MA AND RUSS collaborated on how to leave the crime scene, got the rest of us to set the place up a certain way. We hustled around, thinking about fingerprints. We put up new nooses to keep Harper’s and Lucy’s DNA out of the place, not that their DNA was on record anywhere. We rubbed the nylon rope on Jake’s hands. The crime scene was a basement; nooses would put Jake and Joe with the dead girls, Cathy and Vicki, and make things hot for Kyle. I pocketed the remote detonator Jake had carried around. When we were finished, Ma ordered everyone out of the house, said she would catch up later at Gil’s Café, three blocks from her office near the municipal courthouse.
We all trooped out.
Outside, dawn was breaking. I stayed behind on the driveway, but the girls, Russ, and Day left in the Suburban and the Volvo. They drove to Ma’s office, parked the cars, then walked to Gil’s. The girls were starving. So was I, but I had to know what Ma was up to, and if Kyle showed up, I wanted to be there with Jake’s Glock to protect her.
I went back inside the house and down the stairs in stocking feet, not making a sound. I crept to the door to the wood shop, pushed it open a few inches, and listened. Ma had the duct tape hanging half off Jake’s mouth.
“—if you give me a name,” Ma said. “I don’t have a lot of patience, just so you know.”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
I heard her sigh. “That girl you tortured is worth ten thousand of the likes of you. You’re human garbage. I’m not going to play around here. If you think I’m a softie because I look like your grandma who used to give you milk and cookies, you’re wrong. Give me a name so we can clean this mess up, or—”
“Or what? Or nothing, bitch. I need a hospital and a doctor, you crazy old crone.”
Another sigh, deeper this time. Then she said, “One last chance, and I mean it. I won’t put my friends at risk to save your miserable hide, buster—”
The hinges made a faint squeak as I opened the door another inch. Ma turned, saw me looking in at them.
“Aw, Jesus. Get the hell out of here, Mort.”
“No. We’ve always been in it together, whatever it is.”
“Not this time.”
“This time, every time.”
“This isn’t gonna be like Paris. This’s me, no one else.”
I came in and stood beside her. “Whatever it is, you’re not in it alone, Ma. You and I are partners.”
“Get out of here, Mort. I’m serious.”
“No.” My heart began to pound. I didn’t know what she had in mind, but I couldn’t leave her, couldn’t let her do this alone, no matter what it was.
She lowered her head.
“What’re you up to?” Jake asked her. His voice held a tremor, bravado evaporating like ice on a hot plate.
Ma stared at him. Softly, she said, “We have crossed the Rubicon, Jake. You and I are done here. I’ll try not to kill you, but five minutes from now you will no longer be you.” She pressed the tape over his mouth, made sure it was on tight. “Goodbye,” she said.
He squealed, shook his head, then Ma put the clamp on his nose. She took my arm and pulled me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, Mort.”
We watched from across the billiard room. When Jake stopped trying to yell through the tape and went limp, Ma checked her watch. It had a second hand. “Twenty seconds after five forty-two,” she said quietly.
I didn’t say anything. I held her hand as she stared at the floor for half a minute, eyes closed.
“He shouldn’t have waterboarded Lucy,” she said so softly I could barely hear her. “He shouldn’t have said he would waterboard her so long she wouldn’t know her own name afterward. I can’t have him putting that horrible idea in his brother’s head, or telling it to someone else.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’m right here with you, Ma.”
She looked up, gave me a dim smile. “Thank you.” A single tear leaked out of her right eye. She wiped it away. “That’s not for him,” she said. “It’s for me.”
I squeezed her hand again. “I know.”
At 5:45 I followed her back into the room. She gave it another twenty seconds then took the clamp off Jake’s nose, the duct tape off his mouth. Ten seconds later Jake’s chest spasmed once, twice, then he started to breathe.
“I shut him down for three full minutes after he lost consciousness,” she said in a flat voice. “If it hasn’t killed him—and it looks like maybe it hasn’t—I don’t think he’ll be the same guy who threatened Lucy. Hope not anyway.”
We watched Jake a while longer. He kept breathing, but his eyes weren’t right. They looked vacant, no context or understanding to anything his eyes were taking in.
Too harsh a punishment for what he had done to the attorney general, Lucy, the two teenage girls, and what he would have done to Harper? Too much judge and jury, tap-dancing on both sides of the scales of justice? I didn’t have answers to any of that. I’m not that smart. But now it was what it was. No takebacks.
