Nowhere Pure, page 8
Cole opened the package of crackers and popped one into her mouth. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I think it would do us good to learn a little more about the first victim, Jesse Vega. I know he was a stay-at-home dad, but I wonder what he did before that.”
Callaway sat up. He reached for the case file, which rested in the middle of the table, and pawed it toward himself.
“Not much in here,” he murmured. “We’ve already gone over this back to front.”
“We need to speak with someone who knew him,” Cole said.
“The wife? I’ve got her number in here.”
Cole nodded. “Yeah, let’s give her a call.”
Cole joined Callaway at the table. Callaway gave her the number, and she dialed it, setting the phone on speaker and resting it on the table between them.
“Hello?” a female voice answered. Cole could hear something in the background—running water, maybe.
“Is this Mrs. Vega?” she asked.
There was a snort. “Do I sound old enough to be a missus?”
Now that Cole was paying closer attention, it sounded like the speaker was a young girl, maybe in her teenage years.
“Are you her daughter, then?” Cole asked, glancing at Callaway, who was staring with a thoughtful frown at the phone.
“Depends who’s asking. You one of her clients? You’re not supposed to call her on this number, you know. She has a work phone for a reason.” There was a voice in the background, and the girl covered the phone and shouted, “She’s in the shower!”
Then Cole could hear the girl’s steady breathing again.
“Actually,” Cole said, “we’re with the FBI. My name is Agent Cole, and I’m here with Agent Callaway. We wanted to speak with your mother—”
The girl—Miss Vega—began laughing, cutting Cole off.
Cole frowned, puzzled by this response. “Is something funny?”
“My mother’s gonna have a conniption! You know I’m a minor, right? And that means, like, I’m not supposed to answer any questions without an adult present, by which she just means herself. She thinks everyone in the world is out to get us.”
It was not difficult for Cole to imagine the girl rolling her eyes.
“You’re not in any trouble,” Cole explained patiently. “We were just trying to get in touch with your mother. You said she’s in the shower?”
“Actually, I didn’t say that to you, but yes, she’s in the shower. About time too—we just got back from La Majestad. I thought I was gonna drop from heat exhaustion.” The girl snorted again. “It was good, though. She needs the break. You practically have to drug her and throw her in the trunk to get her to stop working.”
It was clear this girl was enjoying having a captive audience. Cole had no intention of cutting her off, at least not yet. Instead, she nudged him, adjusting the course of the conversation.
“What does your mother do?” she asked.
“Jacinta Vega? You haven’t heard one of her billion commercials?”
Cole glanced at Callaway, who shrugged, looking as lost as she felt.
The girl sighed. “I guess she stopped running those, anyway. That was before she joined L and F.”
Callaway sat up straighter. “Laramy and Fitch? That’s a legal firm, isn’t it?”
“My, how your voice changed! Yeah, that’s right. Fastest growing firm in the southwest.” She spoke this last bit with a boredom she made no attempt to conceal. “Why? Does the government need my mom’s help?” She sounded amused by the notion.
“In a way,” Cole answered. “We’re investigating your father’s death, and we—”
“Yazmin!” a voice in the background called. “The pizza’s burning!”
Yazmin cursed under her breath. A latch clicked, followed by the sound of footsteps thumping down a flight of steps. There was the whine of a hinge (the oven, presumably), then a hiss of pain from Yazmin and a clatter of metal.
“She’s not gonna want to talk to you,” Yazmin said. The sound of running water filled the line.
“Why’s that?” Cole asked. She imagined Yazmin standing at the sink, running her burned fingers beneath the water, while behind her the pizza sat on a circular tray on the table, the pizza spilling over the side from the momentum of its graceless descent.
“She’s just starting to move forward—buying a new house, dating this California guy who seems to think board shorts match any outfit.” She laughed—a brief, abrupt sound without much humor in it. “But then you say something about Jesse …” She sighed.
Cole couldn’t help noticing how well Yazmin concealed her own feelings about her father. She spoke as if she were an outside observer, unaffected by Jesse’s death, rather than a grieving daughter. Maybe it was just her way of coping.
“I understand,” Cole said gently. “It’s difficult to go on with your life when you keep getting reminded of the person you lost.” She paused, gathering her words. “But you have to know, Yazmin, there’s no real closure as long as your father’s death is a mystery—not for your mother, not for you.”
Yazmin said nothing. The water went on running.
“We’re trying to find the person who took your father from you,” Cole said. “But to do that, we need—”
“Why now?” Yazmin’s voice was low and bitter. “It’s been nine freaking months, and now, suddenly, it’s a priority?”
“I understand your frustration. We—”
“No, you don’t!” The water turned off. “You don’t know anything about it! Is your dad dead? Did someone choke the life out of your dad and leave him in some dark hole?” There were angry tears in the girl’s voice.
The girl’s desperate pain stirred something deep in Cole. “No,” she said softly. “My father’s still alive. But my sister …” She paused, swallowing hard. “She went missing seventeen years ago, and I haven’t heard from her since. Someone took her from me, and I don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”
The line went silent again. Cole felt Callaway’s eyes on her, studying her. His hand touched hers, gave it a squeeze, and then withdrew.
