Murder of Innocence (Murder Is Forever) Read online

He can feel himself being bumped and jostled as the SUV speeds along Puerto Vallarta’s potholed streets. But he has no idea who’s taken him, where they’re heading, or what they’re going to do with him next.

  “We still rolling?” says the man who tackled him. “Okay, good.” The man clears his throat. “Now, what you all just witnessed out there is called a dynamic takedown. It’s one of my favorite techniques for neutralizing and apprehending a dangerous fugitive. It can be risky in a public place like that but—”

  “Fugitive?” Andrew exclaims. “Me? You got the wrong guy!”

  “Shut up!” the man roars. He gives Andrew a hard shove for good measure. “I’ll tell you when it’s your turn to talk. Now, let’s try this again. Take two. Folks, what you just witnessed is called a dynamic takedown. It’s one of my—”

  “What the hell is this?” Andrew demands. “Are you filming some kind of movie?”

  The man grabs Andrew by the scruff of his neck and pulls him close. “This ain’t one of your little nudie flicks, brah, if that’s what you’re asking. My name’s Dog. I’m a bounty hunter. I’m not just bringing your ass back to jail, thank the Lord. I’m making mine famous. I’m gonna be on TV! Maybe you can watch me from your cell.”

  Andrew is stunned. He wasn’t caught by the Feds or by Interpol or even by a private eye. He was captured by a wannabe reality-TV star.

  From the front of the van, he hears a man shout, “Damn it—cops!”

  From behind, he hears a symphony of approaching sirens.

  Normally that sound would fill Andrew with dread. But right now, he feels something much closer to relief.

  “Shit!” Dog roars. “Okay, okay. Everybody be cool. Leland, pull over. And whatever happens, you boys keep your cameras rolling! Hear me?”

  Andrew feels the SUV slow down and stop.

  He hears a small army of Mexican federales outside, angrily yelling over one another in Spanish.

  He hears Dog and the rest of his team open their doors and get out, then more yelling outside, followed by the familiar metallic click and clack of handcuffs being slapped onto wrists.

  “Señor, ¿estás bien?” says one of the officers as he approaches the SUV.

  “¡Sí, gracias!” Andrew answers. He tries desperately, in broken Spanish, to explain that his name is David Carrera, that he was kidnapped against his will, that all of this is just one big misunderstanding, that he should be released at once.

  No such luck.

  About twenty minutes later, Andrew, Dog, and the others are all loaded into the back of a police pickup truck and carted away.

  CHAPTER 34

  ANDREW LUSTER IS THROWN into a small, damp, filthy Puerto Vallarta jail cell.

  It’s worse than hell because Dog the bounty hunter and the rest of his team are thrown in there with him.

  A Mexican police officer is posted outside to keep an eye on the motley group of prisoners, but Andrew doesn’t let his guard down for a second. He knows Dog is furious about how things turned out and that he might possibly take it out on him with his fists.

  For starters, Dog’s reality-TV-show footage was ruined. Worse, he and his crew might be facing criminal charges themselves. In Mexico, bounty hunting is illegal, full stop. And since Dog and his team were acting on their own and broke local laws in the process of apprehending him, they probably won’t be entitled to a penny of Andrew’s forfeited bail money.

  “Tough luck,” Andrew sneers when he overhears Dog and some of the others discussing it. “Maybe you should’ve minded your own business.”

  Dog glares at Andrew, steaming. “Maybe you shouldn’t have drugged and raped all those women, you prick. If putting you behind bars for the rest of your life means I gotta do a little time myself, that’s okay by me.”

  But Dog and the others don’t have to do much time at all. They’re released the following afternoon, thanks to the hard work of their excellent lawyer.

  Andrew tries to contact Roger Diamond, his high-priced defense attorney, but Diamond’s snooty secretary refuses to put the call through. According to her boss, she says, Andrew is officially no longer a client.

  Great.

  Andrew is annoyed but not worried. He still has lots of money, and there are plenty of good lawyers out there who will be happy to take it from him.

