No one left, p.1
No One Left, page 1
NO ONE LEFT
PINTER P.I. SERIES
BOOK 2
LISA BOYLE
CONTENTS
Also by Lisa Boyle
1. Adriel
2. Judge Winters
3. James
4. Molly
5. Wayne
6. Kay
7. Sanchez
8. George
9. Molly
10. James
11. Kay
12. Wayne
13. Molly
14. Isaiah
15. James
16. Adriel
17. Kay
18. Tammy
19. Wayne
20. James
21. Molly
22. Sanchez
23. Tony
24. James
25. George
26. Barbara
27. Molly
28. Kay
29. Tony
30. James
31. Adriel
32. Sanchez
33. Molly
34. James
35. George
36. Barbara
37. Wayne
38. Tony
39. Adriel
40. James
41. Barbara
42. James
43. Molly
44. Adriel
45. Sanchez
46. Isaiah
47. James
48. Barbara
49. Wayne
50. Molly
51. Kay
52. Sanchez
53. James
54. George
55. Molly
56. Ronnie
57. Barbara
58. Kay
59. James
60. Peter
61. Cecil
62. Barbara
63. Wayne
64. James
65. Cecil
66. Molly
67. Lester
68. James
69. Sanchez
70. James
71. Sanchez
72. Kay
73. Molly
74. James
Author’s Note
About the Author
No One Left
Copyright © 2024 by Lisa Boyle. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Unless otherwise mentioned in the Author’s Note, names, characters, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This book was written in its entirety by a human and has no AI content. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-7366077-8-7 (Ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-7366077-9-4 (Paperback)
Copy Editor/Proofreader: Constance Renfrow
Cover Designer: Rafael Andres
ALSO BY LISA BOYLE
CRIME FICTION
The Pinter P.I. Series:
In The Silence of Decay
HISTORICAL FICTION
The Paddy Series:
Signed, A Paddy
Dear Inmate
With Great Sorrow
This book is for Lloyd.
*2012–2024*
I almost didn’t finish this without you. I had to include a little fictional friend you would have liked. A silly mutt like you.
I miss you every day, and I can’t wait to see you again at the Rainbow Bridge.
1
ADRIEL
When Adriel first opened his eyes, it was pitch black. He blinked a few times, trying to spot the difference between awake and asleep. The truck had slowed only a little, and Adriel shifted in the passenger’s seat so that his cheek was against the cool window.
He could hear soft music coming from the speakers. He thought it would be church music. That was what his dad normally listened to. But it wasn’t. It was slow and sad, and Adriel sort of liked it.
He could hear his dad humming, too, off and on. His real dad. Not that scary man his mom had taken him to visit before she was killed. It didn’t matter whose blood Adriel had. George was his father. And even though he’d been frightened at first when George told him, very seriously, that they were leaving, that Aunt Kay wasn’t coming with them, he knew George would protect him.
Adriel closed his eyes again and let the gentle rocking of the truck lull him back to sleep.
2
JUDGE WINTERS
As Bartholomew Winters stared down the barrel of the .357 Magnum, he realized two things. He would not be able to save himself, and he would not be able to save his wife, either. He thought of Cathy with a painful yearning. He hoped that heaven was real. He hoped he would see her there.
Judge Winters did not feel regret or even fear in those final moments. He felt sorrow. He was the only one left. The only one standing in their way. Now, he knew, these assholes would do whatever they wanted.
He picked up his glass of whiskey, swirled it with his wrist, and listened to the clinking ice cubes. He didn’t look back at the gun’s barrel until he’d finished off his drink. It was then that he noticed how steady the gun was. There was no tremor in the killer’s hand. There were no second thoughts. That hand was steady.
“Rot in hell,” Judge Winters said.
As he lay on the floor of his office, bleeding to death, he smiled. Of course heaven was real. Cathy was an angel. She was perfect. In her own way, she was even stronger than he was. That was why they would kill her next. If they hadn’t killed her already. Because she wouldn’t give up. He closed his eyes. He would see her soon. He almost already could. He could feel her. She was so close.
3
JAMES
The trailer had been dusty when James and Molly moved in but otherwise in good shape. No major repairs. No mold as far as James could see. He knew issues could come from seemingly nowhere, though. In the middle of a shower or a load of laundry. He remembered the apartment he had rented with Dorothy before Molly was born. One day, the bathroom door just fell off, sending Dorothy running out of its way. That time, it had just been a rusty screw, but there’d been worse things in that apartment, too.
