by J. A. Jance
Nowhere did he see any signs of faucets with running water. Instead there was a macerating toilet at the far end of the room. Walking up to that, he discovered that the lid to the flushing tank had been pried off and left on the floor. Inside the tank a single drowned rat floated in the water.
Tom Hadlock had spent years running the Cochise County Jail. He knew the realities of keeping people incarcerated, but seeing that dead rat and realizing the flushing tank must have been the prisoners’ only source of water was it for him—as much as he could stand. He fled the basement.
The others were still upstairs. “Sorry, guys,” he said on his way past. “That’s it for me. I’m going to give Sheriff Brady a call. She needs to know what’s going on here.”
Wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and the dungeon, Tom returned to the residential area and the house on the end, the one with the picket fence. Back in the chair where he’d sat earlier, he was about to dial Joanna’s number when Deputy Bill Creighton showed up. “Hey, Tom,” Bill said, “I think you’re gonna wanna take a look at this.”
The rest of the team had returned to Skeleton Canyon Road and retrieved the spike strips, as well as all the parked vehicles. Now they were waiting around to help pack and load whatever evidence Dave deemed necessary to take back to the lab.
Around the department Bill Creighton had the dubious honor of being labeled clown-in-chief, so the seriousness of his expression right then gave Tom pause. “Why?” he asked, putting the phone away. “What have you got?”
“Over here,” Bill said. “Come with me.”
Wearily and feeling his age, Tom rose to follow. Deputy Creighton led him from the clearing surrounding the house into a stand of mesquite, stopping only after the house had disappeared from view.
“I needed to take a leak,” Creighton said, “but Dave had given us strict orders to stay outside, so I went around back and came here. That’s what I found.” He pointed at what appeared to be a shallow grave.
“And that’s not all,” Creighton told him. “There are two more right over there.”
Without bothering to go see for himself, Tom pulled out the phone and dialed Joanna. “Would you mind giving the Paxtons a call?” he asked when she answered. “We’ll need to see if they can hang around a day or two longer. Looks like we’ve got another location that we’ll need them to check.”
Chapter 45
SHERIFF RANDY TROTTER HAD BEEN ALL IN WHEN THE PROTECT Our Borders people came along offering to hand out leased helicopters, namely Robinson R22 Beta IIs. Randy just happened to know an out-of-work helicopter pilot in need of a job. The guy, Donald Dunkerson, was also Sheriff Trotter’s former son-in-law. He had come home from the Gulf War and landed a great job for an Albuquerque television station as their airborne traffic reporter—a job that had ended abruptly when he’d picked up a DUI three years earlier.
Donnie Dunkerson hadn’t been anywhere near his helicopter at the time he was cited. He and his wife, Robin, had gotten into a terrible argument. He’d gone to a bar, tied one on, and was ticketed on his way home. The ticket, combined with his soon-to-be-former wife’s very public allegations that he had physically assaulted her more than once, was more bad publicity than the television station could tolerate. Donald Dunkerson’s employment had terminated shortly thereafter.
Sheriff Trotter’s problem with the situation was due to the fact that he liked Donnie a lot better than he liked his own daughter. Robin was a bitch on wheels. On occasion the sheriff had been overheard to say that if he’d been married to Robin, he would have been driven to drink, too. She was a micromanager of the first order, as well as a nagger and a constant complainer. As far as Randy was concerned, Donnie appeared to be a far better father to his kids, Kevin and Roxanne—Randy’s only grandkids—than Robin was a mother.
Because he was a first-time DUI offender, Donnie’s conviction didn’t require jail time, and he had complied with all the terms and conditions mandated by law: he attended DUI school; he did the required screening for drug and alcohol abuse; he went straight to AA, did his ninety meetings in ninety days, and was still sober two years and nine months later; when random drug and alcohol tests were required, he passed with flying colors; he installed the ignition/Breathalyzer interlock; he did his twenty-four hours of community service; and he paid all court and probation costs with a happy heart. His one big stumbling block had been the Victim Impact Panel, where Robin had gone on the record talking at tedious length about what an abusive, scary drunk he was and reporting that their kids were not only terrified of their father, they were also being bullied at school because all their friends knew what a failure he was.