  He’s also no legal expert, but he’s confident that the battle over his extradition back to the United States will be a long-drawn-out one. It could take months. Maybe a year.

  More than enough time for Andrew to bribe a couple of cops and make his escape.

  But he never gets the chance.

  Just four days after his arrest, Andrew receives a visit from a fiscal adjunto, an assistant state prosecutor. She informs Andrew that because he entered Mexico under a false name, David Carrera, he is in the country illegally and thus can be immediately deported.

  Andrew is stunned. He implores the prosecutor not to send him back. He offers to pay her a small fortune to let him stay. He pleads. He begs. He breaks down into uncontrollable sobs.

  But it’s no use.

  Some twenty-four hours later, under the armed escort of four Mexico-based FBI agents, he’s on a commercial flight bound for LAX.

  When they arrive in LA, he is immediately transferred to the custody of waiting Ventura County Sheriff’s officials to begin serving his one-hundred-and-twenty-four-year sentence.

  After nearly four decades, Andrew Luster has finally run out of luck.

  Epilogue

  April 2013. Ten Years Later

  TONJA BALDEN PULLS ANOTHER Kleenex from the travel pack she keeps in her purse and blots her red, wet eyes.

  She’s sitting cross-legged on a beach towel staring out at the ocean, searching the waves for some kind of solace. Her husband, Jon, has his arm wrapped around her. Lisa is holding her hand.

  “It … it … it’s just not fair,” she says. “How could the judge do that?”

  “I know, honey,” says Jon. “It’s not. But fifty years is still a really long time.”

  “He was supposed to die in there! Now he’s going to get out?”

  “When he’s eighty-nine,” Lisa stresses gently. “There’s a very good chance—”

  “What about parole? Good behavior? Another appeal? An even better lawyer?” Tonja balls the tissue in her fist. “That son of a bitch could be released decades earlier than that, and both of you know it!”

  The three sit in silence for a moment, listening to the lapping water.

  All morning they’ve been trying to process the shocking news. Because the original judge presiding over Andrew Luster’s trial didn’t properly follow state law, which requires that specific reasons be given for ordering multiple sentences to be served consecutively, Andrew’s new attorney was able to convince an appeals judge that his sentences should be served concurrently. This had the effect of shortening Andrew’s overall sentence from a hundred and twenty-four years to just fifty.

  Jon’s right, of course. That’s still a very long time.

  But to Tonja, it feels like a slap in the face. It’s dredged up all the pain and anguish she felt over a decade ago, when she bravely testified at Andrew’s trial, and two years before that, when she first watched the video of her own rape. And four years before that, when she and Jon were the targets of Andrew’s stalking, harassment, and death threats.

  Tonja has worked hard to put those awful experiences behind her. To process and move past the trauma and get on with her life. But every few years, it seems, something happens to drag her back.

  When, she wonders, will this nightmare end? “Mom! Dad! Aunt Lisa! Look what I can do!” Tonja and Jon’s twelve-year-old daughter calls to them from the ocean’s edge. She’s a bright and bubbly girl, outgoing and self-confident.

  Tonja puts on a smile. “Show me, baby!”

  Her daughter does a string of cartwheels, ending with a backward knee tuck.

  Tonja, Jon, and Lisa all shout, “Bravo! Wow! Great job!” Their little
gymnast takes a theatrical bow, then scurries back into the water.

  Watching her daughter always fills Tonja with joy, pride, and love. But today, her heart and mind can only dwell in darkness.

  She wonders how many other women out there Andrew might have drugged, raped, and filmed. Women whose stories will never be known. Women who will never see justice served.

  Tonja worries about how many other Andrews are out there. Smart, charming, handsome, wealthy men who have committed the same crimes—or even worse ones.

  How can she ever feel truly safe again in this world?

  How can she ever keep her daughter safe?

  Tonja knows the answer.

  She can’t.

  Because anyone can have a secret dark side—even the people we love.