James sighed and put his hands on his hips. Molly was at school, and he’d just hauled in two desks for the far corner of the living room. Their temporary office. Had it not been for Kay, he probably would have looked for an apartment in Gallup. An office there, too. But their relationship had taken off quick. The night of their first official date, James had intended to go back to Wayne’s—where he and Molly were staying—after only a long kiss goodnight. Instead, he’d ended up sweaty, in Kay’s bed, with his clothes strewn on the floor in a trail from the front door to the foot of the bed, where he’d somehow pulled off his socks at the last second.
James liked Kay more than he could remember ever liking a woman. Even more than Dorothy in the beginning. He supposed it was useless to compare them, though. He’d practically still been a child back then. Still made decisions like one, at least. He wasn’t rash anymore. And he wasn’t attracted to flaky or confusing women anymore, either. Kay was definitely not flaky. She was solid.
Driving an hour each way to see Kay would’ve been inconvenient to say the least, but he would’ve done it. Luckily, though, Wayne had thought of a way for James and Molly to stay on the reservation.
Wayne and his wife, Barbara, put in for some money from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for an expert consultant on staff to assist with big investigations, like the Linda Morris murder. Barbara even added some language about the “war on drugs.” James had had enough experience with that in Vietnam to last him a lifetime, though he knew he couldn’t be picky about what kind of cases he took on. Not this early on in the life of his P.I. business. He was satisfied with bail jumper warrants and larceny cases, but being on the reservation he suspected it would only be a matter of time before something more serious came along or a body was found.
Then Adriel and George disappeared. And then George was accused of murder. It was quick like that. One day and then the next.
He and Kay had both been suspicious of George after some questionable behavior during James’s last investigation, and James was keeping an eye on him. Still, he couldn’t very well camp outside the man’s front door, and so when George took off with Adriel in the middle of the night, James didn’t know until the following evening, when Kay arrived at an empty house with a large pepperoni pizza from the Pizza Hut all the way in Farmington. She searched the trailer—which took all of two minutes—and then called Thelma Long to see if they were at her place. Then she called James, because George’s family was all the way in Arizona, and she couldn’t think of one other place they might be. Not on pizza and movie night.
James called Wayne and then went to the Church of the Open Door, where Fred—the maintenance man, janitor, and assistant pastor all in one—told James that he hadn’t seen George since Sunday.
Then he and Wayne made calls. To George’s sister in Shonto. His mother in Kayenta. His great-aunt in Tuba City. His brother in Tsegi. His grandmother in Flagstaff. George had a big family, and while some didn’t answer the phone, those who did hadn’t seen or heard from him or Adriel. James thought they would wait, then. What else could they do? George was Adriel’s father. He was allowed to take him somewhere. And he was allowed to do so without telling anyone.
But then, a day later, clear as day on the news, the police dispatch, the radios, there was George’s name again. George Morris, suspected of killing a judge and his wife in Albuquerque. Then, everyone was on it. Other chapters of the Navajo Nation police department; the state police of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado; all the big city police departments. Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Flagstaff, Phoenix. And the small ones, too. Gallup. Farmington. They all had Adriel and George’s physical descriptions, George’s truck’s plates.
James knew that Kay was practicing great patience. She hardly went home. She left school at the end of each day and went straight to the station. Wayne had given her the cot in the back. Finally, on the fourth day, she jumped into her baby-blue Toyota Hilux and disappeared herself. She called James that night from a hotel, crying so hard that he just sat on the line and waited for her to get it all out. Finally, she clearly said, “I failed him. I failed Adriel.”
James assured her that she had done everything she could. Yes, George had been acting a little strange in the wake of Linda’s murder, and yes, he’d probably been hiding something. But no one could have predicted the man would up and leave with his child and then be accused of killing two people.
James had told Kay she needed to come back home. She couldn’t chase after them. They could be anywhere. She had come back the next day but still didn’t know what to do with herself. Even her students were worried. One boy showed up at the station to tell “that white guy that hangs out with Miss Kay that she’s not doing so good.” He said she’d been showing the class movies all week. And not even educational ones. Something wasn’t right with her.
“We’re watchin’ out for her,” James had assured the boy.
Now, James sat at the desk with the metal folding chair. The upholstered one with wheels would be Molly’s. He scooched his chair in and got ready to call the next number on George and Linda’s phone bill for the month of May—the real one, the one that hadn’t been tampered with—when the phone rang.
