Fresh from his helicopter adventure, Anthony joined Laura at the cabin. Laura stood back and watched him look at the contents of the room. She wanted to see what caught his eye.
He went for the luggage.
“Nice clothes. Not too expensive, but nice.” He looked at Tess. “His watch was a knockoff made to look expensive. You know where he worked?”
“Mrs. Sheehey’s son, Cody, said he was a financial advisor.”
“In Vegas?” He answered for himself. “Probably. You want me to do that part? See where he worked and what was going on with him?”
Laura knew he liked that aspect of police work best. Back at the squad bay, kicked back in his swiveling chair, on the phone. Romancing people into telling him their darkest secrets.
“He has a sister in Tucson,” Laura said. “Apparently they’re estranged. We’re gonna have to run her down, too.”
Anthony had his phone out, checked it. “Shoot, no cell phone service.” He pocketed his phone. “I’ll go back to the farm and see what I can find. Insurance card, stuff he had to enter for Enterprise.”
“Why’d he rent a car?” Laura asked. “Why not drive his own?”
“Got me. You want me to help you here?”
“I’ve got it covered.” She believed in people doing what they did best. Anthony was good at everything, but he excelled at data collecting and doing his legwork back at the squad bay. She suspected that in down times, he was coming up with movie pitches and treatment ideas, but he was the best talker she’d ever seen on the phone. He could tease answers out of anybody. In person, though, he came off as overbearing. He towered over people, and some folks—most of them older—were intimidated by his bald head. This, she knew, was the reason he often adopted a porkpie hat. It made him look slightly goofy, but it took away the edge.
Just then tires crunched on gravel.
They went to the open doorway. A young woman dressed in skimpy running shorts and a clingy top emerged from a metallic yellow Ford Focus hatchback. She bent gracefully into the back for a bag of groceries, and stepped up onto the low porch to her cabin.
Anthony said, “On second thought, maybe I should stick around and give you a hand.”
Her name was Madison Neville.
Laura couldn’t ever remember looking that good. She felt a moment of regret, and then layered it over with her sterling career as a homicide detective, her superior sharpshooting skills, her interrogation chops, and her fiancé of three-and-a-half years.
Anthony stood back from the girl, porkpie hat cocked over one eye, looking casual, but Laura could tell he was in love.
“Sean? He’s dead? Really?” Madison asked after setting her groceries down on the small table in the pocket kitchenette. She stared at them both, her eyes like amethyst jewels.
“Did you know him to talk to?” Laura asked her.
“Yeah. I thought he was pretty nice.” From the look on her face, she might as well have said, “for an old guy.”
Embarrassed that they might think there was anything romantic between this twenty-something girl and a forty-three-year-old man?
At the age of thirty-seven, forty-three didn’t seem as old to Laura as it used to.
Normal.
Laura would never know for sure. She was going on instinct and the experience of seeing countless death scenes. But she was pretty sure Sean Perrin hadn’t seen it coming.
Literally.
Back at the squad bay, Laura got on the phone and spent a couple of hours calling motels in Winslow. She’d winnowed down the motels to within walking distance of the McDonald's at 1616 North Park Drive.
From Google Maps, she was able to see the area from above and also from Street View. The land looked as if it had been cleared for building, and new stores were going up near an old neighborhood. There were several motels in the neighborhood—an Econo Lodge, a Quality Inn, and a Motel 6.
Laura called the Winslow PD, identified herself, and talked to the desk sergeant there. She asked if there had been any shootings at the motels on Park near the interchange approximately two weeks ago.
“No shootings near the main drag.”
“None near the McDonald's on Park?”
“Not in the last two weeks.”
“How about before that?”
She could tell he was looking. “I’ll have to get back to you. Can you describe what you’re looking for?”
From the mouth of a congenital liar, Laura thought. “We have a homicide victim here in southern Arizona, a white male forty-three years old, name: Sean Perrin.” She described him and the story he’d told Terry Delmonte—the woman who was with him, his trip to the McDonald's for breakfast, his discovery of the woman dead in the room. “We believe he was driving a 2006 Dodge Viper Red Clearcoat.” She read off the VIN number.
“You say he’s a homicide victim? Anything else we should know about him?”
“He’s a mystery to us,” Laura said. “But he was shot once in the head at close range with a .22. No evidence at the scene. Shot in his car.”
“Sounds like a hit.”
“Which is why I’m following this lead.”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire? Can you describe this woman?”
“This is a guess, but she’s probably between the ages of twenty and forty. She would be a resident of Las Vegas. The name I was given was ‘Aurora’. She might have gone by another name. The last name, but not sure: Tattaglia.”
Laura knew the name was a shot in the dark. She was on shifting sands here. She thought about elaborating, but realized she’d only dig herself in deeper.
“So you’re sure he said McDonald's?”
“Yes.”
“There’s only one of ’em here. I’ll check and see if there’s a homicide in a motel, but I don’t recall anything like this.”
Laura thought: all you can do is try.
She got a call back the next morning.
“No record of anyone shot to death in any of the motels near the McDonald's,” the desk sergeant, Manny Contreras, told her. “But there was a death that fits your time frame. A woman died of an overdose at the Meteorite Inn.”
“The Meteorite Inn?”
“Yeah, it’s an old motel, kind of off the beaten track, but if they were hiding out as you say . . . ”
“A drug overdose? You sure?”
“To tell the truth, at first it did look like a homicide. She must have flailed around some, hit her head against the bed board and also on the chest of drawers. Turned out it was a drug overdose. Ketamine and PCP in her system, which fits with what we found.”
“How old was she?”
“Mid-to-late twenties, but she looked older than that. Her name was Aurora Johnson. She had a Las Vegas DL and one hell of a rap sheet,” he added. “She was a prostitute.”
11: Running Down the Road
Laura and Anthony hit the road early the next morning. Early for Anthony was eight a.m.
Laura picked him up at his home, which was kind of on the way, and they hit Phoenix on Interstate 10 just in time for rush hour.
It was mid-afternoon by the time they pulled in to Winslow. The police department was situated along old Interstate 40, a white cube of a building on a one-way street.