Cold Betrayal Page 29

  “I didn’t,” Amos insisted. “I wasn’t the father of her baby, and I didn’t kill her, either.”

  Ali shrugged. “Maybe you know who did, then. I’ve heard rumors that Anne had a boyfriend on the Outside. That wouldn’t have gone over well with a cuckolded husband who was about to move up into a leadership role in The Family’s hierarchy. Maybe you caught Anne, handed her over to her irate spouse, and let him do the job himself.”

  “I’m telling you, Richard Lowell didn’t kill Annie, and neither did I. I had no idea she was dead until just now when you told me.”

  “You called her Annie a moment ago,” Ali observed. “Annie, not Anne. Were the two of you friends?”

  There was a long pause before Amos answered. “Yes,” he said finally, “we were. When I was a little kid, I came down with pneumonia and was really sick. Annie was the one who took care of me instead of my mother. After that the two of us became friends. We stayed friends when we were older, even though we weren’t supposed to be. That’s why I helped her.”

  “Helped her how?”

  “To get away. As far as The Family is concerned, adultery is a serious offense. If Bishop Lowell had found out that the baby wasn’t his, he would have been the one to cast the first stone.”

  Ali felt a chill down her spine. “Literally?”

  Amos nodded. “I didn’t want Annie to die. I knew that, as soon as she went missing, I’d be the one sent to retrieve her. When I drove away to go look for her, nobody had any idea that she was hidden in the trunk of my car.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “To Kingman,” Amos said. “To meet up with her boyfriend. The last thing she said to me when she got out of my car and into his was that he loved her and was going to take good care of her. She believed it, and I didn’t have any reason not to believe it, either.”

  “You saw the boyfriend?”

  Amos nodded.

  “He was someone you knew?”

  Amos nodded again.

  “So maybe the boyfriend’s the one who killed her.”

  “I asked him about her once, years later. He said she’d had the baby—a little girl—and that they had moved to someplace in California—San Diego, maybe. He said they were both fine.”

  “But they weren’t,” Ali added.

  Another nod, this one with a resigned inevitability about it.

  “Tell me about the boyfriend,” Ali said.

  “He was just a deputy back then, stuck in Colorado City for a couple weeks at a time. I don’t know exactly how they met, but they did.”

  “Was the boyfriend married?” Ali asked.

  “Yes.”

  During the lengthening silence, Amos Sellers visibly struggled to come to grips with the idea that Annie had been both betrayed and murdered. Meanwhile, Ali began to connect the dots. She knew by Sheriff Alvarado’s own admission that he had once done patrol duty in Colorado City. He was already married back then. For a man with ambitions of rising in the department, having a pregnant girlfriend show up in town would have blown his world apart. No wonder that critical evidence box about the Kingman Jane Doe homicide had disappeared. With it gone, Sheriff Daniel Alvarado must have figured he was in the clear.

  Noticing that Amos Sellers had so far avoided mentioning the boyfriend by name, Ali did so herself. “Is that how you ended up being a deputy—because you had something on Sheriff Alvarado?”

  It was pure bluff, but it worked.

  “I didn’t blackmail him, if that’s what you mean,” Amos declared, clenching his fists and laying them on the tabletop. “A year or two later, he put in a good word for me is all, but I never knew he killed her. I never knew she was dead. Like I told you, she was kind to me. That’s the thing about Annie—she was kind to everybody, not just me.”

  Ali watched in amazement as two tears leaked out of Amos’s eyes and coursed down his cheeks. She was even more surprised to find herself placing a comforting hand on one of his knotted fists. “You thought you were saving her,” she said quietly. “You had no way of knowing that you were handing her over to a killer.”

  Amos bit his lip. “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t.”

  “We’re just talking here,” Ali said. “There’s nothing official about this conversation, one way or the other, but let me ask you this. If you were called upon to do so, would you agree to testify to what you just told me?”

  Amos Sellers nodded. “Yes, I would,” he said softly. “Anne Lowell was my friend. He told me she was fine.”