Kevin and Roxanne were not called to testify before the Victim Impact Panel. If they’d been invited, they might have offered a different opinion, but since they weren’t asked, they didn’t provide one.
A few weeks later, when Robin filed for divorce, the family-court judge took her every word as gospel. With the DUI conviction hanging over his head, there was no way Donnie was ever going to get custody, or even joint custody. His parental involvement was dialed back to supervised visitation only. Not only that, the judge ordered him to pay child support based on what he’d formerly earned, which had been considerable, as opposed to what he was earning after losing his job, which was nothing.
The only way for him to remain even remotely connected to his children’s lives was for him to stay in New Mexico—where he couldn’t get work on a bet. As the unpaid child-support debt continued to mount, Robin threatened him with legal action that would have deprived him of even supervised visitations.
When POB’s helicopter offer first surfaced, it seemed like the answer to a prayer. Had Sheriff Trotter gone out on a limb and hired Donnie on his own, it would have been deemed outright nepotism, but he and Sheriff Yates from Grant County were longtime pals, and they joined forces on the deal. As pilot bids came in, they were supposed to be sealed, and they might have looked sealed, but with Connie’s help they weren’t as sealed as they should have been. And when the bids were opened? Wonder of wonders, Donald Dunkerson’s low bid won the day. That might have caused a few raised eyebrows in Hidalgo County, but nobody said a word, because everybody who knew Robin and Donnie Dunkerson figured the poor guy had gotten a raw deal.
That morning when Sheriff Trotter got off the phone with Joanna Brady, he called Donnie first thing. “Come and get me in that hopped-up bird of yours,” he said. “You and I are gonna go out and find ourselves a bright blue Peterbilt.”
Joanna had told him that there were APBs posted in both Arizona and New Mexico. Everyone pretends that in the world of cops all things are created equal, but they’re not. For example, if you’re a member of the New Mexico State Police, a crime committed in Arizona is far less interesting and urgent than one on your home turf in New Mexico, and when it came to the Arizona Highway Patrol, the reverse was also true.
The parking lot at the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office was now completely paved—another of Sheriff Trotter’s pet projects that had been accomplished in a somewhat good-old-boyish, tit-for-tat arrangement. Donnie brought the helicopter down there, and Randy jogged out to greet it.
“Who are we after?” Donnie asked, once Randy had buckled in and clapped on his earphones and mic.
“Some jackass who tortures and murders girls the same age as Kev and Roxie. He took off from Road Forks earlier this morning, and no one’s really sure which way he’s headed.”
“So where are we going?” Donnie asked.
“They said he left Road Forks going westbound, but I’m thinking he may have doubled back, so let’s try heading east first,” Randy suggested. “Either way I’m guessing he’ll stick to the interstate. With any kind of luck, we’ll find him before he crosses over into Texas.”
Even then it wasn’t a sure thing. Joanna had told him that two people were involved, two brothers. According to the security tapes at Road Forks, there’d been only one occupant
in Jimmy Ardmore’s bright blue Peterbilt when it took off earlier that morning. The truck had definitely entered the westbound lanes of I-10, but Sheriff Trotter was a New Mexico law-enforcement officer, and chasing a suspect across his own turf would make for better PR than doing an airborne pursuit into Arizona.
The whole time they were flying along, Randy Trotter was thinking that the situation sounded a lot like an old algebra problem, the kind he’d screwed up on while preparing for his SATs: If a truck leaves Road Forks for El Paso traveling at 75 mph, and a helicopter leaves Lordsburg thirty minutes later and flies at 100 mph, will the helicopter catch up with the truck before it reaches El Paso? He tried to work this one out in his head but gave up. He was too uptight. Besides, they didn’t know for sure what time Ardmore took off, whether he’d be driving straight through, or even if he was heading for El Paso. There were too many unknowns.
