As Good as Dead Read online

  As

  Good

  As

  Dead

  A Douglas Files Short

  Nathan Birr

  Copyright © 2020 Nathan Birr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

  graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by BEACON BOOKS, LLC

  Image used under license from Shutterstock.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  www.nathanbirr.com

  To the ones who would come looking for me . . .

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter One

  Friday, October 18, 2013

  7:29 a.m.

  DETECTIVE ASHLEY LARSON twirled a finger through her shoulder-length blond hair and sighed at traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. This was one part of L.A. she didn’t miss. In fact, after four and a half months, she was finding there weren’t many parts she did miss. This her first visit back, she’d expected waves of nostalgia and sadness to wash over her upon seeing familiar landmarks and her old haunts. Hadn’t been the case. It was a little weird, being here as a visitor, but she had no regrets.

  She smiled to herself as the light changed and she accelerated. No regrets. She was two weeks and a day from marrying a man she’d never dated, her former partner of three years, who had proposed out of the blue. Plenty of people—including her dad—had told her it was crazy, getting married to your best friend, getting married so soon—just six months after his proposal. But she’d never regretted her decision to say yes, to uproot her life and career, to move to Northern California and make a life with Dylan. Never regretted it, and in fact was growing more and more sure of her decision by the day.

  A box truck pulled from the curb in front of her, and she quit reminiscing and concentrated on traffic. She had grown used to whipping in and out of Redding’s nominal traffic in her Beetle convertible, not navigating L.A.’s hustle and flow in this boxy SUV—a Nissan Rogue—she’d rented at the airport the day before. She wondered what traffic in Mexico would be like. She’d never been, never had an interest in crossing the border—unless it was to an all-inclusive in Puerto Vallarta or Cabo. But not on a detective’s salary.

  Mexico.

  The absurdity of it hit her as she hit the brakes for another stoplight. Hers and Dylan’s was going to be a simple wedding, and yet, two weeks out, she should be the busy bride-to-be, scurrying around making final arrangements and tying up loose ends. That or planning for and dreaming of the future. Instead, she was giving up her penultimate weekend as a single woman to chase to Mexico on what was, in all likelihood, a failed mission.

  And one she still wasn’t one hundred percent certain why she had instigated.

  * * *

  Nine days ago . . .

  Wednesday, October 9

  5:09 p.m.

  ASHLEY STEPPED out into the searing heat, intensified as it beat down on the blacktop of the Redding Police Department parking lot. The ping of an aluminum bat connecting with a softball and ensuing cheers wafted on the breeze from a nearby ballfield. That breeze did little to cool the oven-like air. Moving north, Ashley had expected temperatures to cool down, but Redding was setting all sorts of heat records. So she turned her attention from the sweat quickly beading on her brow to her phone. It had vibrated with a call while she was finishing up a case report, and she hadn’t bothered to check it until now.

  The number was familiar, one with which she had been playing phone tag most of the day. No voicemail. As she beeped her car open, she tapped redial. The phone purred in her ear as she entered a sauna, quickly starting the car and lowering the windows while also cranking the A/C. Three rings, then, “This is Sam.”

  “Sam, it’s Ashley Larson. Sorry I missed you.”

  “It’s no problem,” came the high, soft reply. “You said in your initial voicemail you had questions about Jackson?”

  “Yeah,” Ashley answered as she backed out of her parking stall. “Short of it is, I’ve been trying to get ahold of him for several weeks and he’s not answering his phone. It’s like he’s ghosting me. I called Reggie, and we swapped voicemails for most of Monday, and all I got out of him was that Jackson had gone to Mexico for a while. He’s in Nebraska now—Reggie, I mean—visiting his mother or his grandmother or something, so I’m trying the rest of Jackson’s friends, hoping some of them know more than ‘he’s in Mexico.’”

  Sam was silent for a moment, maybe processing.

  “Sorry, that was a mouthful,” Ashley said.

  “No, it’s fine,” Sam said. “Thing is, I’ve been trying to get ahold of him for a while too. No luck.”

  “Are you and he . . . dating?”

  “No.”

  “I ask because I didn’t want you to think I was stepping on your territory.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m getting married in less than a month,” Ashley said, pausing to swipe down her sun visor.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. I invited Jackson but he never RSVP’d, and maybe I’m just going bridezilla here, but he’s an important part of my life and Dylan’s life, and I want him to be there. More than that, I want to know what’s going on.” She sighed. “But if you don’t know any more . . . Didn’t we play this game a few months ago?”

  Sam was quiet again.

  “When was the last time you talked to him?” Ashley asked.

  “We talked after the thing with the Russians, so back in April sometime.”

