by Rex Burns
Now Wager felt impatience, the kind that always came when things started falling together and he began to understand. When at last he got an answer from the CCIC, it wasn’t surprise but confirmation that he felt and a twinge of self-contempt: he could have known it all along, but it wasn’t until his conversation with Davenport that he gave himself the clue. It should have been something he thought of much sooner.
There was indeed a Stinney in Cañon City, but it wasn’t Nelda: first name Wayne, middle initial R., a Department of Corrections number, as well as a Denver Police Department number. Wager printed out the information and pushed back from his desk with a sigh. Then he took the elevator to Records.
Wayne Russell Stinney. Wager read down the vitals until he came to “Spouse.” Nelda. And her address was still that grimy apartment building where Neeley had tried to kill Wager with a shotgun. Maybe, in fact, that was why Neeley had run into that building in the first place—looking for Nelda’s apartment, a bed to crawl under, someone to tell Wager that the guy he was chasing wasn’t there. And that was how Heisterman knew to locate his so-called witness. Maybe the lawyer even came up with the idea. Maybe not—more likely it was Hastings’s inspiration: a way to get Julio’s cousin off their backs long enough to finish out the job at DIA. A phone call to Neeley, who would be real happy to file a suit; a warning to Nelda, either she testified that she saw Wager shoot an unarmed Neeley or her old man would never leave Cañon City alive. The gang ties—Neeley, Heisterman—all led to Hastings and to his hunger for just a few more weeks of profit. Wager should have seen it sooner, but even with that thought, he felt a massive lightening of spirit, a fading of the worry about Neeley that had been with him even while he slept, even while he tried to pretend that it wasn’t there.
He ran off a copy of Stinney’s sheet and went back to his desk to call Attorney Dewing.
“I told you to stay away from anybody associated with the case, Detective Wager!”
“Counselor, I haven’t talked to anybody who knows Neeley. This is from open records. Nelda Stinney is lying to save her husband.”
“I think we’d better meet. Bring that with you.”
“It’s a good story.”
They sat in the same booth at Dewing’s favorite restaurant, but this time Wager didn’t have a salad; it was after hours, he was off duty, and he was thirsty. His second beer sat half-drained on the tiny paper napkin in front of him. Counselor Dewing was still working on her first glass of white wine. “But not strong enough for a dismissal, that what you mean?”
She nodded, short hair swinging past her ears. “If Nelda went to the judge and said she was coerced into testifying falsely, Neeley’s charges would be out—no question—and Neeley or whoever would be up for intimidating a witness. But it’s not likely she’s going to do that, is it? So we have to wait until she takes the stand and then bring this out on cross-examination.” She explained, “We’ll let her make her false statement, then tell her what perjury is and what penalties she’s subject to, and give her a chance to save her butt by retracting.”
“And if she sticks to it?”
“We use this information to reduce her credibility—we show the judge that Neeley has something to gain by lying.”
Wager considered that. “It doesn’t put my hands on Hastings, though. He’s the one I’m after.”
“What you’re after right now is protecting your career. What we have here”—she tapped the printout—“is only one argument for your innocence, not incontestable proof of it, so this doesn’t get you off the hook. Besides, Hastings isn’t even your case.”
“He’s mine, all right, Counselor. Just not officially.”
“Detective Wager—”
“Right. Don’t go near him.”
“Don’t. For your own sake.” She shrugged. “After we clear you, you can chase him from here to China if you want to. But prior to that …”
Wager smiled agreement. “All right.” They talked some more about tactics and Heisterman, what the lawyer would probably do to protect Stinney and what they could do to make her vulnerable. But Wager’s mind wasn’t really on that issue, and Dewing finally noticed it.
“Do I get the feeling I don’t have your undivided attention, Detective Wager?”
“It’s divided, Counselor,” Wager said. “But I hear your every word.”
“It’s your career.” There was a warning shrug in her voice.