  As Ali stood up to leave, Amos Sellers buried his head in both his hands and wept. She touched his shoulder with her hand as she went past.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, before buzzing to be let out. “Sorry for all concerned.”

  35

  That was a bombshell,” B. said as Ali exited the interview room. He followed her back out to the evidence locker, where she retrieved her Glock. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing for right now,” she told him. “Let’s deal with one crisis at a time.”

  Nodding, B. glanced at his watch. “Catching up with Governor Dunham’s Sprinter is going to be tight. I was planning on driving up on my own, but when I spoke to Andrea, she told me that I’ve now been officially invited to join the governor’s ‘rearguard’ action. Governor Dunham is of the opinion that having a couple of males from the Outside along for the ride might be a good idea. Bill Witherspoon, her chief of staff, will be there, and so will I.”

  As they exited the building, two men in suits were entering. Everything about the new arrivals said FBI, but there was no time to stop and chat. By the time Ali and B. drove back to the DPS parking lot, Virginia Dunham’s Sprinter along with the two chartered buses were the only vehicles left behind. Ali paused long enough to grab her Kevlar vest from the back of the Cayenne before climbing aboard the Sprinter. Although Ali took the vest with her, with a four-hour drive between then and the scheduled engagement, she didn’t bother putting it on immediately.

  “It’s about time,” Governor Dunham grumbled, motioning them into the last two seats. “We were about to leave without you.”

  The interior of the Sprinter had been converted into something that reminded Ali of the cabin of a small jet. It had four captain’s chairs around a polished-wood foldaway table. There was a long sofa of bench seating along one wall. The tiny galley at the front of the vehicle, just behind the cab, came complete with a granite countertop and backsplash. A door to the right of that opened and closed, shutting off the cab and allowing people in the cabin complete privacy. At the opposite end of the vehicle were two doors. One apparently led to a traveling restroom and the other to a baggage compartment and rear exit. With plenty of electrical outlets and a built-in printer, the vehicle was nothing short of a traveling office well suited for long official road trips.

  The Sprinter’s interior may have been luxury itself, but the mood of the occupants was less than cheerful. Andrea Rogers, along with Patricia and Agnes, had claimed three of the four spots on the sofa. Concerned about what awaited them back home, the Brought Back girls huddled together in subdued silence. The governor was seated in one of the four captain’s chairs with her chief of staff at her side. It wasn’t until after Ali and B. had settled into the two opposing seats that they were properly introduced to Bill Witherspoon.

  “Was the interview successful?” Governor Dunham asked.

  “Yes,” Ali said.

  “Anything I need to know?”

  Ali took a deep breath. “Amos Sellers is under the impression that Danny Alvarado was the father of Anne Lowell’s baby. They must have gotten together back when Alvarado was a deputy and pulling occasional patrol duty in Colorado City. Amos and Anne were friends. When she got knocked up by someone who wasn’t her husband, she was desperate to get away. In The Family adultery is a capital offense, punishable
by stoning.”

  “Stoning?” Governor Dunham asked. “Seriously?”

  Ali nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Amos says that when Anne came to him for help, he’s the one who helped her get away. He claims he took her as far as Kingman and dropped her off with her boyfriend.”

  “He mentioned Sheriff Alvarado by name?”

  “Yes. The sheriff told Amos later that Anne had her baby—a girl—and had moved on to San Diego, where, presumably, she and her baby were hunky-dory and living happily ever after.”

  “Except they weren’t,” Governor Dunham said grimly. “They weren’t at all.”

  A long silence settled over the vehicle while the governor processed this latest revelation.

  “All right, then,” Virginia Dunham said at last, “there’s nothing to be done about any of this right now. We’ll handle it later. First things first. At the moment, there’s been another development. Satellite imaging shows lots of back-and-forth movement between the various residences, the landing strip, and the church up at The Encampment. Because we don’t have any idea of what’s normal around there, the movements may be just that—normal. Bill here, on the other hand, shares your concern, Ali, that our targets may have somehow become aware of our intentions. My decision is that we move forward with the operation regardless. If something bad happens, I’m prepared to accept full responsibility.”

