The Debt Collector

by Lynn S. Hightower

  Kinkle, unaware, went straight for his car.

  Sam moved in behind him, hand in the small of Kinkle’s back, shoving him hard into the side of the car. “Police. Hands on the roof. Hands on the roof.”

  Kinkle froze, and Sam grabbed both arms at the elbow and raised them to the roof. Sonora heard the meaty smack of Kinkle’s palms, knew it had to hurt.

  “Are you Barton Kinkle?” Whitmore had his badge out and a hard edge on his voice. The patrol cars were circling the wagons, hoards of them, lights flashing. Lexington took their backup very seriously.

  Kinkle shrugged.

  “I asked you a question, sir, are you Barton Kinkle? Get his ID.” This to Sam.

  “I’m Barton Kinkle, yes.” The voice was a strangled vanilla tenor.

  “I can’t hear you.” Sam kicked Kinkle’s legs apart.

  “Yes, sir, I’m Barty Kinkle. What’d I do?”

  “Mr. Kinkle, you have the right to remain silent—”

  Sam patted the man down. “Face me, Barty.”

  “—You have the right to—”

  “Sir?”

  “Turn around, son, unless you want your hands cuffed behind your back.”

  Kinkle turned slowly. His face had gone dead white, lips bluish with shock. “But what did I do? Would you please just tell me what did I do?”

  Kinkle’s eyes welled with tears. Sonora shook her head as Whitmore crammed Kinkle into the back of his car. Could this nebbishy little guy be responsible for a crime as brutal as the Stinnet home invasion?

  Sonora was aware of a familiar disappointment. It was often this way. Pathetic little men trying to make themselves large through a big crime. She kept staring at Kinkle. Could this really be their guy?

  Sam looked at her over his shoulder, inclining his head toward the Taurus. “Follow us in, okay, Sonora?”

  One of them present at every point. She nodded. “Don’t lose me. It’s not my town.”

  Sam waved, slid in beside Kinkle. She hoped he would not fight extradition. She wanted him now, she wanted him in Interview One, she wanted him on her own turf. She could crack him open in an hour, tops.

  43

  All four lanes of Main Street in downtown Lexington were clogged with traffic. The streets were lined with government buildings, empty storefronts, an old theater called The Kentucky. A beautiful but almost empty newly built Victorian office structure. It was the usual mix—a downtown sucked dry by suburban sprawl, kept alive by attorneys’ offices, eclectic restaurants, antiques stores, and the kind of hopeful entrepreneurs who opened aerobics studios slash juice bars. A side-street storefront advertised Pamela Dee Wigs.

  Hard to tell if downtown Lexington was going under or just resurfacing.

  Whitmore made a left turn, then another, onto a narrow street of back entrances and a graffiti- and trash-strewn underpass on the right. He got out and opened a huge metal garage door, Sonora waiting, Taurus engine idling. She followed the patrol car into a cavernous underground loading dock and parked catty-cornered from a huge white van with the windows covered in blackout curtains.

  She rolled down her window. “Okay if I park here?”

  Sam stepped out of the patrol car. “Didn’t you see us waving at you when we passed the annex garage?”

  “Nope.”

  Sam looked at Whitmore. “I told you. Oblivious.”

  “You’re okay.” Whitmore smiled at her gently and took Kinkle’s right elbow. “Let’s make tracks, my friend.”

  Kinkle moved stiffly, gave Sonora a hint of a shy smile, which she returned with stiff lips and a wave of nausea. Sam took Kinkle’s left arm. Kinkle looked back once at Sonora over his left shoulder. She exchanged looks with Sam.

  Kinkle was intimidated by the men, the cuffs, the police car, and the procedure, and he was desperate for a kind word, clearly expecting it from Sonora. So his rage, unlike so many others, was not triggered by women. She’d be the best bet in interrogation.

  She had a stab of worry over Tim. Had they handcuffed her son? Had he been afraid and looking for a kind word? Had he had anything to eat?

  Focus, she told herself, stepping onto the elevator, back against the wall. Kinkle had that stunned look, but at least he was not crying. Sonora heard Joy Stinnet’s voice in the back of her mind. Saw the woman holding her stomach together. This boy was thirty-one years old. This boy had a lot to answer for.

