Remote Control

by Stephen White

  “Of course. You have fun. Go watch your privacy get trampled.”

  A detective Alan didn’t recognize broke away from the group that was huddled outside his front door and started down the path that led to the tackhouse, Peter’s old studio.

  Alan called out for him to stop. The studio was on Adrienne’s property, not Alan and Lauren’s. There was no way the cop had any legal right to examine it or search it. Alan didn’t want them discovering the window that Emma had broken.

  But the detective either didn’t hear Alan or didn’t care about his warning.

  Adrienne wasn’t so timid. She jumped on her John Deere, which was parked nearby, powered it up, and aimed it straight at the detective, whose hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. Three times she flashed the beady little headlights of the tractor, while she laid on the horn as though she was intent on warning the officer about the imminence of Armageddon.

  The detective raised his head and stopped, startled at the artillery that was approaching him. Before she pulled the tractor to a halt a few feet from him, he had backed off into a drift that reached to his waist. He asked what the fuck she thought she was doing. Adrienne responded in kind, and they proceeded to have a loud and heated discussion about the limitations of search warrants and about whose property actually belonged to whom.

  Adrienne eventually prevailed in the argument—she was louder, and she had the tractor—and the detective retreated back down the plowed trail to join his colleagues in the other search, the legal one.

  Alan walked across the lane and reluctantly went inside his house. After first asking permission from Scott Malloy whether he was allowed to sit, he collapsed on his favorite green leather chair and stared at the lights in the city. He was still wearing his coat, and, despite his intention to stay observant, he found it incredibly hard to keep from dozing off.

  For the next half hour Adrienne patrolled the courtyard with John Deere, daring any of the authorities to cross the line onto her property.

  When he wasn’t keeping an eye on the cops, Cozier Maitlin was keeping an eye on Adrienne. He was beginning to enjoy her mildly deviant approach to the world.

  When Sam Purdy left Alan and Cozy in Alan’s car on the Mall, he returned to his department Tempo to wait for orders. Sam didn’t relish his current role, which basically involved sitting around trying to stay both awake and warm until the brass decided whether or not he should assist with the execution of the search at Alan and Lauren’s house.

  Sam had already concluded that something smelled about the shooting Lauren was involved in and that something smelled about this latest shooting at the Mall.

  Radio traffic sucked his attention away from the fact that he was starving. A frantic adolescent was reporting a no-bodily-injury drive-by shooting up near Chautauqua.

  Sam considered the location of the shooting and allowed himself to conjure up some possibilities. He picked up his radio transmitter and told dispatch he’d be happy to respond to the scene. He thought the dispatcher sounded inordinately grateful.

  Sam took his time on the messy streets and by the time he arrived at the site of the latest incident, the kid was irate. He told Sam he was sure he was the innocent victim of a drive-by by some punks from Longmont with whom he’d had some trouble after a recent football game.

  Sam figured that what was more likely was that the kid’s windshield had been pocked by a stone. The resulting little chip in the glass had proceeded to grow from tiny pimple to bullet-size star when the mercury dropped precipitously with this damn storm. Happened all the time during cold weather in Colorado.

  The puky, pea-green crescent of paint exposed at the roofline of the car made Sam think he was looking at an old Mazda. No tire tracks scarred the flat sea of snow around it. But the snow was compacted in a long line that led from where the kid had shuffled up to the car from a nearby house and was flattened in an irregular pattern in the spot where the kid had stood while he scraped the windshield. Sam could see no sign that the car had been driven since shortly after the snow had started falling in torrents late the previous afternoon.

  He asked the kid, anyway. “What time did you say you parked here?”

  “Before dinner. It was just getting dark.”

  That was consistent, thought Sam. “Was it snowing?”

  “Not heavy, maybe some flurries.”

  Sam didn’t feel much like talking about the weather. Fatigue made him forgetful and it made him cranky. He reminded himself to be thorough. “You haven’t moved the car since then?”

  “No, I’ve been with my girlfriend all night. She lives there.” He pointed at her house.

