by J. A. Jance
“Sounds feasible,” B. said before adding, “Oops, getting a call back. Bye.”
By the time Ali was off the phone, Cami was already returning the damaged cell phone to the evidence bag. “It’s a burner,” she said in answer to Ali’s unasked question. “I sent Stu the model info so he can start looking for point of purchase, but given the circumstances I’m not going to attempt to get inside it without better equipment and a search warrant.”
Ali nodded. “Right,” she said.
After all, High Noon’s responsibility was to their client. Sheriff Brady had a homicide to solve. In order for the information on the phone to be usable in court, it had to be legally obtained with a properly filed search warrant.
Cami’s iPad and Ali’s phone both began pinging with incoming messages as Stu’s data-mining efforts yielded results. Glancing through them, Ali saw Hans Holzmann’s home address for two separate residences, several phone numbers and e-mail addresses, as well as the license information on four different vehicles, one of which Ali recognized as a very pricey Mercedes, along with an equally pricey Range Rover.
Ali glanced at Cami. “U.S. Customs must be paying their employees very well these days.”
Cami nodded. “Look at these property tax records. There are two separate houses, one in Palm Desert and another in Rolling Hills, California. The taxes on either one of those are more than I make in a year. How big do you suppose the mortgages are?”
“More than Mr. Holzmann could handle with his government salary alone,” Ali suggested. “And if he already has a ‘retirement’ home in Palm Desert, why would he want to use shipping containers to construct another one on his father’s property here in Arizona?”
“Good question,” Cami said.
Stu’s information continued to pour in at breathtaking speed. Hans Holzmann had been arrested once for DUI in his early twenties. His transcripts from Cochise College and Arizona State University showed up, as did his discharge papers from the U.S. Army, in which he had served with honor during Desert Storm. He was married with two children, one of whom had graduated from college, and the other was currently enrolled as an honors student at UCLA.
“What we have here is a crook who is evidently a decent husband and father,” Ali observed. “Go figure.”
Sheriff Brady returned to the room. “What’s happening?” she asked.
“We’re getting a ton of information on Hans Holzmann, but so far nothing particularly useful.”
“And the phone?”
“Cami looked at it but didn’t try to get inside. You’ll need a warrant,” Ali answered.
“We’ll have one,” Joanna answered. “Did you hear anything back on the satellite—”
Sheriff Brady’s question was interrupted by the ringing of Ali’s phone. Ali listened for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Send it to me and to Cami, but let me get Sheriff Brady’s e-mail address for you so she can have it, too.”
Joanna reeled off her e-mail address and then hurried over to the oversized computer monitor on Dave Hollicker’s desktop. By the time Ali’s e-mail account alerted her to a new message, Joanna had opened a mail screen on Dave’s computer. Moments later the same image appeared on the screens of all three devices: Ali’s phone, Cami’s iPad, and Dave’s desktop. At first only a grid pattern was visible, but gradually pieces of brownish desert landscape appeared in an out-of-focus haze before changing into something more understandable. Once the image finished resolving itself, the clarity was amazing. Ali saw a house with what appeared to be a tin roof. Nearby were two more structures. One looked like a barn with a corral out back. The other appeared to be a tin-roofed two-car garage.
“Stu says we need to scroll over north and east from the house,” Cami said, “closer to the base of the mountains.”
Joanna found the shipping containers first. “Holy crap!” she exclaimed. “Not only are the shipping containers there, look at those trucks!”
Working on a smaller screen, Ali took longer to locate that part of the image. When she did, she saw that the shipping containers—five of them in all—were lined up end to end along a dirt track. Parked perpendicularly to each container, about where the door opening should have been, was a bright yellow box truck very much like the one that had come to grief in the bed of the San Pedro River early that morning.
“How long ago was this taken?” Sheriff Brady demanded. Ali had to move away from the image in order to call B., pass along the sheriff’s question, and then relay the answer.