“And my life,” he agreed. But his mind was still on Hastings and on playing a different game. His own game this time, one that might lead Hastings into an even bigger mistake.
Wager began making his moves as soon as he left Dewing. He didn’t tell the attorney all that he was going to do; it would have just interfered with her concentration on his case. But as he had told her, the issue was not only his career but also his life—and if the two conflicted, well, it was himself he had to live with. And that, he sighed, included his family.
Weaving across town through the heavy, quitting-time traffic, he swung off Park Avenue onto Washington, slowing as he approached 16th Avenue. The curbs were jammed with cars that had no garages; he had to pull into a space marked NO PARKING FROM HERE TO CORNER. Flipping down the car’s visor to show the police card, he walked up the heavily carpeted hallway to Hastings’s apartment.
The massive figure with the upright sheaf of woolly hair opened the door again. “Is Roderick Hastings here?” asked Wager.
“No.”
“You’re Kwame Mitchell?”
“Yeah.”
“Mind answering a couple questions?” He folded his badge case away.
The broad shoulders lifted and fell, but the man said nothing.
“Can you tell me where you were a week ago Tuesday—about midnight.”
“Why?”
“Somebody shot at me.”
The hooded, dark eyes gazed down at Wager. “Why would I shoot at you?”
“Could have been Roderick. Either way—” He was interrupted by a pop from his radio and a familiar voice calling his number. “Excuse me a minute, OK?” Wager waited until the sprouts of hair on the man’s large head bobbed affirmative. Then he stepped away from the door to mutter into the radio. “Go ahead, Maury.”
“That call you’ve been waiting for—it came through. He says he’ll meet with you later tonight.”
Wager glanced at the large man who leaned against the doorsill, his head bent slightly so his upright hair wouldn’t brush the lintel. “What time?” He turned away from Mitchell’s nosy stare and big ears.
“Twelve-thirty.”
“Twelve-thirty tonight?”
“That’s affirmative.”
“All right. Where?”
“Valverde Park. Be alone, he says.”
“Valverde. On the west side. Right. Hell of a place to meet.”
“He’s a shy type.”
“With reason. Thanks, Maury.”
He clicked his radio off and slipped it back into its belt carrier. “Sorry about that.” He smiled up at Mitchell. “Always business.”
“I got business, too.”
“This won’t take long. Just tell me where you were.”
“Here. Sleep.”
“Any witnesses?”
“To watch me sleep? Shit, man, you a fool?”
“What about Hastings? Doesn’t he live here too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But he wasn’t here, so he can’t swear you were asleep?”
He saw Wager’s trick, and quick anger lit the man’s dark eyes. “He was here. I was here. We was both here.” He added, “And you can’t prove we wasn’t!”
Wager smiled. “Somebody always sees something, Ball Peen. And somebody is always willing to talk for the right price. I’ll be around again.”
Mitchell, face taut with dislike, pushed the heavy door shut with a thud.
Labelle Rhone’s voice rose in pitch. “You want me to what?”
“Just tell him what I told you. That’s
all.”
“Why in hell should I tell him anything? Or do you no favors neither?”
“Because you have nothing to lose, and either way you’re going to be happy.”
The line was silent for a long minute. Then, “You want me to tell him you gonna meet with a informant who knows who killed … What was his name?”
“Julio. Julio Lucero.”
“A informant who knows who killed Julio and who knows all about why he was killed.”
“And that you heard it—”
“And that I heard you talking about it over some radio while you was talking to me about that fight over at JP’s.”
“That’s all you have to tell him. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Or he’ll take care of you.”
“Like I said, LaBelle. You win either way.”
“Yeah.”
Not that Hastings would trust her. He’d check out her story. But Wager had made enough of a trail at JP’s Lounge, talking to witnesses whose names Andy Powers had given him, to convince Hastings that there was some truth to what LaBelle said.
