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Get Lost

Page 19

by Robert D Kidera


  I had the large flashlight in my jacket pocket and a .38 in my hand. Enough. I crept ahead toward the outer rim of the ancient settlement’s walls.

  The adobe perimeter was uneven, four or even five feet high in some spots, little more than a single course of adobe brick elsewhere. I crouched behind one of the taller sections, afraid to lean against any wall lest it give way. I felt the urge to cry out and let the women know they were no longer alone. But I couldn’t risk alerting Wallace.

  I waited and listened. The wind rose. No other sound. I raised my head and looked around. A faint clang of metal against metal echoed from the center of the ruins. A hoarse, whispering voice broke through the darkness to my right. “Nai’ya, where are you?” It sounded too much like my own voice for comfort.

  Nai’ya called back. “Gabe? Is that you?” She was nearby and off to my left.

  The urge returned to call out in protest at my imposter. I caught myself. Better to approach in the darkness carrying the weapon of surprise.

  “Do you have a light?” The man’s voice to my right was closer now.

  “I’ll light our lantern. We’re in the ceremonial room near the center. Hold on.”

  I gripped my flashlight, but kept it inside my coat pocket. With my .38 in my right hand, I felt along for a gap in the wall, easing myself over a low pile of fallen bricks. I edged forward in a crouch.

  A spark of light twenty yards ahead grew and brightened. Brick walls took form as lantern light flooded the ruins.

  Nai’ya and Angelina huddled against the back wall of a circular, roofless outdoor room. There was a sound of footsteps. The two women glanced off to my right.

  Jacob Wallace leapt from the shadows into the lantern light. “At last,” he purred in satisfaction, like a man about to devour a hot meal on a cold night.

  Angelina screamed and buried her face in her mother’s coat.

  Nai’ya held her ground. “Leave us alone!”

  Wallace approached, and with each step his shadow grew on the wall behind her. He held a gun in one hand and had a foot-long knife cinched in his belt.

  “That’s far enough, Wallace!” I shouted from the darkness.

  He froze, still holding his gun on the two women. His eyes strained in my direction. Then, in a flash, he dashed behind them, using their bodies as his shield.

  I knelt behind a section of adobe wall and took the flashlight from my pocket. I switched it on and hurled it as far as I could across the expanse of the ruins. It twirled and cut a crazy pattern of light, a drunken flare dancing through a black sky.

  Wallace jerked his head toward the light and wasted a bullet on it in his momentary confusion. I scurried for twenty feet along the outline of the wall, then stopped.

  Wallace turned back to my original position and fired off another angry shot. I had the angle on him now. I aimed for his head.

  “Drop the gun!” I watched as he peered into the darkness again. “Do it now!”

  He spun behind Nai’ya. “I don’t think so, McKenna.” Angelina staggered out from behind her mother. Wallace held her hair in his fist and jerked her out toward the lantern light, his gun pressed against the side of her head.

  “I’ll give you five seconds to come out where I can see you. Hands in the air. Or this young lady dies. It’s your choice.”

  I stepped from darkness to shadow to light, hands above my head, my .38 still in my grasp. “Hear me out,” I yelled.

  “Drop the gun.”

  I flexed my legs, crouched, and placed the gun on the ground in front of me. Then I stood and stared back at him from twenty-five feet away. It wasn’t easy to sound calm, but I did my best. “Don’t be a fool, Wallace. Your partner is dead and the police are on their way.”

  Wallace jerked Angelina’s head back and she cried out in pain. He sneered. “You’re lying.”

  “I can prove it. But I need to reach into my pocket. Please.”

  Wallace just stared at me and pulled Angelina’s head back again with a violent tug.

  With my left hand held above my head, I inched my right hand into my jacket and fingered the bank check in my shirt pocket. I unfolded it ever so slowly and pulled it out. My gaze never left his face. I held the check out toward him.

  “Let the women go, Wallace.” I waved the piece of paper. “This is the bank check I took off your friend’s body. It’s yours. Half a million dollars. If you leave now, you can get away before the cops arrive.”