“Every day,” Cole said, “I wonder what happened. Every day, I ask myself if there’s anything I can do to find the person responsible. So, I get that nine months is a long time, but trust me when I say that you don’t want to go seventeen years without closure.”
The line fell silent, and Cole had the impression the girl was thinking over her words. Cole hadn’t intended to open up about her sister, but now that she had, she was suddenly aware of the weight she carried around with her every day like a stone lodged in her chest. Yazmin, she knew, would never just get over her father’s death. But maybe, with the agents’ help, the festering wound could be treated and begin the slow process of healing.
“I was telling the truth,” Yazmin said in a low voice, all trace of anger gone. “She won’t talk to you, and believe me, she’s good at dodging phone calls.”
“Why not? Can you just try?”
Yazmin let out a deep sigh. “Okay. I warned you.”
Cole heard the soft padding of footsteps, followed by the opening of a door.
“How’s the pizza?” a voice—Jacinta Vega, presumably—asked.
“Fine,” Yazmin answered. “Listen, Mom, there’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
“It’s not Morrow again, is it? How many times do I have to tell him—”
“No, Mom. It’s about Dad.”
Silence. Cole waited, chewing at her lip.
“Police?” Jacinta asked in a low voice.
Yazmin must have nodded because there was no audible answer. There was a rustle, and then Jacinta was speaking into the phone.
“Who is this, and why are you talking to my daughter?” she demanded.
“Jacinta,” Cole said, “this is Federal Agent Harley Cole. I’m here with—”
“Now, it’s a federal case, is it? What changed?”
Cole opened her mouth to reply, but Jacinta cut her off.
“You know what? Don’t bother. I have nothing more to say—I’ve told everything I know to the police a thousand times over—so don’t call back here again. And if I ever catch you talking to my daughter again without my permission—”
“I understand your frustration, ma’am. We’re just trying to—” Cole fell silent. The line was dead.
She sank back in her chair and let out a weary breath. “Well, that was something.”
“The girl was right,” Callaway said. “Her mom sure as hell didn’t want to talk to us. Can’t blame her, though—nine months pass, and you still don’t know what happened to your husband? That’s bound to try anyone’s patience.”
It bothered Cole that Jacinta was so consumed by pain and anger that she wasn’t even willing to hear them out. Then again, Cole knew she would have been frustrated, too, not knowing whether investigators were any closer to catching the killer than they had been nine months earlier.
“Laramy and Fitch,” Callaway said, drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. “We could head over there, see what we can learn.”
“Jacinta’s not at work. Besides, you’re talking about a law firm. They’re not going to let us go poking around without a warrant.”
They both fell silent. Then Cole remembered something and sat up straighter.
“What was that name?” she asked. “The person Jacinta thought was calling her.”
“Murray? Mellow?”
“Morrow, I think.” Following her intuition, Cole did a quick internet search on her phone, typing the words, “Laramy and Fitch Morrow” to see what might come up.
One of the first hits was a news article about a lawsuit. According to the article, the defendant, Shaun Morrow, was suing a rail company for an accident in which he had suffered a broken leg. The company, apparently, was arguing that Morrow had not been following safety guidelines. Morrow was being represented by none other than Laramy and Fitch.
“Got something?” Callaway asked, pulling his chair closer. Cole turned her phone so he could read along with her. “That’s interesting,” he said, scrubbing the stubble on his chin. “The case is nearly two years old, though.”
“But not over, if he’s still calling his lawyer,” Cole said. She still wasn’t sure any of this was relevant to their investigation, but just as she was thinking of searching to see what other cases Jacinta might be involved in, she noticed a line describing Morrow.
Shaun Morrow is a self-described “Doomsday prepper” whose many articles on his blog, the Voice of Reckoning, attest to his staunch concerns for the future of humanity. In addition to forecasting a coming nuclear apocalypse—
As she read the words, something Frank Isidore had said came back to Cole: You’d have to be a doomsday prepper to buy one of those. A chill went down her spine. Maybe the forensic pathologist had been righter than he realized.
Opening a new tab, Cole entered the address of Morrow’s blog. It took a moment to appear, but when it did, her breath caught in her throat.
There were not just articles, but a great many pictures as well, showing an unsmiling Morrow underground, the edges of the picture dark as he displayed pieces of survival gear: rations, space blankets, headlamps, a water filtration system.
One of the article titles read, “My First Night in My New Home.” Cole clicked on it. The cover image showed Morrow in a dark, vault-like room. He was dressed in pajamas and thick socks, his sleeping bag spread on the ground behind him.
“I don’t believe it,” Cole said softly, her heart giving a sharp, almost painful beat inside her chest. “He’s living down there, Callaway. He’s living in a nuclear silo.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Nothing,” Callaway said, hanging up the phone and shaking his head in frustration. “Wherever Shaun Morrow is living, there doesn’t seem to be any official record of it.”
They were driving along the highway, heading south. Based on the pictures from the blog, they had a rough idea where Morrow lived, but not the specific location, which was why Callaway had called the office to run a search on Morrow and try to come up with an address. That effort, however, had been a failure.
