Chapter Four – Luke

 

My knocks on the front door of the little adobe shack went unanswered, at first. I stepped back from the door, looking out over the rock-and-cactus-filled front yard. The breeze blew old bedding and a couple muumuus clipped to a clothesline, sending them swaying softly in the blighted desert air. It was like the face of the moon out here, all rocks and dust and dirt. The only thing green here was the Full Moon Security file tucked beneath my arm. Back in the St. Louis offices, it had seemed pale and washed out, but here it was as vibrant as the trees of the Pacific Northwest.

I’d parked the Land Rover across the road from the house. Between picking up my checked luggage and renting the car, I’d already been on the ground for two hours. My time, it was noon, and my body seemed shocked and confused at the way the shadows of the rocks and desert plants seemed to be askew. There shouldn’t be shadows at all, my eyes seemed to insist from behind my tinted shades.

Across the highway, crouched atop the nearest mountain ridge, was the so-called Illuminati House. In the daylight, it was impressive, a hacienda-style mansion that seemed to dominate the skyline. You could probably have seen fifteen miles away, down to Tucson, from up there.

“Hello?” called an old woman’s voice from the back of the house, drawing my attention from the building up on the hill. “Hola? Who’s there?”

“Ms. Vasquez?” I called back as I walked around the front, my boots crunching in the rocks and dirt. Apparently, grass wasn’t a thing in Arizona. And, looking around the town of Prophet, I could see why. You’d have to have a perpetual drip going to keep even the heartiest of grasses alive, and out here there just wasn’t the kind of water you’d need for it.

“Yes?” called Ms. Vasquez again. “Can I help you? Come on back, dear.”

I rounded the corner and headed back, hand hovering near my concealed sidearm out of habit. Not that I expected any threat from the older woman, but you couldn’t ever be too careful when you were walking into this kind of thing.

My nose wrinkled at the smell of ammonia as I got closer. I could hear water splashing, like children playing in a bathtub. I came to a brief stop as I entered the backyard, the smell of cleaning chemicals overpowering me.

An old Hispanic woman, wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat and a muumuu to match the ones hanging from the line out front, worked at her laundry in an ancient-looking washtub, her thick shoulders rhythmically rolling and scrunching together as she worked out the stains and grime from them. Even as a lion shifter, that stench was almost too much for me.

She turned her head a little and looked back at me over her shoulder, her old eyes peering out from beneath thick black brows and a crown of long, salt and pepper hair that flowed out from beneath her woven hat. “Don’t mind me, just doing some chores. What brings you by?”

“My name’s Luke Oldham, ma’am, and I work with a private security agency that’s looking into some of the disappearances in the area. The family of one of the girls convinced the police to release their files to us, and I was hoping you could maybe answer a few questions, if it’s not too much trouble?”

“Security, eh? What’s a handsome young man like yourself doing that for?”

I smiled. “Making a living, I suppose. Would you mind answering some questions, though, about the girl you saw a few months ago?”

“Girl I saw?” she asked as she turned her attention back to the washtub.

I walked around in front of her, the stench from the ammonia nearly choking me. “Yes, ma’am. You spoke to the police a few months back? Told them you had seen one of the girls that went missing driving by on the road out front. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me, just to clarify some things?”

“Oh, yes, I remember now. The memory ain’t what she used to be.” A wide, yellow-toothed grin split her leathery face, and she nodded. “Only if you let me keep working. Sheets won’t sparkle by themselves.”

“Of course, ma’am. Wouldn’t dream of taking you away from that.”

“Now what can I help you with?”

“Well, I had some questions about the house just down the highway? The one with all the parties?”

She nodded, her eyes downcast at the laundry in front of her, her shoulders and hands still working away. “They tried to buy my land, you know. Didn’t want me to see who comes and goes from that place.”

“Oh?”

Another smile cracked her dry, chapped lips. “I wouldn’t sell, though. This place is too precious to me. Need to have something to pass on to the boys.”

I looked around idly at the beaten landscape, at the way the sun came bearing down, at the old house’s crumbling adobe and stucco facade. A few more years, and this place would be falling down around her ears. “Uh-huh. They say why they wanted to buy it up? They already have all that land across the way, don’t they?”

“They wanted privacy, for whatever perverted games they play up there.”

“They said that?”

She paused. “Well, not exactly. But I could see it in their eyes. Perverts, all of them.”

“Even the real estate guy?” I asked, smiling a little.

Ms. Vasquez leaned forward a little. “Even her. And she was the worst of them.”

“Right.” I tapped the folder against my side as I watched her continue to work away at the laundry. A tired old woman, just seeing perversion everywhere. “Well, would you mind looking over some photos I have, Ms. Vasquez? Of the missing girls? See if any of them jog your memory?”

She looked up at me from beneath her shaggy brows, nodding a little.

I flipped open the folder and held them out in front of her as she continued to scrub. She stopped me on the third picture. “Yes,” she said. “That’s her. She’s the one I saw.”