  Far off to my right, a police siren sounded. Damn. A flashing red light cut the darkness at the northern edge of the mesa.

  Wallace shot. His bullet whistled through my leather jacket just under my right arm. Angelina screamed and tore away from her captor. Nai’ya reached out and grabbed her.

  I dropped to the ground. My hand flew into my right side pocket and grabbed Jepson’s Beretta. I dove flat-out onto the sand and fired a single shot. Wallace grabbed his chest, dropping his gun while he fell. He twitched once and lay writhing on his back. His hands flailed about for his weapons. He tried in vain to pull the knife from his belt. Then he lay still.

  I scrambled to my feet and rushed forward. Both women recoiled as I drew near. I held the gun on Wallace and stood over his body. He stared at the sky until his face froze.

  The image of Estefan’s bloody face flashed through my mind. I took a slow, deliberate breath and shot out both of Jacob Wallace’s eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Beretta slipped from my fingers and landed in the sand at my feet. I felt my side and then my jacket. Wallace’s shot would cost me a new coat.

  I turned to the women. Angelina clung to Nai’ya, who stared at me with a wide-eyed mixture of disbelief and horror.

  “It’s over,” I managed to say. “You’re safe.”

  Neither one responded. They huddled closer. I felt an urge to move forward, yet I stepped back. This was not quite the introduction to my daughter I’d been hoping for.

  The siren grew louder. A flashing red brightness danced along the walls of Puye ruins. I looked at the Beretta on the ground. My own gun lay a few feet off to my left. While the patrol car drew near, I gathered up my .38 and slipped it into my pocket.

  A tribal police car skidded to a stop twenty-feet away, parallel to the nearest adobe wall. Onion jumped out first and raced to my side. He grabbed my arm and rested his other hand on the back of my neck. “You okay?”

  I shrugged.

  He looked at Wallace and then at the Beretta by my feet. “Jeezus.” In one continuous motion, he snatched it up to his waist and rubbed his shirttail over the grip and barrel. He dropped it to the ground a moment before Naranjo and another officer arrived. “Don’t worry,” he whispered to me.

  The sheriff turned his collar up and looked around. He knelt and checked out Wallace. He spotted the gun at my feet. He let it stay there. “Back away, McKenna.”

  I did just like he said.

  “Orosco,” Naranjo barked at his deputy, “shine the searchlight over here. Then look after the women. We’ll take their statements after they’ve had a chance to calm down a bit.” He edged closer to Onion and me. “Don’t say a word to each other.”

  My legs felt unsteady. I’d never killed anyone before. “May I sit down?”

  “Suit yourself.” He pointed to Onion. “You go wait over by my patrol car. I’m gonna need to talk to you, too.”

  Onion walked to the car. I glanced over at Nai’ya and Angelina who huddled and cried about fifteen feet away.

  Naranjo got on the police radio and ordered backup, an ambulance, and a medical investigator to come to the scene. When he finished calling in, he knelt next to the Beretta. “This yours?”

  “No.” I pointed to my pocket. “May I?”

  Naranjo’s hand moved toward his gun. “Go ahead.”

  “Mine’s a .38, Sheriff. Fully loaded.” I handed it to him, butt-first.

  “You got a license?”

  “In my wallet.” I fished out my concealed-carry permit, u
nfolded it and handed it over. My hand shook.

  Naranjo stood up, examined it and then put it in his pocket. “You won’t be needing this for a while.” He turned his back and slouched over the body. “You have any idea who this guy is?”

  “Jacob Gray Wolf Wallace. He’s wanted for questioning by APD and state police regarding three murders, a kidnapping, and an attempted murder. If you don’t believe me, just ask Sam—”

  “I’m aware of all that.” He looked down at the body and then back at me. “Just didn’t recognize him without his eyes. You say your gun is fully loaded? I count three bullet wounds here.” He sniffed the barrel of my gun. “And your gun has been fired recently.”

  “Wallace’s accomplice attacked me down by the Visitors Center.” I pointed south, over the edge of the mesa. “We exchanged gunfire. He’s down below on the tribal road.”

  “You claiming self-defense?”

