by CJ Petterson
“Not at Evan’s office. At my house. I need my car,” she said and headed toward the door.
“Hard-headed … ” He grabbed his keys and followed her out.
Sully thumbed in Griebe’s speed-dial number while he backed out of the drive. He spun the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and headed down the street.
“Frank, I’m on my way to meet Pete. The alpha female is going on a little info hunt at the sheriff’s office. She’ll be headed your way when she’s through there.”
While he listened to Griebe’s response, he glanced at her. She mouthed the words, “Alpha female.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sully squealed into Mirabel’s driveway and rocked the car into park. “Stay here while I check it out,” he said and slammed the car door.
“What for? You made enough noise for an army. If there was anyone in the house, they’re gone now.”
“That was the idea. Wait here, anyway.” He unlocked the front door then pulled his gun and let it anchor his hand at his thigh. He looked at Mirabel and stepped in. Mirabel was on the porch when he reappeared.
Sully draped a hand over her shoulder and leaned his face close to hers. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
Mirabel nodded then realized Sully intended to kiss her. She stepped back and slipped her hand up in front of his mouth. “That was last night.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “When you needed me.”
“When we needed each other.”
He looked at her for a long few moments. “Of course.” He stepped back and pointed a forefinger at her. “Evan’s office and then Frank. And stay there. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Whatever you say,” she said and held up three Girl Scout pledge fingers.
Mirabel had the front door locked before Sully left the driveway. Darting into the bedroom, she stripped to her underwear and made a quick check of the bandage on her thigh. She stuck her head under the faucet and combed her hair into place with her fingers. After she freshened her breath with a swipe of toothpaste, she stroked a layer of sunscreen over her reddened face — courtesy of her time in the desert.
Digging around in her bedroom closet, she saw how desperately she needed to wash clothes. If it wasn’t an old lab coat, it wasn’t there. A pair of Levi’s that looked wearable lay on the floor near the bed, and she found a white Henley knit shirt hanging on a hook on the closet door. She sniffed at it. The scent of Dove soap was still noticeable.
“It’ll do,” she murmured. She grabbed her waist pack, cellphone, and keys then climbed into her new, bought-used pickup, cranked the ignition, and backed out of the garage.
As soon as she shifted into second gear, she checked her watch and grinned like she’d just won a foot race. Twenty-five minutes after Sully dropped her at her door, she was driving down the street. Her hair dripped water down the back of her neck, but she knew the wind through the open windows would dry her curls before she reached the sheriff’s office.
• • •
Sully spotted Ridley’s car parked beside the dusty road that led to the train station. He cut the engine and rolled in behind the Camaro. He had a couple hundred yards of empty ground to cross to reach the platform. There were no trees, no high brush, no buildings to use for cover. He looked accusingly at the bright sky — he didn’t even have the cover of darkness. After a final check, he covered the distance stooped almost in half, zig-zagging as he ran.
The old depot building was a one-story rectangle with clapboard siding. The sun had bleached the boards gray except for a few patches of brownish paint. The building listed to one side, the peak of the roof sagging like the back of an old horse. He ignored the stairs at either end. Placing his hands between the nail heads that protruded like booby-traps above the weathered and warped planks, he hoisted himself onto the passenger platform.
Sully stripped off his Ray-Bans and set them on the platform. He darted to the wall, braced his back against it, and examined the surroundings. Several of the one-by-six boards meant to barricade the empty window frames had fallen or been torn off and lay strewn across the platform. The double door in the middle of the building was secured by a rusted chain and padlock. He knelt next to the nearest window and peeked between the two boards that still crisscrossed the opening.
A face abruptly appeared in front of him then disappeared. Sully grunted, brought up his SIG, and slammed back against the wall. Seconds later, the face registered. It belonged to Ridley. “Don’t do that,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re about to get yourself shot.”
“Back at you,” Ridley said softly. “Briggs is stashed behind the ticket counter.”