  44

  The third floor of the Lexington Police Department was nicely turned out with new carpet, walls and floor in a maroon and gray color scheme, and a maze of cubicles stylistically laid out, providing each detective with semiprivate work space that included a comfortable padded chair, file cabinets, a computer terminal, and telephone. Most of the detectives were dressed down—jeans, khakis, sweaters, and flannel shirts. They could have been a group ad for the Gap or Old Navy. Whitmore was an aberration in the wrinkled suit, but Sonora did not think the difference had ever occurred to him. All, of course, were decked out with police jewelry—handcuffs, gun belts. The usual.

  The room had a muffled quality, brought on by new carpet and low voices on the phone.

  Sam looked at Sonora, raised an eyebrow. “Poofie.”

  “Jealous.”

  They sat side by side in a sort of annex to a cell slash interrogation room on the far wall. It was a tiny room, the size of two bathrooms side by side. Kinkle, fresh from processing, was handcuffed to a bench that was bolted to the floor. On Sam and Sonora’s side of the two-way window were a video camera and microphone.

  Sam yawned. Checked his watch. “Briefing in eight minutes. Let’s go find Whitmore.”

  “In a minute.” Sonora watched Kinkle. His head was bowed. He’d called an attorney. Gone to the bathroom twice—Coke refills kicking in. “I want to talk to him.”

  “You can’t talk to him. He’s called his lawyer. What’s he doing, bent over like that? He doesn’t have to go to the bathroom again, does he? He’s been pissing like a weasel since he got here.”

  “I think he’s crying.” How did a weasel piss? Men had odd minds.

  “You don’t feel sorry for him, do you?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to be him.”

  “You’re just worried about Tim. Speaking of which, when are you bailing him out?”

  “If they stick with the plan, I’ll go after the briefing. I should have time to get back for the hit—they said four A.M., right?”

  Sam swiveled his chair back and forth. “As far as I know, they didn’t say. But I expect that’s when it’ll be.” He cocked his head to one side, watched Kinkle. “You know, it comes to me, Sonora, that we are doing this interrogation thing all wrong anyway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. We should sit these guys down and make ’em watch Titanic and Waterworld back to back unless they talk.”

  “You make me watch Titanic and Waterworld back to back and I’d talk.”

  The door was pushed open and Whitmore stuck his head in. He’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned his top button. “You guys ready?”

  45

  Whitmore led them down the side of the bullpen, through a heavy door that led past a room of cubicles, into another room of cubicles, and into a meeting room: tile floor, new wood table, metal folding chairs, huge green chalkboard covering one wall.

  The chalkboard was covered with Xs and Os, like a map of football strategy. The SWAT team was assembled and waiting. It looked like the meeting was in progress. Sonora gave Sam a sideways look. He leaned up against the wall and did not sit down. A sign that he was wary.

  She was exhausted. She sat.

  Whitmore held up a hand. “Gentlemen. Ladies. Say hello to Detectives Blair and Delarosa, in from Cincinnati. They’ll be riding shotgun tonight—this is their baby. You’ve all got the memos—confidential, I don’t have to remind you. The subjects are suspected of perpetrating a home invasion, body count of four, a middle-class family in the suburbs. There was some torture involved. The guy we’re going
after, Aruba, is a pretty hard case.”

  “I’ll take it from here.” The man who spoke was pale, very blond with unhealthy-looking skin, and an air that was completely devoid of humor. “I’m Captain Taleese. I run the Emergency Response Unit.” He nodded at Sam and Sonora. Whitmore took a seat at the table.

  The Emergency Response Unit—the SWAT team—filled the room. Twenty odd or so, three women, the rest men. Everyone looked tense. They all looked like they used their gym memberships.

  Sonora studied the chalkboard. The men were divided into teams of three. One with a ballistic shield, one with a submachine gun, one hands free. There were variations. Men on command. Men armed with gas. First and second hammer men with a sixty-five-pound ram.

  Taleese looked at Whitmore. “We got a dog out there?”

  “Looks like a rottweiler.”

  There was a groan around the table.

  “Boggs, Mirren, you’re the dog team.” Taleese pointed his chalk to a team marked DT. “Mirren, take the sleeve and the baton. Boggs, you take the gas.”

