, so I wouldn’t toss it. Yet.
And wasn’t it a merry fucking coincidence that Harper was right there on the spot when her mother was found in the trunk of a car that had her fingerprints in it?
Shee-it. This pot was about to boil over.
I finally remembered that I was wearing a wig and a moustache, not easy to explain with Halloween still two months off, so I stashed them in my truck, and the nitrile gloves because they shouted that I knew opening the trunk was a big no-no.
“Harper?” I said.
She looked up at me. “What?”
“Are you going to be all right?”
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
I nodded at the car. “That’s your mother in there,” I said as gently as I could.
“I know.” She took another deep breath. “I know, and I’m … I don’t know what I am, but right now I’m not … not what I probably ought to be. I’m not heartbroken. It’s been months since I’ve seen my mother. We haven’t been close for such a long time, pretty much since I became a teenager. She was always so … tight, controlling. Felt like it anyway. I might not have been the easiest teenager out there, but I wasn’t such a bad kid either.”
She was rambling. “I’m going to call 911,” I said. “The police are going to ask a lot of questions. We need to get through that without getting hung up.”
She struggled to her feet. “What should I say?”
“It’s more about what you shouldn’t say.”
She nodded. “Okay. What shouldn’t I say?”
“Tell them everything just the way it happened, but do not mention the room we got at Hotel Nevada—or your gun, or mine, nothing about fake IDs or credit cards. If they bring any of that up, then, okay, tell it like it is. But it’s very unlikely, so don’t offer it to them. Can you do that?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“You’ll have to tell them about the guy who picked you up and hit on you, because here he is. He was fine when he drove off and left you. That’s all you know about him. And we’ll tell the police about the guy in the black pickup truck. We were in the restaurant when he came in and spoke to me, which is why we got out of there and got that motel in McGill. That hostess in the Denny’s might remember him talking to us. Are you okay with all of that?”
“Yes.”
“Is your gun still in the truck?”
“They would need a warrant to look in our bags. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” I smoothed her hair. “If you tell a lie, it’ll come back to haunt you, so don’t. Not even a little one. Just don’t give them any information they don’t ask for.”
“Okay.” She held her arms across her body as if she were cold. She shivered slightly. Then she raised her eyes to mine. “I can do that. I’ll be okay, Mort.”
“I opened the trunk because you recognized the guy in the back and he’d taken off with your things. That wasn’t smart of me, but it wasn’t criminal. I’ll weather that storm when it hits. You don’t have to worry about it, so don’t.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to call 911 now.”
“Okay. Go ahead. I’ll be fine. I’m … I was sort of in shock. I imagine I still am, a little. She’s my mother. We weren’t all that close, but still. This will probably hit me in a while, but … not yet.” She touched my arm. “Call the police. I’m gonna go sit on the porch steps. Do you think I can get my travel bag out of the trunk now?”
“Better not. It’s part of the story, but the police will probably give it back once they’ve gone through it. If not, we’ll buy you more clothes and things in Elko.”
If we’re not in jail, I didn’t say.
I hit 911, got a dispatcher and gave her my location but not my name—might’ve created a beehive of activity when I told her I’d found two dead people—then I hung up.
I locked my truck, then sat on the porch with an arm around Harper to await events.
It didn’t take long. Sheriff Ben Taylor was among the first to arrive. He was in the lead vehicle, with two others following, lights, no siren.
Taylor was in his forties, six-one, two hundred thirty pounds, barrel chest, thick moustache, black belt loaded down with gun, handcuffs, half a dozen other things. He climbed out of his car, left the lights flashing, and headed our way at a fast shuffle, trailing a deputy, Zack Niemeyer.
I got to my feet.
“Oh, please, no,” he said, pulling up short when he saw who I was. “Dirty son of a bitch. Mortimer Angel.” He glanced past me and saw Harper, hesitated a fraction of a second too long when he saw her in shorts and a tight tank top, then his gaze came back to me.
“Sorry about this, Sheriff,” I said.
“Well, shoot. I was hoping you’d never get around to White Pine County, you with your goddamn reputation.”
Which was about to get another good-sized boost.
Now was not a good time to smile, nor did I feel like it. “I don’t do this on purpose, Sheriff.”
“I’m Ben Taylor. Who’s the girl?”
“Harper Leeman.” I held out a hand to her. She came over and took it, stood quietly beside me. A deputy popped out of one of the other cars, hurried over, looked at the house and the front yard. Sheriff Taylor waved a hand at the place and the deputy went into the back to have a look around, check for criminals.
