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by J. Carson Black

  “Gordon White Eagle,” the deputy said. “That’s where we’re going? The Desert Oasis Healing Center?”

  How had she heard him? He must have spoken out loud.

  Shower Cap grinned, started to fade. Max fished around for a thought—any thought. The image that cropped up was a silly one, but he gave it voice. “Why aren’t you wearing a uniform?”

  She said, “I’m not a deputy anymore.”

  “They fired you?”

  “No. They made me detective.”

  “Detective? You were promoted.”

  “You could say that.”

  “I played a detective in three films. Worked with a homicide dick.”

  “We don’t call ourselves ‘dicks.’ ”

  “Sorry.”

  They lapsed into silence. The heavy Caprice ate up the road. They must be going eighty.

  Tess. That was her name. The woman who’d saved him from Gordon’s thugs. The woman who had a perfect, photographic memory.

  He wanted to trust her, but she might take exception to the fact he’d threatened her with a firearm…

  The land whizzed by, the color of a dusty lion, studded with prickly pear and yucca, scrub bushes and trees. Mountains off to the left. Mountains off to the right. The two-lane unspooling before him, leading him to Gordon White Eagle. Finally, he would get relief. Finally, he would make Gordon fix him. The deputy—the detective—might even be a help. He wanted to be put back together, better than Humpty. But more than that, he wanted the answer to a simple question. Why? Why had Gordon messed him up like that?

  Why send a killer like the woman after him?

  Why?

  And now he was on the run, a “person of interest” in three killings. And somewhere out there, looking for him, were the woman and the boy.

  Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. “I didn’t do it.”

  Tess kept her eyes steady on the road. At least he thought she did; he couldn’t see past her sunglasses.

  “Didn’t do what?” she asked.

  “Kill those guys.” His throat was dry. He licked his lips. She seemed so damn calm. “Everyone thinks I killed those guys in the bomb shelter. Why else would I be a ‘person of interest’?”

  She said nothing.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  He did. He described everything, how Luther had lured him to the house. How they’d kept him in the bomb shelter. The ransom demand, the kidnap video. “You know what my wife said?”

  “Talia L’Apel?”

  “Yeah, Talia. She said, ‘You can have him.’ What do you think of that?”

  She shrugged.

  “So now they think I killed them. Do you believe I have superhuman powers? How would I get the drop on three guys? Especially Corey. That’s one mean son of a bitch.” Stopped himself. “Was a mean son of a bitch,” he amended. “But I didn’t kill him.”

  “Who did?”

  “I’m pretty sure I know.”

  “Oh?”

  First time there was an inflection in her voice. Interest. Could he be making headway with her?

  “I think Gordon sent somebody.” He paused, realizing how paranoid he sounded.

  “Who?”

  He couldn’t tell if she was just humoring him, waiting for her chance to get at the weapon in the holster on her side. He should have grabbed it and tossed it out of the car when he’d had a chance, but he hadn’t been thinking straight.

  His window was still open, the air buffeting him. “I’m going to take your gun. Don’t try anything.” He leaned sideways, reaching for the butt of her weapon.

  And at that moment, quick as a snake, she knocked his hand aside and whipped out her gun.

  The car started to slow.

  “Nobody will believe me,” Max said. Staring at the gun muzzle. Mesmerized by it.

  “Not after this they won’t,” she said.

  “Listen, I—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. He felt the thud, rather than heard it. He did hear the squeal of tires. The car lurched sideways—Max had plenty of time to think about it, because everything slowed to a glacial pace. It was like one of those motion simulator NASCAR rides you find at amusement parks, only much slower: sunglasses floating through the air, Tess’s weapon joining his like an animated Disney movie, the one with the waltzing fork and spoon, the rear window taken up with a black and silver grille, an enormous grille with a giant Chevy logo, the squarish titan-sized white hood above; and then the view shifted and went topsy-turvy as their car left the pavement and soared-rolled-shuddered down the embankment in a fountain of dust.