  Sam couldn’t tell whether the kid was trying to be helpful or whether he was bragging.

  “Is this going to take long? If her parents come home and see me out here at this time of the morning, I swear, it’s not going to be pretty for anybody.” He plastered a “you know what I mean” smirk on his face in a manner that Sam found irritating. He wasn’t predisposed to feel much sympathy for the young man’s postcoital problems.

  “And this hole wasn’t here before, when you drove up?” Sam had his long flashlight focused on a small round crater in the windshield.

  “I told them that already. Don’t you people talk to each other? Jesus. How long is this going to take? I think I’d notice a bullet hole in the middle of my damn windshield.”

  Sam Purdy’s patience was exhausted. Gruffly, he said, “I don’t know if you’d notice a bullet hole in the middle of anything but your dick, wiseass. When I ask you a question, I want an answer, not evidence of your ignorance.”

  The kid stomped his boots, rubbing his gloved hands over his arms. “Can I get in my car? It’s freezing out here. I want to try to get warm.”

  “No, you can’t get in your car. Your car’s a goddamn crime scene. It’s mine, until I decide to give it back. You understand?” Sam was using the piercing eyes he usually reserved for felons.

  The kid said, “Jee-zus Christ.”

  “If you want to get warm, go sit in my car. Go ahead. Get in the back. Wait. Give me your keys and your license first.”

  The kid fumbled around in his jacket pocket before handing Purdy his driver’s license and a ring of keys the size of a monkey’s fist.

  Purdy tossed the wad of metal back, “Find me the right key. If it doesn’t open the trunk, get me that one, too.”

  While the kid wrestled with his car keys, Purdy was wishing that the Boulder Police Department owned a helicopter. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he was almost certain that this crappy Mazda’s windshield was pointing on a direct line toward Emma Spire’s driveway. If he had a helicopter, he knew he could determine, in about two seconds, if a straight line passed between the two points.

  He was guessing maybe a fifty-foot change in elevation. Adjust for trajectory and he was willing to bet that if he stretched a wire from Emma Spire’s driveway over the guy who almost croaked in the middle of the road, it would end at this guy’s Mazda. My shield for a helicopter, he thought.

  He trudged back to the car and found his street map of Boulder on the passenger seat under a two-day-old Burger King bag. He squinted and extended his arms until he was able to bring the tiny line indicating the street he was on into focus. Next, he found Emma Spire’s street and scratched a dot at the approximate location of Emma’s house and another at the location of the spot in the middle of the street where the guy with the bullet hole was run over by the car.

  With a pencil, he drew a line between those two points and continued the line straight to the next street. The penciled mark led him to the spot where he was sitting.

  He decided that the theory he was entertaining was possible. He ferreted out the implications and didn’t like them. Every damn scenario seemed to indicate that there was a second gun involved in whatever had happened up here with Lauren.

  He got on his radio and rousted his partner, Lucy Tanner, out of bed and told her to find a metal detector and bring him s
ome coffee.

  Sleepily, she told him to fuck off.

  He said, “Please,” gave her Emma’s address, and knew he would see her in twenty minutes.

  “We’re going for a ride,” Purdy announced to the kid in the Tempo as he pulled himself into the driver’s seat.

  “Where are you taking me? What the hell did I do?” The young man had completed a quick journey from feeling victimized by punks from Longmont to feeling victimized by the police.

  Purdy didn’t know what the hell to do with the kid. He couldn’t leave him with his damn car. The kid might do something stupid, like move it.

  “You didn’t do anything. You want to get to the bottom of this, don’t you? You and me are going to do some investigating. You can be like my sidekick. It wouldn’t be fair of me to leave you there with your dick hanging out for your young lover’s parents to find, would it?”

  Sam expected that the kid had all his adolescent antennae tuned to recognize when he was being patronized. He was right.

  “This is bullshit. Let me out of here. I’m the one whose car was trashed. You’re treating me like I’m the goddamn criminal. I’m a victim here.” He said the word as though the cop should consider it some kind of badge of honor.

