Duel to the Death

by J. A. Jance

  “Thank you for listening,” he said.

  By then they were approaching Avondale on the outskirts of Phoenix. “Let’s pull over at the first gas station we see and switch drivers,” Cami suggested. “I feel rested. We’ll go by the airport, pick up the Prius, and then head home, if you’re not too tired to drive it, that is.”

  Despite the lateness of the hour and the time spent behind the wheel, Stu felt oddly energized, and the fact that Cami trusted him to drive her car home safely touched him more than he could say. Yes, he thought, a very good friend.

  “I’m not too tired,” Stuart said aloud. “Let’s do this.”

  30

  At two o’clock in the morning, Rita Webster Parker was awakened out of a sound sleep when Roscoe, their junkyard dog of a German shepherd, started barking like crazy. Living where they did in the middle of nowhere with no nearby neighbors, they needed a good watchdog. Art, Rita’s husband, was using his CPAP machine. With that running and with his hearing aids on the bedside table, he didn’t hear the dog and didn’t stir, either, so Rita was the one who hopped out of bed, fumbled for her glasses, and then hurried over to the window to peer outside. As soon as she saw the single headlight heading in her direction, she knew that was what had put Roscoe on high alert.

  Their double-wide was parked at the far end of West Lambert Lane on the outskirts of Marana. Since theirs was the last occupied lot before the road dead-ended, it stood to reason that whoever was coming down the road in the middle of the night was probably coming to their place, and it was probably bad news. More than likely it was her son, Ron, coming home sloshed to the gills after closing down one or the other of his favorite watering holes.

  As Rita left the window to return to bed, she mentally reminded herself that in the morning she’d need to let Ron know that one of his headlights was out. She didn’t want him getting pulled over for a broken headlight infraction. When you’re an ex-con, having the cops stop you for even the least little thing could land you in a heap of trouble. Ron had made enough mistakes in his life. It would be a shame to see him back in the slammer over something like that.

  What seemed odd, though, was that Roscoe continued to bark. Why was that? What the hell was the dog’s problem? Roscoe knew Ron’s Ford Transit Van every bit as well as he knew Art’s Jeep Cherokee and Rita’s Subaru. And then she remembered. Ron wasn’t out on the town after all. He had come home much earlier, while Rita and Art were just finishing up watching the ten o’clock news. That had been around ten thirty. Now, at 2:00 a.m., Rita guessed that this late-night visitor would turn out to be one of Ron’s ne’er-do-well drinking buddies, stopping by for a nightcap.

  Art was too careful with his money to leave the AC running if it wasn’t needed, so on this October night, the bedroom windows were wide open, capturing the high desert’s cool evening breezes and passing sounds as well. Rita was seated on the edge of the bed when what had once been a silently approaching car with a single headlight turned into the unmistakable roar of a high-powered motorcycle, a Harley.

  Rita raced back to the window, arriving just in time to see the motorcycle swing off Lambert and turn up the short driveway that led to their house. Naturally Roscoe was there, too, barking his objection. Much to Rita’s dismay, rather than trying to steer away from or around the dog, in the glow of the yard light she saw the guy on the Harley aim straight for him, as if deliberately trying to mow Roscoe down. Luckily the dog managed to scramble out of the way. At that point Rita rushed back to the bed and shook Art awake.

  “Come quick!” she shouted. “Some nut on a motorcycle just tried to run over Roscoe!”

  A dazed Arthur Parker sat up in bed. He was still in the process of stripping off his breathing machine when a huge explosion rocked the house. “What the hell was that?” Art demanded. “What’s going on?”

  Rita rushed back to the window just in time to see the speeding motorcycle roar past again, this time heading in the opposite direction. She could make out no details, just the black silhouette of a motorcycle and rider, backlit by an unearthly orange glow. She couldn’t see any actual flames, but already the night air was full of acrid smoke. Behind the moving motorcycle she spotted Roscoe’s silhouette as well, hobbling along, favoring his right hind leg, but he was still chasing after the motorcycle as if determined to ward off the unwelcome intruder.

