Presumed Dead

by Mason Cross

  He didn’t answer, focusing all his attention on the front door as the two of them approached the house. The glass in the windows was long gone. The door was closed over, but Isabella expected it was unlocked. No one owned the place, and there was nothing to steal. She unholstered her own gun and clicked the safety off, but kept it pointed at the ground. She glanced at Feldman’s Glock. “Take it easy,” she said. “We still don’t know for sure.”

  “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”

  Isabella bit her lip to stop herself from responding. She didn’t know whether Feldman was acting out because he didn’t like Blake; or if it was just that spending time with Blake had left her with less patience for his standard bullshit. Isabella knew one thing: McGregor’s sensible directions aside, she knew which one of these guys she would rather be going through this door with.

  The two of them reached the door. She resisted the impulse to look back at Blake, fifty yards away in the car.

  She reached out and turned the handle. The door swung inwards. Both of them kept a step back from their respective sides of the doorway, out of the potential line of fire.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” she called out into the darkness of the abandoned house. “Anybody in there, make yourself known to us.”

  Isabella’s voice disappeared into the dark and was absorbed by the house. She looked at Feldman. He raised his eyebrows.

  She spoke again. “If anyone is in there, come on out slowly. We don’t want anybody getting hurt, okay?”

  They waited another ten seconds.

  “I’ll go first,” Feldman said at last.

  Without waiting for an acknowledgment, he stepped over the threshold. Isabella followed. The hallway was long and stripped to the bare floorboards. Here and there, there was a gap in the boards, exposing the cellar below. There was a smell of stale smoke, as though somebody had lit a fire in here recently. The two of them picked their way forwards, approaching the stairs.

  As Feldman put his boot on the first step, Isabella heard a roar from outside as a powerful engine revved to life.

  She ran the way they had come, stepping carefully to avoid the gaps in the floor. Feldman caught up, and the two of them almost collided as they made it back to the doorway simultaneously. They made it outside in time to see David Connor’s orange pickup truck smash through the rotting wood doors at the front of the old barn.

  Isabella leapt down the stairs, keeping her eyes on the truck as it approached. She got her gun up and aimed it at the windshield. She saw David Connor’s face. His eyes were looking right through her. As she was opening her mouth to yell at him to stop, she heard three reports from above her, with answering cracks as the bullets smashed into the pickup. Two in the windshield right by the driver, the third smashing one of the lights on the roll bar. She looked up to see Feldman at the door, calmly adjusting his aim as the pickup passed by.

  “What are you—”

  Her shout distracted him. His fourth shot was way off, clipping the tailgate of the pickup. It flew past them. The wheels caught the surface of the approach road, skidded, recovered, and then straightened out. The pickup accelerated quickly, headed back toward the bridge and the south road. Connor had been lucky not to be hit by one of Feldman’s first two shots. Feldman hadn’t been shooting for the tires. Those were kill shots. Isabella took aim at the tires and squeezed off another couple of rounds, knowing it was useless at this range.

  “I had him!” Feldman yelled angrily.

  She turned to look at him. She didn’t know what she was going to say, because in the next second they were both distracted by the sound of a second engine as her own car roared onto the road in pursuit, Blake behind the wheel.

  “Come on,” she said, not bothering to look back as she holstered her gun and ran toward Feldman’s car. She got in the driver’s seat, his keys were in the ignition, too. She started it up and threw it into reverse as Feldman caught up and scrambled in the passenger side. She hit the siren with her left hand as she yanked the wheel around and floored the gas, following Blake, following Connor.

  “I had him,” he said again quietly.

  Isabella didn’t respond, too busy processing the last fifteen seconds or so. Radio, my ass. Blake had been expecting this.

  53

  Carter Blake

  Rule one of vehicular pursuits: don’t get into a drag race with somebody who knows the road better than you.

  The narrow road through the woods was roughly finished and dotted with potholes, every one of them magnified tenfold at the speed I was taking them. The suspension complained and every indent in the ground registered with a painful thump as I drove, keeping the tailgate of the pickup in view. Connor’s vehicle was built with this kind of terrain in mind. Green’s Crown Vic was no fragile little city car, but it was struggling. Connor hit the temp bridge fast, the end nearest me jolting off the ground as he came off the other side. I didn’t slow, felt it sway as I passed over it.

  I was grateful when we hit the asphalt of the main road only having lost a few hundred yards on Connor. Out here, the Crown Vic’s 4.6 liter V8 gave me the advantage. I floored the gas pedal, closing the gap.

  I focused on the taillights of his car, trying to close out any other consideration than keeping him in sight and keeping my own car on the road. My mind was turning faster than the car’s revs. That was David Connor driving, all right. No doubt about it, I had seen him clearly as he passed within feet of me. I had been lucky Green had parked in a position that didn’t require turning around. She and Feldman would lose valuable seconds getting his car backed up. They would be calling it in as they drove, maybe alerting whoever was on the south roadblock. Only they didn’t know what I knew, that he had turned left instead of right, headed for Bethany rather than the highway. He knew there would be no way out by car. His best chance was to ditch his pickup and then flee into the woods. We had already found one of his boltholes, maybe he had more. Like the old shelter on Devil Mountain.

