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by J. Carson Black

  She would see the bullet holes and Corey’s blood against the carport wall, the broken glass, all evidence of a gunfight.

  Max had to get out of here.

  He jogged along the road, looking for a house, someplace to hide, a car, anything.

  The road spanned a narrow wash ahead. The wash was overgrown with chest-high grass, green like corn—the stuff that grew up after a rain. He could hide in there. He jumped down into the dry riverbed, and that was when he saw the culvert under the road.

  He crawled inside, as far as he could get.

  And waited.

  SHAUN FOLLOWED THE road all the way to town. They had closed up the bomb shelter and locked the kitchen door behind them. The place was out in the sticks. There were a couple of ranchettes farther up the road, but the bamboo hid most of the front yard from view and the carport was in shadow. It might be days before anyone came by.

  Shaun and her son had both washed up at the kitchen sink and rinsed their shirts to get rid of any stray blood spatter. They’d throw their clothing away in a Dumpster somewhere on the road. They dug through their suitcases from the truck and changed hurriedly. Shaun knew they needed to get on Max Conroy’s trail before it went cold.

  They needed to split up. Although Max Conroy might still be nearby, Shaun thought he would head for town as soon as he escaped. She left Jimmy to scout the area while she reconnoitered ahead. He was to check the four or five houses and barns in the area and then call when he was done.

  She had just made a pass through the main drag and was parking the truck so she could continue her search on foot when she heard a cop car coming, fast. No siren, but cops had a way of driving that made those big engines roar. She got back into the truck just as two sheriff’s cars rounded the corner, lights flashing. She saw them turn in the direction she’d come from, and knew instantly: someone had found the bodies in the bomb shelter.

  Who?

  Had a neighbor come by? Or did Max Conroy have a fit of conscience?

  Jimmy was on his own—for now. He would be all right. He’d hear the cop cars coming and go to ground.

  She continued to canvass the town. Didn’t talk to anybody, just played tourist. She knew she didn’t look like a tourist, but she also knew that if she looked at anyone who regarded her with curiosity, the person would likely look uncomfortably away. They said the best assassins were nondescript and blended into a crowd, and that was true. But she’d made a living being the other kind. She knew she could be mistaken for a man, depending on what she wore and how she carried herself. People would remember her. But they usually looked away, embarrassed and guilty because they didn’t want to gawk. They tried to forget her. They thought of her as a freak, not someone who might be dangerous.

  She could change clothes, put on a wig, and be a different person. She’d made the transformation dozens of times.

  She called Jimmy and he answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

  “I’m laying low,” he said.

  “They at the house?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you get around them?”

  “Sure. I’m up on the hill. They can’t see me, but I can see them.”

  “You talk to anybody?”

  “I saw one lady out with her horses. She looked smart, though, so I stayed away.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t think he’s here.”

  “He’s probably headed for town. Meet me outside the Subway, OK? Don’t let anybody see you.”

  “It might take a while.”

  “That’s OK. I’ll keep looking for him, but now that they know what’s in the bomb shelter, we’ve got to get out of here. So try to get there in an hour, all right?”

  “Roger,” Jimmy said.

  MAX KNEW AT some point he had to leave the culvert. He could hear thunder, and if the rains came, the dry arroyo would fill up fast and funnel into the culvert—he could drown. But he was tired. After all he’d been through—the adrenaline rush—he could barely keep his eyes open. Being here, under the road, made him feel that he was not only safe, but invincible. He’d locked all three kidnappers into the prison of their own making. He’d survived a gunfight with a tough guy like Corey. He’d managed to give the woman and the boy the slip, as well as the sheriff. The only thing standing in his way now was a need for stealth and a need for transportation.

  In fact, he felt better than he had in a long time.

  For so long Max had been a victim of circumstances—a victim of his own making. He’d gone along to get along. He’d dutifully done what his press agent told him to do, what his manager told him what to do, what his business manager told him to do, what his CPA told him to do, what his financial advisor told him to do, what his wife told him to do. They all had their own agendas, and Max realized he’d just drifted, hating himself more and more, drinking and taking whatever prescription drug was available at the time. And, since he was a star, the drugs were always available, all the time.

  Strangely, he didn’t feel a craving for the drugs. How could he have lost the dependency on prescription drugs so easily? He remembered Gordon telling him that sensory deprivation therapy was the most useful tool in combating addiction, that in many cases, people just…lost the urge.

  Here he was, sitting in a culvert with possibly two killers coming after him, and now Max finally felt as if he was his own man.

  That feeling lasted about fifteen minutes. Then he heard footfalls.

  At first, he thought he was hearing things. The footfalls were so light. Just the faintest tap on pavement, hardly enough to register. But the humming. Tuneless, barely there, like someone was thinking aloud by humming.

  Then no sound at all.

  He waited.

  His heart rate jumped into the red zone. He eased the Smith & Wesson out of the duffel. How many people had he pointed the thing at? How many shots had he fired? It didn’t seem like him, but right now he was the hunted, and he went by pure instinct.

  Max felt as if he’d been melted down to the steel of his own core. He tasted it, like metal in his mouth. Determination. Anyone who poked his head into the culvert would risk getting it blown off.