  “What kind of gas?” Sonora asked.

  Whitmore leaned close to her. “It’s liquid nitro. Scares the hell out of them but doesn’t hurt them.”

  “Unless they get so scared they jump through a two-story window.”

  Sonora looked around, wondering who made the remark. Saw a smirk or two.

  “That house have a storm door?” Taleese asked.

  “No,” Whitmore said.

  “Good. We’ll take the hooligan anyway. Mai, as usual, videographer.”

  A thin Asian woman along the middle of the second table gave a small nod. This, Sonora realized, was Whitmore’s partner, Mai Yagamochi, doing double time as ERU videographer.

  Taleese pointed to a mark on the board. “This is Old Frankfort Pike. We’ll hit at four A.M. and we will pull over right here, about a hundred yards before we get to the first house. We’re hitting house number four. The houses are on the left. Subject is Lancaster—as in Lanky—Aruba, and he is armed and extremely dangerous. Some indication of mental illness; he is going to be a handful. Also inside are Belinda Kinkle, aunt of Barton Kinkle, currently in custody, and sister of Aruba. She has three children, so heads up. One baby, one toddler, one five-year-old boy.

  “It’s going to be complicated. Aruba is going to be nervous. Kinkle got sent out this morning and he didn’t come back. This man’s jacket says he is capable of anything, up to and including harming the sister and the kids. And don’t forget the dog. We got just about everything working against us on this one.

  “Fifteen seconds tops to get everyone inside secure from the time we bust that door. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “According to our Cincinnati detectives, it’s possible Kinkle and Aruba took small items from the primary—pictures, maybe even jewelry.”

  It was a stretch, Sonora knew, but it enabled them to get very specific with their search warrants.

  “This means our warrant allows us to look virtually anywhere you could hide a picture or a piece of jewelry, which means anywhere.

  “I want everyone assembled and suited up at oh-two-thirty. Any questions?”

  Sonora checked her watch. Plenty of time to go pick up her son.

  46

  It felt good to get some alone time, Sonora thought, bombing down I-75, heading for Boone County, which bordered Cincinnati and would almost take her back home. If Tim had called her earlier, she and Sam could have sprung him on the way to Kentucky. She had gone to an ATM—it was going to cost her more to feed him than to bail him out.

  A fine mist of rain blew up as she headed north, turning the ground to muck and making it hard to see in the dark. Headlights from oncoming traffic glared off the wet pavement.

  Sonora gritted her teeth. Her biggest problem was going to be staying awake.

  The road construction started around Florence, and Sonora reduced her speed. No point falling into the same trap as her son. She took the Burlington exit, turned left, braked until she was going thirty-five. The only good thing about this town was its size—even she could find the courthouse without any trouble.

  It was red brick and fairly new. She circled to the right, parked in back, locked her car. Going to bail out her boy, just like John Q. Public.

  Sonora stopped outside the courthouse long enough for Tim to put on his shoes.

  “Thanks, Mom. Where’d you get them?”

  “Out of your car, which is still in the impound lot.”

  “Can’t we get it?”

  “Not till we get this business straightened out about your license. You’re lucky they didn’t strip it and tear it up looking for drugs.”

  He winced. “You think they might do that before we come back and get it?”

  “No, I stopped at the Dairy Mart and got a disposable camera. Took a few pictures, let them know I was doing it. But we need to get it out of impound ASAP.”

  He nodded. Tied his shoelaces. Followed her through the dark parking lot. If she had expected a cowed, frightened little boy, she was once again tricked by the mysteries of male adolescence.

  “Where’s the Pathfinder?” he asked, searching the near-empty lot.

  “Home in the garage. I’m in the company car.”

  “How come?”

  “How come? Tim, I’m in the middle of a stakeout.”

  “You mean those guys that did the home invasion?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Mom.”

  “Yeah, Tim, that’s what I mean. And as soon as I get you fed and back home, I’ve got to go back.”

  “You look pretty tired.”

  “I am pretty tired. I hope you feel guilty.”

  He ducked his head. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Good. This can’t happen again, kiddo. If I have to get you an attorney, and I don’t know yet if I will, you get to pay for it.”