  Chapter Thirty

  GUS STENHOLM, WHO worked part time for Belvedere Mining as security, had not been to the Rosasite Mine for a couple of days, due to a bad cold. Usually, he drove around there once a day to check the outbuildings for vandalism, but the main reason he had this job was to make sure no hiker or bunch of pot-smoking kids breeched the old adit on the property. That was pretty much his whole job, which would go away once Belvedere filled the mine up as required by law. He slowed for the Frying Pan Road exit, glad for the four-wheel drive SUV. Used to be hell driving around in the first car they gave him—a Mercury Marquis that had been run into the ground by Bajada County sheriffs. Got hung up on a hump of dirt on one of those two-tracks and dinged the oil pan. That was the end of the Merc.

  The sun was low enough now for every stunted little bush to cast a long shadow. The graded dirt road wound through hills up onto the bajada. He turned off onto what was little more than a two-track out to the old mining buildings. The last time there had been a real road out to them had to be in the twenties. Now it was just twin paths that hunters used through the ocotillo and prickly pear cactus. But Jack Godin, who liked to fly his Piper Cub all over God’s green acre, said he’d spotted a wrecked car over by the slag heap.

  A newly wrecked car, since a few people had dumped cars there over the years.

  Jack was a teller of tall tales, but Gus knew he wouldn’t flat-out lie.

  As he approached the old buildings from Belvedere Mining Company, the smell of burning came through the air vents.

  He stopped outside the building. The many-paned windows at the front had been shot out by kids or by hunters or both, and the place was strewn with junk. He drove on past the mining building, up the steep road to the slag pile. He rounded the hill and parked on the little turnout and walked out to the edge, looking down the slag heap. The shadows slanting down in the red glare, the brown, black, and purple slag glittering here and there where the sun hit it. Down below he saw the long rectangular shape of a car lying on its side.

  He called it in.

  Couldn’t get down there—not with his knees.

  Gus stepped out of the SUV and, gun drawn, walked along the edge of the slag heap, looking for movement. The light getting dimmer by the minute. He almost tripped over a rock, and looked down. The rock had been painted crimson, looked like. Kind of resembled a man’s head.

  Vomit shot out of him like a projectile missile when he realized it was a head.

  THE BAJADA SHERIFF’S Department had access to the automated fingerprint system. Marge, a ranch woman turned part-time deputy, was the go-to person for fingerprints. Marge rescued dogs and always had one of the smaller ones with her. You always knew when she was coming your way because the doggy smell preceded her.

  Pat didn’t have to smell her, though; he was still at the slaughterhouse on Ocotillo Road. Marge told him the fingerprints on Jensen’s truck came back to one Max Conroy. Apparently, before Conroy became the world’s biggest dreamboat, he’d spent three semesters teaching auto mechanics at a community college in Fullerton—the system required every teacher be fingerprinted. A lucky break.

  So Max Conroy stole the truck, which, along with the kidnap video, put him right here on the stretch of road running right by the house on Ocotillo. Turned out his fingerprints were
also all over the crime scene in the bomb shelter, as well as the carport and inside the Chevelle and the Saturn.

  Amazing how that happened.

  But he’d been acting strange at the cafe yesterday morning. Pat thought at the time that Conroy had been disconnected from the proceedings. In his own little world. Pat remembered Tess McCrae’s recounting of the men in the limo giving Max a hard time.

  And now this: Gus Stenholm’s photos of the car wreck at the Rosasite Mine slag heap, sent via his cell phone. The car was a stretch limo. Gus had also sent a picture of a man’s head on the ground—it looked like a misshapen beet.

  Jesus.

  Pat didn’t know if the head belonged to Hogart or Riis—or if the head belonged to either one of them—but he was pretty sure that both Hogart and Riis were dead. Unless they’d pushed their own limo off the slag heap, which defied logic.

  The body count was rising. Three dead in the house, and probably two at the mine. Max Conroy had been busy.