“Leeman?” Taylor said. “Sounds familiar but I can’t place it offhand.” He shrugged dismissively. “Where’s the body? Bodies.”
I pointed. “In the car. Back seat and the trunk.”
He sidestepped ten feet, looked inside at the guy in back on the floor, then glanced at me and Harper. “Either of you armed?”
I held my arms out. “No. We found them, that’s all. House here belongs to Harper’s aunt. She’s in Idaho, last we heard. With a guy named Jeff.”
“That’d be Jeff Nickel,” Taylor said. “Good guy, Jeff.”
He was on top of things, knew his people. Good small-town sheriff. He got a pencil out of a pocket and used it to lift the trunk, which was up two or three inches. His eyes widened and his lips tightened, but nothing else about his face changed. He took a breath, looking in at the attorney general. “Aw, jeez, I don’t need this.” He looked at Harper. “Leeman. Your name is Leeman?”
“Yes. That’s my mother.”
“Aw, shit,” Taylor said so quietly I barely heard him. He looked at me. “Who’s the guy in the back seat?”
“No idea. But this is probably his car and he comes with a story.”
“A story?”
“Harper here had something of a run-in with him.”
“Huh. Where and when? And how?”
I gave him the two-minute version with Harper filling in gaps as needed. I also told him about the guy in the black Ram pickup who might be looking for Harper, but we didn’t know that for certain and neither of us had ever seen him before.
Sheriff Taylor took it in, said, “Huh,” then strode over to Deputy Niemeyer, who’d glanced into the back seat of the Altima, and into its trunk, then backed off, watching us. “Otis on the way?” Taylor asked.
“Alma said he’s five or ten minutes out.”
Taylor nodded. “Need the coroner, too. And tell Alma to contact NDP, see if she can get Dick Vales out here, if he’s available. Tell her that’s a hurry-up job.”
He looked at me and Harper. “Nevada Department of Public Safety, investigation division. I’d rather have Vales than some newbie runnin’ around screwing things up.” He took another peek in the trunk of the car. “This’s gonna be a long goddamn day.”
He wasn’t wrong.
To get things going, he took preliminary statements from Harper and me. Niemeyer listened in as a witness.
The coroner arrived. Larry Norton, a white-haired wisp of a man in his late sixties. He determined that the two in the car were indeed dead, thought the hole in the old guy’s forehead was much too big for a bullet wound, no exit wound, didn’t know what had done it right offhand, but said he would know more after an autopsy. He found the old guy’s wallet on the floor and tentatively identified him by the photo on his driver’s license as Chase Eystad, sixty-eight years old, with a Reno address.
“Eystad,” Taylor said. “Never heard of the guy before he gave you that lift?” he asked Harper.
“No. First time I saw him was in Goldfield.”
“And here he is again. Attorney General Leeman too.” He gave the two of us questioning looks, but Harper and I didn’t say anything to that.
His gaze turned casual. “Tell me again about the guy in the pickup. Got a license plate, description, anything?”
I didn’t see a downside to giving him the partial plate and my thoughts about who might have killed Eystad and Leeman. It would slow Max down if he were picked up for questioning. I didn’t tell Taylor that Harper and I had been calling him Max. That would’ve been too confusing.
“Late model jet-black Ram pickup,” I said. “Crew cab, partial license of ZJX5. Didn’t get the last few numbers in all the rain when he took off west.”
Taylor looked over at Niemeyer. “That it, Zack?”
“Close enough, Sheriff. License was ZJX583.”
“Huh.” Taylor turned to me. “Got a description of the guy in that pickup?”
“Thick beard about an inch long, dark with some gray in it. Bald head, thick neck. Strong-looking guy, six-two, about two hundred thirty pounds. Jeans and boots, short-sleeve shirt, nothing fancy.”
“And you saw him again in the Denny’s at the hotel?”
“Uh-huh. He came in while we were eating. I had a bad feeling about him that night in the rain and there he was again, so we left, got a room in McGill for the night.”
Taylor squinted at me. He thought for a minute then shrugged. “There’s a law enforcement maxim that says we—the law—shouldn’t give out information we don’t have to. But I’ve known Russ Fairchild going on twenty years. We golf together a couple of times a year, here and in Reno, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and hope it doesn’t bite me in the ass.”
He chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip, which gave me time to ask, “You and Russ are friends?” Russell Fairchild was the senior detective at RPD in Reno.
