Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2)

by Sarah Lovett

  It had taken Matt several hours to convince Captain Elizer Rocha that it was worth a shot at Kevin Chase. Matt had lied about his source. Rocha would not be impressed with a tip from one of Erin Tulley's snitches—not after all the negative fallout on the Randall case.

  Matt pulled his body back into shadow when Manny Dunn's white Buick appeared in his sightlines. The Buick braked to a stop under another industrial light, almost directly in front of the rest stop facilities. Matt shook his head. Manny Dunn was no genius.

  The 1-25 rest stop was located just north of the crest of La Bajada. The bajada, or descent, a one-thousand-foot drop from mountain to desert, marked the unofficial division between northern New Mexico and the southerly regions of the state. Vehicles heading north from Albuquerque climbed for an hour before they hit the crest of La Bajada, at which point the city of Santa Fe and its surrounds became visible, scattered below like children's toys.

  Manny Dunn hoisted his bulk from the Buick and slammed the car door. He walked with a slow, rolling stride, hands in pockets, chin low. But Matt knew Dunn was watching everything and everybody around him as he moved toward the men's toilet. Matt and his team would wait for Kevin Chase to show. If he wasn't scared off, they'd have themselves a nice, neat collar. They'd even pop Manny Dunn for buying dirty toys.

  A skinny guy walked out of the toilet and passed Dunn on the cement walkway. Matt could see Dunn's shoulder blades tighten beneath his cotton shirt, but the other guy kept walking without a word.

  Matt checked his watch—8:08 P.M. The deal could go down any time now. Or never.

  The night air was soft and soothing—the payoff of hot, sticky days. From where he stood he could see the lights of Los Alamos glowing like phosphorescent creatures.

  More than an hour ago he had turned away from the faraway lights and traveled south across the plateau on foot, leaving the rest area behind. He had ducked under barbed wire, dodged cans, bottles, and other human debris. He had passed a large outcrop of rock. By the time he looked back at the interstate, the traffic had been reduced to a distant glow and a faraway hum.

  He'd walked long enough for his mind to clear. The terrain, the sense of place, seduced and soothed. It reminded him of Oklahoma. There were antelope a half mile away, and a coyote was surely watching his long stride across earth. Unexpectedly he found himself picturing his wife's face. If Mary's soul was anywhere, it could be here, lured by open space. He still missed her, still felt her absence after all these years.

  By the time he'd reached the rim of La Bajada, he felt almost peaceful. Out there, the earth dropped away and fell back like a receding wave; it gave him a view of the entire world.

  Matt instantly put those thoughts from his mind when movement caught his eye; a girl skipped out of the women's bathroom. Her mother called to her from the parking area.

  Matt glanced back over his shoulder. The D.P.S. surveillance van was parked between highway maintenance vehicles roughly fifty feet behind the row of picnic tables. He could communicate with the van via radio.

  He looked back to the toilets—Dunn was inside and alone at 8:37 P.M.

  Matt let a thin arc of tobacco juice squirt from the corner of his mouth. With his tongue, he readjusted the plug of chaw between gum and tooth. Now that Sylvia had smoked a cigarette in front of him, he didn't feel so defensive about his tobacco habit.

  Another car drove into the parking area. A Jeep. Two kids got out. . . and then a woman. The kids raced over the grass toward the picnic area. The woman followed, calling them back in an irritated tone of voice.

  Thirty seconds later, a gray truck rolled in and parked next to the Jeep. The low throb of the engine died away, but no one got out. The truck windows were tinted black, and it was impossible to see who was inside. Maybe, just maybe, Matt caught the faint glow of a cigarette behind dark glass.

  His stomach churned uneasily. He was on edge. The plan was to wait until Kevin Chase was inside the toilet with Manny Dunn.

  But what if Kevin didn't cooperate tonight? Ninety-five percent of stakeouts were busts. Long hours, boredom, fatigue, sore feet, a bad back. He had a sudden craving for a drink. He could almost taste the smooth bite of tequila, the lime, the salt—when his body tensed.

  A dark van with tinted windows pulled into the slot on the far side of Manny Dunn's Buick. Headlights off. New Mexico plates. Music drifted from the radio—Bruce Springsteen.