“Pinter P.I., this is James Pinter,” he said.
“Pinter, it’s Sanchez.” The line cracked, and Sanchez’s voice sounded distant.
“Sanchez. You in a cave or somethin’?” James asked.
“A payphone. Listen. I need you to pay a visit to a guy in Albuquerque.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s the son of this murdered judge and his wife. I told him you’d be contacting him.”
“Hold on, now,” James said. “Why would you do that?”
Sanchez took a deep breath. James could hear horns in the background. The whoosh of traffic.
“He’s convinced they’ve got the wrong guy. I think he suspects someone, but he won’t tell me who. He insisted I look into it, but I told him I couldn’t. Not officially. But that I know someone who might be able to help him.”
“Let’s meet and talk about it,” James said.
Sanchez said, “I’ll come to you.”
“Fine. When?”
“Tonight. When I’m off shift. I’ll meet you at the Shiprock station.”
“See you then.” James hung up and stared at the phone bill again, thinking about what Sanchez had said. How the hell Sanchez was involved in this, James couldn’t figure. He guessed he’d find out soon enough.
James picked up the phone again and dialed the last number on the bill. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. On and on before the machine picked up again, just like it had the first time he’d called. “Hello. You’ve reached Janice Stone. I’m unable to get to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
James did not leave a message. He stood, stretched, and scribbled a note for Molly before grabbing his hat and heading for the station.
4
MOLLY
It was the last period of the day on a Friday, and Molly just couldn’t focus any longer. She stared out the window. Twirled her hair around her finger. Thought of Adriel. Of where he was. If he was afraid. She thought of the weeks they’d had together before George ripped him away again. George. With his fake smiles. He’d seemed so gentle and attentive to Adriel. It made Molly a little sick to think about now.
Something soft hit the back of her head, and she looked down at a crumpled piece of paper on the floor beside her sneaker. She glanced behind her and saw Paula mouth, “Sorry.”
Molly smiled and bent down, pretending to tie her shoe. She sat back up and unraveled the note slowly, keeping her eyes on the chalkboard. She glanced at the note.
Compound? it read. Then, Mr. Pinter <3 <3
Molly bit her lip to keep from laughing. A few days ago, her dad had brought Kay coffee at school and caused a bit of a sensation among some of the sophomore girls. It was excruciating to listen to them, but she was glad only Paula knew that Mr. Pinter was, in fact, Molly’s dad. She assumed it would come out eventually, but for now, she let Paula tease her about their little secret.
While Paula was a member of the Navajo Nation, she had been raised in Albuquerque. After they were evicted last year, she and her mom moved to the reservation to live with her grandmother. Paula was Molly’s bridge to the rest of the Navajo kids—an outsider, but not really. Paula and Molly also both knew what it was like to be looked down upon for not having a father at home. It was something that the two bonded over at first. That in Albuquerque and Dallas they had had a life other kids couldn’t understand.
But on the reservation, it didn’t seem to matter. Plenty of the kids at Molly’s school only had one parent. Or lived with a grandparent or other family members. Molly had asked Paula’s grandmother about it one day. She had told Molly, “Paula has already learned to shoot a gun, shear a sheep, and weave on a loom since she moved back. I can tell you I didn’t teach her all of that. A child needs many adults in their life. So we share them. We share the children.” She glanced at Paula and sighed. “Even when they become moody teenagers.”
Molly doubted she’d find another friend as good as Paula. They were already inseparable. Paula had started calling James and Molly’s trailer the “compound,” since it was technically their office, too. She also helped with the P.I. business. She and Molly had gone door to door, asking the neighbors about George and Adriel, and she’d tried to help Thelma remember any details from the few days she’d had with Adriel after he returned from Shonto. Paula was good with people, as if she’d known them for ages. She had a big, warm smile and a familiar manner. She said she’d learned it from her grandmother.
The bell rang, and Molly stuffed her notebook into her backpack, stood, and swung the bag over one shoulder. She walked to Paula’s desk.
“Yes, compound,” Molly said. Paula grinned.
“Good. Because if I even have to smell my mother right now, I’m gonna lose it.”
“Gross,” Molly said. Paula and her mom had a complicated relationship. Much more complicated than Molly and her dad—and they hadn’t even had a relationship until a few months ago. Paula vented occasionally, and so Molly knew bits and pieces of their story. But Molly never talked about it unless Paula brought it up. She knew how painful a broken relationship with a parent could be.
