Dance of the Bones

The problem was, she had a long drive ahead of her tonight. It would take at least five hours to reach the Border Patrol checkpoint northwest of Brawley, California. She wanted to pass through that around midnight, a time when the guards would be tired and traffic would be light. Jane Dobson would drive past the officers in her properly licensed vehicle. Then, somewhere north of there but south of Indio, Jane Dobson would disappear for good, shortly after Ava Richland.

At that point the Acura’s Arizona license plate would go in the trunk. Weeks earlier she had commissioned one of her operatives to steal a California plate from a similarly colored Acura. Then, with the stolen plate in place, she would assume the guise of Kate Worthington for the remainder of the trip. And once in L.A., Kate Worthington would also evaporate when Jane Carruthers went into Postal Minders to pick up her preshipped packages of diamonds.

As for Henry Rojas? She hoped it would be days or maybe even weeks before anyone stepped inside Jane Dobson’s abandoned house to find his body. Earlier in the day she had asked one of the neighborhood kids for help loading her luggage into her car in the two--car garage. In passing, she happened to mention to the kid that she was on her way to visit her dying mother and wasn’t sure when she’d be back.

Waiting for the garage door to open, Ava concentrated on remaining calm. She touched her purse with the toe of her shoe. The extra weight told her that her weapon was where she needed it to be. The Glock semiautomatic was much smaller than the .22 she had used on Amos Warren and Kenneth Mangum. The .22 had originally belonged to her philandering father. Twelve--year--old Ava had found it hidden in the bottom drawer of his dresser the day her mother threw the man out of the house. Ava had taken the gun, hidden it in her own dresser, and used it twice before ditching it in a Dumpster at a gas station somewhere in Portland on her way home from Seattle.

As for this one? It was new. She hadn’t spent any time firing it, but at close range, that wouldn’t matter. She worried about the sound of gunfire. Occasional gunshots in this dodgy neighborhood weren’t all that unusual, but unwelcome attention was something she could ill afford. If she could avoid shooting him, she would.

With that in mind, what Ava was really counting on was Henry’s soft spot for tequila. They’d shared a slug or two of that on other occasions when he’d dropped off shipments. This time, she had prepared a special barbiturate--laced bottle of Jose Cuervo. She’d set it out on the coffee table along with a single shot glass, a plate of lime slices, and a shaker of salt. And if that didn’t quite do the trick? If something more was required, she was pretty sure she’d be able to make it look like suicide.

Ava had watched the local news at six. She had followed the piece on the reservation shooting with avid interest, but there had been few details. Stories about two unidentified males being gunned down out along the border didn’t get much traction these days. Just before the broadcast ended, there had been a brief breaking news alert about a disturbance at the state prison in Florence in which two -people had died and one was injured. The smiling young blond anchorwoman breathlessly promised more details on the ten o’clock edition.

Ava fervently hoped that the two dead victims were the right dead victims, but she didn’t plan on hanging around long enough to make sure. She’d be well on the road before it was time for the ten o’clock news.

The minutes crept by. She had poured herself a glass of wine that sat untouched on the table next to her chair. There was no point risking having wine before embarking on an all--night drive, but the wine provided camouflage and gave her a reason for not joining Henry in having some of his tequila.

For hours now, the only sound in the house had been the quiet growling of the fridge as the motor switched on and off and the occasional banging of ice machine cubes rattling as they dropped into the plastic bin. The sound she was waiting for was the slow creak of the garage door opening, but that one didn’t come. Instead she was jarred by the sound of her doorbell.