CJ shook his head. “My only way out of this is find the real killer. Because he got up there so quickly after the motel scene, he has to be someone who saw all the communications that went on. It should be easy. Check all flights leaving Tucson yesterday morning and look at the last minute bookings. If that doesn’t pan out check all Phoenix flights and then all charter flights.”
“And if that doesn’t pan out shall we check all Las Vegas flights, then San Diego flights, or how about Los Angeles?"
CJ took a swig from his beer. “I hear your point, but still, he'd be stupid to fly out of Tucson. It still has to be someone who took last minute time off.”
“A lot of ground to cover and I’m not even allowed near the case.”
“Who took over for you?”
“Ralph Bunko.”
"You're kidding!" CJ shook his head. “He’ll play by all the FBI rules.”
“Exactly.”
“And he doesn’t much like you, does he?”
“Doesn’t like you either.”
“We’re probably screwed.”
“That’s the way I see it, CJ.”
They both took hits on their beers and then CJ said, “Do you have any good friends in Personnel?”
“One, who does happen to owe me a favor. But that’s just Tucson police. I have no connections in any of the other law enforcement agencies.”
“Then let’s hope he’s Tucson.” CJ finished the rest of his beer and then turned his face up to the sky. “Do you hear that?”
Dan listened for a few seconds. “No, what?”
CJ set the empty bottle down, pushed from the vehicle and looked east, then as far as he could see in all directions in the sky above the desert. “It’s a ways off yet, but that’s a helicopter.”
Dan listened again. “Has to be air force or medevac.”
“Heard anything happening on your police scanner?”
Dan turned his ear to the interior of the Tahoe. “No. Haven’t been hearing much of anything at all since I left home, come to think of it.”
“How often this time of night does the police network go this quiet?”
“Only when there’s a major operation and we go radio silent.”
“I repeat my earlier question; did you check for a tracking device?” He squatted and started feeling around under the rear bumper.
“Shit, CJ. You don’t think…”
CJ stood and handed a small device to Dan. The sound of the helicopter was louder, but it was not yet visible.
“They’re coming in low,” CJ said and picked up the beer bottle. “Thanks for this, but I think you’d better get out of here. This is the only thing I touched so I’ll take it with me.”
Dan over-handed his open beer as far as he could into the desert, pulled the hatch down and ran to his driver’s door. “I’ll toss the bug as soon as I’m a ways away from here.”
“Hope you can convince them you’re just out here drinking by yourself, Dan,” CJ called to him as he jogged away sideways. “I’ll find a way to contact you again.” With that he took off running in one direction while Dan's Tahoe threw up desert sand taking off in the other.
While they were talking CJ had been analyzing the desert around them in anticipation of just this scenario. He’d dumped his original plan to head north. That direction was so sparse that even with only moon light he could see as much as a quarter mile, it seemed. The best cover was within a hundred feet of where he’d been standing, and probably the last place they’d search for him, hopefully assuming that he’d be with Dan or on the run.
As soon as Dan’s Tahoe was out of sight, CJ sprinted over to the denser area, maybe an acre worth, and found a place to lie down. The problem with southern Arizona desert is there is very little native plant life without needles. With that in mind he carefully eased himself under and amongst a grouping of bushes, hoping that the only bites he was getting were from needles, that he didn’t disturb a rattlesnake or scorpion. He was none too soon getting settled when a black SUV whipped into the area where the Tahoe had been parked, slowed for a few seconds and then continued on after Dan. CJ heard a second one pass a couple of hundred yards to the west. Dan had drawn them northwest, onto a track that took him, and them, deeper into the desert.
The sound of the vehicles was suddenly drowned out by the helicopter. It slowed right overhead, pointing its searchlight everywhere but right on CJ. It made a three hundred and sixty degree circle then took off to become part of the chase. As soon as the chopper was well away, CJ stood and worked his way south, toward Valencia Road. He remembered a shallow wash that ran somewhat parallel to the road. When he found that he began trekking east, bent over in a crouch.
What bothered him now was that he could clearly see cars parked in the casino parking lot, which meant he was likely visible to anyone watching from one of those cars, especially if they had any kind of night optics. Despite the wash, the vegetation was not as thick as where he had originally hidden ten minutes before. He crouched even lower and virtually crawled along, stopping occasionally to extract cactus needles. He was beginning to know what it was like to be a Mexican sneaking across the border and covering mile after mile of Arizona desert.
Suddenly the foliage ahead of him became illuminated. He went flat to the desert sand and crabbed sideways into a stand of prickly pear, having to bite his lip as a half dozen needles lodged into his shoulder. For a long minute the light moved back and forth, controlled by a patrol car idling slowly by, west-bound on the shoulder of Valencia Road. Just as it was nearly past, the engine roared and the light went out. When the sound of the patrol car speeding away receded, CJ looked up to find he was directly across from the main casino entrance. He stood, pulled out the more painful of the needles he could find, and pushed on, the moon shining in his face.