  Part One

  * * *

  CHAPTER 1

  Pikeville, Kentucky. May 1987

  THE UNMARKED FBI SEDAN cruises through the Kentucky hills, lush and green after a wet spring. Mark Putnam drives with the window rolled down and his elbow propped on the frame. Neil Whittaker, a state trooper, rides shotgun. Mark is wearing a suit; Whittaker is in his uniform.

  When Mark arrived in Pikeville three months earlier, one of the first things he did was join the local cops on ride-alongs so he could learn the lay of the land and earn the respect of the men he’d be working closely with. Today’s journey, however, has a different purpose. Trooper Whittaker is taking Mark out to meet a potential informant.

  “Now, one thing about Susan,” Whittaker says, raising his voice to be heard over the wind rushing past the windows, “she’s got a reputation for telling some tall tales, and you can’t always be sure if what she’s saying is the actual truth or something she just wishes were true.”

  Mark frowns. “Sounds great,” he says sarcastically. “Just what I look for in an informant.”

  Mark likes Whittaker; they have a good rapport. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t joke like this with the trooper.

  “The thing is,” Whittaker says, “she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s smarter than people give her credit for. And everyone likes her. She’ll be able to find stuff out for you, and no one will suspect her of a thing.”

  Mark is skeptical. He’s seen the file on the woman. Her name is Susan Daniels Smith. She is twenty-five, has two kids, and lives with her ex-husband, a known drug dealer.

  “I’m not sure why they’re still living together,” Whittaker says. “It might be they filed for divorce just so they could get more welfare money. Or it could be they actually split but Susan has nowhere else to go.”

  Mark had wanted to tap the ex-husband, Clint, as an informant. Clint’s definitely plugged into illegal activity in this region of Kentucky. But Whittaker had cautioned him that Clint, who’d already done hard time for selling drugs, was too unreliable. Whittaker suggested Susan instead, saying they’d grown up together, and he had a high opinion of her. Plus he thought she might be interested in making a little extra money.

  Whittaker directs Mark to turn down a gravel road that twists back into the hills. From there, they turn off onto another road, and another, until they are traveling through the woods on what could hardly be called a road—more like two wheel ruts straddling a berm of weeds. Bushes crowd both sides of the lane, the branches clawing the sedan. Finally, the route opens into a grassy clearing with a couple of rusted-out automobile husks that might once have been used as moonshine stills.

  Mark and Whittaker step out of the car to wait. The wild grass in the clearing is two feet high, and grass-hoppers jump from stalk to stalk. The air is loud with insects and birds. They hear the long, low honk of a semi in the distance, probably a coal truck leaving a mine. Mark closes his eyes and tries to enjoy the sound of the insects and the warmth of the sun on his face.

  “Here she comes,” Whittaker says.

  A car, an old maroon-and-green Chevy Nova that looks pieced together from two cars, pulls into the clearing, its engine chugging loudly. The woman behind the wheel spots Mark and smiles. Her expression says, What’s someone as handsome as this fella doing in a town like ours?

  Mark gives her a slight smile in return. He’s a little surprised himself; when he’d learned his new potential informant had two kids and was married to—or at least living with—a drug dealer, he’d made a few assumptions about her appearance: she’d probably look much older than her years and be either overweight or grossly malnourished with listless stringy hair, acne-scarred skin, and a mouth full of rotten yellow teeth.

  Susan Daniels Smith looks nothing like that. Her teeth are straight and white, her hair shiny and healthy, her skin glowing and unblemished. She opens the door and strolls over to them; she’s wearing tight jeans, a black tank top showing off slim arms, and a small gold necklace that lies against her tan skin. She looks like a carefree college senior on a campus in the South, not a mother of two who never finished the seventh grade.

  “Howdy, y’all,” she says with a charming Southern twang. “Let’s make this quick. Clint thinks I borrowed the car to get the welfare check. I can’t take all day.”

  Whittaker makes the introductions, and Susan extends her hand to Mark in a businesslike gesture. “Nice to meet you,” she says, pronouncing the last two words as one—meet’cha.

  Susan’s hand feels soft and small in Mark’s strong weight-lifter’s grip. “The pleasure’s mine,” Mark says.