  Not full, Ali thought. Some of that responsibility will be Sister Anselm’s and mine.

  The Sprinter was moving steadily northward through the night. “All right,” Governor Dunham said, resuming control. “As of now, we’re going dark. Please turn off all electronic devices, iPads and cell phones included. We won’t light them up again until after we’re in position and the operation is under way. At that point, maintaining secrecy will no longer be an issue.”

  Knowing how much information could be gleaned from tracking electronic devices, Ali and B. both complied without protest, although Ali wished she’d had time to call Leland and let him know a little about the situation before the no-communication edict went into effect.

  “Now,” Governor Dunham said, switching seamlessly from command mode to hostess mode, “how about some dinner? The box lunches aren’t exactly gourmet fare, but they’re better than going hungry. They’re in the fridge drawers under the coffee dispenser.”

  B., seated on the aisle, hopped up and retrieved two of the lunches and a pair of chilled sodas as well. By now, it had been a very, very long time since breakfast. Ali didn’t pause before tearing into hers. Bologna had never been high on her list of preferred sandwich fillings, but since she was famished, that dry sandwich was nothing short of divine. Ditto for the small bag of chips and tiny container of mandarin orange slices tucked into one corner of the box.

  When her lunch was gone, Ali wrapped herself in a blanket that had been thoughtfully folded over the back of her chair. As the Sprinter rumbled north through the night, Ali should have been wide awake and worrying about what awaited them at the end of the road. Instead, once the carbs from the box lunch were absorbed into her system, she was out like a light. Only when the van began to slow more than three hours later did she return to her senses. B. continued dozing and didn’t wake up completely until the van came to a complete stop.

  Peering out through the window, Ali discovered that a full moon had lit up the high desert landscape. The van was parked on a wide spot next to the paved roadway in a graveled area lined by an array of mailboxes. Across the highway, a narrow dirt road led off into the distance. Here and there silvery patches of unmelted snow glimmered in the moonlight.

  The lights in the cabin had been dimmed, but a glance at the luminous dial on her watch told Ali that it was twenty past eleven. The three-hour fifty-seven-minute drive had taken just that. As Ali settled in for an interminable forty-minute wait, B. reached out to take her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. She squeezed back. She was glad to have him here with her; glad that however this turned out—for good or ill—they were in it together.

  The door between the cabin and the cab popped open, and the driver appeared in the doorway. “Going outside to stretch my legs, ma’am,” he said to Governor Dunham.

  “Don’t be too long,” she warned him.

  Ali had carried her vest onto the Sprinter when she boarded and had dropped it on the floor next to her seat. Picking it up, she turned to the governor. “I could use a pit stop, too.”

  “Good idea,” Governor Dunham said, gesturing toward the left-hand door at the rear. “Help yourself.”

  Slipping her vest on as she went, Ali made for the restroom. She had finished what she needed to do and was washing her hands in the tiny sink when a door somewhere behind her slammed open with such force that the whole vehicle shuddered.

  “Hands where I can see them!” an unseen but clearly angry male voice shouted. “Now.”

  Ali froze where she was. With the restroom door shut, she could hear what was going on out in the cabin but she couldn’t see it. Those chilling words told her that an armed assailant had somehow disabled the driver, stormed aboard the vehicle, and now was holding the others hostage. Drawing her Glock out of her holster, Ali stood in front of the flimsy pocket door, holding her breath and waiting for it to slam open, too. It didn’t.

  “Who are you?” Governor Dunham was speaking. “What do you want?”

  “I think you know who I am. The name’s Lowell. I’m the guy you’re after,” the man replied. “The guy outside was armed, so I’m guessing some of you are, too. Hand them over—weapons and cell phones. All of them. You”—he addressed one of them—“take that box and gather ’em up.”

