Page 68

CHAPTER 68

I CLOSED MY EYES and tried to chase off the thoughts that were again darkening my mind. I’d spent days and nights and buckets of precious hope trying to save Troy Hansen, when it was becoming ever clearer that it was just his natural weirdness I’d sympathized with. I wondered at my failure to recognize Troy as a psychopath, since my track record for choosing truly misunderstood underdogs to root for had been near perfect. Maybe I was getting old. Maybe the move to California had rattled me.

Or had my vision been clouded by having Baby to care for as my sister and my business partner? I dejectedly typed in Dorothy Andrews-Smith’s address, opened the Google Maps Street View, and looked at her house. It was a perky little white-stucco job with clay roof tiles and red bougainvillea crowding the front door. Dave Summerly’s words floated back to me.

Dorothy Andrews-Smith was killed by a fucking gang, Rhonda.

I know she was. And you will too .

I looked again at the glut of hits for Dorothy Andrews-Smith online. Her disappearance had tickled the interest of an LA Times journalist who seemed to believe Southern California was the West Coast hub of America’s opioid crisis.

Dorothy, a deeply tanned grandmother who dripped with colorful jewelry in every online photograph, had been an outspoken opponent of the operation of a nightclub at Redondo Beach. She’d gone to the local papers and a number of online groups with accusations that the nightclub owners were selling fentanyl-laced cocaine to the young people who partied at the club. She had even submitted an application to the Redondo Beach mayor’s office opposing the club’s extension into a neighboring mechanic’s workshop. A couple of overdoses in the area had given Dorothy’s complaints traction, and the club’s extension, which might have made the owners millions of dollars, was rejected. The Times stopped just short of suggesting that the club, the Update, was cartel-owned.

Then Dorothy had disappeared from her home, both her front and back doors left hanging open.

Perhaps feeding my misery, perhaps procrastinating to avoid beginning the eight-hour drive back to Los Angeles, I looked up the contact info for the Times journalist who’d written the article about Dorothy. Johnathan Brite. I was pleased when Brite took my call, but he sounded bored when I explained who I was and what I was seeking.

“The cartel killed her,” he said. I heard a car horn blare. He was apparently spending his time the way most LA journalists did — stuck in traffic en route to or from a story. “She annoyed them by messing with their club expansion.”

“Are you sure?” I asked Brite. “I mean, I’ve read the articles and I heard the same thing from a cop I know. But why is everyone so certain that that’s what happened to Dorothy?”

“Because it makes sense.”

“But — ”

“They left the back and front doors open,” Brite said. “The guy that owns the club? He’s a high-ranking member of the local chapter of the Tormenta Thirteens. The open-doors thing is, like, that gang’s calling card or whatever. It’s supposed to represent a storm blowing through the house. Tormenta means ‘storm’ in Spanish, I think.”

“Okay.”

“They’ve rubbed out a bunch of people that way. Rival drug dealers. A couple of prostitutes who held back on their cartel pimps.”

“So that’s it? No other angles have been seriously investigated in Dorothy’s disappearance?” I asked. “What if she ran off? Faked her own death? Or what if she fell victim to someone else?”

“You ever heard of Occam’s razor?”

I sighed.

“Look, there’s no angle here,” Brite said. “I’ve written what I can about it. But they ain’t ever gonna find that woman’s body. They never do with these cartel guys.”

“But if the cops and the locals are so sure that Dorothy was killed by a gang, why haven’t there been any arrests?” I asked.

The journalist’s laugh hammered my already battered ego.

“Sounds like a nice world you’re livin’ in, lady, where people commit crimes and the cops come around and do something about it,” he said. “Be sure to let me know if a spot opens up for me there, will ya?”

I sighed again as Brite clicked off. The diner cook picked up one of my empty plates and gave a small, satisfied smile because I’d all but licked it clean. Then he stopped. Someone had dashed to my side.

I turned and felt a rush of adrenaline as I saw Reina Hansen lift her chin at the cook, her tiny hands spread wide on the counter beside me.

“Can I just get a quart of two percent, Hank, please?” she asked. Her jaw was tight and her eyes were firmly fixed on the cook. He set my plate back down and went to a section behind the counter where I assumed he kept grocery supplies for customers.

For a second, I thought Reina didn’t realize that I was beside her. Which was unlikely — between the tattoos, the pink hair, and my outsize style, no one fails to notice Rhonda Bird. I looked down and saw that Reina held a couple of bills for the milk in her right hand, and in her left, the hand closer to me, she had a tiny roll of paper tucked between her index and middle finger, like a cigarette. She tapped the end of the rolled piece of paper on the counter to get my attention. I turned on my stool and saw Barney Hansen on the street, his head bent and a finger stabbing the air as he talked into a cell phone.

I took the piece of paper from Reina’s fingers, grabbed my stuff, and moved swiftly to the restrooms before Barney could glance into the diner and see me. In the safety of the stall, I unrolled the paper and looked at the name written there in what I assumed was Reina’s delicate, curly cursive.

Chelsea Hupp.

With trembling fingers, I got out my phone. The lock screen was covered with hundreds of notifications for news stories about the discovery of Daisy’s body. I typed Chelsea Hupp into Google and sank onto the closed lid of the toilet seat. There were hundreds of Chelsea Hupps in the world. I added Ukiah and found a thirty-year-old news story:

“Police Stumped by Local Girl’s Death.”