  Pat knew Conroy was unstable—and that was a polite word for it. He’d sensed that from the moment he’d sat down with Tess and Max. No surprise that Max thought he could do anything he wanted, even kill. Hollywood was a cesspool. All those hijinks, everybody sleeping with everybody else, out-of-wedlock babies—and they were proud of it—the drugs, the alcohol, the silly liberal causes—they thought they were entitled.

  He called Bonny. “I’m gonna need more help, now there’s a secondary crime scene. Where’s Tess?”

  “She’s been advised of the secondary crime scene at the slag heap. But right now she’s working the case from another angle,” Bonny said.

  At that moment, Pat could have thrown his phone against the wall.

  It wasn’t right. Here he was, with two bloody scenes and no help. They were both detectives. He was still a detective. Bonny should tell him where Tess had gone. But he wasn’t about to ask. No way he’d give Bonny the satisfaction.

  All he said was, “I could use her here.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Bonny said. He sounded sympathetic but unmovable. “As soon as she’s available, she’ll meet you at the scene.”

  As soon as she’s available.

  To hell with him.

  To hell with them all.

  For a moment Pat was temped quit right then and there. But he was six months away from retirement. His mother always told him, “Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.” He swallowed his bile. “Anything else?”

  “You measured the scene and collected evidence?”

  No, I’ve been lunching at the Casbah. “You mean doing my job? Yeah.”

  “Sorry,” Bonny said. “I was just thinking out loud. When do you think you can get to the mine?”

  “Soon. I’m gonna need some help, though.”

  “I can send another deputy, but we’re running out of them,” Bonny said. “Never saw anything like this—five homicides that we know of. It’s a good thing I have you both working this.”

  Pat swallowed again. He had to take it. He had no choice. And meanwhile, Tess McCrae was out doing God knew what, following “leads,” looking for the bad guys with that X-ray vision of hers.

  Sometimes, X-ray vision wasn’t enough. Sometimes it took years of working as a detective, years of putting in the time, the late nights, the long days, to know what you were doing. To be a real detective.

  Four years in Albuquerque didn’t quite do it, Pat thought. No matter how talented you were.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  JERRY FOLLOWED TALIA off the jet and into the silver Range Rover with the Desert Oasis insignia on the side. The Desert Oasis Healing Center logo was the proud but Roman-nosed profile of a Plains Indian, maybe a Sioux warrior, against a background of what he could only guess were the concentric circles of an open-pit mine. The guy driving the Range Rover was dressed like an Australian and had an annoying fake Australian accent. But Talia liked him. Jerry could tell because Talia was all over Jerry, doing it for the fake Australian’s benefit. She’d been on strike sexually, but now feathered kisses along his neck and reached down between his legs. Fortunately, the leather man purse she’d bought for him for Christmas and insisted he take everywhere was between her long lacquered nails and his genitalia.

  You can take the actress out of the trailer park…“You have to excuse our friend here,” Jerry said. “She was so upset over Max’s disappearance, she took one Xanax too many.”

  “That’s all roight—I’ve seen it all before, mighty,” the fake Aussie said. “We’ll be there in two shikes of a lamb’s tile!”

  Gordon met them in his usual regalia. The fringed deer hide jacket was white this time. But Gordon looked pale under his tan and seemed distracted. Normally, his gaze was a laser. His voice was a laser. His personality was a laser. But now he looked…stunned.

  “What’s up?” Jerry asked, not expecting a real answer. Gordon wasn’t into sharing. He liked to deliver his tablets from on high.

  But Gordon said, “We’ve run into a snag.”

  “What?”

  “Max is gone.”

  “Gone? You said Shaun had him.”

  “I can’t raise her.”

  “I thought Shaun would have him by now.”

  Gordon shrugged.

  “What? You’re shrugging? You don’t know where he is? You don’t have a clue?”