  “I’ll pay you every penny.”

  “Yes, you will, even if it means you sell the car.”

  He swallowed. Definitely a hit.

  “Come on, get in, Tim. We still need to go get your buddies.”

  The hug was swift, sudden, the first she’d had in months. “You really are a great mom.” He retreated to his side of the car. “You know, Mom, we could think of this as quality time.”

  “May we always do our felonies together.”

  Tim entertained Sonora and his buddies—both starving and happy to be treated to McDonald’s Extra Value Meals, supersized of course—with the various plans he had thought of for making his escape from the Boone County Jail. Sonora, well-aware that the jail was run so tightly it squeaked, listened without comment. The boys had been cold, broke, and hungry, and the sight of a parent with a working car and enough cash and goodwill to buy them dinner had been a welcome sight. She supposed that to the average Joe, they looked like tough little fellas, but to her they still seemed like babies.

  They were amazingly polite, grateful, helpful. Sonora, who felt that teenage boys were best kept busy, put them all to work at the BP station. Walter pumped gas into the Taurus, Tim checked the tires for air, and Brock cleaned the windshield.

  “You should’ve just escaped that place,” Brock said, as Sonora let him off in front of his house.

  “Yeah, why didn’t you?” Walter asked.

  “Nine dollars seemed a whole lot easier,” Tim said.

  It was the most sensible thing Sonora had heard all night.

  She and Tim were greeted with ecstasy by Clampett and Heather, who were both glad to see Tim and delighted by the sackful of cheeseburgers.

  Sonora checked the kitchen windows, told the kids good-bye. They both looked at her like she was crazy.

  “Can’t talk about it, kids, and I’ve got to go. I won’t be home till … hell, you’ll have to get off to school without me. Tim? I can count on you?”

  “Oh, hell yes.”

  “Plus you owe me nine dollars.”

  He opened his wallet. “Money�
�s still there,” he said, putting a five and three ones and three quarters into her palm.

  “Thank you.”

  “This isn’t dangerous, is it, Mom?” Heather was frowning, one hand on her hip.

  “Nah. I got Sam as backup, I’ll be okay.”

  “Load your gun,” Tim said.

  “Stay locked up,” Sonora told them. She did not want to leave them.

  She paused at the front door, turned and pointed a finger at Tim. “Twenty-four hours. Can you stay out of trouble that long?”

  “Sure, Mom. Piece of cake.”

  It made her nervous, kids saying stuff like that.

  47

  Sonora woke suddenly, the van lurching sideways, throwing her up against Sam. Unbelievably, she had dozed off. Sam put an instinctive hand on her knee, steadying her.

  The hand did not go unnoticed. Mai, Whitmore’s partner and the ERU videographer, studied Sonora openly, unsmiling. She had the personality of a videographer, watchful, uninvolved, stoic—wise little face, a poker face, impossible to guess her thoughts. Her body was compact and petite, but taut and muscular for her size. She was definitely a presence.

  A woman, Sonora thought, who had secrets. A woman who would reject much, who would pare the world down to white polished bone, allowing no sharp edges, meat, or gristle. She would be judgmental. Thoughtful. Obscure.

  The woman watched Sonora more than she liked, studying, probably habit. She’d make a bad enemy. A rare but elusive friend. Her friendship might be as scary as her enmity.

  Sonora took a breath, feeling carsick. It was a tight fit inside the van. Cushioned benches ran along either side, leaving Sonora and Sam, near the driver, beside and facing the twenty-man unit, all of them dressed in black and riding quietly. They looked impressive and impersonal, in black Kevlar helmets, weighted down with forty pounds of equipment. Radio frequencies were coordinated and set.

  There was a surprising lack of conversation, to Sonora’s mind, the tension as thick as fog. They would be worrying about the children, she decided. Wary of the dog. And what they knew about Aruba would make some of them nervous and some of them aggressive. He was every cop’s nightmare, dissociated, disturbed, and unpredictable. Men like Aruba reacted in unexpected ways. They fought like animals, they felt no pain. Logic did not apply to the Arubas of the world, who ran on instinct—warped, ego-saturated instinct—and an inexplicable agenda coupled with an otherworldly strength.