  “The guy’s name is Charles Jepson. And yes, he shot at me first. Twice.” I lifted up the side of my jacket and let him see the bullet hole.

  Naranjo took hold of it and poked his finger through the ragged opening.

  “I fired off three or four rounds,” I continued. “One of them went through his cheek. My final shot caught his knee. I saw to his wounds. He was alive when I left him.”

  “We’ll check on all that when we get down there. When did you reload?”

  “Right after I shot him. Then I came up here.”

  Naranjo’s eyes narrowed. “How the hell did you get to the top of the mesa?”

  “I heard Nai’ya’s voice above my head. I thought she and Angelina were in danger. I took the shortest route to the ruins I had. Up the rock wall.”

  Naranjo looked at me like my hair was on fire and shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

  Over the sheriff’s shoulder, I caught Officer Orosco leading Nai’ya and Angelina back to the squad car. When they passed by, Nai’ya looked my way, her tears glistening in the beam from the patrol car’s searchlight.

  I gave her a weak thumbs-up. She turned away and passed into shadow. Ten seconds later, car doors opened and closed.

  Lights appeared in the north. A second squad car, an EMT vehicle, and another car with an unfamiliar insignia on its door came to a stop next to the sheriff’s car.

  Onion still stood nearby. He fidgeted and gave me a wave. I pointed to my eyes, then back to him and then toward Nai’ya and Angelina in the back seat of Naranjo’s patrol car. He nodded in return. I knew he’d look after them if the cops gave him any room.

  “Okay, McKenna.” Naranjo’s sharp tone snapped me back. “You and I are going down to check on that other guy.” He turned to the second patrol car. “Sanchez!”

  A diminutive officer stood by the second squad car. At the sheriff’s call, he scuttled back in and drove over to us.

  “Get in the back, McKenna. Wait for me,” Naranjo snapped.

  I slipped into the rear seat of the patrol car, staying close to the window and watching every move the sheriff made.

  He conferred with the EMT personnel. One of them hurried off to check on Nai’ya and Angelina. Two others walked over to Wallace’s body. A tall, gray-haired man in a white lab coat was already examining him. I figured it was a medical investigator, or coroner, or whoever handled that job around here.

  After five minutes, Naranjo lumbered back to the car and swung in next to me. Sanchez leaned against the cage behind his headrest. “Where to?”

  “Go out the service route the way we came. Hang a right at Puye Road.” He looked at me. “Both you and the other guys drove right past 608.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He laughed to himself. “The approach road to these mesa ruins. Ya’ll could have saved yourselves the climb up and down that rock face.”

  Sanchez interrupted Naranjo’s moment of satisfaction. “What should I do then, Sheriff?”

  “Keep going west on Puye until you find a couple of cars. We’re gonna check out McKenna’s report of a wounded man down there.”

  The search and headlights helped Sanchez navigate the steep curves of the road as it twisted down the northern slope of the mesa. I felt events closing in on me. Too many things to explain and not enough answers.

  Naranjo looked at me the way a cat looks at a half-dead mouse. “This should be interesting.”

  “What?” I asked, afraid of his answer.

  “The ballistics tests on your gun and Wallace’s. And that Beretta we found beside the body. We’ll run the prints too. You have anything you wanna tell me now?”

  “The Beretta belongs to Charles Jepson, the guy who fired at me on Puye Road. I shot him in self-defense. That’s the truth, I swear.”

  “Explain how his gun gets up to the mesa.”

  My mind raced. “He dropped the gun after I shot him. I bound up his wound with his scarf and took his gun with me up to the ruins.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There he is, Sheriff.” Sanchez pulled the squad car off to the edge of the gravel road.

  Naranjo glowered at me. “Get out.”

  I slid out behind him and followed both cops to Charles Jepson. He lay on the stairs unconscious, right where I’d left him. His skin looked pale in the glare of the headlights.

  An EMT van screeched to a halt behind us. Its crew bulled their way around us to Jepson. “Fuckin’ busy night for you guys,” Naranjo said after them.

  The first paramedic, a short, round man with dark hair, grunted and motioned us out of his way. He and a second man who could have been his twin crouched over Jepson and conferred in Spanish. A third member of their team arrived from their vehicle carrying a stretcher and straps.