But several of those unknowns also counted in their favor. According to Donnie, they had a hefty tailwind, which meant they were going faster than 100 mph—about 115 or so, he estimated. In addition, Jimmy Ardmore would have to stop for the Border Patrol checkpoint west of Las Cruces. They wouldn’t. So maybe they’d catch him. Maybe they wouldn’t. Or maybe the whole damned thing was a joke and the SOB was somewhere on I-8 by now and well on his way to sunny California.
They reached the I-25 interchange with no bright blue Peterbilts in sight. They had seen hardly any enforcement along the way. There’d been plenty of trucks tooling down the road at the 75 mph limit, but none of them were that distinctive color. As I-10 curved to the south after Las Cruces, Sheriff Trotter began to lose heart. Now two major interstates were involved, and Ardmore could be on either one of them.
“Which way?” Donnie asked.
Randy indulged in a mental coin flip. “Let’s keep following I-10 for now,” he said. “If we don’t catch up with him before El Paso, we’ll turn back and take a run up I-25.”
“To do that we’ll have to stop someplace and pick up more fuel.”
Right, Randy thought, just what we need. Why don’t we run out of gas?
“Hey!” Donnie yelled in Randy’s ears bare moments later. He was shouting and pointing both. “Isn’t that our guy?”
Randy looked where Donnie was pointing and saw that he was right—there it was, a bright blue Peterbilt.
“Where are we?” Randy asked.
“Just coming up on Mesquite,” Donnie told him.
“I need to call it in.”
“Do you really want to do that?” Donnie asked.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Actually, I do,” Donnie said, grinning at him. “Back in the Gulf, they didn’t call me ‘Top Gun’ for nothing. Watch this.”
He put the Robinson into a steep dive, a hair-raising dive. It was like being inside a roller coaster, and Randy held on for dear life. A moment later they were flying over the trailer of the moving truck. For a time they simply kept pace with it, and then, without warning, Donnie upped his game, shooting them forward and bringing the helicopter down to a position that couldn’t have been more than a couple of yards ahead of the speeding truck’s windshield.
“Are you nuts?” Randy demanded with his heart in his throat, expecting the truck to crash into them from behind at any moment. “Are you trying to kill us both?”
“Naw,” Donnie replied with an easy grin. “Just trying to get the guy’s attention, and it looks like I did. He’s going down.”
Still coolly maintaining the distance between helicopter and truck, Donnie angled up, out of range, and slightly to the left. By the time Randy was able to see behind them, the Peterbilt’s tractor was careening down the road, swaying drunkenly from side to side. Behind it the trailer whipped back and forth in a much wider arc, looking for the world as though it were about to go airborne.
“He’s losing it,” Randy murmured. “He’s gonna jackknife for sure.”
Other than the speeding truck and the hovering helicopter, there was no nearby traffic traveling in either direction when James Ardmore’s bright blue Peterbilt came to grief. One moment it was moving forward. The next moment it had tipped over onto its side and was sliding off the roadway.
“That’s how it’s done,” Donnie announced over the intercom. “Now we sit back and watch the fun.”
“Fun?” Randy Trotter echoed. “You damn near killed us.”
“What are you upset about—we got your man, didn’t we?”
“Yes we did,” the sheriff muttered, “but I believe I’m going to need to change my underwear.”
Chapter 46
JIMMY ARDMORE WAS DRIVING ALONG AND CAREFULLY MINDING his own business. He’d been holding his breath as he approached the Border Patrol checkpoint east of Las Cruces, but the dogs hadn’t alerted to anything in his truck, and they waved him through without a second glance. He’d seen a couple of cop cars in the course of the morning, but they’d been westbound and he was eastbound, and they had paid him no mind. He had bought that new phone in Road Forks. It was one of those cheap cell phones—a “burner,” as crooks liked to call them, not that Jimmy ever considered himself to be a crook. He was far more talented than that. He had told the clerk that he’d broken his cell phone and he wouldn’t be able to get it fixed until after he got back from this trip.