“Same class in the Academy. Last person I wanted to show up here is you, Angel, given your record. Back when you found those two heads, Reno’s mayor and the DA, Russ badmouthed you up one side and down the other. But something changed last year, about the time you and that other girl took down those two serial killers south of here around Caliente. Now he can’t speak highly enough of you.” He gave me a hopeful look. “Don’t suppose you know why Russ changed his mind, do you? That’s not like him.”
I sure did. It was because I know who really killed the gangsta rapper Jo-X, and it wasn’t who the police or the FBI thought it was. Russ and I have a relationship based on the Cold War—mutually assured destruction—that has evolved into something approaching real friendship.
“I’ve bought him a few beers,” I said. “Russ likes his Bud Heavy. Maybe that’s it.”
Taylor gave me a look. “Don’t think so. It’s more than that. Anyway, about that pickup truck. We got a call about a vehicle fire three miles up Highway 6 at four in the morning. Black Ram pickup. That partial plate you gave me matches. It was stolen off a Ram pickup down in Vegas, but the owner doesn’t know when it happened. The truck was still too hot an hour ago to get at its VIN number, but I’ll bet you a month’s pay it’s stolen too.”
“No bet, Sheriff.”
No need for Ma to keep working on that partial plate now. I would have to give her a call when I got a chance. In fact, I would have to tell her about my finding the attorney general, see if it was worth a bonus.
Taylor looked at me. “You never met this Eystad guy before either, huh?”
“No. Don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “But it looks like this is all connected to the attorney general somehow. She was missing; now she isn’t.”
“And here you are. Again.”
“It’s all my fault, Sheriff. This wouldn’t happen if I’d stuck it out with the IRS.”
He grinned. “You call Russ Russ. Might’s well call me Ben, keep it friendly.” He put his hand out and I shook it. He glanced at Harper, then gave me a subtle eyebrow lift. “Desert Rose Motel, huh?”
“Room fifteen.”
“Might’ve gone into the wrong line of work back when I was twenty-four.” He shook himself, then said, “I’ll need a formal statement from both of you back at the office. Don’t see a problem with what you told me right offhand so I won’t put you in cuffs—kidding—I mean not kidding—but you know how it is with paperwork.”
“I was with the IRS for sixteen years. The U.S. tax code is the most ambiguous, circular, contradictory dung heap of paperwork ever created by a bunch of criminal lunatics. God couldn’t unravel it, so we had ample opportunity to put anyone behind bars we didn’t like. Which was actually the point of it. Still is, too.”
Ben Taylor grunted. “There are feds and there are feds. FBI is full of prima donnas; IRS is full of … of what?”
“Thugs.”
“Yeah, those. Anyway, this”—he glanced again at the Altima—“is a hell of a mess. And that black pickup, which might be part of this based on what you said happened up there thirty miles west of Grange.” He turned to Niemeyer. “Did you get that description of the guy Mr. Angel saw in the pickup?”
“Wrote it down while he was givin’ it.”
“Get Alma to put it out on the air right away. Just to detain the guy for questioning, but be damn cautious about it. Request backup before approaching.”
Niemeyer trotted over to his patrol car.
Sheriff Taylor frowned at the Altima. “I’ll be happy to turn this over to the state boys. And girls,” he added. “How about you go over to the office. I’ll get over there soon as I can after Otis shows up. Otis Kuska, the county detective. He’ll want to talk with you. He can get a look at this, then we’ll be over. He’ll probably want to leave this for the state guys, too. You two can follow Niemeyer over to the office in your truck there.”
All of this had gone easier than I had any right to expect. I would have to thank Russ later, buy him enough Bud Heavies to have to drive him home, but not so many I would have to tuck him into bed. There’s a reason to be on good terms with the law, but not that good.
On the way to the sheriff’s office, I reminded Harper of what not to say. She held my hand the entire trip, which was less than two miles and didn’t take five minutes.
“I’m okay, Mort,” she said. “I don’t think this will be very bad.”
“You heard what I told the sheriff. Just tell it again.”
“I’ve got it.”
And she did. We told our story to Ben and Otis when they showed up. They never mentioned Hotel Nevada, so neither did we. No one asked about guns. A phone call to the Desert Rose Motel did bring up the question of who Britany Taggart was, but that had nothing to do with Max or the black pickup, Chase Eystad, or the attorney general. In fact, the guy in the pickup made my use of a friend’s credit card sound reasonable. I would have to thank Max for setting his truck on fire if I saw him again since it gave our story more heft.
During a ten-minute break in the Q & A, I phoned Ma.