  He aimed at the half circle of sunshine and shadow. The white sand of the wash, the weird green cornlike grass, stalks rustling slightly in the ozone-scented breeze. The sky like a dark bruise beyond…

  The click of shoes on gravel.

  Was he imagining it?

  Another shift of the shoe on pavement. No, he was not imagining it.

  The kid.

  The skinny little kid with the big gun.

  We’ll see whose gun is bigger.

  The sound of the voice in his own head shocked him.

  Whatever was in his head wanted the boy to come down here. Wanted to blow him to kingdom come.

  Thunder grumbled.

  The air seemed both electric and still. Everything stopped. He was suspended, here in this tunnel made out of corrugated tin, with the accumulated trash hooked onto the rocks, the whole world standing still…

  The kid plopped down off the bank. Max saw his elbow and one sneaker-clad foot. Just the side of him. Kid had a purple yo-yo, was playing walk the dog.

  Max sighted down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson.

  Make my day.

  Then he heard canned music—a ringtone.

  Max watched the kid’s legs. The knees bent. The kid sat down on the bank of the wash, his legs swinging, kicking back at the dirt. The ringtone stopped. The kid said, “What?”

  Then he said, “I was just going—”

  Then he said, “OK.”

  His knees came into the frame briefly, his elbows flapping, the tip of his head. Then he scrambled up the bank.

  Max realized his hands, which had trained the gun steadily on the half circle of daylight, were beginning to shake.

  Adrenaline.

  He waited. He did not lower the gun.

  The Smith & Wesson seemed to weigh
a hundred pounds. His arms were tired. He knew it wasn’t the weight of the gun. He knew it wasn’t the way he held his arms out in front of him. He knew it was the weight of anger, fear, and determination.

  And he knew that the weight was an acknowledgment of something else: he would have killed that kid.

  Killed that kid, and rejoiced over it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  PAT ACTED AS if Tess were still a deputy. That was OK with her. He had his pride. But she didn’t like the fact that he was phoning it in. He stared down at the three bloody corpses in the bomb shelter and said, “This is going to be one bad mother of a day.”

  Tess had met Sam P. and Luther. She’d arrested Corey once for assault. She’d had no idea Sam had a bomb shelter, but the house was old and built in a time when bomb shelters were popular.

  Tess knew she’d be seeing this tableau in her nightmares—every stark detail. At will, she could see any and all of the crime scenes she’d been called to as a detective in Albuquerque. The familiar stink rose up, a bloated miasma, along with the flies that had already found the dead men. There was the overwhelming stench of death, nine parts spoiled meat and one part the coppery odor of blood, which lay in the membranes of her mouth. She felt her gorge rise but willed it to back down.

  “So, what do we do now, hotshot?” Pat said. He kept his voice light, as if it were a joke.

  She said, “I’m kind of new on the job.”

  “Right.” Pat started giving instructions. Everyone out of the house, now that they’d cleared it. Crime scene tape around the house and yard, make sure to rope off the carport. One deputy to keep people from coming in—that would be Derek, who’d have the police log. Then it was just the two of them. Gloves and booties. “You wanna take the photos?” Pat asked Tess. “Or is just looking enough? You probably have it all memorized down to the fly on ol’ Corey’s ankle.”

  Tess took photos.

  She kept her mind on the work, careful not to touch any blood, which was tracked all over the bomb shelter floor and bloomed on the wall like an iris where Corey had been hit. Blood spatter everywhere—plenty for an in-depth analysis.

  “What do you think?” Pat asked.

  Tess knew this time he was serious in his question. He often relied on her judgment. “Looks like a large caliber weapon, maybe a forty-five? They were shot from above.”

  “Like fish in a barrel,” Pat said. “We got us a serious killer here.”

  It was a large crime scene. The yard out front. The kitchen leading to the pantry leading to the entrance to the bomb shelter. The carport with the shot-up cars. The flurry of footprints and tire prints outside. The investigation would extend into the night and long into the next day.

  AFTER THE BAJADA County Medical Examiner’s Office removed the bodies, after Tess and Pat had measured the scene and marked the evidence to be bagged, Tess went outside to breathe some clean air.

  The cumulus clouds were building up over the mountains and it looked like there might be rain. Right now, though, it was just an electric feeling in the air. The air was heavy and waterlogged from the little bit of rain left over from last night, and the creosote bushes smelled heavenly. But it was hot. She lifted her ponytail off the back of her neck.

  She’d seen Max Conroy walking on the road’s shoulder.

  She’d seen his look of surprise when he saw them go by.

  Now Tess pictured his face in the rearview, tried to peg the expression. He knew he was in deep trouble.

  There’d been no weapon on him, but he had a duffel. The duffel looked heavy.

  There was the truck too. Dan Jensen’s Ford F-250. Sitting by the road, approximately an eighth of a mile beyond the spot where she’d seen Max standing on the shoulder watching the parade of sheriff’s cars go by.

  Max might have left the truck there.

  Tess told Pat what she’d seen.

  “You think he did it?”

  “I think we should check him out. Even if he wasn’t the shooter, he could be a witness.”