Ma and I trooped upstairs.
She phoned Day on her burner as I put my shoes back on. “Get over here,” she said to him. “Just you, no one else. Bring the Suburban.”
He arrived eight minutes later and we gathered down in the basement. “Everyone just ordered,” he said, looking at what was left of Jake. “I did too. My pancakes are going to get cold, Maude.” I knew the comment was an attempt to lighten a somber mood. It didn’t work.
“Sorry about that.” She nodded at Jake. “We have to get this guy out of here.”
He stared at Anza. “Where to?”
“My house. We’ll stash him in the garage for a while.” She didn’t say for how long, and Day and I didn’t ask.
“He’s quiet,” Day said. “Guess his morning didn’t go so good. I parked the Suburban right outside the door.”
Ma stepped out of the way. “Can you two get him out of here and into the car?”
“No problem.” Day looked at me.
“I’ll take his feet,” I said.
As Day and I lifted him, Ma set a burner phone on the worktable, turned on, ready to receive a call.
“Insurance policy,” she said.
Day and I followed Ma as she drove the Chariot of Fire back to her place. We left the Suburban in an unattached garage behind her house, a three-story place she shared with two other ladies about the same age. Jake Anza was awake, sort of. Not easy to tell since he was unresponsive. We locked the Suburban and left him tied up, duct tape over his mouth to keep him quiet, a tarp covering him in case anyone tried to peek inside.
“His brother’s supposed to get to the Monroe house around nine,” Ma said before we left the garage. “After he’s gone, we’ll put this guy back in the basement and call 911 on a burner, get the police going on it.”
“We could’ve left him there,” Day said. “Not put him in here.”
“His brother would’ve seen how Jake ended up. Not sure I want that. And he might’ve taken him away. I didn’t want that either. I want Kyle to be off balance, not knowing what’s going on. I want the police to ID Jake, start putting pressure on his brother, which might put pressure on the person or persons who hired them.”
“Let’s hope it was Jake and Kyle, no one else,” I said. “Joe doesn’t count. He was a shitbird, brought into this by his uncles. It might be a family thing, to keep it tight. Jake didn’t mention anyone other than his brother.”
“Then maybe there isn’t,” Ma said. “But someone else is in this. There’s a recording that has someone panicking, someone with a lot to lose if it comes to light. Whoever it is probably didn’t hire anyone else. They would want to keep this as quiet as possible.”
“Let’s hope.”
Day said, “My pancakes are probably stone cold.”
Gil’s Café had been open less than a year. It had a bright, appealing retro look—red Naugahyde booths, tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, a long counter with ten stools on a low, raised dais, milkshake machines, ’60s neon jukebox loaded with ’50s and ’60s rock and roll.
At 6:10 all of us were in a booth closest to the restrooms, as far from other patrons in the room as we could get. We held a powwow, keeping our voices down. Ma had pulled up a driver’s license photo of Kyle Anza from the DMV site so all of us could ID him if we saw him. Lucy had dropped a small fortune in quarters in the jukebox to keep our conversation private. Chuck Berry was singing “Johnny B. Goode.”
I sat across from Lucy and Harper. Both of them gave me questioning looks, wanting to know about Jake. I gave them a slight head shake in return. Not now.
Lucy handed Harper the $1,200 she’d found in Jake’s wallet. Harper gave it back. “No way. That’s too much like blood money. I don’t want it.”
Lucy shrugged and pocketed the roll. “No problem. I’ll launder it.”
Ma stared at her, then said, “We’ll try to follow this Kyle guy if he shows up. And I want to put a tracker on his car.”
“No,” Day said. “That’s too dangerous.”
“He’ll go in the house. We’ll leave the door unlocked. I’ll be nearby. An old lady out walking will barely register with him and not as any kind of a threat. I’ll put the tracker on his car as I go by, keep going. It won’t take ten seconds. When he leaves, we’ll follow him. We’ll be in three or four cars, all of us talking on a conference call. If he meets the person who hired him, we might nip this thing in the bud.”
“Not likely to happen,” I said. “Especially once he sees what’s in the basement.”