  Purdy pressured his brakes until the ABS took over and eased the car to a stop. He rotated slowly in his seat until he was staring the smartass kid right in the face. “How old is the girl you been screwing? Maybe I should investigate that, see if maybe we have another crime worth considering?”

  Sam Purdy turned back to the business of navigating through the thick, heavy snow. He knew the twerp was done whining.

  Eighteen minutes after Sam’s call, Lucy drove up with the metal detector. She didn’t have the coffee he’d requested, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she wasn’t in a good mood.

  Sam walked over to the car.

  “Don’t say a fucking word, Sam. I was up late last night. Real late.”

  Sam said, “Luce, I’m way too tired to criticize. I’m still up late last night. Thanks for coming.”

  “You kidding me? You been up all night? You do look like shit. What’s going on?”

  He filled her in on the events of the evening, a concise version that would fit in USA Today.

  “So what’s this for?” She pointed at the metal detector on her passenger seat.

  “Need to find a cartridge casing under the snow. I know where to look.” He pointed at the adjacent driveway. “We start at the sidewalk and work our way up. That’s Emma Spire’s house, by the way.”

  “No shit? Is that important? Is she part of this?”

  Sam shrugged and pointed to his gut.

  Lucy nodded and got out of the car. She was wearing jeans that fit her like cellophane. They were tucked into the top of tan Sorels. Five minutes to get ready, or five hours, Lucy Tanner knew how to dress.

  Within minutes they had located the cartridge casing on the sidewalk. Sam instructed the officers who had been guarding the earlier scene to extend the boundary to include the sidewalk in front of Emma Spire’s house. He also called for CSIs to come back.

  Sam and Lucy and the adolescent headed back to the Mazda on the next block. This time it took Sam and Lucy ten minutes to find the bullet, which was embedded in the backseat cushion of the kid’s filthy car. Lucy taped off the area around the vehicle while Sam got patched through to the CSIs on the next block. He told them he had discovered a slug that he wanted recovered immediately.

  A crime scene investigator arrived and efficiently recovered the bullet from the Mazda and turned it over to Lucy. She lofted the evidence bag and said to Sam, “You think this is the bullet from Lauren’s gun?”

  “Yeah. Fits the facts. She shoots a warning shot up in the air. The trajectory carries it here. I want to go back and get some quick ballistics on the casing and the slug. See if they’re from Lauren’s gun. I think they will be. If they are, then we have to start looking for a second shooter.”

  “Lauren fired only one round? That’s certain?”

  “That’s the way it looks. Her weapon’s a little Glock. One round missing from the magazine.”

  “Do you know why she fired?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, I’d guess warning shot. Maybe accidental discharge. She has a lawyer. She’s not saying. There’s a reason though.”

  “And you and Scott are both convinced the victim was shot at close range?”

  “Burn marks on the victim’s coat are real tight. Forensics will bear it out. And that shell casing we found is—what would you say—maybe fifty feet from where the victim fell?”

  “At least, maybe more. So what are you saying? Was the guy hit here? Or someplace else?”

  “Good question, Luce.”

  She kicked some snow off her Sorels. “So if Lauren didn’t do it, who did?”

  He pointed at his belly again.

  She scoffed, “Emma Spire? I don’t want to hear it, Sammy. As a matter of fact, if your gut is right this time I’m going to tell everybody I never got out of bed this morning.”

  When her automatic garage door began to creak and clang as it slid up on its tracks, and when the overhead light flashed on, Adrienne grew concerned. When the sound of an engine cranking to life roared above the drone of her tractor motor, and the headlights of Emma’s car began to glow, Adrienne grew alarmed.

  The little John Deere tractor was built for stamina, not for speed, and Adrienne didn’t have enough time to get across the lane to intercept Emma before she pulled her car out of the garage and pointed it down the lane.

  Adrienne knew that she certainly couldn’t scream, “Emma, stop, don’t go,” in front of a dozen cops who were searching the county for her.