“Hola, Ma,” I said.
“Mort. Where are you? What the hell’re you doing?”
“Funny you should ask.” Harper put her ear next to mine so she could listen in.
“No. Oh, fuckin’ no. I hate it when you say that.”
“Anyway, the attorney general is no longer missing.”
“Oh, Lord. Please tell me you didn’t.”
“I did. Harper and I are currently at the sheriff’s office in White Pine County. In Ely.”
“Good luck, then. I ain’t posting bail and you’re fired.” She hung up.
Harper looked at me. “Really? You’re fired?”
“Nope. Ma’s a kidder. She thinks firing me is a kick. She does it all the time.” I called her back. “Hola, Ma.”
“You’re fired.” She hung up.
“Three’s a charm,” I said, dialing. “Ma! Don’t hang up.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Got some good news for you.”
“What? They’re lockin’ you up and tossin’ the key?”
“You don’t have to worry about that partial plate, so you can move on to other, more lucrative stuff.”
“Why? What’s with the plate?”
“It was on a truck that was torched a few miles west of Ely this morning.”
“Is that related to you finding the attorney general?”
“Yup. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of it, anyway.”
“Is she dead? I forgot to ask.”
“Well, yeah. You know how it is with me.”
“You are so fired.” She hung up.
We left it at that. I figured I’d let her absorb what I’d told her, give her time to cool off, then try again later. I phoned Lucy. By then it was 10:35 a.m.
“Hey, Mort. What’s happening? How are you and Harper?”
“Just peachy, cupcake.”
“Uh-oh. Now what?”
“You know how I drift around the world minding my own business and end up coming across things?”
“You mean ‘things’ like Harper?”
“That, yes, but, you know, other things as well.”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“And you know who’s been missing and in the news of late. Other than those two teenage girls.”
Another sigh. “You found her, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And of course, she’s dead, because that’s how they are when you find them.”
“That too, yes. Sadly.”
“Are you all right? Not hurt or anything?”
“I’m fine. So’s Harper.”
“How’s she taking it? I mean, the attorney general was her mother, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. But they weren’t close, not like you and your mom. She’s doing okay. I’ll let her explain about that later sometime. Right now, we’re in the sheriff’s office giving statements. We’ll be here a while. Eventually they’ll cut us loose and we’ll head up to Elko, see about finding Elrood.”
“What about that guy Harper’s been avoiding? Do you think he might’ve killed her mother?”
“No idea. We’re keeping away from him all the same. We don’t know anything about him, including his name. We’ve been calling him Max.”
“Max. Groovy. You don’t know where he is now, huh?”
“Nope. But I told the police he appeared to be stalking Harper so there’s an APB out on him. He might get picked up. That would slow him down, but I don’t think it’d stop him for long. We don’t have proof that he’s stalking her. We’ll keep an eye out, but Elko ought to be safe. I’ll try to get us up there by tonight. Hey, how about you talk to Ma, get her to get Doc Saladin working on a new ID for me, and make it snappy.”
“I thought you had one you haven’t used yet.”
“I do, but I have a feeling I might need more than one with all this going on, and Max is out there. Just a feeling, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
“You better be safe. And why don’t you tell Ma to get on it?”
“She hung up on me three times in two minutes. You know how she gets when I find people and our agency ends up in the news again.”
“Uh-huh. Little bit grouchy.”
“Yup. And right now, I’ve got a detective staring at me. Gotta go. Talk to Ma about getting me a new license and credit card. Soonish.”
“Okay. I love you, Mort. Be safe.”
“Love you too, sunshine.”
She laughed. “Sunshine? That’s new.” Then she was gone.
I opened a can of Diet Pepsi. Harper got her travel bag back after it was checked out and nothing was found that could have the slightest bearing on the two murders. We went back to the Q & A stuff and the day wore on.
A young reporter for The Ely Times, Megan Howard, hung around and eventually cornered Sheriff Taylor in the lounge by the coffee machine, got as much of the story as he was willing or able to tell her. He included the possibly newsworthy fact that Reno private investigator Mortimer Angel had located the body of another missing person—as if some sort of remarkable skill were involved. Ely being in the middle of nowhere, young, likeable, fresh-faced Megan out-scooped the likes of ABC, NBC, CNN, and all the other alphabet news-vulture agencies.
A little before noon I learned that Chase Eystad had once been a high-dollar criminal defense lawyer in Reno. He’d retired three years ago. Somehow it figured that one or more lawyers would stumble into this morass, whatever it was. Eystad’s liver temperature indicated that he’d been killed an hour or two after midnight, about five hours after Max had seen us in the Denny’s.