  Art joined Rita at the window. For a moment they stood side by side, staring in stricken silence as the dark of night turned an ominous orange, lighting the interior of the bedroom with the glow from outside.

  Art was the first to speak. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Whoever that son of a bitch was, he just set fire to our garage!” He stumbled back over to the bed to pull on a pair of pants. “Call the fire department,” he ordered.

  While Art piled into his pants and a pair of shoes, Rita located her phone. With trembling hands, she keyed in the number. By the time a 911 operator took the call, Rita had slipped on her own shoes and was charging out the back door, hot on Art’s heels.

  “Nine-one-one, what are you reporting?”

  “Some guy on a motorcycle just set fire to our garage,” Rita gasped into the phone. “There was a big explosion—a huge explosion—and now . . .”

  As she stepped out outside, another fierce explosion rocked the night. This time Rita saw fierce flames shooting skyward above the roof of the oversized garage a previous owner had built to house a massive RV. If the guy on the motorcycle was already gone, where had that secondary blast come from? And where was Art? What if he’d run outside, straight into the path of that new explosion?

  Rita stopped cold, too frightened to move. Then to her immense relief, she caught sight of Art. He was all right. Still between the house and the garage, he had been protected from that second fierce blast by the garage itself. He was bent over and desperately struggling to pull a length of garden hose loose from its housing. With the phone to her ear, Rita hurried up to him and helped free the hose. After pausing long enough to open the spigot, she raced after her husband. They rounded the end of the garage side by side and then stopped short, rigid with shock, gazing in horror at what was now a towering inferno. The wall on the far side of the garage was already on fire, and Ron’s Lazy Daze had been completely obliterated.

  After a moment Art attempted to move forward, aiming the puny stream of water at the conflagration, but the intense heat forced him to fall back. Some of the water reached the flames, but not enough to have any effect. There was far too much fire and far too little water. In that terrible moment, Rita understood that if Ron had been inside the motorhome when it blew, there was no way he could have survived. Ron was dead—Rita’s only son was dead.

  She heard a faint voice calling to her, summoning her from very far away. “Ma’am, are you still there? Can you tell me what’s going on? I’ve notified the fire department. They’re on the way, but is anyone injured? Should I send an ambulance?”

  Unable to speak, Rita stared in uncomprehending silence at the device still clutched in her hand. Just then she heard a whimper. Looking down, she saw an injured Roscoe limping toward her. He staggered to a halt and then huddled at her feet with blood from his injured hindquarters oozing onto the skirt of Rita’s long nightgown.

  Sobbing, she knelt beside the injured dog and buried her face in Roscoe’s soft ruff. It smelled burned where sparks from the fire had singed his fur. Rita was still clinging to the dog when she felt Art’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Come on, hon,” he said urgently, pulling her to her feet. “We’ve got to move farther away from the fire. It’s too dangerous. If the gas tanks in the cars catch on fire, they’re going to explode, too.”

  Rita moved, but Roscoe, still whimpering, stayed where he was. While Rita watched in amazement, Art bent over and grabbed Roscoe. Arthur Parker was not a young man. For years he had suffered with back pain. Even so, grunting with effort, he somehow managed to heft the sixty-pound dog up off the ground and sling him over his shoulder.
Rita started toward the house, but Art stopped her. Grabbing her hand, he dragged her along with him, past the end of the mobile home, and on down the driveway.

  “If the garage goes, the house goes,” he told her.

  “But what about our things?” she asked.

  “What about them?” he replied. “They’re just things. They don’t matter. Come on.”

  When they reached the far end of the driveway they paused long enough to look back. By then the garage was fully engulfed. While flames roared skyward, from somewhere in the distance came the welcome wail of an approaching siren along with the frantic voice of the 911 operator who was still on the phone and still trying to reach her.

  “Ma’am, are you still there? Can you talk to me? Are you all right? Is everyone all right? Do you require an ambulance?”