  They tossed aside Jepson’s scarf and applied proper sterile wrapping to the man’s wounds.

  I shivered, then reached down and lifted the scarf off the ground. My first impulse was to wrap it around my neck, but I stopped. The light from the vehicles made it easier to see its true colors.

  Bingo.

  With the attention of the police and medical personnel diverted by Jepson’s condition, I snuck the scarf inside my jacket. “Sheriff, I have to get back to Albuquerque right away. A woman’s life is at stake.”

  Naranjo walked over and leaned his face to within an inch of mine. “Not a chance, Galahad.”

  “I’m pleading with you.”

  “No.”

  “Let me call Sam Archuleta.”

  He flashed a cold smirk. “I’m thinking about all the things I already have to charge you with. You need to make a phone call? Call your lawyer.”

  I felt the muscles tighten in the back of my neck. “If that girl dies, I’ll have your badge.”

  “You will, eh?” Naranjo gave me a glassy stare. “I’d be more likely to lose my badge if I let you go now. You’re at least a person of interest in this mess. And I have jurisdiction here, not Sam Archuleta. This is sovereign tribal land. You get that?”

  “Sheriff, please listen to me. What happened here tonight is connected to killings in Albuquerque, Northern New Mexico, and even New York City. The FBI is involved.”

  My words seemed to give Naranjo pause. “Really.”

  I pressed him. “Archuleta will vouch for everything I’ve said. You call him. Tell him Wallace is dead. It’ll settle his stomach.”

  Naranjo made a guttural sound. “Wait here.” He slouched back to the squad car, sat inside and talked for a while on the police radio. By the time he hung up, my stomach felt the way it had back at the hospital.

  “Archuleta confirms what you said. Wants you to call him pronto. Wants everything that you know.”

  “See?”

  “He also said that if I felt like holding you for a couple of days, he’d understand. Says you have a habit of going off half-cocked. Says you like to take things into your own hands.”

  “But Sheriff, I have to get back to Albuquerque. I’ve got to be the point man on this.”

  “So, now you’re Mr. Indispensable?” Naranjo look
ed at Sanchez. Their laughter made me shake.

  “Look,” I said at last, “I give you my word. I’ll be back here within twenty-four hours. Then you can arrest me, lock me up, and do whatever you want.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  I thought for a second and then reached into my wallet. I took out the bank check, unfolded it and handed it to Naranjo. “Here’s half a million reasons. That’s a bank check drawn on my personal account. Says it right on the bottom there.”

  He took out a flashlight and examined both sides of the check. “Is this real?”

  “As real as you are. If I’m not back here in twenty-four hours, I’ll forfeit that entire amount. The Pueblo can keep it for all I care. Satisfied?”

  Naranjo’s face soured. He scratched at his neck. “I dunno…”

  “Let me go, Sheriff. Call Sam back. He knows all about the check.”

  He drew a line in the sand with the toe of his boot. “Okay, McKenna. Twenty-four hours. Then you get back here. Bring your lawyer. Try anything and your ass is mine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I pulled onto the shoulder of the Interstate just south of Santa Fe and took out my phone. “Sam. It’s Gabe.”

  “Where the hell are you and what have you been up to?”

  “On my way back to Albuquerque. You and I are about to solve all of these killings.”

  “What?”

  “Jacob Wallace is dead.”

  “Naranjo told me.” Sam’s lighter clicked.

  “His partner Charles Jepson is now in custody.”

  “Where’d you find him? Never heard of the guy.”

  “You weren’t supposed to. He’s been a silent partner in this all along. But we have bigger fish to fry now. Meet me at my house in half an hour. I’ll explain everything.”

  “You’d better. You managed to piss off Naranjo pretty good. I’m surprised he let you go.”

  “He’ll be shaking my hand tomorrow. And you’ll be getting a promotion.”

  “Terrific.” He said it like I’d just promised him a root canal.

  “Listen, I need you to do me one favor.”

  “You usually do.”

  “I need to be wired when we move in on the ring leader.”

 

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