“Where’s Saint John?”
“Not here.”
“Damn! Mirabel’s in the open, headed to Evan’s office. Karadzic?”
“Not sure.”
“We got to get this done now,” Sully hissed.
“The door on the end is open.”
Sully found a wood-framed screen door leaning awkwardly ajar, held to the structure by a single bottom hinge. Its torn, rusty metal screening hung in strips. The destroyed keyway on the jamb revealed the windowless entry door had been kicked open. Sully squeezed sideways past the screen door and stepped inside.
He waited while his eyes adjusted to the dimness. Then he moved along the perimeter of the empty room where passengers had once sat in rows of pews listening for the wail of a train. The wooden hulk was a perfect hiding place for snakes and scorpions.
He stepped over a pile of debris and glanced around before he took another. His face touched a web. Spiders! He grunted softly and jerked back, frantically wiping sticky threads off his lips.
He crept to a position next to the counter. A few seconds later, he peered over the counter and looked around.
Ridley raised his head above an overturned table on the far side. He pointed to the ticket counter then ducked out of sight again.
Sully was breathing with his mouth open. The inside of the building was as hot as a brick pizza oven. His heart raced. Rivulets of perspiration trickled past his temples. Briggs could be dead of heat stroke by now, he thought.
Sully watched for Ridley to poke up again then he held up two fingers. When he saw Ridley nod, he folded one finger then the other. When his hand closed into a fist, he vaulted the ticket counter, kicking out the uprights that had once held glass. He landed in a crouch on the other side. Ridley slammed his shoulder against the counter door, splintering it, pushed through, and rolled up on one knee. Their guns swept the space.
Ray Briggs lay curled into a tight fetal ball.
Sully touched his shoulder to roll him back. His eyes were closed, one eyebrow was caked with blood, and a ripening bruise covered his cheek. His left hand was scraped, two fingers bent into a painful angle. “Ray?”
Briggs blinked open his eyes but couldn’t seem to focus.
“Ray, you know who I am?”
“Sully,” he said and nodded.
“You alone?” Ridley asked.
“I think so,” Briggs said through puffy lips. “How’d you find me?”
“Can’t hide in a small town,” Ridley said. “There’ll always be someone who’s seen you or knows someone who has.”
Sully nodded to Ridley, and they lifted Briggs to his feet. Sully slipped Briggs’s arm over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of this sweat box.” Ridley took the other arm, and they walked Briggs out of the building. Once on the platform, Sully supported the wobbly dentist while Ridley went for the Camaro.
“Take him to the hospital in Placerville,” Sully said when he had helped Ridley lay Briggs across the back seat. “I’m headed to the sheriff’s office,” he called over his shoulder as he ran for the Jeep. “I’ve got to get to Mirabel before Saint John does.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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p; Mirabel’s pickup stuttered to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office. She hopped out and left the vehicle straddling two head-in parking spaces. As soon as she entered the door, she spotted the Barbie-sized Esther Lee leaning over the shoulder of rotund and grandmotherly Tina Hall at the gray-and-black computer table that served as a dispatch cum receptionist desk. The dissimilarity between the two women was startling. A thirty-key telephone occupied the right corner of the desk, and the keyboard and large-screen monitor of a black, IBM computer filled up the other corner. Tina pecked at the keys with two forefingers, using the powerful electronic workstation like an old manual typewriter.
Mirabel’s eyes flicked toward the floor-to-ceiling, six-by-six-foot wire cage that served as a holding cell in the middle of the room. She was relieved it was unoccupied.
Her focus shifted to Evan’s scarred mahogany desk near the back of the room, and it struck her that she would truly miss him. Though several days’ worth of newspapers lay in a pile on the floor, and the wastebasket was overflowing, the desk was relatively organized. File folders, the red ones he designated for his active cases, rested in neat piles around the perimeter of the desk. The calendar pad that occupied the middle of the desk was free of paperwork. She remembered that each month, he’d adorned the squares around the dates with his notes and screwy doodles scribbled in red, green, and blue ink. A hand-molded clay ashtray that Tina’s grandson had decorated in shiny blue acrylic with yellow spots sat on a corner of the desk. It had been wiped clean, but the stale odor of Evan’s cigar smoke still clung to the air.