I grimaced as I looked down at the photo of Sadie Parkland, the girl in question. Tabitha had taken it from one of her social media accounts, and she was all made up and smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world. Like she wouldn’t have her life ended because her heart had been wrenched from her chest through some supernatural power.

“You sure, ma’am?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything for a long moment, her eyes unwavering in their focus on the picture. “Positive that’s her. Sure it is.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling a little. “And you saw her turn into the mansion up the road?”

“Oh, yes. She was going up there to party with those perverts.”

“Right,” I said, shutting the folder and tucking it beneath my arm. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Anything else I could help you with?”

I smiled tightly as I began to edge away. “No, ma’am, I think you’ve been more than enough help for one day. If I have any other questions, I’ll just stop by, okay?”

“Oh, feel free, my dear.”

Well, that had been a waste of my time. The old bat had identified the wrong woman. The one she’d seen was Annie Greenberg, and not Sadie Parkland.

Behind me, water sloshed as she went back to her washing, humming a little tune that drifted out and followed my crunching boots as I trudged back up to my car. I looked back up to the house up on the hill, thinking about her words. About perverted parties, and the like.

Simply put, I couldn’t trust anything that came out of her mouth. Not anything in the past, and not anything now. She was about as likely to give me solid information as I was to just find a beautiful woman wandering around in the desert.

Before, my next stop had been the Illuminati House. Now, I wasn’t so sure. All I had to go on was the word of some crazy lady who thought only perverts went up there, and couldn’t even tell the difference between the victims. Who was to say she hadn’t just seen an attractive girl going up there one night, and gotten her confused with the picture the cops had showed her? Maybe I should go out to the scene of the crime, or try to get into the morgue to take a look at the latest body? Either of those avenues of investigation might give me more than what I had now.

I walked back out of the front yard, past the drying laundry still fluttering in the wind like a surrender flag, up to where I’d parked the Land Rover. I was still amazed Tabitha had sprung for the nicer rental.

Just as I was about to cross the old stretch of highway, I saw a silver Acura SUV come rolling down the road, thirty miles per hour under the speed limit. The driver had both hands on the top of the wheel, and she kept looking around like she was confused about where exactly to go. Folder gripped tightly in my hand, I watched her come down the road, our eyes locking as she slowly crept by like a dream passing in the night.

Damn.

Maybe I was wrong about Ms. Vasquez. Maybe I should have gone back and questioned her more fully. After all, I’d just found a beautiful woman wandering around in the desert.

As she continued down the road, I crossed over and opened the driver’s side door. As I put my foot inside and went to climb in, the silver SUV’s brake lights lit up, and it came to a slow stop.

I grunted, a little curious.

The reverse signal popped on, white against the ruby-colored taillights, and the woman in the car began to slowly reverse.

My gut instinct was to draw my sidearm and take cover behind the rental. After all, what would a random beautiful woman want with me out in the middle of the desert?

I fought the urge down and, after tossing the case file on the seat, closed my driver’s side door. Arms crossed, I leaned back against the hot exterior, trying to look as casual as possible.

Call it a hunch, but something about the slightly confused look on her face told me that she wasn’t a for-hire assassin, or a supernatural creature bent on my murder.

Wheels crunched to a halt as she drew up in line with me.

We exchanged a look through the glass of the passenger side window, and she gave me a weak smile for a moment before she glanced away, seeming to fumble with her window’s down button.

I could tell this wasn’t her car. Or that, maybe, it was a rental like mine.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

She smiled a little, gave a slightly off-kilter laugh. “So,” she said, “I’ve got a pretty crazy question.”

“What’s that?”

“You, um…you wouldn’t happen to be a police officer, would you?”

I smiled a little. “What makes you ask that, ma’am?”

She looked forward again, nodded. The smile slowly began to fade from her lips as she turned back to me. “Well, you kind of look like one. Like, I’m really getting that vibe off you, you know? But, your car’s really nice, so it kind of threw me off.”

I shook my head a little as I pushed off from the side of the car. “No, not exactly one. Been a lot of things, but never a cop.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God!”

I raised an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Yeah, oh my God, so much better.”

I smiled a little. “So you’re glad I’m not a cop, then?”

“Oh, no, not exactly that.” She looked to the ceiling, kind of shook her head from side to side like she was weighing things in her mind. She turned and smiled. “Okay, so kind of like that.”

“Gonna be honest. Not exactly sure how I’m supposed to take that.”

“You see, my friend Heidi came to a party up here last night, and she hadn’t called me to pick her up or anything. And I was just really worried about her, is all.” She paused to laugh, her nerves clearly having gotten to her. “And you looked like a cop, with your cop vibes and stuff, so I saw you, and I was worried something had happened to her. That’s all.”

Unconsciously, I winced a little as my stomach roiled. Tabitha had predicted we had a little more time. Another twenty-four hours, at least. Sure, that hadn’t been all the time in the world, but I was used to working within constraints. It was doable. We could prevent another innocent from getting hurt, rather than just having to go in and just wreak vengeance. This had been a chance to do good, dammit.