“Which is what?” Harper asked. She gave me and Ma a look, wanting to know what we’d done with Jake. I would never tell her. Lucy yes, but Harper had to go back to her life, back to teaching. It wouldn’t do her any good to know what had happened to Jake.
“He’ll find Joe dead on the floor,” I said. “Nooses hanging from the beams. Two wooden stools, Jake’s duffel bag of equipment, a few pools of blood. But no tomahawk or wallets. We’ll put those back after he’s gone. It’ll help tell a story once the police get there.”
Russ leaned closer. “What about Jake? He’ll be there, won’t he?”
I figured Russ would get around to that. Ma had left Russ out of it; didn’t think he could handle what she had done to Jake. Clifford Day was tougher. Russ would find out later, one way or another, but now was not the time.
“No,” I said flatly. “Jake’s not there now and he won’t be there when Kyle goes in.”
Lucy lifted her eyebrows at me. I gave her a look that said later. “With Jake missing, Kyle is gonna be worried,” I said. “And hyper cautious. He won’t know what’s going on. He won’t stick around the place for long.” Ma’s insurance would make sure of that.
“We don’t know what he’ll do after he leaves,” I went on. “He might contact the person who hired him, but if he does, it’ll most likely be by phone, no way to trace it.”
“Nothin’ we can do about that,” Ma said. “But we need to keep tabs on him, which is why I want a tracker on his car. So here’s how we’ll work it …”
Kyle Anza showed up at 8:54 that morning in a silver Lexus GX SUV. Ma had been strolling up and down the street for an hour, taking it slow and easy, acting her age on a nice day. A breeze was blowing, temperature in the mid-seventies, headed for ninety-five, scent of honeysuckle in the air.
I had Jake’s cell phone in case Kyle called before going in the house. Which he did. The phone erupted with the sound of bamboo wood chimes, startling me. The screen showed the letter K. “About time, man,” I said. “Get in here,” then hung up. I could only hope I’d sounded like Jake, that they didn’t have a code word or phrase worked out, and that the brusque response wouldn’t scare him off. If he called back, I didn’t know what I’d do, other than to sound angry and fake it again.
I let everyone know he was on the way. Ma watched as his SUV passed her, moving slowly on Monroe. He turned left into the driveway. The Volvo was still there, locked, far enough from the house that Kyle had to leave the Lexus close to the street. The Suburban was still in Ma’s garage.
Ma watched as he got out of the car. He gazed around, but didn’t take note of the older woman slowly ambling up the sidewalk across the street—or the white-haired fellow out walking a dachshund on a lavender leash, or a woman trimming rose bushes half a block west.
Kyle wore black jeans, a gray T-shirt, ball cap. He was a solid-looking guy, six-two, two hundred forty pounds. He opened the side door and went inside. Ma crossed the street and headed for the Lexus. She gave us all that on the conference call, and the license of the Lexus when she got closer to it.
It took her eight seconds to stick a tracker under the SUV’s right rear wheel well and keep going. Seconds later I drove by in my nondescript ’94 Toyota Tercel. No sign of Kyle yet, as I’d expected. I didn’t slow down or speed up. I dialed the number of the burner Ma left on the worktable. I gave Kyle one minute to look around the basement before hitting the SEND button.
It rang five times, then, “Who’s this?” he answered in a guarded tone.
“Cops will be there in two minutes, Kyle.” I ended the call. I smiled, having probably sent his blood pressure into orbit.
Ma and I had talked over the timing. She strolled by on the far side of the street, keeping one eye on the house.
Kyle came out, moving fast, looking around. He had Jake’s utility bag in one hand. He tried to open the Volvo’s doors, gave up, then stopped by the back of the Lexus and scanned the street. He looked both ways, took out his cell phone and tapped the screen. I got all that from Ma.
Jake’s cell phone rang in my Toyota. I didn’t answer. It was better to keep Kyle guessing, wondering where Jake was, wondering what had happened. Wondering who had answered the phone not four minutes ago since it couldn’t have been Jake who’d told him to “get in here,” and wondering who was on the burner telling him cops were on the way. He would be on edge, on guard, sweating bullets.
He got in his car and backed out, took off fast.
“He’s leaving,” Ma said. “He’s got Jake’s bag of tools, but he left Joe in the basement. Right now, he’s headed east on Monroe.”
