Amos was grateful Bonnie had let him sleep in, but he hated to sound so groggy when he answered the phone, especially considering this was the detective assigned to investigate Jack Littleton’s case.

  “Amos Anderson here,” he said, hoping he sounded more chipper than he felt. “How can I help you?”

  “Sorry it’s taken a while to get back to you,” Hollingsworth said. “After you called the other day, I went back through our case log. At the time of Jack Littleton’s death, officers responding to the scene regarded it as a clear case of suicide. For one thing, there was an open file on his computer with only two words in it: ‘I’m done.’ Looked like a suicide to them. When the initial autopsy revealed an elevated blood-alcohol level, no further tox screening was deemed necessary.”

  “So how come his manner of death came up as undetermined rather than suicide?”

  “There was blood spray on his hands and clothing, of course,” Hollingsworth continued, “but some blood evidence was found on the inside of the palm of his right hand. Since he was right-handed and would have held the weapon in his right hand, that inconsistency should have raised red flags, but it didn’t—at least not enough.

  “Some lines of inquiry were conducted after the autopsy, but no actual persons of interest or suspects were ever developed. I had received a message from a so-called concerned citizen a day or so before you called in, but I didn’t take that one too seriously. After your call, however, I went back through the case file and discovered that although his clothing had been checked for blood evidence, it was never checked for gunshot residue. So I ordered a GSR.”

  “Wait,” Amos asked. “His clothing wasn’t checked for gunshot residue at the time? Isn’t that Crime Scene Investigation 101?”

  “It is,” Hollingsworth said, “and I have no idea how or why it was overlooked in this case, but it’s fixed now, and the results just came in. Guess what? Gunshot residue was found on his shirt—around the neckline, on the collar, and on the shoulders of his shirtsleeves, which is consistent with being shot in the head. However, no GSR was found on the cuffs of his shirt or on the lower portions of his shirtsleeves.”

  “So the shot wasn’t self-inflicted.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Hollingsworth agreed. “The ME’s office is changing Littleton’s manner of death to homicide even as we speak, so what can you tell me?”

  At that point, Bonnie appeared in the bedroom and handed Amos a cup of coffee. He thanked her with a grateful thumbs-up.

  “We’re zeroing in on a guy named Frank Muñoz,” Amos answered, “a dirty cop Littleton helped send to prison years ago, but I have to tell you, everything we’ve got is circumstantial.”

  “Tell me about it,” Hollingsworth said wearily, “because circumstantial beats the hell out of what I’ve got at the moment, which happens to be a big fat nothing.”

  CHAPTER 57

  COTTONWOOD, ARIZONA

  Monday, January 6, 2020, 9:00 a.m. (MST)

  With Alonzo at the house to look after B., Ali headed in to work on Monday morning. She had almost a week’s worth of backlogged paperwork to get through. She was still in transit when Stu called with Frigg’s latest report.

  “Sal just told Frank his refund will be ready for pickup by eleven a.m. this morning,” Stu told her. “He even included his daughter’s address, but what should we do now? We can keep track of him as long as he’s in or around his apartment complex, but once he leaves that, we’ll be blind.”

  “All this information came from Munoz’s draft file?” Ali asked.

  “Yup.”

  “That keylogger is still off limits,” Ali declared, “so there’s nothing we can do with it. I already told Amos about the luggage situation. He’s aware that we’re unable to maintain any further surveillance.”

  “So the ball’s in his court, then,” Stu muttered.

  “Yes, it is,” Ali agreed, “but he’s a dedicated homicide cop out to solve a very cold case. I say we stand aside and let him do his job.”

  “I hope you’re right about that,” Stu said before he signed off.

  So do I, Ali thought. So do I!

  By midmorning she was knee-deep in paperwork when Shirley poked her head into Ali’s office. “Sheila Rafferty is on the line.”

  Ali’s instant fear was that Hal Holden’s daughter was calling with bad news. “Put her through,” Ali said.

  “Good morning, Sheila,” Ali said. “How are things?”