Enough, anyway, that he couldn’t ignore it. And then he and his partner Ball Peen would talk about what they could do, and—which would keep Counselor Dewing happy—Wager would not have to approach them. They would come to him.
Valverde Park was a small patch of worn grass that had a few trees and the usual playground equipment that had seen high use and low maintenance. In the dark, its size increased, and the shadows were made blacker by the streetlights surrounding the open stretch. Most of the lights in the homes were off by now, and Wager could hear—carried on the damp air of night—the grunt and rattle of a switch engine working the sidings in the distant Platte Valley yards. Slouched behind the wheel of his unmarked police car, his shape was a faint congealing of the darkness, dimly outlined through the window by the streetglow.
He had not told Elizabeth exactly where he was going, but it had been enough to live up to his promise to her. “I have to meet a guy—an informant.”
She looked up over the tops of her glasses. “Like that last time?”
“No way will it be like the last time.”
“But it’s dangerous?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Just a meeting.” They were only a few days from the election, and with the close race against Dennis Trotter, she had enough on her mind.
Wager glanced at the dim green pips of his watch: ten after midnight. Elizabeth was probably finishing up tonight’s neighborhood meet-the-candidates gathering about now; starting home in a few minutes. He’d promised to call her after this little adventure. If it didn’t take too much time, maybe he’d even drop by. All he’d had time to tell her over the phone was that he had some good news about the Neeley charges; she’d been heading out the door for her meeting, and he’d had a few things to take care of, too, so the call was brief. But she sounded almost as happy as he had felt and wanted to know more as soon as he could tell her.
So his mind was on that, though his ears were open for the sound of approaching feet, and his eyes watched the slide of each pair of headlights that crossed through the darkness of the small park. But the approaching, dark-clad figure moved almost soundlessly, and Wager didn’t hear anything until the muffled scrape of soft rubber soles on a gritty curb turned his head. The rider’s side—he was looming at the rider’s side again and then the night split into the orange-red spray of a shotgun blast—two, three of the hollow explosions and the ripping, slapping sound of lead thudding into the slouched figure.
Wager braced his arm on the parked car’s still warm hood. “Police—surrender!” And fired. The automatic bucked quickly twice. The flash of the first round showed him where to place the second. The figure with the shotgun swore and ran toward the park, pumping and firing as it ran, and Wager shot again, keeping his rounds low so they would not carry across the open space toward the dark homes beyond.
“Goddamn!” The figure tumbled, still firing. “Help me, BP—give me some cover, man!”
A second dark-clad figure stirred in a pool of shadow ten yards from where Wager crouched, and the hot, flashing glare of the automatic weapon shoved him up against the car. The vehicle quivered like a living thing as rounds punched into it, and Wager could smell the sudden, pungent odor of spilling gasoline. The MP-5 sprayed again, glass shattering in chips and beads and stinging Wager’s hand that gave thin shelter to his face and eyes. Orange sparks of glowing steel bounced like angry fireflies across the asphalt. The car lurched again and then rose off its springs with a lung-pressing roar as the gasoline torched into a sheet of yellow-blue flames. Wager, rolling frantically from the billow of exploding fumes, tried to scramble to the safety of darkness, but the crack and whine of slugs ripped through the roaring glare of the fire, and he did not think he would make it.
Crawling, rolling, slapping at the flame that whipped like a hot flag from his coat sleeve, he heard the high-pitched crack of a rifle, then a second round, then the rattle and flash of the automatic weapon stopped and there was only the deep, windy roar of the flaming car.
Wager, nostrils pinched against the smell of gas fumes, the stink of burned cloth and hot metal, the mix of oil and steam from the still-smoking car, stared at the pillows that had been wrapped in a blanket and placed behind the wheel of his vehicle to look like a slouching man. Golding, carrying the .308 rifle with its laser scope, peered in through the other window.
“Lord, Gabe. He would have really had your ass this time!”