  “No, and so far, we’re OK. I’ve done damage control with the press and the cops. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve made it clear I’m safeguarding his privacy. But there’ve been so many sightings—the rumors are flying. I’ve put it out that he has a stunt double who looks a lot like him, which is true, one of the paps ran with it. There are all sorts of stories going around, which can only help us. As long as nobody knows anything, and we stick to the script, we should be fine.”

  But Gordon didn’t sound fine. Jerry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His brother—the stonewaller of the century—was having a major meltdown.

  For a moment—a brief moment—Jerry savored this.

  Then he decided it was time to get down to work. “Gordon, you’d better tell me everything. You said you fucked him up. What did you do? Did you plant anything in him that would turn him into a killer? Like The Manchurian Candidate?”

  Gordon stared at him. His eyes were like fixed blue marbles in his tanned totem of a face. “No way. All I did was make him impressionable, so we could herd him the right direction.”

  “You mean the stuff about freezing on command, right?”

  “What do you think I mean?”

  “Sarcasm isn’t going to help this situation, Gordon. You’ve been known to improvise.”

  “Improvise.”

  “Yes, improvise. You’ve really screwed it up this time.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Well, fuck you.”

  Gordon pinched the spot between his eyes and his nose. “Look, this isn’t doing us any good. I have to think.”

  “Ha! You’re finally getting it that Shaun might not be the goddess you think she is. She snowed you, Gordon. Maybe she was good with the Russian mob, but why can’t she handle one drunk and stoned actor? Master criminal my foot! She’s barely sane.”

  “I’ve seen her sharpshooter medals. She’s legendary.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “She’s killed a lot of people, Jerry. And never went down for any of them.”

  Gordon loved to use terms like “went down.” Like it made him sound tough. “OK, so she’s good,” Jerry said. “But maybe motherhood’s changed her.”

  Gordon waved Jerry’s theory away. “That’s ridiculous. I’m sure she’s secured him by now and is on her way. We’ve got to have a little faith.”

  “Faith, huh? We’re down to praying, now?”

  “This is no time to switch horses. She’s the only one I know who can drill a man from ten feet away in the heart with a twenty-two. And kill him dead. That’s what I hired her for. Because she can shoot like that, and she can kill witho
ut conscience.”

  “There are plenty of people like that, Gordon. You should have dug deeper.”

  “Actually, there aren’t. In fact, there are very few with her particular skill set.”

  “So where is she now, Gordon? Can you tell me that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  THE CAR CAME to rest upright—amazing. The Caprice had turned around, 180 degrees, and slid backward down the steep embankment.

  Max thought: a big, heavy car. It had saved them. He looked at Tess McCrae. She was trying to get the seat belt off. Her movements were slow, but everything else was slow too, and when he moved his fingers it felt as if he were trying to pull taffy—everything seemed to slip out of his grasp. The gun was on the seat and he needed to pick it up, get some control here. His mind was so scattered he didn’t even think about the truck that had run them off the road until he heard the click of feet on rock.

  Max glanced around—there seemed to be all the time in the world. Everything was quiet. He felt weightless, under water. But he could see the kid scrambling down the embankment, balancing a gun and his yo-yo. The kid shucked the yo-yo loop from his finger so he could hold the gun in both hands.

  Max pawed at the gun on the seat again.

  Tess was almost out of her harness.

  They were in an amphitheater. No, that wasn’t right. But there were a lot of rocks—boulders. Big, round, vanilla-colored boulders and spears of yucca. There was a place in California where they used to shoot otters—he and his dad had gone out there once; most of it was long gone, but the area looked somewhat like this…Why was he thinking about that?

  Pick up the gun.

  He did.

  Magically, his fingers came alive, wrapped around the butt.

  Fire a warning shot at the kid. Scare him off.

  He aimed through the window, shot to the right of the kid and down. Didn’t want to hurt him. He’d wanted to once, when he was in the culvert, but now he realized that he’d been wrong. You don’t hurt a kid.

  Just scare him.