  “He’s still on the ventilator, but he’s stable, awake, and upgraded from critical condition to serious. We’re able to communicate by writing on a whiteboard. I had to tell him what happened. He didn’t remember anything about the wreck.”

  “What’s the prognosis?”

  “The doctor says that cases like this usually require up to two more weeks on a ventilator. After that he would normally be sent to a rehab center, but Dad raised hell about that. He wants to go home. When the doctor told him that would require the services of a full-time nurse, Dad wrote, ‘HIRE ONE!’ I have to get back home for work. I tried to explain that hiring a private nurse would be prohibitively expensive, but he wrote, ‘I CAN PAY WHATEVER IT COSTS!’

  “I thought he was nuts, but then he had me log into his bank accounts. It turns out he’s right. My father has more money than I ever would have thought possible. He can easily afford to hire whoever he wants. In fact, I just got off the phone with Sister Anselm to see if she has any suggestions about possible candidates.”

  Ali was incredibly relieved. “This is all excellent news,” she said, “and you can be sure that anyone Sister Anselm recommends will be top drawer.”

  “It is good news,” Sheila agreed. “But here’s what I want to know. If my father is sitting on bank accounts that come to more than seven figures, why the hell was he driving an airport limo in the first place?”

  For a moment, Ali didn’t answer. She was thinking about her own father. Bob Larson had always been gregarious, and in retirement, he had loved being busy and useful. When his diminishing mental capacity began robbing him of all those things, he’d lost his reason for living. With that realization, Ali had the answer to Sheila’s question.

  “Your dad was probably lonely,” she said, “lonely and bored. He was working because he wanted to, not because he had to.”

  “If he hadn’t been out on the road that morning,” Sheila objected, “none of this would have happened.”

  With what Ali knew about Frank Muñoz, she suspected that he would have come after Hal one way or the other, no matter what. It might not have been on I-17 on New Year’s morning, but it would have happened sometime, somewhere.

  “I haven’t heard anything more about the investigation,” Sheila said, changing the subject. “Have you?”

  There was a lot going on that had nothing to do with Warren Biba’s investigation, and Ali couldn’t talk about any of it.

  “Not really,” Ali hedged. “I’m sure someone will get back to us in good time.”

  “I hope so,” Sheila said.

  “So how long can you stay?” Ali asked.

  “I need to be back in DC in time to go to work a week from today.”

  “If you need anything in the meantime, we’re here,” Ali told her.

  “Thank you.”

  As the call ended, Ali glanced up to find Stu standing in the doorway.

  “I think we’re okay,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “Frigg spotted someone—an unidentified male—messing with the back of Muñoz’s car. She’s pretty sure whoever it was attached something inside the back bumper.”

  “A tracking device, maybe?” Ali asked hopefully.

  “That’s Frigg’s best guess,” Stu replied.

  “Good,” Ali said with a smile. “Sounds like Amos Anderson has someone working the case.”

  CHAPTER 58

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  Monday, January 6, 2020, 8:00 a.m. (PST)

  Bradley Whitman had been employed by the DEA in LA for twenty-seven years, most of it undercover. In many cases, undercover work and marriages don’t go hand in hand, but Brad had been lucky on that score. Emmy had stuck with him through thick and thin.

  Emmy was an only child raised by parents who had both been in their forties when she was born. In retirement, Brad’s in-laws had moved to Vegas and settled in Sun City Summerlin. By the time they both passed on, they had left their mortgage-free home to their only daughter and heir. At the time, Emmy had been fifty-five and Brad fifty-seven, which meant they both qualified for Sun City’s fifty-five-plus age requirement.

  What to do next had been a no-brainer. Brad retired from the DEA. They had sold their LA house for a bundle and moved to Vegas full time. Which was fine as far as it went, but for Brad, once a LEO, always a LEO. When he heard about a possible part-time gig doing undercover work for parole officers, Brad signed on and loved it. Working for POs let him keep his hand in without being nearly as dangerous as working for the feds.