  CHAPTER 2

  SUSAN CRUISES DOWN THE road, singing along to a Juice Newton song on the radio. The green trees blur by, and Susan reaches her arm out the window and moves her hand in the wind like it’s a bird.

  She’s in a good mood.

  It’s a beautiful day, she has a moment to herself for once, and she has her welfare check in her pocket—one of them, anyway. Like a lot of people in the area, she double-dips by collecting checks from both Kentucky and West Virginia.

  Being able to buy groceries is one reason she’s in a good mood, but mostly she’s feeling positive about her meeting with Neil Whittaker and that FBI agent. She played tough with him, saying that she wasn’t sure she wanted to work for the Bureau because she’d had a cousin who’d been an informant and gotten stiffed on his payment.

  But the truth is, she’s excited.

  Not just about the money. That’s a big part of it, but she’s also eager to do something that might be meaningful. She feels stuck in this dead-end town, living week to week—sometimes day to day—on government checks and whatever money her ex throws her.

  She wants something more from life, and maybe this is the way to get it.

  Also, it doesn’t hurt that this Mark Putnam fellow is cute. She was bummed when she noticed his wedding ring.

  As she approaches the trailer she and the kids share with Clint, she slows down. She isn’t ready to go back. Tucked deep in the woods, the trailer was once a baby-blue color, but now, with all the paint flaking off, it’s an ashen gray. There’s not enough room inside, and there’s no garage, of course, so the stuff a normal family would store indoors is stacked up outside against one wall—toolboxes, coolers, and cardboard boxes that are sagging in on themselves and coming apart at the seams after sitting out in the weather too long. There’s a firepit out front with a handful of plastic lawn chairs around it. The grass is overgrown except for a dirt track the kids have made with their bikes and Big Wheels.

  As she pulls up out front, Clint bangs open the screen door and trudges her way, wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a Hank Williams Jr. shirt over his wiry frame. In his hand is a wrinkled paper grocery bag with the top folded over; it looks like he’s carrying a large sack lunch.

  Of course there isn’t any food in the bag.

  “What took you so damn long?” he says before she even has the car in park.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Susan tells him. “Where you gotta go in such a hurry?”

  “Making my rounds,” he says, snatching the keys from her.

  From inside the
house, she can hear their younger child, two-year-old Alex, crying.

  As Clint fires up the engine, he calls out the window to Susan, “We’ve got friends coming to stay with us for a few days. Make them feel welcome.”

  “Who?” Susan says.

  Clint doesn’t answer; he steps on the gas and roars down the road, kicking up gravel.

  When Susan enters the trailer, Alex rushes into her arms. She lifts him and pats his head, and immediately his cries subside. Five-year-old Samantha is in the living room watching some daytime talk show that’s way too adult for her.

  Even though Susan cleaned the place this morning, it’s already a mess. On the kitchen table are half a dozen empty beer bottles and dirty dishes with the remnants of the kids’ lunches sitting half eaten, collecting flies. Ziploc bags are strewn about, some with a powdery residue of something inside. The floor is cluttered with the children’s toys.

  Susan takes a deep breath. Apparently, cleaning up after everyone else has become her lot in life.

  She lets the kids watch TV while she picks up their toys and does the dishes. As she’s putting the last plate in the drying rack, a car rumbles up to the trailer. She can tell just from the sound of the engine that it’s not her husband’s Nova.

  She looks out the screen door to see a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Paul Collins—who everyone calls Cat Eyes—climbs out of the driver’s side, and his girlfriend, Crystal Black, steps out of the passenger side, adjusting a skirt that leaves little to the imagination.

  These two visitors are the exact people Susan was afraid Clint meant.

  “Hey, good-looking,” Cat Eyes calls to Susan as he walks through the overgrown lawn, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “You like my car? It’s just like the one from Smokey and the Bandit.”

  “If you can afford to make payments on that,” Susan says, coming out onto the front steps and drying her hands with a dishrag, “what do you need to stay with us for?”