“Would they believe me? Do they have enough evidence to build a case, or did they screw up the scene? What if the sheriff is an old friend of Sabotny’s—and I’ve blown my cover?”
“Yeah, yeah. Lots of problems” Ken Lee admitted. “And the prosecutor might have gotten his degree online. Sabotny is going to have the best lawyers money can buy. But still….”
“You know what, Ken Lee, I like the fact that he’s crazy. I want to turn up the heat.”
“No, Mackenzie. We need to get you out of there.”
“I’ll say it again: how’s he going to find me?”
“Okay, okay. Give me a minute. I got it. When he looked up his old buddies, he was wondering about you. What happened to that skinny little girl, he says to himself? You’ve made yourself hard to trace, but he’s been trying. And don’t think you haven’t been noticed around there. That’s too small of a place. It’s not like Manhattan or L.A. You’ve got to come home, baby. We’ll come up with another strategy.”
“What’s all this ‘baby’ crap?” asked Mackenzie. “You’ve never used that term before, but it’s been creeping into our conversations lately. I’m not your baby. I’m not anyone’s baby. I’m a woman. And I’m not leaving until this is over.”
“I should come out then.”
“No. Listen. I appreciate all you’ve done, but this is mine. You can visit after everything is over. We’ll walk the beaches, drink wine, watch the sunset, the things couples do. But right now, just keep giving me the support. No more lectures. I’m going to figure this out and nail him myself one way or another.”
42
“How did your interview with Ms. Rood go?”
“Just give me a few more minutes,” Ray said, his eyes not moving off the screen. “Where is Simone?”
“She’s at home.”
“All this time?”
“I have a guest; flew in last night. He’s looking after her.”
“Sorry,” said Ray.
“It’s okay,” said Sue. “He needs to know what I do and the hours I work.”
“Sure that’s a good thing?”
“I was asking about your conversation with Sally Rood.”
“I just posted my notes. You can look at the video when you have time. In short, she’s not a morning person, and she has a certain ambivalence about law enforcement, especially when she’s pulled from the arms of her lover at an early hour.”
“I can relate to that,” said Sue, giving Ray a wry smile.
“I may be wrong, but I don’t think she’s involved in Moarse’s death. I believe her when she says that she didn’t come north again after we stopped following her. And we can easily check on her alibi if need be.
“Did you learn anything about Moarse that we don’t already know?”
“He didn’t like driving his Jeep during daylight hours.”
“Imagine that,” Sue laughed. “Hasn’t had an operator’s permit in years. Didn’t bother to update the tags on his Jeep, either.”
“Why should he?” said Ray. “Just a waste of good money.”
“I wonder how common that is?”
“More common than either one of us would want to admit. If you took a reasonable amount of care—not that most of these characters are particularly skilled at taking care of anything—I’m sure you could get away with it for years. But back to your initial question. Moarse, according to Rood, was some kind of builder who was crashing financially and had a major drinking problem. The one thing she told me that might prove to be of interest is an old friend Moarse reconnected with by the name of Ricky.”
“Last name?”
“She doesn’t think she ever heard it. But Moarse told her they were working a big deal.”
“Capone?”
“No, no Capone. Never heard of it.”
“So that’s it?”
“Well, almost. This Ricky has a large, light-colored car, perhaps an SUV that might be a Cadillac or Mercedes. No hint as to plate number or state.”
“Can we have the road patrol guys pull over every large SUV and ask the driver if his friends call him Ricky?” asked Sue.
“Only in Arizona,” said Ray. He sighed, stood up, and stretched. “I can tell we’re both way too tired given the direction of the humor. Let’s do some planning.” He lowered the whiteboard and retrieved the container with the markers.
“First, I’d like to see if we could establish the fact that Moarse was the killer of Vincent Fox. I’ll contact Fox’s daughter and see if she’s ever heard of him. We can also look through the surveillance tapes from the casino to see if he was lurking around the day Fox made the big hit. And, of course, did he act alone or did he have accomplices?
“Second, we need to know why he was murdered. Is it connected with the Fox crime or something else? We’re going to have to find out a lot more about Jim Moarse.
“And third, the phantom 911 call. Someone was watching this crime go down. They wanted to make sure we were directed to the murder scene. So why aren’t they coming in to tell us about it?”
“Okay,” said Sue. “This is how I would like to go forward. For the first item on your list, proving Moarse killed Fox: I’ll need to establish that the computer we found in Fox’s house actually belonged to Fox. That’s the easy part. Then I’ll search Fox’s house for evidence that placed Fox there or connects Moarse to his abduction. That’s the hard part.”
“Approach it like an archeologist, try to stay with the upper layers.”
“Ha ha. We also have to bring his Jeep in and go through the interior. I think we’ll get a match on the tires with the casts I made at Fox’s house. Just with that, there’s a lot of work to be done before we move onto the second part: why. I don’t even know what to say about your number 3.”
“Give me some time lines,” said Ray.
“The day’s going away, and I’m very tired. I’d like to start on the house tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” said Ray. “It can wait till Monday.”
“Tomorrow, not early, by about noon. The area’s got to stay secured until I’m done. Let’s run one road patrol at night and two during the day. That will give us someone every shift to protect the scene.”
“Okay.”
“If I could have some help…. Brett, he should be learning this stuff. We’ll need at least two days, maybe more for the house, barn, sauna, a good look around the property, and to process the Jeep. We’ll have to cover his shifts with people working overtime.”
Ray nodded in agreement. “Until Monday afternoon?”
“No, there’s too much to do. How about Tuesday afternoon?”
“Tuesday morning is better. How about your weekend guest?”
“I’ll see how he and Simone get on. She has a really good sense of character. In fact, she might save me a lot of trouble.”
43
Mackenzie was back in front of the screen, caught in another unrecoverable yawn.
“You still tired from the weekend?” Ken Lee asked.
“No, I’m okay. I slept about 12 hours last night and then got up early and went to TC for yoga. Good instructor. I hope I’m in that good of shape when I get to be 60-something. Ken Lee, I apologize about getting pissy yesterday.”
“No problem, I understand. Things have been….”
“Here’s what’s going on,” Mackenzie cut him off, “I don’t know what to do now. I’m back to not having a plan. I’ve made a couple of passes of the Moarse property. Looks like the local sheriff’s department is securing the scene night and day. On my last drive by, there were three vehicles, probably the crime scene team. The garage door was open with no Jeep in sight. They must have moved it to another location. I wonder what that’s all about?”
“Who knows what kind of stuff Moarse might have been into. I imagine the cops are trying as hard to figure this out as we are. And by now they’ve found the phantom phone. Bet that’s a real puzzler. What did you tell me the last major caper was up there—someone chopping down cherry trees? Lots of them?”