  Matt heard the car door slam, footsteps, and he glanced over at the D.P.S. surveillance van. Everything was quiet. Nothing that might scare off their guy.

  The man was on the other side of the vehicle, walking around the front fender, heading toward the toilets. Matt squinted through the warm night air. Moths buzzed around the fluorescent safety lights. The contrast between dark and harsh light made it hard to see.

  Five feet ten, one hundred seventy pounds, hair that brushed the collar under a low cowboy hat—and walking right into the women's toilet.

  That was a woman?

  Two seconds later, the same guy came out of the women's and walked into the men's. Looked embarrassed as hell, like he'd screwed up.

  Matt tasted heat in his mouth—the whole thing felt hinky. Then his eyes were drawn to the high windows of the men's toilet. When had the light gone out?

  SYLVIA WINCED AS the Volvo shuddered over a particularly nasty rut. Her window was open and the scent of salt cedar, fish, and desert flowers permeated the car. In midsummer the river was usually low; still, she heard the sound of water rushing over small falls. The road snaked right, then left, following the natural undulations of the Chama.

  Her thoughts drifted to Matt, and she wished she was curled up on the couch, in his arms, watching an old black-and-white movie starring Carole Lombard or Jean Harlow. All at once it hit her, the melancholic edge that sometimes accompanied the liminal movements of twilight. As the Volvo rounded a corner, Sylvia saw the headlamps of a car parked by a river turnout. For fifty feet the parallel beams of light cut horizontal slices out of trees, rock, and earth; instead of reassuring, they only intensified the canyon's loneliness. When she followed the road around another bend, the lights were gone and the world returned to half-light.

  She began to hum "Mi Corazón," a Spanish love song. She realized she'd chosen a song her mother, Bonnie, had sung to her when she was five or six years old. It was Bonnie's whistling-in-the-dark tune. She fingered the tiny scar by her left eye, her fingers tracing the familiar ridge of tissue.

  She sighed, downshifted, and slowed to avoid the debris of a minilandslide that had peppered the road with rocks. She knew that boulders as big as cars had been known to land in the road. When that happened, road crews and front-loaders were summoned from Española or Abiquiu, and any traffic came to a standstill while the crews completed their laborious task.

  She jammed on her brakes to keep the Volvo from colliding with a stranded vehicle that blocked the roadway.

  A tire jack, lit by the beams from her headlights, was leaning against the rear bumper. The driver wasn't visible. . . and there didn't seem to be enough space for the Volvo to pass.

  Sylvia wondered if the car belonged to hikers, kayakers, or pilgrims on their way to the monastery. She shifted into reverse, began to back up, to see if there was another route around the vehicle. As her headlights grazed the car, she realized that none of the tires looked flat.

  She was instantly alert and rolled up the Volvo's window—the car was warm and claustrophobic and the engine ticked as it idled. She inched back, then forward, and back again. But the rear tires of the Volvo suddenly rolled over a barrier and spun out. She was high-centered; the car wasn't going anywhere.

  Abruptly, a shape materialized beside her door. A tree of a man. When he yanked on the door handle, her foot hit the accelerator. The engine wailed but the Volvo didn't budge.

  There was a dull crunch as a tire iron smashed against the side window. Sylvia jerked her head away and grabbed her keys from the ignition, but they dropped through her fing
ers. She reached automatically for the glove compartment and her gun before she remembered it wasn't there. She pushed aside papers and maps searching for anything that might serve as a weapon. Her fist closed around a long metal can opener.

  With the impact of a second blow, the window caved inward. The tire iron thrust through glass—it was driven by a fat hand. Sylvia slashed at the man's knuckles and he cried out. She scrambled across the seat away from the driver's door.

  Her attacker was verbalizing, but his words were garbled, choppy. Even in panic, Sylvia thought the voice sounded familiar. Her mind sorted out the reasons for his indecipherable tirade: he was drunk, high, enraged, and/or psychotic. None of the possibilities was encouraging.

  Thwack!

  The tire iron penetrated the window again and tiny particles of glass rained into the car. Sylvia wrenched up on the passenger-door handle and jammed her shoulder against the door. She stumbled out of the Volvo, regained her balance, and took off running. She knew he was pursuing her; she was moving fast and was terrified she would trip and fall. She headed uphill without thinking. Almost instantly she realized that many areas of the cliff wall would be impassable above fifteen or twenty feet.