I also heard that no one in the neighborhood had seen the Nissan as it was driven to Harper’s aunt’s place and left in the driveway. Engine temperature indicated it had been run an hour or two before Harper and I got there, but after Max’s pickup was torched. That told me Sheriff Taylor was trying to connect the two events. Given those things, I felt the presence of the ghost of an accomplice lurking in the background, someone other than Eystad since he wasn’t in any condition to drive at the time the truck was set on fire. If so, there’d been at least three people hunting Harper.
At 12:55 p.m. I heard the distant beat of helicopter blades. It got closer, finally landing outside in the yard in a hot cloud of dust, and two people got out.
Dick Vales was a lead investigator for NDP, a thin, sallow guy of fifty with buck teeth and blue eyes like lasers. His cohort, Alice Jacobs, was in her forties, stocky, hair pulled back in a bun and held in place with something that resembled a short dark chopstick, but what do I know? The two of them had come from Winnemucca. Evidently the discovery of the state’s missing attorney general warranted immediate, high-level action.
Vales and Jacobs were first driven to the crime scene where a forensics crew was still hard at work. They nosed around, got what little there was to get, then returned to the sheriff’s office. Harper told the story to Jacobs, I told it to Vales, then the two of them compared notes. We got a late lunch and learned that Max’s torched pickup had been stolen in Vegas three days ago.
Then the team players switched sides. I told our story to Jacobs, Harper told it to Vales. At one point I think my eyes rolled up in my head and I passed out. If not, I don’t know where those missing minutes went. The story wasn’t getting any better with the telling, as stories are supposed to do. I got another Diet Pepsi to stay awake—at taxpayers’ expense.
But Harper and I must have passed inspection on the Q & A because we finally got cut loose at 4:15 p.m.
“Omigod,” she said when we were back in the truck. “I never want to do that again.” She set her Reebok bag on the floor at her feet.
“Stick with me, kid. You’ll do it at least twice a year.”
“Let me out now. I’ll walk back to Goldfield and wait for my car to get fixed.”
“Walk? Dressed like that you’d catch a ride easy, so if you want out …”
“Drive, Mort. But don’t find any more … you know.”
Good enough. I pulled out of the parking lot, headed north. As we left Ely, Harper called Jeff’s number and got her aunt in Idaho. She put the phone on speaker.
“Hi, Auntie,” she said.
“Hello, Harper. Sorry about this last-minute trip, but Jeff and I will be back day after tomorrow. Did you get settled in at my place? I fixed up the cabin for you.”
“Uh, no. I guess I won’t for a while.”
“Oh?”
Harper gave her aunt an abridged version of recent events, but there was no way to soft-pedal the death of her mother, Ellen’s sister.
Silence on the other end. Then, “Jeff and I will come back right away.”
“No, don’t.”
“Why not?”
“It, uh, might not be safe. Right now.”
So much for soft-pedaling. Harper had to get into it in more detail. She told Ellen there was a guy running around who might be targeting family members for some reason, but she wasn’t sure about that.
“So you’re headed to Elko with … who?” Ellen asked.
“This nice guy, his name is Mort. But you should stay where you are, Auntie, since you’re family too. If you come back, stay with Jeff for a while, until this gets … resolved.”
“Resolved how, for goodness’ sake?”
“When they catch the guy, I guess. Anyway, I hate to ask this, but could you deal with the police, you know—releasing mom’s body, funeral arrangements, that sort of thing? I would, but … right now I … well, I can’t.”
More silence. Then, “I can do that.”
Hesitations and subdued conversation, but no tears. Interesting. Annette Leeman must not have been an easy person to be around. They ended the call with Aunt Ellen on board with taking on the necessary arrangements.
We passed through McGill without stopping at the Desert Rose, picked up a Red Bull for me and some sort of raspberry-flavored vitamin water for her, a bag of cashews and another of sunflower seeds, then we got the hell out of the area and far away from Max. I hoped.
But as we were leaving McGill, I wondered where Max was and what he was doing now that he’d killed Chase Eystad and Annette Leeman. He might bore easily. I didn’t think he was done with that sort of thing—if he’d done it—and I had the feeling he was a slippery son of a bitch and wouldn’t be picked up by the police anytime soon.
Just a feeling, but my feelings are right at least two or three percent of the time. Less than that, however, when it comes to figuring out women—like the one sitting a few feet to my right as we barreled north on 93.