  If he wasn’t the killer, why was he running? I had to admit he looked guilty as hell. The road straightened out and I started to close the gap. Two hundred yards, a hundred. Connor’s brake lights lit up as he slowed for a tight bend, and I had to feather my own brakes to keep from running into the back of him. A tanker truck appeared from out of the bend. I caught a flash of the driver’s startled eyes as the two oncoming vehicles swerved out in his lane before tucking back in with a second to spare. I heard a distorted blast of the horn as he passed us, missing Connor’s pickup by inches. Another bend up ahead, this one skirting a sheer drop into a ravine.

  The brake lights flashed again, and then he was speeding up out of the curve. The road straightened out again for a quarter-mile. Clear, for now.

  I shifted down to fourth, floored the pedal and swung out into the left lane, drawing level with the driver’s side of the pickup. Connor was looking straight ahead. If he was even aware of me, he didn’t show it. I leaned on the horn. He glanced at me, back at the road. A couple hundred yards to the next curve. Steep upward slope on our right-hand side. I jerked the wheel to the right and slammed into him. The weight disparity worked in his favor now. The pickup jolted and swerved a little, but he kept it on the road. I started to steer in again, watching Connor’s face. And then I saw his eyes widen. I looked ahead, saw a green truck emerging from the curve, less than a hundred yards away. There was no time to brake, nowhere to go.

  The calculations rushed through my mind. Head-on collision at a combined speed of over a hundred miles an hour, or a plunge down the ravine. Neither felt like an attractive option.

  And then Connor’s orange pickup vanished from alongside me. Without processing what had happened, I yanked the wheel to the right and slipped into the space he had been. The green truck flashed by.

  I hit the curve and it kept curving, a hairpin bend. I slammed my foot down on the brake t
o stop from flying off the edge. The back wheels slewed around and I straightened up and leaned in on the brake. As soon as I could see the road ahead was clear I risked a glance in the mirror and saw Connor aiming to overtake. I braked the rest of the way and swung across the road, blocking his path.

  He slowed, and then picked up speed again, slamming into the side of Green’s Crown Vic and rocking it a little forwards, making a little more space in the road, but not yet enough to get past. I shifted into reverse and closed the gap. He backed up and revved the engine, no doubt calculating how much distance and speed he would need to knock me out of the way. He was unlucky on the location. The road had gradually narrowed over the last mile, so that even though I had stopped diagonally rather than horizontal to the road, there was barely a foot of clearance on either side. With time and perseverance, he would probably be able to shunt me out of the way. But time was on my side. I heard the sound of a siren on the road behind us. Still distant, but getting louder.

  I turned so I could make eye contact with him. The blank look I had seen earlier had gone, he was pissed now. He eased off the gas and glared at me. I decided to take a chance.

  I opened the door and got out of the car, palms up, watching Connor’s hands on the wheel. He made no move to shift them.

  “You’re making a mistake,” I called out.

  I knew Connor heard me. His window was rolled down and he was looking right at me, but he didn’t answer. He gunned the engine again. I glanced at the position of my car. He wouldn’t be able to shunt it easily, but I thought it was a good sign that he had stopped trying.

  I heard another siren in the distance, coming from ahead of us. Feldman and Green had called in backup.

  “It’s over. They have to bring you in dead or alive. I would rather you were alive.”

  “Why the fuck would you care?”

  “Because you’re my client. It’s bad for business to let a client get himself killed.”

  The siren got closer and Feldman’s cruiser appeared at the bend, slamming on the brakes when he saw the two cars blocking the road.

  Connor’s hands dropped from the wheel. I approached, putting myself in between him and Feldman’s car. I hoped that would make him less likely to shoot. Then again, given his attitude, maybe I should have been the one hiding behind Connor.

  We had less than five seconds before things were taken out of my hands. I looked Connor in the eye.

  “Was it you, David? I need to know before they take you in.”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes were watching Feldman and Green as they scrambled out of either side of the car, guns drawn. Feldman’s face was red: exertion or rage or a blend of the two.

  I looked back at David, ignoring Feldman’s shouts for me to get the hell out of the way. His eyes met mine. He shook his head.

  “David?” Green’s voice.

  “David, I’m going to need you to get out of the vehicle and lie down on the ground with your hands behind your head.”

  I turned to look at her. She was standing a couple of paces in front of Feldman, who had his gun pointed straight at Connor’s head. The muzzle didn’t waver, but his eyes kept moving. From his target, to Green, to me, back to the target.

  I took a step back. “I think you better do what she says.”

  54

  Isabella Green

  “If you didn’t do anything, why did you run?”

  David Connor straightened a little in the interview room’s chair. He looked at Isabella Green for a full ten seconds before he answered. Then he said simply, “I didn’t run.”

  “There are a couple of good dents in the side of my car that say different.”

  He was looking in good shape, all things considered. Despite the high speed chase, despite being shot at a couple of times, despite the fact he was being held on suspicion of several murders, he was entirely unruffled. His shoulder-length hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore a clean gray T-shirt and jeans. He had been booked and fingerprinted and swabs of his hands had been taken to check for gunshot residue. The only visible mark on him was a shaving cut that looked a couple of days old. Isabella had the feeling that wouldn’t be the case if it had been Feldman who had caught him, instead of Blake.