  “And that’s the last you’ve heard from him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Ashley coasted to a yield, then gunned the engine to beat traffic north on Market Street. “What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

  “Like you said, I’ve tried to get ahold of him a few times, and he hasn’t answered or returned my calls. I even stopped by his house, and he wasn’t there.”

  “This is like the last time,” Ashley said.

  “So I went to Reggie, about a week and a half ago, actually. He told me Jackson had gone down to Mexico in early September. To Tijuana.”

  Ashley frowned. “What the heck is he doing in Tijuana? Working a case?”

  “That’s what I asked Reggie. His answer was ‘getting away.’”

  “Getting away?”

  “His exact words,” Sam said.

  “He say anything else?”

  “Said he’d been there for most of the month.”

  “Of September?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?” Ashley asked as she turned into the Safeway parking lot. It was her night to make dinner, and she’d decided she was too hot to cook and so she and Dylan would have to settle for salads. To wit, she needed some greens.

  “Reggie didn’t know,” Sam answered. “He said life had taken its toll and Jackson need
ed to get away.”

  “And he chose Mexico? He hates Mexico.”

  “I said something similar to Reggie, and he just shrugged.”

  “Being coy or does he not know anything more?”

  “My take was he didn’t know, that Jackson hadn’t looped him in.”

  “He say that?”

  “Not in so many words. More of how he said it.”

  Ashley digested as she searched for a parking spot. Close, if preferable, lest she melt on the walk in. “Has Reggie been in touch with him at all?”

  Sam hesitated for a second. “He said he got a postcard a few days after Jackson left.”

  “A postcard?”

  “A picture of the surf on the beach, Tijauna scrawled in bright letters on the front. He showed it to me.”

  “What’d it say?”

  “‘Reg, the women here are indeed muy caliente!’ with an exclamation point. Signed ‘Jack.’”

  “The women here are muy caliente?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said softly.

  “So Jackson is so bummed with life that he went down to troll for señoritas in Tijuana?”

  “That’s what it sounded like.”

  Ashley finally found a spot and veered into it, stopping on a dime. “And that settled okay with you?”

  “No, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Now . . . I’m still not sure.”

  Ashley hesitated, trying to figure out if there was jealousy in Sam’s words or not. The downside of a phone conversation—you couldn’t look somebody in the eyes to see what they were feeling. She let it pass.

  “Neither am I,” Ashley said. “I’m out of people to call.”

  “Did you try Jackson’s grandpa?”

  “Leroy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I’ll try that. Thanks, Sam. I’ll let you know if I hear any update.”

  “Me too.”

  Ashley ended the call and sat back for a second, trying to place the emotions she’d heard in Sam’s voice. She concluded that only one was prominent—anxiety.

  * * *

  Friday, October 18

  7:41 a.m.

  AS THEY turned onto Colorado Avenue and passed under the Santa Monica arch, it became real for Samantha MacRaney. She was going to Mexico.

  It had been real when she’d packed the night before, when she’d rearranged shifts at the hospital where she worked as a nurse, when she’d called Steve to let him know—sort of—what she was doing. She’d been expecting anything between a reprimand and a direct command from her older brother, but he’d seemed preoccupied with his news—he had a girlfriend, and apparently it was serious. Where had that come from?

  Hers was apparently not the only life moving fast.

  They coasted down the ramp and onto the wooden Santa Monica Pier. It brought back a tinge of sadness to Sam. Her first “date” with Jeff had been here. A visit to the aquarium, fresh seafood for dinner, ice cream at sunset. It had been a romance to match the summer, coming out of the blue, moving fast, and ending before she knew it.

  Jeff wasn’t the only guy brought to mind by the pier. Sam and Jackson had gone there several times on “dates.” They’d never had a formal relationship, but Sam didn’t know what else to call it but dating. What with her relationship with Jeff, dealing with her mom’s breast cancer diagnosis (she was currently three-months cancer free!), and the usual hectic schedule of an E.R. nurse, Sam had all but forgotten about Jackson, about what they’d had—even if neither of them had been able to define it. Now he, and thus it, was back on the forefront of her brain.

  Ashley turned so suddenly that Sam had to brace herself against the door.

  “Sorry,” the diminutive detective said. She had flown down the night before, and Sam had let her crash at her apartment instead of getting a hotel. It also saved Sam a drive to the pier and parking fees.

  “It’s okay,” Sam said.

  “Jackson used to have conniptions about my driving.”

  The pier provided twenty-four-hour parking, and served as a reasonable meeting location. Even though she was driving to Mexico, Ashley took a ticket for the lot, which at twenty to eight was mostly empty. So was the pier, and the beach. That had as much to do with overcast, breezy skies as the early hour, Sam figured.