“This one was taken a little over an hour ago.”
As Ali delivered B.’s message, a little red-haired dynamo sprang into action. Joanna made for the door and dashed down the hall, barking orders into her shoulder-mounted radio as she went.
“Dispatch, I want all westbound traffic on Highway 92 stopped at Melody Lane and all eastbound traffic stopped at that new steakhouse in Palominas ASAP. Call out the tactical operations team. Any of members of the TAC team currently on the far side of the San Pedro should assemble in the parking lot at the restaurant, where Deputy Stock will be the incident commander. Everyone else should proceed to the intersection of Highway 92 and Melody Lane. Lights but no sirens. No telling how far sound travels over the desert, and we don’t want them to know that we’re coming. Once officers arrive at their designated locations, they’re to set up roadblocks and deploy as many spike strips as they have available. We need to shut these guys down.”
The conversation was briefly out of Ali’s earshot as Joanna ducked into her office. “Yes,” she was saying when Ali followed her inside. “If this is related to the earlier incident, we may be dealing with automatic weapons. We need to stop these guys, but we also need to be safe. That means that nobody is to show up at either roadblock without a Kevlar vest. We believe the suspects will be driving a convoy of yellow box trucks loaded with contraband.”
Inside the office, Joanna paused long enough to don her own vest.
“If the image is from an hour and a half ago, will we be in time?” Ali asked.
“ ‘We’?” Joanna repeated. “Did you hear what I just said? I want my TAC team, my emergency response guys out there. No civilians. Period!”
Cami appeared in the doorway to Joanna’s office, iPad in hand. “Excuse me, Sheriff Brady, but I think you’re going to need us. Mr. Simpson has asked the pilot of our chartered helicopter to do a single fly-over of the site and relay what he sees back to me, including—with any luck—some video footage. He’s on his way there now. As the crow flies, he’s probably less than ten minutes out.”
“He’s sending video footage to you?”
Cami nodded. “That’s the plan.”
Joanna looked first at Cami, then at Ali. Finally, with a sigh of defeat, she relented. “All right, then,” she agreed. “The two of you can ride along, but both of you are to stay in the car, well back from the roadblock. Understand?”
• • •
Ali wanted to object but didn’t. Instead, she climbed into the front passenger seat of Joanna’s Yukon without a word. For one thing, the sheriff was right. Ali had her trusty Glock along, right there in her small-of-back holster, but in a matchup against an AK-47 or something of a similar caliber, the handgun would have all the firepower of a slingshot. As for going into a firefight without wearing Kevlar vests? That would be downright stupid.
The Yukon left the back parking lot of the Justice Center leading a parade of five or six other vehicles, all of them traveling fast with lights flashing but no blaring sirens. Cami sat in the backseat staring at her iPad and seemingly willing something to show up on the screen. Ali watched warily as the Yukon’s speedometer headed for the stratosphere, making her wish Joanna would pay more attention to her driving and less to her radio.
“Is Deputy Stock on the scene in Palominas?”
“He’s about five minutes out,” the dispatcher said. Ali
thought the dispatcher’s name was Larry, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Can you patch me through to him?”
“Hang on.”
Moments later a different voice came through the radio. “Deputy Stock here.”
“When you set up your roadblock, I want it to go from fence line to fence line,” she said. “Don’t deploy the spike strips until you’re sure all oncoming traffic has been stopped. Try to lay them out as far to the west of the roadblock as possible, out of sight of it if possible. It’ll be better if they hit the spikes before they see you.”
“You want strips laid out on the shoulders, too?”
“Absolutely, but only if you have enough,” Joanna answered. “Otherwise they might try driving around. We need these guys stuck on rims before they hit either of the roadblocks.”