The deputy straightened and spoke without warmth. “Dr. Campbell.”
Mirabel understood her presence was not welcome. “Deputy Lee. Sorry to interrupt. Hello, Christina.” Mirabel didn’t think the gray-haired dispatcher looked like a “Tina,” and she couldn’t make herself use the familiar nickname.
Tina brushed tears from her reddened eyes. “Are you here about Evan?” she asked in her reedy voice.
Mirabel nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
Mirabel was used to Tina’s face having the appearance of the crackle paint the woman used in her ceramics class. But in her grief, and without makeup, Tina looked aged beyond her sixty-plus years. “You doing okay, Christina?”
Tina sniffled. “I can’t believe he’s gone, you know?” she said.
“Me neither.”
“I worked for him ever since he got elected sheriff. Evan was a good man with good intentions. Came in like a real tornado, you know, but he didn’t know diddly about how to operate a sheriff’s office or anything. I even had to train him how to use the car mic, you know?”
“I know.” Mirabel moved her hand in a gentle circle in the middle of Tina’s rounded back.
Tina grabbed a tissue out of a nearby box and wiped her nose. “Deputy Lee was just helping me finish the incident report.”
Mirabel turned to the deputy. “Did you find out anything about Evan’s death?”
“Like what?” Esther asked.
“Like anything. Like how did he die?”
“In a car crash.”
“Jonas said Evan called in, said he was chasing a speeder” — Tina dabbed at her eyes — “in a white Mercedes. He said he was about to break off when — ” Her words disintegrated into sobs.
“Do you really think it was an accident?” Mirabel said.
“You should finish the report,” Esther said to Tina and turned to Mirabel. “Why wouldn’t I think it was an accident?”
“Because Evan makes three.”
“Three what?”
“Three of my friends who’ve either died or gone missing in the past week and a half,” Mirabel said.
“You speak of a conspiracy?”
“Well, they certainly weren’t coincidences.”
“I find nothing connecting Mr. Harbin and Dr. Briggs,” Esther said. “The plane crash was an accident. Pilot error.”
“That’s not true. I was there. The engine exploded.”
The deputy lifted her shoulders in a little shrug, silently disputing Mirabel’s claim. “Evan died in a car crash while doing his duty. If we find the driver of the other car, we will arrest him. Evan had told me Dr. Briggs is on vacation, and I am to talk to him when he comes back. So you see, there is no exotic conspiracy.”
Mirabel examined her car keys. “Evan told me he changed his mind about Ray being on vacation. He admitted to me that Ray might have been kidnapped.” She hoped her eyes wouldn’t reveal she knew more than she was saying, that she knew where Briggs was, that Sully and Pete Ridley were on their way to rescue him.
“I do not want to call you a liar, Dr. Campbell, but Evan did not mention this to me.”
Mirabel felt her jaw tighten. “Maybe he didn’t have time to tell you.”
Esther walked to Evan’s desk and sat down in the black leather executive chair. The oversized chair dwarfed her small frame as she leaned back and played absently with a ballpoint pen.
Mirabel tensed at the sight of the deputy assuming Evan’s position. You arrogant little — Evan had never been what Mirabel would call a close friend, but for some reason, she bridled at Esther Lee’s actions.
The deputy carefully placed the pen beside the telephone and leaned forward, knitting her fingers together over the desk pad. “Tell me, Doctor, what it is that you think puts your friends in danger?”
Mirabel looked at her car keys again, unclenched her teeth, and shrugged. “Maybe it has something to do with my research.”