  Ashley parked, and they both got out. The ocean was gray and angry, crashing onshore in thunderous waves. Sam quickly put her hair in a ponytail to keep it out of her face and scanned the pier. Her eyes wandered to the beach, and with them her mind, back to a year and a half ago when she and Jackson had celebrated his birthday by coming to the pier for ice cream cones and a walk along the shoreline. She remembered the talk they’d had that night, about him trying to cope with the death of his parents and brother. She remembered taking his hand and encouraging him that things would get better. The sudden pang in her stomach was as much nostalgia as it was realization that, apparently, things had not gotten better.

  Why else would he have gone to Mexico, a place he admittedly loathed? Why else would he want to get away, seemingly going to lengths to avoid those who cared about him? Why else would he . . .

  And why else would she be about to follow him there?

  * * *

  Nine days ago . . .

  6:03 p.m.

  AFTER TALKING to Ashley, Sam showered and changed into jeans and a sweater, fighting against a chilly snap that had come in with October and not, as of yet, lifted. Then she set about making something simple for dinner. She had some leftover chicken in the refrigerator that would mix with a seasoned rice package. With a quickly tossed salad, it would suffice.

  Before she could start, her cell rang. She found it on the counter and glanced at the display. It was an unknown number, but she answered it anyhow. “This is Sam.”

  “Sam,” the voice said. It was a woman’s, husky, familiar. When she continued, it became apparent why. “This is Maggie, Jack’s friend.”

  “Yeah, Maggie, hi.”

  “Hey. Say, this is kind of an odd question, but do you have any idea where Jackson is?”

  Sam walked to the loveseat and sat down.

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, you’re just the second person to call and ask that today.”

  “Who else is looking for him?”

  “Detective Ashley Larson.”

  “Yeah, Ashley’s the one who called me.”

  “She called you?”

  “Yesterday morning,” Maggie answered. “She was worried because she hadn’t been able to get ahold of him, and said she was calling friends of his.”

  Sam put out of her mind—for the moment at least—why Ashley had called Maggie a day earlier than she’d called her. It wasn’t important right now.

  “I told her I hadn’t talked to him in over a month,” Maggie continued, “but I’d try to get ahold of him. I called him a couple of times, stopped at his house. Nothing. I talked to his neighbor, Connie, who’s miffed because he hasn’t mowed her lawn since August, but has no idea where he is and hasn’t seen him in—her words—‘forever.’ I stopped in to see Reggie at his restaurant, but he wasn’t there. I stopped to see his grandpa. Not there. Gave a call to that P.I. I worked with the last time Jackson went off the grid, Tori Walker, and she’s in Barstow on some big case all week but hasn’t heard from him. I got your number from the hospital, but I don’t suppose you know anything more than anybody else.”

  “Actually, I do,” Sam said.

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “No.”

  “But you know something?”

  Sam explained, as she had to Ashley an hour ago, about her visit to Reggie after she’d been unable to reach Jackson herself. She didn’t tell Maggie why she’d wanted to find Jackson. She wasn’t entirely sure herself.

  “He went to Mexico?” Maggie asked. “Jackson hates Mexico.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, really bad. After everything that happened there.”

  “That’s right, the
two of you were there.”

  “Yeah, and we left as personas non grata, too. He went back there voluntarily?”

  “From what Reggie told me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you talk to Reggie?”

  “A week ago Sunday.”

  “And you’ve just been sitting on this?”

  Sam leaned forward, trying not to take offense at the critique in Maggie’s voice. “Reggie didn’t seem worried. There’s nothing to suggest Jackson was in trouble.”

  “Have you talked to him since?”

  “No. He’s in Nebraska.”

  “What?”

  “He has family there.”

  “He have a phone there too?”

  “Ashley played a little phone tag with him, but sounds like he’s hard to reach.”

  “Yeah, who knows if they even have cell towers in Nebraska.”

  “Maggie, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you worried about Jackson?”

  “I’m getting there. I’m trying to tell myself this isn’t like last time, but who knows what’s happened to him since he sent Reggie that postcard you mentioned. He might have flipped and gone down there to chill for a few weeks, but it’s Mexico. And Jackson. Trouble follows him.”

  “I know. And it’s not like him to be off the grid this long . . .”

  “Unless something happened to him?” Maggie finished.

  “Yeah.”

  Maggie sighed.

  “You said Leroy was gone too?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, checked his houseboat twice.”

  “Reggie didn’t say anything about him.”

  “I swear, there’s something in the genetics in that family.”

  Sam said nothing.

  “I had a source in Mexico,” Maggie said after a while. “She worked at El Universal in Mexico City, and her brother-in-law was a detective in Acapulco. One of the few people who didn’t burn us when we were down there. I’ll give her a call and see if she knows anybody in Tijuana who could . . . I don’t know, verify Jackson’s not in jail for publicly burning the Mexican flag or screaming ‘Remember the Alamo!’ at a soccer match or something. Or on a slab in the morgue.”