  Ali felt the Sprinter wobble slightly. She had no idea which member of the group had stood up in response to that spoken command, but someone had. Holding her breath, Ali waited, realizing eventually that Lowell had no idea that someone else was on board the vehicle. As long as Ali did nothing to give away her presence, she was relatively safe. She also understood that she was the court of last resort for all six of the people being held prisoner on the other side of that all-too-insubstantial door.

  “Hey,” Lowell was saying. “Someone with two cell phones and a revolver in her purse. Give me that gun. It could come in handy. A man can’t have too many guns.”

  Ali knew that the Brought Back girls wouldn’t have been armed, and she doubted that Andrea Rogers would have been, either. That meant that in addition to Ali, only Governor Dunham had been carrying a weapon.

  “I was planning on hiking the whole way, and then I saw this rig,” Lowell continued. “At first I thought you were just a bunch of stupid campers, spending the night, but when I found out the driver was armed and carrying a security-detail badge, I realized this has to be some kind of command vehicle. So I would guess the lady with the gun is the one running the show?”

  “More or less,” the governor said. “My name’s Governor Virginia Dunham. I’m one of the people running the show, Mr. Lowell, but only one of them. There are plenty of others. It’s over, Mr. Lowell. This is not going to end well for anyone. Give it up.”

  “I’m supposed to surrender on your say-so? Are you nuts? Who’s the one holding the weapons here?”

  Ali glanced at her watch. It was just now twenty-five minutes past the hour. Thirty-five minutes to go. Moving slowly, she put her own weapon down long enough to ease her cell phone out of her pocket. An emergency 911 call this close to zero hour might put the entire joint operation in jeopardy, but she needed to alert someone about their dire situation. Instead, praying that Stuart Ramey was still up and working, she forced her trembling fingers to type a text:

  EMERGENCY. DO NOT REPLY OR CALL. HELD HOSTAGE IN SPRINTER BY LOWELL. RECORD WHAT’S SAID. NOTIFY DPS. SEND HELP. DO NOT USE REGULAR 911 CHANNELS.

  Then she dialed Stuart’s number. He answered after half a ring.

  “Ali, I got your text. What’s up? Ho
w can I help?”

  At the sound of his voice, Ali’s knees almost buckled out of sheer gratitude. Instead of replying verbally, Ali turned the call volume to max. Then she sent another text:

  FOLLOW SIGNAL. LOWELL ARMED AND DANGEROUS. ACTING ALONE, I THINK. GOV’S DRIVER MUST BE DOWN. SIX HOSTAGES, INCLUDING GOV AND B.

  Ali allowed herself a deep breath. If Lowell ended up gunning them all down, Stuart would at least be able to provide an audible recording of what had happened.

  “If you have a quarrel with anyone, Mr. Lowell,” Governor Dunham said, “it’s with me. Let the others go.”

  “Nobody’s leaving,” Lowell replied. “Everybody stays.”

  Ali’s opinion of Governor Dunham moved up several notches. Despite having a gun pointed in her direction, she sounded poised and utterly calm.

  Ali hurriedly sent Stuart another text:

  ARE YOU HEARING ALL THIS?

  Stuart’s response was almost instantaneous.

  LOUD AND CLEAR

  So was Ali’s.

  STAY WITH US.

  Ali stuffed the cell phone into her bra and picked up her weapon in time to hear more of what was happening beyond the door. She heard Lowell’s sudden change of focus when he finally either noticed or recognized the Brought Back girls.

  “You two are behind all this, aren’t you? I should have known you’d be involved. As soon as Amos told me that you’d run off, I knew there’d be trouble. Whatever happens, it’s all your fault.”

  “You’re evil,” Ali heard Patricia mutter.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Agnes added.

  “Right,” Lowell said. “Another station heard from. Who says I won’t get away with it? Out of the pigpen less than a day and already you’ve cut off your hair and started wearing godless clothing. Just because you’re wearing pants now, young lady, what makes you think I’ll listen to you? You may have forgotten your position in the world, but I haven’t. Besides, you and Patricia there won’t be around to cause trouble for much longer. Now shut the hell up.”