By then Ali noticed they were speeding along beside what was evidently a huge mine tailings dump. Up ahead, Ali could see buildings on either side of the highway. Ali and Cami had come this route earlier on their way to the Justice Center. Knowing they were fast approaching the town itself as well as a complicated roundabout, Ali was more than ready for Sheriff Brady to lift her lead foot off the damned gas pedal . . . which she did, but only at the last moment. When they swung into the traffic circle, Joanna was still driving way faster than Ali would have liked, but she was relieved to see that uniformed municipal cops had cleared the way for them by shutting down all adjoining intersections.
“Pulling up at the scene now, Sheriff Brady,” Deputy Stock said. “Over and out.”
Larry’s voice immediately came back on the line. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Call Frank Montoya in Sierra Vista. Tell him what’s up and let him know we’re asking for mutual aid. I have way more people on the roadblock on the Bisbee side than I have on his side. Ask him if he can send backup.”
“Will do.”
Ali watched out the window as the town flew past, starting with a few residential neighborhoods on either side. Beyond that, the road was mostly empty desert. When they came to another area of businesses and housing, the houses seemed to be set back from the highway, while the various businesses were not. Ali knew that if the bad guys somehow made it past the roadblock, the people in those businesses—a taco stand, a gas station, a grocery store, an insurance agency—would all be at risk, customers and proprietors alike. She wanted to shout “Take cover!” out the window to warn them, but she didn’t. It wasn’t her place. Sheriff Brady was calling the shots here, not Ali Reynolds.
They came to what seemed to be the edge of town. Joanna slowed abruptly just short of a growing traffic jam. After pausing for a moment at the back of the line, Joanna veered off the pavement and onto the shoulder, dodging around the stopped vehicles and going to the front of the line, where four other cop cars were already parked across the roadway. With only one try, Joanna deftly pulled the Yukon into the single remaining open space, a spot so tight that her back bumper was almost on top of the front bumper of the car just behind hers, while her front bumper was nosed up against a barbed-wire fence.
“As I said,” she cautioned as she opened the door and started to climb out, “you’re both to stay here.”
Just then Cami’s phone rang.
“Okay, Stu,” Cami said when she answered. “Put him through when you can.”
Joanna climbed back inside, shut the door, and waited. An oversized heavy-duty Sprinter with the sheriff’s office logo on the door and the identifying letters TT painted on the side was parked in front, parallel to the four blocking cars.
TT, Ali told herself. Tactical Team.
An officer in full battle dress emerged from the Sprinter. As he hurried up to Joanna’s Yukon, she buzzed the window open.
“Is everybody here, Deputy Ruiz?” she asked.
“Not yet. We’re still short two, including Detective Carbajal,” he told her. “In the meantime, we’re collecting spike strips. You got any with you?”
She nodded. “In the back,” she said, clicking open the rear lift gate.
He reappeared a moment later holding an armload of strips. “Turns out Deputy Stock is short in the spike strip department,” Ruiz reported. “Once we deploy ours, we’ll need to see if there’s enough to reinforce his supply.”
“Which may leave your guys in the middle when all hell breaks loose,” Joanna objected.
“Yes,” he agreed, “but we’re in better shape to deal with that than you are. We’re armor plated. You’re not.”
“Yes, Chuck,” Cami’s voice said from the backseat. “I can hear you.”
“Wait, Deputy Ruiz,” Sheriff Brady said. “Let’s see if there’s an update.”
Cami delivered the pilot’s words in the rapid-fire fashion of a trained interpreter. “Just flew over. They seem to be forming up in a convoy. Four of the trucks are already in line.”
“Crap,” Joanna muttered, turning to Deputy Ruiz. “We don’t have much time, so don’t wait around for Jaime any longer. Whoever doesn’t show up doesn’t show up. Those trucks have three miles of dirt road to travel. Even if they leave right now, they won’t be going fast. You should be able to get your strips down and be past Holzmann Road with additional ones for Jeremy before they hit the highway. Go now. It’s going to be a squeaker.”
Ruiz was off in a flash. “Okay, Chuck,” Cami was saying. “Thanks so much.”
