by Rose Beecham
Jude could take her into custody now if she wanted, just on suspicion of being involved in terrorist activity. Sandy could then be held indefinitely while the Bureau figured out if there were any charges to bring. They didn’t even have to disclose her name. Basically, she would disappear. No one who knew her needed to be informed that she was under arrest, and she would have no right to legal counsel.
If Jude didn’t act soon, someone else would. She couldn’t delay telling Arbiter much longer. She’d rolled the dice, hoping to hell that Sandy’s love for Debbie would outweigh her paranoia, even briefly, and not inflame it. She had to get into her hideout as soon as possible. Given her workload, she would be stuck in Cortez all of tomorrow.
“I have an idea. Let’s all have a potluck at your place on Wednesday night. Watch a silly movie or something. I’ll get Tulley to pick up some burgers for the grill.”
“That sounds great.”
“I was thinking about what you told me. After everything she’s gone through, Lone needs support. She has you, but other people care about her, too. Maybe she needs to see that right now.”
Sandy wasn’t going to drive back to Rico in the dead of night after a few beers and a barbecue. And she and Debbie would be making up. She would probably spend all of Wednesday in Paradox Valley. Jude could nap at the stationhouse for a few hours, then drive down to Sandy’s place. By early morning, she could start her search.
“She has such a hard time relating to people.” Debbie sighed. “I hope she wants to come.”
“We’ll keep it casual. I’ll try to find out what she’s been up to on her trips away. It’s probably something she’s embarrassed to tell you about and that’s why she’s keeping it to herself. There’s usually a silly explanation for things like that between partners.”
“You think maybe she’d be more comfortable talking with a friend about it?”
“That’s possible. So far she hasn’t been willing to tell you, has she? Maybe that’ll change after you visit. We’ll see.”
“I’d really like if you’d talk to her,” Debbie said. “Jude, I appreciate everything you’re doing for us. It feels really good to know I can count on you.”
Feeling like a jerk, Jude said, “People can make it through rough patches. Good luck this afternoon. Let me know how it goes.”
*
“She wants you.” Bobby Lee tousled his bangs in the passenger mirror.
Tulley slowed down with the traffic flow as they reached a line of cars stuck behind a semi. The drive down to Cortez was always like this on the mountain route, which was why he normally went the boring way through La Sal Junction. He didn’t know how Jude put up with it on the days she had to drive to the MCSO instead of across to Paradox. She lived in the wrong location, too far from everywhere. She said she was trying to be an equal distance away from both the substation and headquarters, and she couldn’t stand to live in Dove Creek, so Montrose seemed liked a reasonable compromise. Lately she’d been looking at places in Norwood. Tulley wished he could afford to rent there.
He slowed down to a 27 mph crawl and thought about hitting his overheads and siren, but people noticed cops rushing to an emergency situation and expected to see all the details in the Cortez Journal or the Durango Herald the next day. Some troublemaker would remember the K-9 unit and call in and report his misuse of authority.
“She’s a married woman,” Tulley repeated.
“A hot MILF,” Bobby Lee corrected. “I’ll take a piece of that action anytime.”
“No wonder Jude won’t get engaged. She’s waiting for you to change your horndog ways.”
Bobby Lee looked at him sideways. “She knows who I am.”
No clarification was needed. Tulley had heard Bobby Lee’s theories about the natural order of things and how as mankind was not genetically designed to be faithful to one woman. How hormones drove the male to fulfill the destiny of the species by spreading his seed, and Bobby Lee was fighting the power of Mother Nature herself if he denied his urges. It was testosterone that prevented inbreeding and made the human race gods of the universe.
Tulley said, “If she walks in on me one more time, I swear I’m gonna tell Gavin what’s going on.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why the heck not?”
“Because he’ll fucking kill you.”
“Me?”
Tulley put his hand on the horn. The guy in the pickup in front of him kept braking and slowing down, half crossing the yellow lines, positioning to overtake the car in front of him. Like that would gain something. Tulley knew if he was driving an unmarked vehicle, the guy would have flipped him the bird.
“The husband is going to blame the OM first,” Bobby Lee said with the certainty of firsthand experience. “In his eyes you’re the problem.”
Tulley concentrated on the road as yet another retard with a death wish tried to pass the semi. “What’s the OM?”
“The other man. That’s you, buddy.”
“Shit! I never even look at her.”
Bobby Lee cradled his head in his hand. “You worry me.”
“He thinks she’s so perfect. And behind his back she’s flirting and all. It ain’t right. I can’t respect a woman like that.”
“She ain’t asking you to respect her.” Bobby Lee angled his head around. “And take it from me, you’re not the first. Chicks who come on like that make a habit of it. This Crystal, she’s a bona fide S.L.U.T. The old man’s out busting his nuts so she has the nice house and the nice car. She’s got him right where she wants him, pussy-whipped and too goddamn busy to notice her extracurricular pursuits.”
“I’m sleeping over tonight.” Tulley was filled with anxiety. “What if she comes in the guest room? She did that one other time and sat on the bed.”
“Man, that’s so uncool. You do not want to go there with the hubby in the next room.”
“You got that right.”
“Pay attention, my friend. This is an opportunity.”
“No, it’s a goddamn nightmare.” Tulley stared straight ahead. He should have known Bobby Lee wouldn’t understand. “I’ll tell her to quit.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thanks, you’re a big help.”
“Dude, the problem here is you’re not handling the situation like you should.” Bobby Lee got back to fixing his hair. “Be cool. Get a piece of that ass. Give her what she wants till she loses interest, then she’ll dump you and there’s no hard feelings.”
Tulley shook his head. “I’m not getting shot by a pissed-off husband.”
“I can respect that,” Bobby Lee said. “Hey, did you ever nail that deputy? What’s her name? Serenity or something?”