  After Miriam Baxter called him that morning, he gathered the information he needed to do the job—address, photo, and vehicle license and registration—and went to work.

  In the old days, keeping a suspect under surveillance in traffic would have required a whole team of officers. Now, with a bit of high-tech assistance, Brad could do that job single-handedly. After locating Muñoz’s Honda in the apartment complex’s parking lot, it took only a moment for him to affix a magnetic tracking device to the inside of the vehicle’s back bumper.

  With that done, he grabbed a newspaper and a cup of coffee from his car and went in search of the complex’s pool. It was fenced with a key required for entry. He was making a show of searching his pockets for a missing key when a bundled-up maintenance man gave him a questioning look as if to say, “Why would anyone go to the pool in the dead of winter?” But Brad had a ready answer for that. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, pointed to an upstairs apartment, and shook his head.

  Nodding his understanding, the maintenance guy let Brad inside. Once there, he located a lounge chair that afforded an unobstructed view of his target’s front door. With the newspaper in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, Brad settled in to wait, and it didn’t take long. Twenty minutes later, Muñoz’s door opened, and the man himself appeared.

  He traversed the second-story breezeway and then disappeared into a stairwell. Emerging at the bottom of that, he set off between buildings. Brad expected Muñoz to head straight for the car. Instead, he left the complex on foot, sauntering down Shadow Lane toward Alta as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  There weren’t many people out walking on this chill winter morning, and Brad had no trouble keeping his target in sight while maintaining a discreet distance. He watched while Muñoz entered a gym, the same one where he’d left his luggage hours earlier. Brad stationed himself at a bus stop across the street and waited. As time ticked by, Brad worried he’d screwed up. What if Muñoz had grabbed his luggage, left via a back door, and taken off in some other vehicle? Eventually, though, Brad’s patience won out. More than an hour later, an empty-handed Muñoz exited the gym and entered a diner two doors down the street. As Muñoz settled in for breakfast, a chilled Brad Whitman did the same after crossing the street and entering the restaurant from the opposite direction.

  Once breakfast was over, Muñoz paid his bill and left the restaurant in a purposeful fashion. Leaving enough cash on the counter to cover his tab, Brad followed suit. This time there was no mistaking where he was going—Muñoz made straight for the Honda. When he exited the parking lot, Brad let the tracking device do its work. Even so, he was still close enough that when the Honda turned off East Oakey Boulevard onto South 7th Street, Brad was able to casually drive past and pull up in front of a residence two houses farther down the street.

  From there he used his vehicle’s mirrors to keep the Honda in view. Muñoz exited the vehicle, walked up to the front door, rang the bell, and was ushered inside. With Muñoz out of sight, Brad made a quick U-turn and moved one house closer. Then, camera in hand, he waited again. After the better part of an hour passed, he sincerely regretted the second cup of coffee he’d had before leaving the diner.

  At last the door to the house opened, but Muñoz didn’t reappear. While Brad snapped photos, a woman dressed in a brightly colored tracksuit exited the home, hurried over to Muñoz’s Honda, and climbed into the driver’s side. She appeared to be several inches shorter than the suspect and had to spend several seconds adjusting both the car seat and rearview mirror. She was still doing that when the garage door slid open. A white Lexus emerged and immediately turned left onto 7th. When it turned left again onto Oakey, the Honda wasn’t far behind.

  Brad was close enough to see that the man behind the wheel wasn’t his target, and for a moment, he was stumped. If Rochelle Moroni and Big Eddie Gascone had just left the residence, where was Muñoz? Had he spotted the tail and managed to give Brad the slip, or was he waiting inside for the couple to return?

  Needing to know for sure, Brad left his own vehicle. Opening the trunk, he pulled out a bright green vest, a hard hat, and a clipboard. Then, armed with a lanyard proclaiming him to be an employee of Southwest Gas, he went straight to the front door where he rang the bell twice, to no avail. When no one answered the second time, he let himself into the backyard through a side gate.