“Wait,” Ali said. “Don’t hang up. Ask him if he can do us a favor and come get us.”
“Come get us?” Joanna demanded. “Are you kidding?”
“If this is war and you’re the general,” Ali said, “wouldn’t we all be better off if you’re somewhere that will allow you to see all the action as you direct your troops?”
Joanna turned to Cami. “Ask the pilot if he can keep us out of range of automatic weapons fire.”
Cami asked the question and came back with another. “He wants to know what the bad guys are carrying?”
“At least one AK-47 and maybe more.”
There was another brief pause. “Chuck says that he flew over AK-47s in the Middle East, and unless they have grenade launchers handy, his bird will be just fine.”
“Then I guess we’re going airborne,” Joanna said. “Tell him to land on the highway just in front of the roadblock. Come on.” She clambered out of the driver’s seat.
Stunned by Joanna’s sudden change of heart, Ali started after her, just as her phone began to ring. Ali knew who was calling: B. If she answered and told him what was happening, she also knew exactly what he’d say, too: Don’t go. Instead of answering, she let the call go to voice mail. By the time Ali was on the ground, Joanna had opened the autolocking back door so Cami could step out of the Yukon.
“Wait,” Cami said, not moving. “Does this mean I’m coming, too?”
“Everybody’s coming,” Joanna said, “but only if you want to. Can you handle a weapon?”
“No,” Cami stammered.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re our dedicated com girl for the day, in charge of keeping us in touch with the mother ship. What about you, Ali?” Joanna asked. “Is that weapon in your small-of-back holster just for decoration, or do you know how to use it?”
“I can use it,” Ali said. “But I’d rather not need to.”
Joanna gave her an appraising look. “That makes two of us,” she said.
• • •
On the one hand, Joanna Brady knew she had no business involving civilians in what was bound to be a dangerous operation, but without Cami’s and Ali’s capable help they wouldn’t be here right now. The GPS evidence that had brought the Holzmann Road destination to Joanna’s attention would still be waiting to be transported to the crime lab in Tucson. By the time the lab got around to processing it, the trucks would be long gone.
In other words, she owed Ali and Cami big-time. They would be involved in
the firefight without having signed one of those legalese CYA forms civilians always had to sign before doing a ride-along. The board of supervisors would be appalled. To make matters worse, Joanna was bringing a multimillion-dollar helicopter into the mix. If this went south, Joanna figured she’d probably be better off dead than caught up in the middle of a liability lawsuit hurricane.
“Come on, ladies,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster. “Time to saddle up.”
Walking around the Yukon, she had to climb up on the front bumper of the patrol car parked behind hers to reach into the cargo space. Her hand emerged holding not one but two Kevlar vests. She handed the smaller one to Cami and the larger to Ali.
“Put these on,” she told them. “They won’t fit exactly, but they’ll do.”
When Joanna had been pregnant with Dennis, her added girth required that she move up to a larger-size vest. After Denny was born, she went back to her original one, but she kept the other in reserve. Cami pulled it on. The petite young woman seemed to swim in the thing, but Joanna deemed it better than nothing.
As for the one she handed Ali, it had once belonged to Deputy Dan Sloan, her department’s only fallen officer in the course of Joanna’s seven years in office. Dan was wearing the vest the night he was gunned down, shot in the abdomen where there was no Kevlar protection. After Dan’s funeral, his widow brought the vest back to the sheriff’s office in the hope that someone else could use it. Joanna accepted it even though she had understood even then that, out of respect for Dan, none of her other officers would ever agree to wear it. Not only did Joanna accept the vest, she kept it, too, more as a reminder than out of any expectation that it would ever again be used. Once Ali slipped it on, Joanna was gratified to see she was tall enough for the vest to fit fairly well. And since Ali didn’t know the vest’s backstory, Joanna thought it better not to pass it along.
Another battle-dressed guy showed up just then. “Why’d the van leave without me?” he demanded. “I told them I was coming.”