So yes, he wasn’t supposed to be using a cell phone while driving, but he did anyway, keeping it on speaker and spending the better part of an hour on the phone with Tony Segura. During that long conversation he had been given the address of a place on the far side of El Paso, the site of a defunct crop-dusting outfit. He’d be able to pull his rig under the shelter of an old airplane hangar, a location where one of Tony’s business associates ran a very profitable chop shop.
The part of I-10 between Las Cruces and El Paso was by far Jimmy’s least favorite stretch of highway. There were all kinds of dairy farms in the neighborhood, and by the time he made it past them, he felt like he was breathing cow shit. He switched the cab’s A/C over to recirculate, hoping to prevent the foul odor outside from permeating the interior.
He had just turned the control on the A/C when a helicopter appeared from nowhere, dropping out of the sky directly in front of him. At first he thought the guy was going to crash. He looked around, trying to find a place to dodge out of the way. He swerved, struggling to avoid it, and the truck lurched to the left. The helicopter was still there and still in front of him when Jimmy’s overcorrection sent the truck speeding to the right again.
He fought desperately to regain control, but the Subaru in the back was a much lighter load than he was used to pulling. As the trailer began to sway from side to side, it felt more like he was flying a kite than driving a truck. He knew before it happened that he was going to jackknife, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it—not a single thing.
The next exit was coming up fast. The last thing he saw, just before he slammed into it, was one of those Gas, Food, and Lodging signs. The gas part was right at eye level as he creamed it, shattering the safety glass in front of him and taking out the windshield. As airbags enveloped him and slammed his head back against the seat, the Peterbilt flopped over on its side and slid, skidding across the dirt of the shoulder before crashing through a fence line and coming to rest at last in a steaming heap of cow dung.
When Jimmy came to, a guy in a fire-department uniform was speaking to him. “Sir,” he said urgently. “Sir, can you hear me? We’re here to help. We’ll have you out of there in no time.”
Jimmy heard the words and tried to make sense of them, but the only thing that really penetrated his consciousness was that he was covered in crap, head to toe.
Chapter 47
JOANNA WENT HOME. SHE HAD RACED OFF IN SUCH A HURRY THAT she hadn’t done the necessary chores. She made quick work of them now, hoping that the animals would forgive her for throwing them off schedule. By the time everyone was fed, Dwayne and Li’l Pat, bundled up against the cold, were out in the driveway pl
aying fetch with all four dogs—their two and Joanna’s two. It did Joanna’s heart good to realize that although Stormin’ Norman and Big Red were work dogs, they were also given the opportunity to play.
After showering, Joanna went to the kitchen for coffee and found Carol whipping out a batch of French toast. “A girl’s gotta eat, you know,” she said.
Truth be told, Joanna was famished. After that, she settled in to field phone calls, hoping to hear about what was going on. She wasn’t actually at work, but she could just as well have been.
Tom Hadlock called first, his voice thick with disappointment. The arrest team had come up empty. The killers were in the wind, and they were waiting for Dave and Casey to show up to direct the collection of evidence. Joanna tried to assure Tom that whatever had happened wasn’t his fault—that he’d done his best—but she could tell he didn’t believe that for a minute.
Marianne called next. “I just talked to Lou Ann Richards. She said that she and Lyle could get better connections from St. Louis and New Orleans into Phoenix than they could into Tucson. They’ll fly into Sky Harbor, arriving late tonight. They’ll rent a car, stay there overnight, and then drive down tomorrow morning.”
“That’s good news.”
“As soon as Latisha knew when her mom was getting here, she wanted to know if I could help her do something about her hair. I got her a comb, but when she tried to use it, the hair started falling out in big chunks. Eileen Hopkins from ER told us that losing hair is yet another symptom of severe malnourishment. Up to now the hair has been so matted that it couldn’t fall out. Eileen suggested I call Eddie from the barbershop out in Don Luis. He’s the hospital’s go-to guy when someone needs what they call the ‘Big C Hairdo.’ ”
“Which is?”