  “You think he stole the truck.”

  She shrugged. “That would be an easy conclusion to jump to.”

  They called the crime scene technicians, who were already on the road, and asked them to come back and process Dan Jensen’s truck.

  “You going to check it out?” Pat asked Tess.

  “Thought I would. You all right here?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She nodded.

  “I mean, seriously, why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been investigating homicides for twenty-three years.”

  Red as a tomato, he brushed at the sweat on his face. His blue eyes angry.

  Tess said, “You tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Just…just do your job," he said. “Whatever that is.”

  TESS WENT AND did her job. She’d need a warrant for the truck left abandoned on the road, since it might or might not be part of the crime scene. The judge was pretty good about these things, would OK it pretty quickly.

  She peered into the truck, careful not to touch anything.

  There was a Mexican serapelike throw covering the bench seat.

  Tess guessed the truck had broken down or was out of gas. Or maybe just abandoned. As soon as the crime scene technicians arrived, she’d go pay Dan Jensen a visit. Just in case he had something to do with this. It was always good to surprise people.

  But the dispatcher called her first, to tell her that Dan had reported his truck stolen.

  Tess called Pat and asked him if he would take Dan Jensen’s statement.

  “Why not?” he asked. “I happened to be as free as a bird today.” Then he hung up on her.

  This was working out well.

  It had been a couple of hours since she’d spotted Max walking along the roadside. He would have made it to town by now. Tess had the dispatcher send out an Attempt to Locate on the actor Max Conroy. In case there was a deputy or PD officer who didn’t know what Max Conroy looked like, she uploaded a photo of him from the film and television site IMDb.

  She called Pat again. “How’s it going there?”

  “About what you’d expect. Bloody and stinky.”

  “I need to run down the lead we were talking about—Max Conroy. I think he might have made it to town. I need a deputy here until our property and evidence unit gets here.”

  Bajada County’s property and evidence unit consisted of one part-time crime scene technician and a volunteer who had taken a community college course on gathering evidence. They would be responsible for delivering the evidence to the Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab.

  “We need everyone we got,” Pat said. “This is one massive fricking crime scene.”

  “I’ll stay here, then.”

  “Yeah, that’s the right call.” He added, “You put out the Attempt to Locate. Don’t need to go running around like you’re the Lone Ranger.”

  “Roger,” she said, and clicked off.

  She sat in the shade of a mesquite, waited for property and evidence, and monitored dispatch.

  And waited.

  And tried to picture Max. Max getting the jump on Luther, Sam, and Corey, and killing them all.

  She wondered why he’d do that. Why a movie star would go to Sam’s house and get the three of them down into the bomb shelter and kill them?

  She thought about the last she’d seen of him, at the diner. He’d seemed normal to her then. But what was normal?

  Tess called the deputy who’d been first on the scene. “Do you know why you were dispatched to the house?”

  “Somebody called it in. God, I lost my lunch. It was like something out of a horror movie. Never saw anything like it.” He sounded embarrassed.

  Tess said, “Somebody called it in. What did the dispatcher say?”

  “An unknown person was trying to break into Sam’s place.”

  Tess needed to hear the recording. She made a note of it. “That was what they said? They saw somebody trying to b
reak in. Was it a man or a woman?”

  “Man. The dispatcher said ‘he.’ ”

  “When you arrived, what did you see?”

  “What you saw. The carport, all shot up. Broken glass everywhere. The door was open.”

  “What led you to the bomb shelter?” she asked.

  “There were drag marks on the floor. And blood. I already gave you guys my statement.”

  “I know,” Tess said. “I was just hoping you’d think of something new this time around.”

  “It was hard to think, after what I saw.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  She disconnected and called the dispatcher. Toni cued up the recording, which came from an anonymous source.

  Tess closed her eyes and listened. “There are two people trying to break into a house on Ocotillo Road. It’s the last house on the left.”

  Max Conroy’s voice.

  “Could you repeat that?”

  Toni cued it up again and played it.

  There are two people. Trying to break in.

  “Is there any way to trace the phone?”

  “No. We could spend a day or two to pin down the location, but—”

  “We already know the location.” Tess disconnected and stared out at the middle distance. The clouds were amassing; the air was hot and humid. But so far, no rain.

  If Max killed those three people, why did he call it in?

  Unbidden, the image of the woman and the boy at Joe’s Auto-Wash came to her. The woman who’d bought a truck for Sandstone Adventures and dressed up to do it.

  The woman who had stared right through her. Whose presence made the hair stand up on Tess’s arms.

  Tess knew it was never a good idea to jump to conclusions. But as she set the phone down, the voice in her mind said, There’s your killer.

  GORDON WAS GETTING worried—still no word from Shaun, and she wasn’t answering her phone. What was she doing? Paradox wasn’t that far away—she should be pulling into the healing center any minute with Max in tow. But he had not heard word one from her.

  Then he turned on the news, and that was when he realized she’d gone too far. Three people slaughtered in a bomb shelter in Paradox, Arizona. Of course there were no names. But already on CNN he could see the deputies traipsing around the sunbaked property. Saw a gurney with a body bag strapped to it being rolled out the door.