  With each stride her feet hit the ground on faith and her eyes barely made out the rugged trail. As she lunged along the path, she prayed it led up into the cliffs instead of dwindling to nothing or, worse, trapping her at a dead end. When she looked over her shoulder, she could no longer see a figure hurtling along behind her. Had she gained ground that quickly? Or had he taken some other route?

  She caught her breath and listened. The rush of the river seemed far away. So did the civilized world. Pain crackled up her left instep; prickly pear spines had penetrated the leather of her shoe. She tried to pull out the thickest spine, but it stabbed the soft flesh under her thumb.

  Her instincts told her it was too quiet and she dashed another hundred feet before she was exhausted, gasping for breath. She stopped again and heard the faint sound of sliding rock. Had it come from behind or overhead? She squatted behind a clump of chamisa that had clawed its roots into the cliff side. The stiff branches of the shrub scratched her bare arms and neck. Its sharp scent tickled her throat. She slowed her breathing, afraid her ragged inhalations would betray her location.

  Something dark flashed overhead. A bat? An owl? As if by magic, shapes around her slowly emerged: rocks, rabbit brush, cholla. Her eyes strained, searching for the attacker who would lunge out of the shadows. She focused on a dead tree, arms extended like a man . . . a hulking piñon . . . a squatting juniper . . . a ghostly cholla. And then she saw the dark human shape, twenty feet away, as still as a tree.

  Sylvia stayed frozen—she knew he was searching for her. A terrible minute passed before she felt his eyes settle on her body.

  She bolted, scrambling up the hillside. Her hands grasped at any available shrubbery for purchase. She lost track of time, and her mind fell into that static space of nightmares: she was racing uphill, gasping for breath, muscles pumping desperately. She had the terrible sensation of running in place and going nowhere.

  "Wait!" He was yelling at her as he ran.

  Kevin Chase. She recognized his voice now. She kept moving higher and higher up the steep canyon wall until the trail finally jammed itself up against a mass of boulders. Unless she was ready to hoist herself from rock to rock, she was boxed in. She felt the fear crawl up her legs, take her by the throat—she was trapped. And she'd dropped the can opener somewhere on the trail.

  She could see everything at once—stars overhead, the river flowing deep in the canyon, her own body standing on the cliff, Kevin coming closer and closer. A jolt of adrenaline shot through her muscles, and suddenly she was very angry and ready to fight.

  She reached down and felt the rocks at the edge of the trail. Her fingers worked over several that were the size of a fist; then, with both hands, she gripped a rock as large as a human head.

  Even in full darkness she saw her quarry forty feet away, walking—instead of running—up the trail; she heard the sound of his breath under his nonstop verbal tirade. Eerily, even the obscenities were delivered in a conversational tone.

  When Chase had gained another ten feet, Sylvia yelled down at him. "Kevin, you sonofabitch, what the hell are you doing?"

  Maybe he was surprised that she recognized him, maybe he heard his shrink talking—or maybe he saw the primitive weapon. For whatever reason, he came to a standstill.

  Sylvia was shaking; a deep tremor passed through her body and played itself out. There might be a chance she could talk him out of this attack—

  No! Fuck him! I want to bash his skull in!

  He took a step. And another. Now, he was twenty feet away. She gripped the rock and raised it above her head so that he was staring up at it.

  Seconds ticked away; they both stood in tableau. Somewhere up the canyon a pack of coyotes yipped excitedly. The sound was heart-wrenching and forlorn. It changed abruptly and became a command to go in for the slaughter.

  Kevin Chase swung the tire iron with great force and it tore branches off a piñon. He darted forward, yelling out, "The whole government stinks—they all get away with murder like Killer says—there's no justice, no nothing—it's time—I'll show you what real justice feels like—"

  Something tore loose deep inside Sylvia—some emotion that was sharp and dangerous—as she saw Kevin covering the last few yards. When he was three feet in front of her, scrambling toward her legs with the tire iron, she brought the rock down with all her strength.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MEN'S TOILET had gone pitch-black with Manny Dunn still inside.