  The uniformed officer who had been assigned to monitor the maniacal woman who was driving the tractor saw the car coming out of the garage, and the bundled silhouette of someone behind the wheel, and yelled to Adrienne, “Who is that?”

  Adrienne answered, “That’s my baby-sitter,” before recovering her wits and saying, “What’s it to you? That’s my house. My garage. You have a warrant for that, too? If not…” She didn’t finish.

  Helplessly, she watched the taillights of Emma’s car disappearing down the road.

  Adrienne parked her tractor as close to Alan’s front door as she could, killed the engine, and stomped past two cops. She was looking for Alan or the tall lawyer to give them the news about Emma’s departure.

  They would not be pleased. She felt like a sentry who had failed her platoon.

  She found Cozy first. She whispered, “Our friend’s gone. Drove away. Where’s Alan?”

  Alan couldn’t figure any of it out.

  Adrienne was dressed head to toe in pink nylon and was shaking his shoulders telling him to wake up. A man who looked nine feet tall towered above her saying, “Come on now, wake up.”

  Alan’s dendrites were frayed. Whatever replenishment sleep was supposed to provide to the brain, he had enjoyed an insufficient amount. For a moment he wondered if he had suffered a concussion that he couldn’t recall.

  “What, what?”

  Adrienne leaned over and whispered. “She’s gone. I blew it. I’m sorry.”

  “Who’s gone?” Alan’s mind hadn’t even decided which volume of current reality Adrienne was discussing. He was still trying to remember who the tall guy was.

  Adrienne jerked her head in the direction of her own house. “You know.”

  “Emily ran away?” Alan’s heart sank. God, he couldn’t stand to lose another dog. Adrenaline jump-started his central nervous system.

  Adrienne said, “No, the other ‘she.’ Remember—at my house—lying on the couch? The one with the problem.”

  Emma.

  Oh God. The pieces came back, like successive images at a slide show. Lauren is in the hospital, under arrest. The tall guy is her lawyer. The cops are here—in my house—searching for God knows what. The optical disc is still missing.

  And now
Emma is gone.

  “What? How?”

  “She took her car, just drove away. I was on John Deere keeping the cops from my place. I didn’t think she’d run. I blew it. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “You didn’t blow it, Ren. I did. How many times can I misjudge somebody in one day?”

  Adrienne apologized twice more before going back home to be with her son. Cozy stayed to see the last of the cops out the door.

  Alan wanted to be alone. He also had a comforting urge to pick up the phone and page Sam Purdy and offer to meet him at the Village Coffee Shop for an early breakfast. He wanted to share a pot of bitter coffee or two and have a number five over easy with double hash browns and watch Sam eat a number three with sausage and a full stack of buttermilk pancakes. He wanted to tell Sam everything and get some advice about what to do. He wanted a friend.

  Instead he had Cozy Maitlin.

  Cozy said a final good-bye to Scott Malloy and suggested that the cop go home and get some sleep as he watched the parade of police vehicles slide back down the lane.

  Cozy said, “No bloody socks in the bedroom. That’s a relief.”

  Alan said, “I have to find Emma, Cozy. I think she’s in serious jeopardy.”

  “Are you speaking as a psychologist—or as an amateur lawyer?”

  “Both, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re running out of places to look for Emma.”

  “We need to think of new ones, then. We need to anticipate what she’ll do.”

  “She can’t hide, Alan. By morning the press is going to be on this like white on rice. They’ll find Emma for us in the next few hours. They or the cops.”

  “I’m afraid they’ll find her dead, Cozy.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. But right now, I think our attention, yours and mine, needs to be on getting your wife out of custody. Emma’s welfare is secondary.”

  Alan was thinking about his wife’s welfare. “Lauren’s getting what she needs in the hospital. She’s exactly where she’d be even if she wasn’t under arrest. She didn’t shoot anybody. Her legal mess will turn out all right as soon as we find Emma and the damn disc. I feel…totally confident about that. Right now our focus has to be on finding Emma.”