I was two blocks west and headed west, too far away to get on him. Day was in a blue-gray Taurus a block north on Nixon Avenue. “I’ve got him,” he said.
The tracker was up and running according to Ma, but that wouldn’t tell us who Kyle met, if he met someone, so the chase, such as it was, was on.
It didn’t last long.
In a rented Chevy Sonic, Harper took over from Day when Kyle’s SUV turned right onto Arlington. She kept on him down to Plumb, stayed two cars back, and followed him all the way to the Grand Sierra Resort on Mill Street with Lucy one car behind her in a ’98 Plymouth Breeze I’d borrowed from Velma Knapp, my former neighbor up near Ralston Street. Velma is eighty-eight years old. I told her we needed to track a bad guy, a very bad guy, and she was thrilled. She’d wanted to come along. Feisty old gal.
Harper parked in a slot a hundred feet from Kyle. He was in row G. Harper took row E. She got to the front door of the hotel-casino thirty seconds before him, kept an eye on him as he came in, then handed him off to Lucy. Lucy got a profile shot of him at the registration desk as he got a suite on the eighteenth floor. The girls lost him when he went into an elevator. So much for tracking him to see if he met anyone. But … c’est la vie. We had other pressing matters to take care of.
First up was getting Jake out of Ma’s garage and back into the basement of the Monroe Street house, leaving the Volvo in the driveway. We returned wallets to Joe’s and Jake’s pants and tossed the tomahawk on the workbench with Jake’s fingerprints on it. The police might be able to track down who had bought it and where. The spike end of the tomahawk would match the hole in Joe’s head and the wound in Jake’s chest. It might even match the hole in Eystad’s forehead. Food for thought—something for the FBI to ponder, if RPD got them involved. Jake’s eyes were vacant, drool on his chin. His shirt was still upstairs and he was bare-chested. He was untied, no duct tape on him. A nice puzzle for cops or feds. No point in leaving the Glock with Jake, so it was mine now.
The two girls had a ten-minute delay getting out of the Grand Sierra. Lucy led Harper over to a high-limit roulette table. She watched for two rounds without betting, then set five hundred on red, five hundred on a 14, 15, 17, 18 corner, and the ball landed on fifteen black. She cashed in the chips, gave $3,000 to Harper, a hundred to the girl running the table, and pocketed the rest for traveling money.
“Keep it,” she said to Harper. “It’s clean now.”
“Uh, okay, I guess. How did you do that, and why do I get three thousand dollars?”
“Answer to the first is I was born on April Fool’s Day when four planets were lined up. The second is, you need it to pay for your car and travel expenses and I don’t.”
“Huh. Neither of those makes any sense, Lucy.”
“Life is often like that.”
“Okay, but the guy said the new radiator is only going to cost three-forty. Three thousand is way too much.”
“Keep it anyway—to get to San Francisco next March. Fly first class, it’s great. Let’s get outta here.”
They had to do a car shuffle, returning Velma’s car and Harper’s rental, then they were off to Tonopah in the Suburban. They would leave it in the Raley’s supermarket parking lot. Lucy’s Mustang was in front of the Stargazer Motel. Harper had gotten word that her Corolla was ready in Goldfield. I gave Lucy a long hug and an even longer kiss, then watched as the Suburban rounded a corner of Washington Street, headed for I-80 and points south. Ma stood beside me as they disappeared.
“Now what?” I asked her.
“Print the cell phone photo of Kyle that Lucy took, and his driver’s license picture, and the best one I got of Jake down in the basement, then I’ll get on the computer and see if I can get a line on the Anzas which might tell us who hired them. And,” she said, eyes narrowed in thought, “see if we can get a handle on those two girls who were found in a basement a few days ago. All of this started with them. They got hold of a video of something they shouldn’t have, something that got them killed.”
“And call 911?” I said. “Get the police scurrying over the Monroe house like beavers building a dam?”
For a moment she stared at me. “That too. Cops will ID Jacob Anza and his nephew, which might put them on Kyle. That could also turn up the heat on the broad who hired ’em—if it really was a broad.”
She hesitated, then shook her head at me. “Beavers buildin’ a dam. I don’t know how you come up with stuff like that, Mort.”
“It sounds like what cops do, doesn’t it?”
“In a strange way.” She took a deep breath. “Hope that asshole Jake doesn’t wake up and start squawking. That’d be a bitch and a half.”