  Moths battered their fragile bodies against the yellow lights outside the cinder-block building. Behind a glass box, faded orientation maps showed visitors where they had come from and where they were going. The rest stop was quiet.

  Matt whispered into his radio, "I'm coming down." Then he moved Silently forward, closing in on the welcome center and facilities. When he was parallel with the D.P.S. van, his fingers played over the butt of his Colt, warming up.

  All his energy focused on the darkened men's toilet as Manny Dunn appeared in the doorway. Illuminated suddenly by harsh fluorescent light, Dunn's face was haggard, his heavy shoulders sagging. He squinted into the night; it took him a moment to reorient.

  A shadowy shape lurked behind Dunn; the second man had a hat pulled low over his eyes. His face wasn't visible.

  Matt glanced over at the D.P.S. van and raised a thumb in a high sign: Let's do it!

  One officer emerged from the surveillance van as Matt sprinted forward. The other man on his team closed in from the bushes on the north side of the building. In less than thirty seconds, they had both men restrained on the ground. Dunn was silent, but the other man was protesting loudly about his violated civil rights. He wasn't Kevin Chase.

  Now, Matt could hear someone yelling from behind the cinder-block toilet. He took cover at the edge of the building.

  He yelled, "Police! Come out. Put your hands on your head!"

  Suddenly, there was silence. Just the swish of cars on the highway and the hum of powerful overhead lights.

  Finally, a young teenage boy stumbled around the side of the building. He was followed closely by a hulking shadow: Special Agent Dan Chaney.

  Chaney said, "I don't suppose this is your guy?"

  Matt shook his head. "What the hell are you doing here, Dan?" He turned abruptly and found himself face-to-face with a frightened girl on her way to the women's bathroom. She glared at him suspiciously. He motioned her by, too distracted to explain he was a cop.

  Chaney snorted. "The same as you. Trying to pop Kevin Chase. We got zip."

  THE ROCK CLIPPED Kevin's left hand and mashed his knee. He toppled—rolled—and his head bounced off a juniper stump. A shower of tiny lights exploded behind his eyelids. He tried to stand but the pain in his leg made him fall back, heaving.

  When his vision cleared,
he could barely make out Sylvia crouched like a predatory bird twenty feet uphill. He groaned and reached out for a handhold, but surrendered when the earth began to give way.

  SYLVIA WATCHED, GRIMLY triumphant, as Kevin was swept down with the wash of shale and arid topsoil. After he had disappeared from sight, small sounds—grunts and cries—reached her from halfway down the cliff side. How badly was he injured? She waited, prepped, ready to defend herself again. The sounds of the rock slide gradually faded away. It was quiet. Even the coyotes were silent.

  Reluctantly she took the first few steps from the natural cul-de-sac. Her legs almost collapsed under her, almost refused to carry her forward. On the path, she was exposed and vulnerable to surprise attack; she prayed that Kevin Chase had taken the worst the primitive bludgeon could inflict. She cut off the path and headed across the hillside, away from the cars below.

  Very recently, and very close by, a skunk had discharged its glandular toxins. The potent odor stayed with Sylvia as she continued down the cliff.

  When she was almost to the road, she could see both cars, but they were just dim shapes in the distance. Her keys were back there somewhere—she prayed Kevin Chase was, too. She started west over rough terrain, toward the monastery.

  All around, the sounds she heard were night sounds: crickets, owls, a fox. And under everything else, the never-ending rush of the dark river. She flushed a rodent from its nocturnal lair, and her stomach twisted uncomfortably when it scrambled through the underbrush. There was no sign, no sound, of Kevin, but she felt his presence.

  She calculated that she had three or four miles to walk. If she pushed herself, she could make it in under an hour. The moon was just cresting the canyon rim. That gave her light; it also made her visible to Kevin. She would stay off the road and travel parallel to the river.

  The terrain was much more hostile than Sylvia had imagined. Little black bugs attacked her bare arms and face, leaving red welts that she forced herself not to scratch. Clumps of rabbit brush clawed at her legs. She stumbled over tufts of buffalo grass, and once she tripped in what she thought was a gopher hole. Finally, fear that she would twist her ankle or wrench her knee forced her closer to the road.