  Just then the night was shattered by two more distinctly separate explosions. For a moment the roof of the garage seemed to lift into the air and float there, rising up over what was now only the frail skeleton of the garage, outlined against the terrifying backdrop of raging flames. The studs remained upright for a matter of seconds before crashing to earth. The impact sent a cloud of burning debris spewing in every direction. As shrubs in the yard lit up like torches, some of the embers landed on the thin roof of the double-wide. Within moments, and long before the first fire truck arrived on the scene, the mobile home, too, was ablaze.

  At the end of the driveway, Rita was ready to stop and rest, but a panting Art urged her forward, stopping only when they were on the far side of the road. Wrestling Roscoe down from his shoulder, Art gently placed the injured dog on the ground. With a groan and some difficulty Art stood up and straightened his back. Then he reached out and gathered Rita into his arms.

  “I’m so sorry about your boy,” he murmured into her hair. “I tried, but there was nothing I could do.”

  That was when Rita finally lost her grip on the phone. Letting it fall to the ground, she clung to her husband. How was this possible? How could Art be comforting her? After all, wasn’t she was the one who had begged Art to let Ron stay with them when he’d had nowhere else to go? And now, because Art was a kind man and had said yes, everything the two of them had ever worked for was gone.

  “I need someone to talk to me,” the woman on the phone was demanding. “What’s going on?” But by then she was talking to herself because no one was listening.

  31

  After unloading the office furniture and the provisions Ali had liberated from the break room at High Noon, she and Alonso prepared for what they both envisioned to be something close to a siege. They drove back on 89-A and dropped B. off at the Sedona house where Ali insisted he get some sleep in his own bed. Meanwhile Ali and Alonso finished gathering up and organizing whatever else from the Sedona house they thought might come in handy for a crew of people working overtime in an otherwise vacant house—everything from rolls of toilet paper to poolside chaise lounges complete with pillows and blankets that could, in a pinch, function as makeshift cots

  Moving the chaises into the bedrooms of the house in the Village of Oak Creek, and putting together the makeshift beds, Ali couldn’t help but smile. The last time she had assembled a group of chaises as beds had been on the occasion of her son’s eleventh birthday back when Chris had invited eleven friends over for a sleepover. She suspected that what had worked well for a bunch of rambunctious preteens back then would offer welcome respite to a pair of weary travelers who had spent way too much time on the road.

  Back at the house in Sedona, Ali slipped into bed around eleven and was sound asleep when the ringing of a phone awakened her at 3:45. She wasn’t surprised to see that B., operating in no known time zone, was already up and dressed. He answered after only one ring.

  “You’re in Cordes Junction?” she heard him say as she staggered off toward the bathroom. “Good, we’ll meet you at the house. Alonso says he’s coming, too. He’ll be another body for carting those racks around. Since he came away from the Navy with his dolphins, I’m guessing he’ll be pretty handy when it comes to doing reassembly.”

  Ali had learned about the US Navy’s dolphin awards during Alonso’s hiring process. Like an aviator’s wings, the dolphins were an insignia awarded to submariners who demonstrated the ability to operate and repair all the equipment on board as well as being proficient at lifesaving skills. Alonso had been helpful with last night’s prep work, and she had no doubt that his submarine-honed skills would make him equally proficient at stringing computer servers back together.

  While Ali climbed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, B. prodded a reluctant Bella out from under the covers and escorted her out for a morning walk. When Ali entered the kitchen, she found that Alonso had prepared a bag of cold meatloaf sandwiches and was filling the third of three thermoses with fresh coffee.

  “Good morning,” he told her with a grin. “Our people will need sleep, food, and coffee, not necessarily in that order.”

  They were at the house in the Village of Oak Creek with the lights on and the garage doors open when Cami pulled up in the U-Haul at five a.m. In an impressive show of driving panache, she backed the vehicle smoothly up the steep driveway, stopping just short of the garage door opening. Stu, following behind in Cami’s Prius, parked nose to nose with the truck. When the two drivers emerged from their respective vehicles, Ali hugged Cami and resisted the urge to hug Stu.

