“So the prosecution said he discovered his little sister there, took her, drove around with her for a while, then killed her to keep her from talking?”
“Yes. Then, in remorse, later tried to kill himself with a lethal mixture of booze and pills.”
“I think he was set up,” Tadeo said angrily. “I knew it from the moment I opened that car door, and I’m never going to be able to live with myself if-”
He broke off and looked at his wife, a strange expression on his face.
“It’s true,” she said softly. “You’re a good man, Tadeo. And you won’t be able to live with yourself until you make this right.”
He frowned, then shook his head. “It’s probably not going to make a difference.”
“Who says that you only do the right thing if you’re going to win? Not the Tadeo I know. And if you were where that young man is now, it would make a difference to you.”
She kept talking to him in this vein, and eventually he agreed to talk to Frank. He also told me he would talk to Mark Baker at the Express before he spoke to any other member of the press. “And the brother, Caleb-can you ask him to call me again?” he said.
We told him we would.
As we left, Dora refused our thanks, saying we were the ones who had helped her. I didn’t think that was the case.
WE started the trip back.
“Are you sorry it won’t be your story?” Ethan asked, rearranging his pillows.
I thought about it for a moment and said, “A little, I suppose. Mostly not.”
But he had already fallen asleep, wasting my honesty.
He slept through the brief calls I made to Frank and Mark Baker, and the stop I made at the police department, where Frank met me in the parking garage. Memories of seeing Ethan in an ICU were far too new-neither of us wanted to wake him or leave him alone asleep, so we stood outside the car and spoke softly. I gave Frank a quick summary of what I had learned and told him how to contact Tadeo. He told me Reed had found a little tin container hidden in Sheila’s house. It held several small, individually wrapped teeth.
“He nearly didn’t find them. She put them in a Yahtzee game. He only figured it out because the game was in her bedroom, and after imagining a few wild variations on Yahtzee, he decided she probably wasn’t the type to be playing any of them in bed.”
“Thank you for that image.”
We promised to catch up on other events of the day when we saw each other that evening.
I stopped to refill the Jeep’s nearly empty gas tank, then headed home.
I don’t know when Ethan woke up, but about three miles from the house I heard him say, “Did you know we’re being followed?”
Honesty made me admit I didn’t, but he was right.
CHAPTER 34
Monday, May 1
3:15 P.M.
LAS PIERNAS
SO you don’t know how long you’ve been tailed?”
“I don’t think it’s been for very long. I think I would have noticed someone following me all the way from Redlands. I stopped off at the police department, and again to get gas.”
“You did?”
His disbelief over that gave me a moment to glance again in the mirror.
“Don’t let him see you checking the mirror,” he said, making me want to tell him that I wasn’t born yesterday, but why emphasize the obvious? And it’s hard to sound wise if you’re the one who didn’t notice the tail.
“He’s staying far enough back that I haven’t been able to get a good look at his plates-or at him,” he added. “He’s wearing a cap and shades. Driving a dark blue SUV. Not one of the giant ones, but high enough off the ground to see you from a few cars back.”
“I did figure out which car it is,” I said. He didn’t laugh, which made me think he was more worried than he was letting on.
I made a turn, traveling away from the house. “Don’t sit up,” I said to Ethan. “He may not know you’re in the car, and that might be helpful.”
“No problem. But the seat belt might be giving me away.”
I made another turn and glanced at Ethan. His face was pale and drawn. “Are you in pain? Don’t lie to me.”
“Let’s call it discomfort. I can handle it.”
The blue SUV appeared in traffic a few cars back. I thought over my options.
If I turned on to a more deserted street, I would either make him shy away or become more aggressive. If he was only trying to figure out where I lived, he might hang back a bit, but if he intended harm, it would be a bad choice. This was no time to give him the benefit of the doubt.
So I stayed with bigger roads. The SUV stayed with me. I had a full tank of gas but couldn’t keep this up much longer, or I’d end up driving Ethan to the ER.
Same with pulling any fancy moves through intersections-if I had been the only one in the car, I would have taken turns faster and blown a red light. I would have to try to lose the SUV with subtler moves, or lead him somewhere he definitely didn’t want to go.
I thought of going back to the police department, but that might only be a temporary solution, since I could have been followed from there. And I was afraid the issue might be forced before then.
I grabbed my purse and pushed it toward Ethan. “Take out my cell phone-it’s clipped to the side. Hold down the number two and it will dial Frank’s cell phone. Tell him what’s happening, and ask him if a patrol car could pull one of us over.”
“Pull one of us over! Why not him?”
“My first choice, of course, but I’ll take scaring him off any way we can.”
Frank had just answered when the SUV turned down a side street, disappearing from view.
“He’s gone,” I said.
Ethan still told Frank what was going on. He spoke to him while I made a few more unnecessary turns, making sure I hadn’t been handed off to a second tail.
“Frank says stay on the phone with him until we get home.”
So they talked, mostly about the visit to Tadeo, with occasional interruptions when Ethan relayed a question from Frank, mostly to ask if I was sure I didn’t have another shadow.
When we reached the house, a patrol car was parked out front.
“Don’t worry,” Ethan said. “Frank made sure it wasn’t Officer Fletcher.”
“I don’t want to become paranoid about everyone in that family,” I said, not entirely sure that it wasn’t too late to prevent that from happening.
I recognized the officer as Mike Sorenson, a longtime friend of Frank’s, and felt the last of my fear easing.
“Dude,” Ethan said into the phone, “he’s so old.”
I heard Frank laughing.
“Ethan,” I said, “he’ll be able to protect us from anything short of an act of God.”
We said good-bye to Frank and hello to Mike. Ethan was perfectly polite to him, perhaps because when Mike helped him into the house, he got a better chance to see that the man is built like a steel vault. Ethan took a painkiller and headed for bed.
Mike told me he was going to stick around for a while, if I didn’t mind.
I didn’t, because even knowing that sooner or later he would have to return to regular duties, it was a relief to have him there. The dogs, friendly as they were, were also protective, and would undoubtedly hear anyone trying to approach the house.
I kept trying to figure out why anyone would want to follow me. Who could it be? Sheila’s killer? But if the killer was worried that I had told the Las Piernas police something about him, reading the Express would have let him know I hadn’t seen the person who ran off. And the person who ran off might not, after all, have been the killer. It would be too late to come after me now to shut me up, anyway-I had already talked to the police that night, and the public knew it.