  She glanced behind her at the two-way mirror, knowing Blake was there watching. He had done exactly what McGregor had asked him to, found his target and helped us to bring him in. He had used a department vehicle without authorization in order to do so, but neither she, nor even Feldman, were in a hurry to mention that detail to anyone, since that would entail explaining exactly how they had almost let their suspect slip through their fingers.

  Blake had pressed hard to be allowed in on the interview, redoubling his efforts when Connor waived his right to a lawyer, but McGregor had stonewalled. They owed him for catching Connor, though, so the compromise was he got to observe from outside along with Feldman. Who hadn’t been best pleased to lose out on a spot in the room himself, naturally.

  Connor’s eyes flicked to McGregor’s. The sheriff had stayed quiet so far. It was a technique he and Isabella had developed without ever really discussing it, during the interrogations they had handled together thus far. Not so much “good cop, bad cop” as “talkative cop, taciturn cop”. It had the same effect, achieved with a little more subtlety.

  “I heard on the radio you were looking for me for those murders. I know what happens when the cops find someone they like for something like this.”

  Isabella sat back in the chair. “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

  “I have a better idea, why don’t you count the bullet holes in my car?”

  McGregor glanced at Isabella, waiting for her response. She wanted to drag Feldman in here and let him take that one, but she didn’t.

  “You were a suspect fleeing from armed deputies.”

  “Something tells me I wouldn’t have done any better staying still for him.”

  “Connor, I know you feel like people have it in for you. But can’t you see how it looks? If the GSR tests come back negative, if we don’t find any evidence you were at the scene, maybe we’ll start to believe you. Why cause trouble for yourself?”

  He turned his eyes to the ceiling and sighed, in the manner of one tired of explaining himself to idiots.

  “Maybe I should get a lawyer,” David said.

  “That’s your decision, David,” McGregor said. “If you’ve got something to hide, that’s your best option. But if not, maybe we can clear it up quickly.”

  “You really think so?”

  McGregor nodded. “We have a lot of questions, David, as you can imagine. Why don’t we start with where were you this morning between seven and ten?”

  Connor turned his gaze on McGregor sharply. “Aren’t you tired of this shit?”

  “Tired of what shit?”

  “Me. Again. We went through all of this bullshit fifteen years ago when Adeline disappeared.”

  Isabella thought it was interesting that he had raised that already. She wondered what Blake was making of it, resisting the sudden urge to turn again and look back at the two-way mirror.

  McGregor didn’t respond to that, just folded his arms and looked Connor in the eye. The message was clear. He wasn’t going to repeat his question. She thought about asking it again, decided that would not please her boss. After a minute or so, Connor sighed and held his hands up.

  “I went for a drive. Got sick of your guy sitting outside my house. Then I went down to the Marion place. Next thing I know, I hear on the radio I’m a wanted man, and I’m getting shot at.”

  “Where did you go driving? What time did you get to the Marion place?” she shot back, watching him to see if he thought about the answers.

  “Around. I drove up to the mountain road and back, then I went for breakfast.”

  “You were up at the Devil Mount
ain road? Near Roland Roussel’s house?”

  “I guess.” He didn’t blink at the name of the victim; didn’t seem to register why this would be important.

  “Where did you get breakfast?”

  “Freddie’s. Maybe a quarter to eight.”

  That was all verifiable, which was good. Freddie’s would be quiet at that time on a Tuesday morning. It was after the early morning rush and before lunch got going. They would know Connor by sight. Isabella didn’t get the feeling he was making it up, but if he was it would be a stupid lie, as it was so easily checked.

  “Who served you?”

  “Kelly. You want to know how I had my eggs?”

  McGregor leaned forward. “Yeah.”

  Connor shot him a look full of contempt. “Over easy. With bacon and grits.”

  “So that takes us up to eight-thirty, perhaps,” Isabella said. “You went straight to the Marion house from there?”

  He nodded.

  “Through town, or around by the south road?”

  “South road.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “Maybe. How should I know? I wasn’t expecting to have to account for my whereabouts. Not until I found out you had decided I was the goddamn Devil Mountain Killer.”

  It was like somebody had sucked the air out of the room. Sheriff McGregor wasn’t the flinching type, but he shifted a little in his seat as Connor spoke the name.

  After a long moment, McGregor broke the silence. “Who said anything about him?”

  He said the word “him” in a strange way, almost like a believer talking about God.

  “Come on,” Connor said. “You’re either the dumbest cop in the history of dumb cops or you know what’s happening here. Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s not him, but this is all about what happened in 2003.”

  Isabella suppressed a shiver and glanced at McGregor. His face gave little away, other than a slight reddening to his cheeks. She wanted to talk to Connor about this, of course. This and more. Like the fact the killings had only begun after he reopened the wounds of his sister’s disappearance. But first things first. First, they had to establish whether Connor was really in the frame for the murder this morning. Although nothing he had yet said ruled him out, she was becoming less and less sure they had their man.