Dance of the Bones

Her intention was to drop her luggage off at the safe house, then drive across the border into Mexico at Nogales in broad daylight. Appearing as Ava Richland herself, she’d be thoroughly inspected and photographed at the border. After that, she’d abandon the car in Nogales, Sonora, with the keys inside. With any kind of luck, it would end up in somebody’s chop shop. After walking back across the border with a whole other set of ID, she’d meet a runner who would smuggle her back to Tucson.

As for Ava Richland herself? With the car gone or found stolen, she’d simply go missing. If the media could be believed, hapless American tourists went missing in Mexico all the time, and that’s where they would search for her—-in Mexico. By the time the search started, she’d be back across the border into the United States, and dropped off at her safe house in Tucson. From there she’d be long gone.

Her unsafe safe house was situated in a dodgy neighborhood on the south side of town—-a run--down place she’d picked up as a foreclosure during the real estate collapse. She had bought the place for a song and furnished it on the cheap with secondhand furniture from several of Tucson’s many resale stores. The person who had bought the house and the furniture—-one of Ava’s many stand--in characters—-was a frail little old lady named Jane Dobson.

Jane wore colorful muumuus, used a walker, and drove a ten--year--old Acura. She seemed to have serious health issues and never went anywhere without being hooked to a portable oxygen pack in the basket of her walker—-one of Harold’s rejects. Jane had told both the real estate agent and the neighbors that she had an abusive husband. (Harold would have been so surprised!) That’s why she needed a bolt--hole if things ever got too bad at home. As far as the neighborhood knew, the lady in the late--model Mercedes and the Native American man who stopped by periodically and let themselves into her garage? According to Jane, they were her well--to--do younger sister and her nephew, both of whom came by now and then to check on the place for her.

Ava’s bags were packed and ready to be carted out to the car when she made one last trip through the family room. Pausing in front of the floor--to--ceiling windows, Ava stared down at the cityscape beneath her. She couldn’t help feeling a little sad, actually. She knew she’d never be coming back here. Tucson had been good to her—-far better than she could ever have imagined—-and she knew she would miss it.

Walking back across the room she passed the bar, and there was Fito. Poor Fito. How she wished she could take that lump of limestone with its toothy captive along with her. Jack and Susan would never be smart enough to sell the piece for what it was worth. Unfortunately, Fito was far too big for Ava to carry.

Then her eye fell on the pot—-the tiny pot. Jack and Susan wouldn’t know what that was worth either, but what it meant to Ava was far more than any mere monetary value. It was a -trophy—-a reminder of her first kill, a kill she’d gotten away with then and would still get away with now.

When JFA’s attorneys had poked their noses into John Lassiter’s case, they must have hoped to have his life sentence reduced to something considerably less than that, but as of today, his life sentence would become a death sentence. Somewhere around five that afternoon, John Lassiter would be a thing of the past, and so would Max José. And once Henry Rojas was out of the way, too, there would be no one left to connect all those dots back to her.

As for Ava? With Jane Dobson’s aging Acura decked out in a new set of plates, she would drive to L.A. and to another equally unassuming safe house—-a condo in a massive development not far from LAX. On the way she’d stop by a Postal Minders shop off Sepulveda and pick up the collection of packages she’d sent ahead to Jane Carruthers—-another of her guises—-from one of the shipping centers at the Gem and Mineral Show a few weeks earlier. Lots of -people shipped their gem-show purchases home from there, and her packages of blood diamonds had no doubt blended in with the crowd.