Not only that, but I’d been moments away from turning around and trying to chase down some other leads.

“You okay?” she asked. “Because you don’t look okay.”

Maybe, though, just maybe, her friend had been a server or something, and not one of the main attractions. “Up here, huh?” I asked, my voice breathless.

“Yeah.” She sucked her lips in a little, clearly ashamed as she looked away.

“You know what goes on up there, then?”

“Well, I definitely have an idea. I mean, I know what line of work my friend is in.” She paused. “Why? You said you’re not a cop. Why should you care? Who are you, really, then?”

A queasy feeling rose up in my stomach, and I was reminded of back in the sandbox. Of when a soldier beneath me, Corporal Adam Riley, had caught some shrapnel from a mortar during a bombardment at Garcia, the FOB we’d been operating on. Riley’d been under cover, but it had somehow flown right in beneath his bomb blanket, cut his carotid. I could still remember the feel of his blood on my hands, of how slippery and warm it had been.

And I could still remember the feel of the keys beneath my fingers as I typed out the letter to his mother and father. There’s no worse feeling than having to tell a person their loved one is gone. No worse feeling than having to say sorry. To say you couldn’t protect them.

But here, there was at least hope. Tabitha said the women had been discovered two days later. Maybe I couldn’t stop the creature from taking another woman. Maybe I couldn’t protect everyone completely. That didn’t mean I still couldn’t prevent the worst of it from happening.

“Mind if I come closer?” I asked, clenching my jaw a little as that sour feeling continued to roil in the pit of my stomach.

“Sure,” she said, the word coming out as more a question than an answer.

A few steps later, and I was at her window. “Ma’am,” I began, my mouth as dry as the desert around me, despite the smell of citrus and spice coming from her, “I’m going to be honest, here. I am investigating the death of some women in the area for a private client.”

As I let the words hang in the air like a rain cloud that’s just swept in, the blood drained from her face behind the bare amount of makeup she wore. Even if she’d had lipstick on, those full lips of hers still would have paled.

“Some women who were working up here over the last four months have gone missing, and have been found around the Tucson area. The media’s not really pushing it because the murders are pretty strange, but they’re there. I can show you the reports, and their pictures.”

She opened her mouth like she was about to say something, but only silence filled the car.

I paused, trying to give her a little bit more time. But, the truth of the matter was, time was our most valuable resource.

Forty-eight hours. That was all we had.

“That place up on the hill?” I asked. “Where you took your friend last night? Local cops think it might be involved in some way, with one of the girls being seen coming this direction around the time of her disappearance.”

“You think that’s what happened to her?” she asked, finally. “That she was kidnapped, or she’s being held up there?”

I frowned, didn’t respond. After all, what was I going to tell her? That I was a lion shifter, and I was hunting some kind of supernatural serial killer? It would have been bad enough if her friend had been involved in something completely mundane and normal, but maybe a secret cult murdering prostitutes for fun? That certainly couldn’t be any better.

Or that my first lead had just turned out to be about as far from credible as a witness could get?

“Of course you do,” she said, nodding. “You think they had something to do with it, don’t you?”

“Well, sometimes there are just coincidences out there, ma’am. I admit that.” I paused and took my sunglasses off so I could look her in the eye. “But, when I fly all the way out from St. Louis, and the first place I investigate after landing has a woman outside looking for her missing friend, I’m gonna err on the side of it not being one.”

She nodded. The fear was there in her eyes, but not panic. Panic seemed to have come and gone a while ago. Instead, it had been replaced by determination. “Have you gone up there? Have you tried talking to them, yet?”

“Honestly, they were my next stop. Talked to one of the witnesses here who claims she saw one of the victims, but I’m not sure how reliable she is.” I paused, licking my lips. A cold glass of iced tea would’ve really hit the spot right then, especially with the way the sun was pounding down on me. “They don’t seem like much of the talking type, though. Even the cops around here aren’t too sure, so they’ve been pretty hands-off and avoiding the place.”

“How do you know so much about all this?”

I smiled grimly. “We’ve got our sources, ma’am. That’s about all I can say right now.”

She gripped the wheel more tightly, shifting in her seat. The engine changed its hum a little, shifted its idle. For the life of me, it seemed like we were the only two people left in the world on this open road, under this baking sun.

But I couldn’t drag her more deeply into this. Sure, she had a friend who was involved. But that didn’t mean she needed to be seen by anyone, or associated with me or my investigation.

She was a civilian, after all. No formal training, and wasn’t even involved in this industry. All she had were ties to the victim. Maybe she could help me out with a timeline of events, maybe backtrack into some other clues and give me an idea of the woman I was trying to rescue.

But that was it.

She turned to face me again, and the words that came out of her mouth were the last ones I would’ve expected, or even wanted, to hear.

“What if I can get you in? Would that help you find Heidi?”