  “Sorry it took so long,” Cami apologized, as B. stepped forward to open the tailgate. “Lots of traffic, and they’re doing overnight paving on I-17 over by Black Canyon City. The freeway there was coned down to one lane in both directions.”

  “You’re here and you’re safe,” Ali said. “That’s all that matters.”

  The room B. had designated as the temporary location for Owen Hansen’s computer racks was a bonus family room, originally designed as a man cave, at the far end of the garage. That meant that, once the racks were trolleyed down a ramp from the bed of the truck, it would be a straight shot through the garage and into the new quarters.

  To Ali’s surprise, some previously unknown version of Stu Ramey—Stuart 2.0—took charge of the whole operation. Before allowing any equipment to exit the truck, he used a measuring tape to evaluate the space where each piece would go. After that he issued exacting directions about which racks were to be unloaded in which order and where each one was to be positioned.

  Ali had more than half expected that Cami and Stu would want to sleep first and unload later, but that wasn’t the case. They, along with B., were determined to have the truck emptied and away from the house as soon as possible,

  When it came to dealing with the racks, Alonso, who was in by far the best physical shape of any of them, took charge of the hand truck at the top of the ramp while B. and Stu, pushing back from below, provided the necessary braking. Once the hand truck reached the smooth flat surface of the concrete floor, Alonso was able to maneuver the load on his own through the garage and on into the house.

  The monitors, which had been packed into the truck before the racks, were the last items to be unloaded. They were light enough to be carried out of the truck and through the garage one at a time while Stu brought along the only other item left in the truck—a small cardboard box.

  Under Stu’s direction, the racks were unloaded and reassembled into the same configuration from which they had been dismantled back in Santa Barbara. During the load-out, Stu, Cami, and Lance had carefully labeled each power cord and cable, often duct-taping the end of the cable to the nearest piece of paneling, thus ensuring the use of the proper connection. Once the heavy-duty packing film came off the racks, that painstaking attention to detail paid off. Rather than being faced with an incomprehensible tangle of loose wires and cords, each rack was an organized puzzle that could be reassembled with the ease of a ten-year-old kid building a LEGO set.

  Each connection had to be rock solid, but after a few lessons from Stu, Ali surprised herself by taking on a rack of her own.
As they worked in an orderly fashion, Stu and Cami related the details of the trip, including Irene Hansen’s surprising reaction.

  “So she really doesn’t care about the money?” B. asked.

  “That’s what she said,” Stu answered. “She may change her mind about that, though, when push comes to shove. There’s a big difference between turning down theoretical money and turning down a specific amount.”

  It was complicated work, made easy by camaraderie and a joint sense of purpose. When energy flagged, liberal doses of the sandwiches and coffee supplied by Alonso came to the rescue. At nine o’clock in the morning, Stu and Cami were finally forced to call a halt. They took to separate chaise lounges in order to grab some much-needed sleep while B., Alonso, and Ali kept on working. Two hours later, while Ali was busy reconnecting the last GPU on the very last rack, B. and Alonso hung the monitors on the one empty wall in the room and connected those cables as well. In anticipation of the heat from all those working blades, B. had already switched on the AC and turned it down to the lowest possible setting, a frigid 62 degrees.

  “There we are,” B. said, clapping his hands in honor of a job well done. “As long as the Internet connection comes online, I think we’re just about done here.”

  It was Ali, however, who asked the obvious question. “How do we turn this mother on? I saw plenty of cables and cords, but I never saw anything that resembled an off/on switch.”

  “Should I go wake Stu?” B. asked. “Maybe he knows.”

  A few minutes later, a still-groggy Stu appeared in the doorway holding that stray cardboard box. He lugged it over to one of the tables, set it down, and began unpacking it. By then the room was already cool enough that Ali was beginning to wish she had brought a jacket along to put on over her sweatshirt.