From the corner of his eye, he watched the cars run the red light and continue on their way toward the mall. Matt threw himself around and followed them with his eyes. Were they after him, or were they out on a completely different matter?
There were a few cars behind him, and the driver in the first one started honking. Matt figured that the lights must have turned green, but he paid no attention to it. The only thing he could focus on were the patrol cars and where they were going. He could see the road leading into the shopping mall about half a mile away. The cars were halfway there. Another ten or fifteen seconds and he would know whether they were onto him or not.
The driver in the car behind him honked his horn again, but Matt continued to ignore him. Then after a few more seconds, the guy got into the other lane, honked his horn a few more times and hurled some abuse at Matt as he made his way past. But it hardly registered with him. The only thing that mattered were the police cars.
Another dose of adrenaline hit his system when he watched the cars turn off the main road and entered the parking lot of the shopping mall. Matt felt his legs go numb and he found it difficult to breathe. They were after him, he was sure of it.
Jesus! If he had stayed there for a few more minutes, it would have been all over. He would have been in cuffs and had guns pointed at him, and been thrown into the back of one of those cruisers. The police were on his tail, quite literally breathing down his neck. Would they turn around and head back toward Phoenix when they realized they were too late?
Matt turned away, took his foot off the brake pedal and quickly made his way through the lights. He had been able to dodge a bullet yet again, but how long would his luck last? Eventually everyone’s luck runs out. Would his run out later today?
He removed the sunglasses and the hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Then he did his best to focus on the traffic and the task ahead. It turned out to be extremely difficult, because his mind was bombarded with images of him being handcuffed and placed in the back of one of the patrol cars that had just raced past him.
12
“We got him!” Valdez cried out. Then he waited a few more seconds, listening to what the person on the other end of the line had to say, before finishing the conversation and putting the cellphone back in his pocket.
“We’ve just received a tip from an anonymous source, claiming that Matthew Brunner is driving around in a blue Mitsubishi Lancer. The caller also claims that the vehicle is currently located at the Westfield shopping mall in Maricopa.” Valdez started walking toward the entrance door of the house where they had found James Matthews’ dead body an hour and a half earlier.
“Who called in the tip?” Morrell asked, sounding just as excited as his partner, and following right behind him.
“Don’t know. The guy called Ryan five minutes ago, told him what I just told you and hung up.”
They got in their car and began driving toward Maricopa and the shopping mall where the anonymous caller claimed that Brunner had left his car. The traffic was light, and it only took them twenty two minutes to get there. This was largely due to the fact that it was the middle of the day, and that they were racing along at close to a hundred miles an hour.
When they arrived, Morrell pulled up behind a police cruiser that was parked diagonally across the road that ran between the parking spaces and got out.
A young uniformed police officer, who looked like he had just graduated from high school, was standing in front of the Mitsubishi, and he immediately began walking toward the two detectives. Morrell pulled out his badge and showed it to him before he got a chance to tell them they weren’t allowed to get any closer.
“So this is the car Brunner is alleged to have used?” Morrell asked as he put the badge back in his pocket and walked over to the car and peered in through the passenger side window.
“Yes, sir,” the young officer replied, slightly taken aback by the blunt approach. Morrell turned around and faced him and saw the name tag attached to his shirt said Williams.
“Have you had a look inside the vehicle?”
Williams shook his head.
“No, sir we haven’t. But we’ve run the license plates and called the forensic unit. They should be here any minute, and when they arrive, they’ll check it for fingerprints.”
The young officer seemed to have regained some of his composure after having been thrown off by Morrell’s no nonsense attitude. He spoke slowly and without effort.
Morrell nodded and kept walking around the car, trying to see if there were any obvious signs that would tend to suggest that Brunner had left it there.
“So who does the car belong to?” Valdez asked. He was standing on the driver side, gazing in through the window.
“It’s a rental car, sir. It belongs to Avis.” Williams pulled out a notepad from his pocket and opened it. “Apparently it was rented out to a Mr. Antonio Lopez,” he said after consulting with his notes.
“And I take it you haven’t spoken with this Mr. Lopez and confirmed that the car is indeed rented out to him?” Morrell asked without looking up.
“Well, two of my colleagues are currently checking out the security camera footage of the parking lot to see if they can identify Brunner. They’ve also tried to get in touch with Mr. Lopez via the shopping mall’s PA system, but so far, he hasn’t identified himself.”
Morrell and Valdez looked at each other. If the owner of the car hadn’t come forward after explicitly having been asked to do so, there was a good chance that Brunner could have used it to flee Matthews’ house after the murder.
Morrell did some quick mental calculations. The murder had been committed almost two and a half hours ago. The shopping mall was only thirty five minutes away. That meant that Brunner had a two hour head start if he had chosen to come here straight after the murder. He had then either stolen a new car, or gotten someone to take him out of the area. He seriously doubted that Brunner had come down here just to shop.