“You know what I think, Dr. Campbell? I think you have a child’s vivid imagination. I think you’re trying to use these tragedies to place yourself into the center of attention.”
“That’s garbage!” Mirabel smacked her hand down hard on the desk. “You need to get off your — ”
“Mirabel,” Tina called, her hands fluttering, her voice quaking more than usual.
“What?” Mirabel snapped and was immediately sorry. This twit goading me is not Christina’s fault. “Sorry, Christina. What do you need?”
“Um, do you want me to call you when the coroner’s report comes in?” Tina asked.
“Dr. Campbell does not need to know the details,” Esther Lee said.
“But she — ”
“Never mind, Christina,” Mirabel said. She brushed her palms together to remove some imaginary dirt. “How about Evan’s funeral arrangements?” she said. “Can you tell me about those, or does Deputy Lee consider those also need-to-know?” She watched the deputy as she lobbed the barb.
Esther Lee’s eyelids slid down, and her face froze into an impassive mask.
“Of course not,” Tina chirped. “I mean, yes, of course I can. Evan’s wife called this morning. She’s going to arrange a memorial service as soon as the coroner in Sacramento is finished. Darlene said it’ll be a closed casket, of course.” Tina sniffled. “The church auxiliary is getting the food together for the wake.”
Mirabel handed her a fresh tissue and laid her hand gently on the woman’s shoulder. “Do you have anything on Dan’s arrangements?” she asked softly.
“Oh, dear, I almost forgot,” Tina said. She reached for a pale green steno pad, flipped over a page, and read, “Evan said ‘tell Mirabel and Sully Dan’s brother is making arrangements. Dan is eligible for burial at Arlington Cemetery in Washington, D.C., you know, but he wants to be cremated. He also wants his ashes cast over the side of an aircraft carrier. The USS Hornet.’”
Mirabel almost smiled at the sentiment. “Where and when?”
Tina ran a pale pink fingernail over her notes again. “Here it is. The ship is dry-docked at Pier 3 on Alameda Point. And it’ll take two or three weeks to get the request approved. That’s all Evan gave me,” she said, “except for a phone number for Dan’s brother. Here, I’ll write it down for you. His name is John.”
She sniffled while she scribbled on the steno pad, tore off half a page, and then handed the piece to Mirabel.
Mirabel glanced at the deputy and opened the door to leave. “Take good care, Christina. Let’s get together soon.”
Mirabel stepped up into the pickup, pulled the seatbelt across, and buckled it. She sat with her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel for a long moment. She smiled grimly at her reflection in the rearview mirror and slipped on her sunglasses. “Well, Deputy Lee, Sully sent me to ferret out information on Evan’s death.” She palmed the ball knob of the floor shift and backed into the street. “And you are not going to stop me.”
She popped the clutch, the tires squealing a protest at her jackrabbit start, and she headed for Sacramento and the coroner’s office. She didn’t see the black Expedition pull in behind her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Five miles into her trip to Sacramento, Mirabel glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted Sully’s Jeep closing in behind her. She groaned when she remembered she’d promised him she’d head home when she left the sheriff’s office. She knew he’d be ticked. She braked harder than she intended and slid to a stop on the highway’s gravel shoulder. She shifted into neutral, rested her forehead on the wheel, and let the engine idle while she waited.
He pulled up alongside. “Park it and get in,” he barked.
“Is that one of those orders I’m supposed to follow without question?” She tried to keep her tone teasing, but he didn’t buy it.
“You got it.” He rolled past her door so she could open it.
She climbed into the Jeep and buckled in. “Where’s Ray?”
“With Ridley,” he said as he turned the car around. “The kicker is that Saint John wasn’t with him. He’s on your trail. I spotted his Expedition between you and me, but I lost it. They must’ve turned off-road and stopped, because I couldn’t spot a dust trail.”
At the news that Saint John had been that near, she felt a rush of fear and understood why Sully was angry. She rubbed the crease she found between her eyes. “Is Ray all right?”