The hard glare of searchlights from the clattering firetrucks washed out the erratic red-white-blue flash of surrounding police vehicles and made the shredded holes in the blanket look almost colorless. The scorch of gunpowder showed up as dark smudges, and through the holes, spongy wads of filling looked vaguely like torn flesh. “Ball Peen came damn close to it with that MP-five. What the hell took you so long?”
“He was running toward you and shooting. It’s harder than hell to keep that laser dot on a running target. I don’t care what they tell you on the range.” He added, “I’m sorry about it, though. Really.”
“OK, Maury, no harm done.” Not to Wager, anyway. Ball Peen was dead: the .308 elk round had ripped through his lungs and heart and put him in the dirt where he belonged. Hastings was only wounded—once in the side and once in the knee.
Screaming first for a doctor and then for his lawyer even as the ambulance attendants loaded him up. And, of course, two police cars suffered a little damage—Wager’s from bullets and Golding’s from burning up. Chief Doyle would not be overjoyed when that report landed on his desk in the morning. But Wager was damned if he was going to use his own car to stop any more bullets; his insurance was high enough. “You made a good shot, Maury. I’m glad I’m here to thank you.”
“Yeah, well …” Golding shrugged modestly. “Maybe I should eat more carrots for my night vision.”
They watched the gurney with its rubber sheet rattle past on its way to the second ambulance.
Golding wagged his head. “You were right, Gabe. Hastings was the kind of guy who just couldn’t quit when he was ahead.”
Wager, thinking more of Julio, of Arleta Hocks, than of Hastings or Ball Peen, said, “Yeah.”
Golding started unscrewing the night scope from the rifle. “You think Hastings will cop to killing Julio?”
“What’s he have to gain? We’ll have to argue circumstantial evidence on that one—motive and opportunity.” But tonight’s criminal attempt at murder was a class-three felony, and even Heisterman wouldn’t be able to get Hastings off the hook on this one. And Wager—Kolagny or no—would make sure all the aggravating circumstances, including Julio’s death, were aired at the sentencing. It wasn’t the nice, neat ending you got on those TV detective shows, and the paperwork for tonight’s fun and games was just beginning, but Wager was satisfied.
Golding gently placed the scope in its case and stared for a long moment at the blasted pillows in Wager’s car.
“I was thinking it’s too bad the Lucero kid can’t come back and testify. But”—he wagged a thumb at the torn pillows—“in a way you did. I mean, Hastings must have thought you were gone, Gabe.”
Wager nodded. He was thinking of Elizabeth, too, and wondering if it was too late to call her. Maybe not. Maybe she would be still awake, worried and anxious to hear from him. In fact, he was certain she was.
“Speaking of which, I read about this guy lives up in the mountains behind Boulder. He’s into cryogenics. You know, freezing a body until science comes up with a cure for what killed it.” He snapped the locks on the scope and hoisted the .308 to his shoulder like a successful hunter coming down from the hills. “He has his own grandfather on ice. Wouldn’t that be something? Be able to bring a member of your family back from the dead?”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Gabe Wager Novels
CHAPTER 1
EARLY MARCH IN Denver is a time when the trees, on one cold and windy day, are still bare with winter, and on the next—though the wind is just as sharp—are suddenly swollen with buds and timid leaves. And everyone shakes their heads at the foolishness of the early bloomers because winter hasn’t finished yet and more snow, the heavy, wet, limb-breaking kind, is bound to come.
That thought rode on the others that filled Gabe Wager’s mind as he listened to Captain Melrose finish thumbing through the whispery pages of the homicide detective’s official life.
“Any personal reasons why you can’t leave Denver for a few days, Detective Wager?”
There weren’t. No major reason, anyway. Elizabeth wouldn’t be overjoyed about it, but she would understand. That was one of the benefits of going with somebody whose professional life demanded as much time as his own: a city-council person understood what it took to do the job.