Despite her disappointment, Cole was not particularly surprised by this. It made sense that Morrow, a man planning for the end of the world, would be secretive. After all, he might fear that if others came to believe he was right about an approaching apocalypse, many would swarm to his silo, demanding to be allowed entry regardless of whether or not he had the supplies on hand to sustain them.
Still, this line of logic did little to make her feel better.
“There has to be a way to track him down,” she said, her eyes straining at the road. It was early evening, and the light was thinning, leaching away to the west while shadows rose from the ground like the walking dead. A lonely coyote loped along the highway; the rabbit clutched in its jaw was a testimony to its hunting success.
“Let’s go back to the pictures,” she said. “What exactly do they tell us?”
Callaway sighed and leaned back against the seat, adjusting his Stetson. “Well, he’s clearly underground.”
“We know that already. I’m talking about clues above ground.”
“Other than Granddad?” he asked, referring to a peculiarly shaped mesa in the background of one of the pictures, colloquially called “Granddad.”
“How far away would you say it is?”
Callaway’s breath hissed through his teeth. “Oh, I don’t know. Ten, fifteen miles? A good distance.”
Cole frowned. She imagined placing a pin on a map at the location of the mesa, then using a string to measure fifteen miles out in a circle. It would be a huge amount of ground to cover—far more than they could search on foot. They would need more manpower and more vehicles, and with that amount of attention, their chances of taking Morrow by surprise would be slim to none.
“How many nuclear silos can there be around here?” she asked, realizing she had overlooked something. “Even if there’s no official record of where Morrow is living, there must be records of the silos.”
“That’s just it,” Callaway said. “There aren’t any nuclear silos in this area.”
Cole frowned, unable to make sense of what he had just said. “Then where is he?”
“Underground, for sure, but that don’t mean he’s in a nuclear silo. Could be a bunker—and there are plenty of bunkers that ain’t on any maps.”
Cole sank back against the seat and began chewing her lower lip. It made sense, unfortunately. A doomsday prepper, of all people, would have reason to be secretive about his place of refuge. If a global catastrophe—nuclear war, for instance—caused mass panic, he wouldn’t want his bunker to become a magnet drawing everyone within a hundred-mile radius. He might wish to talk about his plans and warn others, as Morrow did with his blog, but that didn’t mean he would jeopardize his own safety by sharing too many particulars.
All at once, finding Shaun Morrow seemed an impossible task. They could do land surveys, or canvas towns he might frequent in order to buy supplies, but such efforts could take days. They might not have that kind of time.
Cole tried to create a mental map of the area. There were some blank spots, so she turned to Callaway for help.
“What towns are nearby?” she asked.
Callaway’s fingers tapped the screen of his phone as he searched. “We’ve got Cobalt, Red Springs, Deadfall, Tormenta Negra—”
“Wait a minute. You said Deadfall?”
Callaway glanced up. “Yeah, you know it?”
“It’s where Bryce lives.”
A few moments passed in silence.
“What does your boyfriend do again?” Callaway asked. His voice was suddenly neutral, bled of emotion.
“He’s a rancher. Breeds, breaks, trains horses.” The words rattled easily off her tongue, having heard Bryce repeat the refrain numerous times.
“How well does he know the area?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Lived here all his life, so I’d say he knows it pretty well. Why?”
She knew why Callaway was asking, but she found herself playing dumb, nonetheless. Why did the idea of talking with Bryce make her so … uncomfortable?
Noticing a small herd of cattle gathered at a fence beside the road, she turned her head, pretending to focus on the animals as they swished their tails in the slanting sunlight.
“Just thought he might be worth talking to,” Callaway said, sounding nonchalant. “Might be able to help us find Morrow.”
Despite Callaway’s words, it was clear from his tone that he had very little enthusiasm for this plan of action—even less than Cole had, perhaps. Still, it was their best lead at the moment, so she could hardly disagree.
“Sounds great,” she said, not looking at Callaway.
Callaway said nothing, and they continued their journey in silence. Cole considered calling Bryce to give him a heads-up, but the thought of talking with him on the phone in Callaway’s presence made her anxious, though she could not have said why.
Better to send him a text, she thought, reaching for her phone. Keeping one eye on the road, she wrote: Stopping by the ranch. Hope youre around.
A few miles later, she turned off the main road, leaving the level asphalt for the uneven, hard-packed ground of a trail that cut through the hills, passing between adobe houses and aluminum trailers on either side. A stretch of weathered fence line appeared on the right, beyond which Cole could see a small, circular pen where a dark horse was racing, tossing its head and kicking wildly as if to strike an unseen pursuer. A man in a button-down shirt and a white cattleman hat was leaning on the fence, watching.
“That your boyfriend?” Callaway asked, gazing out the window.
“That’s Bryce, yeah.”
They drove through the gate, then pulled alongside Bryce, who stared at the galloping horse a few moments longer before turning around. He smiled when he recognized Cole, but when he saw Callaway, the brightness in his eyes seemed to dim a little.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said to Cole. “I can’t remember the last time you just dropped out of the blue like this. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