If his theory was correct, it meant that Brunner could be as far as a hundred and sixty miles away. Jesus! That would make it almost impossible to locate him. That was of course unless they got a sighting of him, or managed to identify the car he was driving around in. And provided of course, that he was indeed driving around in a car.
“Tell one of the security guards to meet us at the entrance,” Morrell said. “I want to have a look at the security tapes.” Then after a few moments, he added. “And as soon as the forensic team arrives, tell them that it is imperative that we find out if it was Brunner that left the car here.”
Then he signaled to Valdez that the two of them should head over to the shopping mall.
“Will do, sir,” Williams said and lifted his hand up to his head, giving Morrell a mock salute with his index and middle finger as the two detectives walked away.
Then he took up his position again in front of the Mitsubishi, and leaned up against the trunk. Before he got another chewing gum out from the pack in his pocket, he turned his head and saw the two detectives walk over toward the big, glass sliding doors about a hundred yards away, wondering if they would find the man they were after.
Morrell and Valdez only had to wait half a minute before a burly security guard, dressed in black pants and a white shirt arrived and escorted them to a room off one of the many wide corridors in the mall. The room was spacious and filled with half a dozen TV monitors along the wall directly opposite the door.
When they arrived, two uniformed officers were standing on either side of a security guard who was seated in a comfortably looking office chair, and was busy tapping on a computer keyboard that controlled the fast moving images on the screen in front of him.
One of the officers turned around when he heard the door open and greeted Morrell and Valdez when they came over.
“Have you managed to establish if it was Brunner who was driving that Mitsubishi?” Valdez asked, as he stopped in front of the computer monitors.
“No, not yet,” t
he officer replied. “We only started five minutes ago. But we should be able to find out within the next ten minutes or so. We should also be able to establish whether he took off in a new car after ditching the Mitsubishi.”
Morrell felt his heart rate speed up. If they had Brunner on tape, they would catch him before the end of the day, of that he was certain. And when they did, they would make him feel the full force of the law. This time there wouldn’t be any slimy defense lawyers to get him off the hook. This time the asshole was heading straight for the slammer, and he would only be allowed out for the trial that would follow in a few months time. Hell, if Morrell had his way, they’d just throw away the key and let the lowlife rot in there.
He moved closer to the screen and watched the recorded images being displayed at seven times the normal speed. People and cars were racing along.
“There it is,” said one of the uniformed officers after a few more minutes had gone by. He put his index finger on the screen and tapped it a few times.
The security guard sitting in the chair immediately punched a key on the keyboard and the footage slowed down to normal speed. And they were able to see a blue Mitsubishi pull into a parking space between two other cars.
Morrell took a deep breath and held it, and could hear his own heartbeat. His throat had gone completely dry. Was it Brunner driving the car, or had the anonymous tip been a dead end? He could feel the tension in the room, everybody waiting to find out if this had all been a waste of time.
The car on the screen had come to a full stop by now, and any second the person inside the car would step outside. Morrell’s eyes were fixed on the driver side door, he didn’t even blink. But the door remained shut and it seemed to take forever before it finally opened up. Morrell let out the air in his lungs in one quick motion. The camera was too far away to get a positive I.D. But it certainly could be Brunner. The person was a white male and he had the same hairstyle and roughly the same build as Brunner.
“Can you zoom in?” Morrell asked, his voice sounding strange and distant to his own ears.
“Sure.” The security guy punched a few more keys, and the man and the car grew in size and filled up half the screen.
“This is the best I can do,” he said without turning around. “Is it the guy you’re looking for?” He had paused the tape and the person who had just exited the car was looking straight at the camera.
Morrell stared at the image for a couple of seconds before turning to Valdez, who was still staring intently at the screen.
“It’s Brunner,” Morrell said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Valdez nodded.
“Yeah, it’s him alright.” He looked up at the clock on the wall above the monitors and then over at Morrell. “He got out of that car an hour and ten minutes ago. I wonder if he’s still here.”
“We showed the picture of the suspect to the security guards patrolling the mall, and told them to contact us immediately if they spotted him,” one of the uniformed officers said. He had taken a few steps back from the screen and was looking at Valdez.
“And you haven’t heard anything from them yet?” Valdez asked.
“No, sir.”
“How long ago was that?” Morrell asked.
“About ten minutes after we arrived here.”
Morrell turned to the security guard in the chair and told him to start the tape again. The man did as he was told, and they could see Brunner walk across the parking lot and enter the mall.
Morrell ran a hand through his hair and let it come to a rest at the back of his neck. Why had Brunner come here to this particular spot, and why had he decided to enter the mall? It didn’t make any sense. He was a wanted man, guilty of killing two individuals within the span of a few hours. His main priority should have been to get as much distance between himself and the scenes of the crimes as possible. So why hadn’t he done that? Why had he chosen to remain in the area? And what had he been up to in the last couple of hours after leaving Matthews’ house? Just driving around aimlessly?