Chapter 27
The wash gradually angled away from Valencia Road. CJ paused at a dirt track that ran southeast to northwest–probably the same one on which Dan raced away–and then crossed over to arrive a minute or so later at the corner of a housing area. This worried CJ because he knew that this was not an HOA organized community. There were about two-dozen plots of land with unpaved streets and a mixture of mostly low-income trailers and houses, with and without fences, many of which had dogs, big barking dogs. He decided to stay with the wash as it wound through and around the properties.
For an hour CJ kept moving, leaving one dilapidated track of properties for another, crossing an occasional road, alerting only a few dogs. No one appeared nor did any lights come on. The only evidence of human presence was when, after a deep bark, there came an equally deep, “Shut up!”
The helicopter droned in the distance. At no time did it get near him. At one point, early on, he saw a post office a couple of hundred yards south and debated checking to see if it had an exterior phone booth. In the end he decided it wasn’t worth the risk and moved on. To avoid stepping out onto Valencia Road, he kept to the skirt of a mountain—hill in any real sense, rising less than 300 feet above the desert floor, a mountain according to the locals. Without the wash he was having to bushwhack and was feeling more and more like a pin-cushion.
Just as he realized he could no longer hear the helicopter he stepped out of the desert onto a rough, paved road, hardly more than a single lane. He couldn’t think of what road it was. Across the road was a sprawling construction business. A few hundred yards to his right the road intersected Valencia. A car turned toward him from that intersection. He backed into the desert and lay down as he did before. The vehicle passed by very slowly and CJ spotted the star of a Pima County sheriff deputy. Were they looking for him or on routine patrol?
After the deputy passed out of sight, CJ analyzed the business across the road. It didn’t appear like the type that would have a security system. He extracted a few more cactus needles then sprinted across and into the shadows thrown by the building.
He crouched and listened while waiting for his breathing to return to norm
al. After several minutes, when he was sure he’d not been observed, he proceeded to analyze the entry to the building, hoping to get to a phone to call Stella. There were no security decals or other evidence of a security system. He had to get in and out without leaving evidence that a break-in had occurred. Any such reports in the area would prompt deeper investigation, in his name, he was sure. He didn’t know how thorough the feds would be, but it’d only take one over-achiever to check phone records on the night of the break-in and then get a lock on their phone number and thus their location.
The door had a deadbolt. He tried the door knob and found it locked as well. From his wallet he pulled out the card he used for just this situation and slipped it between the jam and the door, in the hopes that only that lock was thrown and not the deadbolt. He felt the lock release, but the deadbolt held the door in place.
Lights appeared from the direction the deputy had disappeared. CJ hid and watched as the sheriff’s car again went by, just as slow as before. When gone, he began inspecting the remainder of the building looking for any weak point through which he could make entry. After finding nothing, he crouched against the north wall and considered his options. He was starting to regret telling Stella to go all the way to Wal-Mart and that if he didn’t show up by 2:00 to assume he was in jail. There was no way he could get there by that time without getting out on Valencia and jogging. He’d have to just keep moving, maybe find another business, hopefully one with lousy security.
He pushed to his feet and turned to head east from the property in hopes of finding an egress to the desert beyond. He stopped in the middle of the yard and realized that there were more buildings; two garages and a trailer, odd machines and beaten up trucks scattered about. Wires ran from a pole next to the main building to a pole next to the trailer. Likely a phone line, and trailers are a cinch to get into.
With his break-and-enter card back in his hand he approached the trailer. Thirty seconds at the door and he was in.
The interior was a junk hole compared to the one he broke into in Idaho. In the mess he could find neither a lighter nor a flashlight, but he did find a phone with a lighted keypad and a dial-tone. He punched in the number.
“Where are you?” Stella answered, barley controlled panic in her voice.
“I’m not sure,” CJ said. “My guess is I’m about two miles east of the casino, a block or so north of Valencia; been making my way through patches of desert and housing.”
“I saw a helicopter,” she said. “Was that…”
“Yes. We think they had a GPS tracking device on Dan’s Tahoe.”
Her, “Oh,” was followed by a long silence, then, “Where do you want me to go?”
CJ thought for some time before coming up with a plan. He told her what to do and then, after hanging up and locking the door behind him, started working his way toward Valencia Road.
He crossed back over the road he knew not the name off, for better coverage should he need to hide, and got up as close to Valencia as he could. He crouched amongst a spattering of bushes and prickly pear cacti and watched for headlights approaching from the east. Two vehicles went by going away from the casino before he spotted a set of west-bound headlights. It wasn’t until the car came abreast of him and drove on before he was sure it was Stella. He eased out where he could watch the taillights and waited. It seemed like forever before the brake lights came on and she turned into the post office. A few seconds later she was back on Valencia and heading his direction. As she got closer he looked all around, saw no one, and then sprinted across in front of her. She skidded to a stop and in seconds he was in.
“Go! Not too fast.”
“I’m not.”
“Stay the speed limit.”
“I am!”