  As soon as Brad peered in through the patio sliders, he knew something was wrong. Furniture was tipped over—a recliner lay on its back while a shattered glass coffee table sat on one edge. A broken floor lamp leaned drunkenly against one wall. Obviously a violent struggle had taken place inside the room, and Frank Muñoz was nowhere in sight.

  Brad tried the patio door, and it slid open. Luckily, no alarm sounded. He raced through the house with his weapon drawn, clearing each room as he went. Eventually there was only one possible conclusion—Frank Muñoz had left the house, most likely in the back of the Lexus and probably not of his own free will.

  Rather than call for backup and spend the next half hour trying to explain what was going on, Brad chose another option. Using the tracking app on his phone, he saw that Frank’s Honda was a mile or two away and merging onto northbound I-15.

  Racing back to his vehicle, Brad followed. Once he, too, was on northbound I-15, he hit the gas, hoping to close the gap between him and the moving blue dot that represented the Honda, which by then had already passed the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and was heading into the open desert.

  Brad’s personal vehicle, the one Emmy called his “midlife-crisis car,” was a bright red Ford Mustang that didn’t mesh well with undercover operations. For those he generally borrowed Emmy’s Hyundai Elantra. It didn’t have quite the same acceleration as the Mustang, but eventually it got the job done.

  As the speedometer passed the speed-limit mark and kept rising, Brad began hoping a traffic cop would pull him over. After all, he was out here on his own, and bringing along another officer—even an inadvertent one—might level the playing field. At the moment it was two against one, but there wasn’t a cop car in sight.

  Just for safety’s sake, Brad dialed Miriam’s number. She didn’t answer, but he left a message, telling her where he was and letting her know the address of the place where Muñoz had lost him. That way, in case something bad happened, if someone had to come looking for him, they’d at least have a starting point.

  Ahead of him, the blue dot slowed and exited the interstate, heading northbound on Highway 93, aka the Great Basin Highway. That roadway traveled through one of the most desolate and unpopulated areas of the whole country. Some seventy miles north of the Highway 93/I-15 intersection lay the tiny burg of Alamo, with nothing but miles of empty desert in between.

  By the time Brad himself turned onto Highway 93, there were no other vehicles in sight. Brad hit the gas pedal again. Fifteen minutes later he noticed that the blue dot had turned off the highway to the right and was now moving east into what appeared to be trackless wilderness. Before Brad reached the turnoff himself, he noticed a speeding vehicle approaching from the opposite direction. As it drew closer, Brad could see it was white, but it wasn’t until the vehicle roared past in the southbound lane that he knew for sure it was a Lexus—the same Lexus—with two occupants inside, a man behind the wheel and a woman in the passenger seat. If Muñoz was in the vehicle, too, he was nowhere in sight.

  Brad did a gut check. Should he turn and follow the Lexus or head toward the stationary blue dot that indicated the current location of the Honda? Eventually, he went with the second option. Minutes later a roadside sign warned of an approaching side road. At the turnoff, Brad spotted a street sign, the letters of which had been totally obliterated by barrages of bullets. The primitive roadway leading away from the sign looked barely passable. Since it seemed to head directly toward the Honda, however, Brad had no choice but to follow it. As he eased Emmy’s precious Elantra onto the rutted dirt track, he knew that his wife would be pissed as hell if he damaged her beloved sedan.

  A hundred yards from the turnoff, the road curved slightly to the left to cross a dry wash bed, then it continued east, but beyond the wash the road was worse than before. Brad estimated that by then he had to be within half a mile of the Honda, but when the Elantra threatened to high-center on the rock-strewn roadway, he decided to park and walk. Once he did so, he spotted numerous places where undercarriages of passing vehicles had scraped over rocks and overturned boulders, making him wonder if whoever had been behind the wheel of the Honda had been worried about damaging it.

  After rounding another sharp curve and crossing another wash, Brad spotted the Honda parked up ahead and stopped directly in front of a padlocked gate with a sign that said NO TRESPASSING. Even from that far away Brad noticed that the Honda’s two back tires were flat, and he also spotted what appeared to be a motionless person slumped in the driver’s seat.