He let the hand on his neck fall down to his side and exhaled slowly. What mattered now was that they didn’t lose their momentum. They were right on his heels and they needed to be on their A-game. If they made a mistake now, Brunner would once again slip out of their reach.
He turned toward the uniformed officer who had just informed them of the measures the local police had implemented since arriving at the scene. He was a tanned man in his fifties with a muscular build, crew cut and alert eyes.
“I want you to position police officers at all points of entries and emergency exits. I also want police officers to do a thorough check of the mall itself and see if Brunner is still around. We have strong reason to believe that he has killed three people, and I want him apprehended as soon as possible.”
Morrell reached inside his pocket and gave the officer his card.
“Contact me straight away once you’ve done a thorough check of the area, or if you spot Brunner and are able to arrest him.”
The officer extended his hand, took the card and nodded.
“I’ll organize it straight away, sir,” he said and quickly exited the room along with his colleague.
“Should we set up roadblocks and check the traffic going in and out of Phoenix?” Valdez asked.
Morrell shook his head.
“No, that would be taking it a step too far. Besides it would probably be too late anyway. Let’s find out if he’s here first. If he is, he won’t be able to get away.”
Morrell ordered the security guard to go through the footage of the entrance area for the last hour and ten minutes. The man nodded, tapped a few more keys and fast forwarded the clip from the point where Brunner had entered the mall.
Morrell pulled a chair over and sat down, his eyes never leaving the screen. Ok, let’s see if you left the mall asshole, he thought, hoping intently that Brunner was still here.
They spent the next ten minutes studying the recordings that were playing at twice the normal speed. On two occasions, Morrell had instructed the security guy to pause the tape and zoom in on individuals that he thought looked like Brunner, but who turned out to be someone else.
But a few minutes after they’d paused the tape for the last time, they finally got the lead that they were after when one of the uniformed officers came barging into the room and headed straight over to Morrell.
The officer looked out of breath, as if he had been running all the way over.
“Sir, we just got a report that someone has stolen a vehicle from the parking lot.”
Morrell bore his eyes into him.
“What type of vehicle and when was it stolen?” he asked as he quickly rose out of his chair.
“It was a Honda Civic, and it was stolen sometime within the last half hour. A young woman and her friend just reported it.”
Morrell felt a rush of adrenaline hit his system. It had to be Brunner. He must have figured out that the Mitsubishi was no longer safe, and decided to steal a new car.
“Do you have the license plate number?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got it right here?” The officer handed him a slip of paper.
“We’ve already called it in and advised all mobile units to be on the lookout for the vehicle in question. If it’s our guy, and he’s still driving around in it, we’ll find him.”
The officer turned around and left the room, while Valdez and Morrell kept studying the security tapes with renewed interest. The security guard had switched to a camera overlooking the exit of the parking lot, and they were rewinding the tapes, trying to catch a glimpse of the stolen Honda.
It took them just under ten minutes to identify it, and another five minutes to conclusively determine that it was Brunner that had stolen it. There was no question about it. Even with the hat and the sunglasses, they had been able to identify him. He was wearing the exact same clothes that he had been wearing when he entered the mall an hour earlier.
Upon making the identifi
cation, Morrell and Valdez immediately relayed the information to their colleagues in Phoenix. They then hurried over to their car, raced out of the parking lot and headed back toward the city, following in the footsteps of Brunner. Soon they would be able to pull him over and arrest him. And this time, he wouldn’t be able to get away. His days as a free man were numbered.
The thought filled Morrell with an indescribable sense of satisfaction, and a big grin appeared on his face as he gunned the engine after they entered the highway. Soon, he thought, very soon.
Matt pulled over to the curb and parked the Honda behind a beige SUV. After he killed the engine, he reached over and pulled the jacket out of the shopping bag. It was a lightweight, watertight blue thing that he’d picked up from one of the two clothing stores he’d visited at the mall.
He leaned forward and put it on, pulling the zip halfway up. Then he pulled out the gloves and the black cardboard box from the bag, and placed them in the backpack. A few moments later he got out of the car and put the backpack over his shoulders. The baseball cap was pushed down tightly over his head, and along with the sunglasses it did a fairly good job at disguising his facial features. But even so, he still felt extremely apprehensive. If something were to go wrong, this whole thing would be over.
There weren’t that many people around, and Matt started walking without looking back. He wondered how long it would take the police to locate the car, and figured that it would probably take a while, at least in this area. There weren’t that much through traffic here, and there weren’t really any reasons for the cops to come out this way. Maybe a member of the public would alert them eventually? That would be the logical outcome if the police appealed to the public for help in locating the vehicle. At least by then he would be long gone. That was if his plan didn’t go belly up.
Shock and Awe Page 16