Chapter 28
CJ lay next to Stella in Lizzi’s bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the meeting with Dan. Nothing had been accomplished; as a matter of fact, things may have gotten worse. Dan was his only contact and he may now be more than off the case, he might be off the force.
“Are you awake?” Stella’s whispered words filled the darkness.
“Yes.”
She rolled toward him and he put his arm around her.
“What are we going to do?”
As hard as he tried, CJ couldn’t come up with one optimistic response; there wasn’t an ounce of optimism to be had.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’d be better if I turned myself in; let the chips fall.”
Stella sat up. “What do you mean? Everything’s against you.”
“They can’t convict me on circumstantial evidence.”
“The prisons are full of men who were convicted from less.”
“That’s not really true.”
“The hell it isn’t!” Stella pointed off into the dark. “There have been dozens who have been released in the last five years because new DNA tests exonerated them. And they’ve got everything on you, including DNA, everything except the smoking gun.”
“None of the women were shot,” CJ corrected.
“I was being metaphorical and you know it. A jury would see you as guilty. Hell, if I was on a jury viewing the evidence stacked against you, I’d be inclined to hang you.”
“Another metaphor, I hope.”
“Damn it, Clint. This is serious.”
He reached out for her and pulled her back down to him. “I know. I honestly don’t know where to go from here. I’d try to make contact with Dan again, but to be truthful with you, I don’t know what good it’d do. With being off the case his investigative resources are limited.”
“Do you think the FBI caught him last night?”
“Probably.”
“What’ll happen if they did?”
“At best he’ll be suspended pending further investigation.”
“At worst?”
“We’ll be playing chess together over at the county jail.”
They both went silent for a long time, and then she said, “Make love to me.”
“Are you sure? I…”
She put a finger on his mouth. “If you wind up in jail, likely so will I. I don’t think we’ll be able to play chess together, or do anything else. This might be our last time.” She replaced her finger with her mouth and then pulled away. “I’ll be right back.”
He lay as before, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about her words, the impact of them slamming down on top of him. Their lives of freedom, at least his, were likely over. If he told them that she talked him into giving up, maybe they’d go easy on her. And if he turned himself into Dan, maybe they’d go easy on him as well.
In any case, though, she was right. This night together could possibly be their last. Would he even be able to perform?
The toilet flushed and suddenly she was back and her mouth was on his again, and then
she was all over him, naked and hot, and any doubts about performance vanished in the heat of his own sexual rush.
It was after 9:00 when they found each other one more time in the shower and then stood still, pressed together, until the hot water ran out. Wordlessly they dressed, made the bed, put together a modest breakfast and then turned on the TV and sat down. The local morning news was long past so they switched over to national news. After a half hour with no mention of the Tucson serial killer, they turned it off. They cleaned their breakfast dishes then looked at each other.
“What now?” Stella said.
CJ felt so defeated he couldn’t respond. He looked away, not wanting to see the disappointment in her eyes, and started to say he’d call Dan, to tell her about his plan to keep the heat off the two of them as much as possible, but found his mouth so dry that he couldn’t get out a single word.
She stepped into him and put her arms around him. “Is there anyone you could trust in the department, anyone who owes you a favor?” she said, her cheek pressed against his chest. “A damned janitor… anyone?”
And then CJ remembered Dave McDermott and his
daughter, Officer Bowers. After more than six years she’d remembered what he’d done for her father though he’d barely recognized or remembered her.
He pushed Stella to arm’s length. “Maybe.” He then told her about Sgt. McDermott and the false charges leveled against him and how CJ found people who would testify that it was all a setup to take down the police officer who interrupted their party.
“So you think he still feels indebted to you?” she said.
“Yes. I doubt he could do much, though. He retired shortly afterwards. However, I ran into his daughter at a couple of the dumpster crime scenes, directing traffic. Officer Lisa Bowers.”
“She’s a cop?”
“Yes, and even though I didn’t recognize her at first, she remembered me and made a point of thanking me for helping her father.”
“If she was directing traffic, she’s likely not close enough to the case to be of much help,” Stella said.
“Maybe, but she’s all we’ve got. She’s worth a try. Better than a janitor.”
“She could just turn you in.”
“She knows about a cop being framed. She’ll at least listen first.”
“How do we find her?”
“Normally that might not be easy, but since I know where her father lives, let’s start with him.”
“Do you think he’ll help?”
“Does a bear poop in the woods?”
Stella grinned at him and shook her head. CJ thought about how even the slightest bit of hope could totally shift a mood.
Chapter 29
Stella drove while CJ sat slumped low in his seat, giving directions to McDermott’s home in Indian Ridge Estates off Sabino Canyon Road. When they arrived in front of the house he told her to pull the car all the way up the driveway to park next to what he assumed was McDermott’s truck, a black Ford F-250 backed up to the garage door. He figured that being the middle the week, Dave’s wife, Nancy, would be at work and Dave would be home alone. After a few seconds of debate they decided that she’d go up first, ring the doorbell and tell McDermott that CJ needed his help.
Deserving of Death (CJ Washburn, PI Book 1) Page 12