“She’s too aggressive. I want to go back to Denver again.”
Recently Bobby Lee had decided to display his tricked-out Chevy Silverado at a custom car show, and they’d spent a few days in Denver. During the vacation, Bobby Lee introduced Tulley to several ladies who made their living in the professional escort business. He spent the night with the one he liked best. It was a positive experience and Tulley was ready to practice his bedroom skills some more now. But not with Crystal Sherman.
“Here’s the thing,” Bobby Lee said. “You’re a good-looking dude. You don’t have to pay for it.” He stabbed his thumb toward the caged area behind their seats where Smoke’m was drooling. “And that animal is a major chick magnet.”
“I’ve saved up enough for two more nights with Stormy,” Tulley said.
“Oh, man.” Bobby Lee put his comb away and got to work with the lip balm. He said soft lips were mandatory if you wanted to make out with chicks.
Tulley accelerated. The truckie had finally found a place to pull over. No one else tried to pass. They had to make way for Tulley. He was the law.
“Like I’ve been telling you,” Bobby Lee said. “I know all the cute chicks in Durango. I can get you hooked up.”
Tulley cringed at the thought of sleeping with gir
ls from his best friend’s reject pile. He wished he could find someone as pretty and kindhearted as Stormy. After they were finished having sex that night, they cuddled together and got talking about their dogs. She was a big-time animal lover just like him. They agreed that Michael Vick should get death by lethal injection, even though a swift end was more mercy than he deserved.
“Here’s what I’ll do for you,” Bobby Lee said. “I’ll take Crystal off your hands.”
“Yeah? How do you plan on doing that?”
“Take me over there and tell your friend Gavin some BS about how I’m real eager to see those dogs of yours going though their paces. I’ll handle it from there.”
“Oh, that’s just swell.” Tulley decided Bobby Lee was messing with him. He was a mite too casual about going behind Jude’s back. If it was him planning to cheat on the detective, Tulley would be terrified.
“Considering I only have your word that this chick’s a hottie, that’s a generous offer,” Bobby Lee said.
“You are actually for real,” Tulley marveled.
“I never kid about getting laid.” Bobby Lee picked fluff off the black Stetson on his lap. “And don’t get yourself worked up on Jude’s behalf. I promise you, I could bang every horny housewife in the Four Corners and she wouldn’t care.”
Tulley kept his opinion to himself. Their relationship was in worse shape than he thought.
Chapter Thirteen
“We found the Lexus in Durango,” Koertig said.
“That was quick.” Jude poured herself a cup of coffee and they took over an interview room for a quick catch-up before they briefed the team.
“It was reported stolen in Animas Valley on Saturday morning. The owner left it idling on the street while she dropped off her kid for a birthday party.”
“Where was it located?”
“It’s been sitting at an expired parking meter downtown since Saturday evening. We towed it to the garage. Belle’s processing it now.”
“Anyone see the driver?”
“Eight witnesses so far. They all report seeing two Caucasian males.” Koertig consulted his notepad. “Driver is over six feet, 170 pounds, shaved head, goatee beard, pale suit, plain silk shirt open at the neck, cross on a thick gold chain. Passenger shorter, thinner, blond, leather jacket and casual shirt. Neck chains and cross. Rings. Diamond ear stud.” He handed Jude a statement. “Waitress at Ariano’s. She’s our best witness.”
Jude scanned the details. The two men ordered veal, paid cash, big tip. Departed around ten. Both spoke with an accent. The waitress thought it was Serbian, Russian, Czech. Something like that. They told her they were from Miami. She described one of the men as having a lot of gold in his teeth and saw tattoos on the fingers and chests of both. The man in the leather jacket had cuts on his knuckles.
“The rose on the shorter guy’s chest is Russian mafia,” Jude remarked. “The symbols the witness saw on the fingers are probably Cyrillic.”
She’d seen a few examples of Russian prison tattoos when she worked in the CACU. Jude didn’t know much about them except that they were highly symbolic, a coded language that revealed the wearer’s criminal history and gang status.
“Russian mafia in the Four Corners?” Koertig marveled.
Equally amazed, Jude said, “Not exactly their kind of holiday destination. How are the composites coming along?”
“One of the guys is working on FACES now with the waitress.”
The men she described would have stood out among the casual Saturday night crowds. Shorts and T-shirts were the norm on warm Southwestern evenings. “Did anyone see them after they left the restaurant?” Jude asked.
“We got a couple of homeless juveniles,” Koertig said. “They claim they saw the men getting into a silver Mercedes SUV in the parking lot on Camino del Rio.”
“Security cameras? License plate?” A faint hope.
“No, but Durango PD had two patrol cars parked near the lot. They were responding to another son of God incident.”
“I thought they sent that guy to the state mental hospital months ago,” Jude said.
The offender was a fixture on the streets of Durango. Most of the time he harmlessly panhandled outside restaurants, proclaiming his messianic status to passersby. When he struck a bad patch he got aggressive about wanting to perform miracles and tried to pull people out of wheelchairs.
“They let him out last week,” Koertig said. “He stole a mule from the petting zoo. He was riding it through town Saturday night, yelling ‘Hosanna.’ The homeless kids tagged along for a laugh.”
“Where was he arrested?” Jude asked.
“Corner of the 800 block. The boys took off through the parking lot to avoid police. That’s when they saw the suspects getting into the Merc. One of the officers also saw the vehicle leave.”
“Any idea which highway they took?”
“He thinks they were headed for 160.”
“Which would eventually get them onto I-25 and south to I-40,” Jude concluded. “So Miami sounds like the truth.”
“Do you want to talk to the waitress before I round up the team?”
“No, you did great with her. We better get rolling. The Calloways will be here soon.”
“Oh, yeah, and then the joint terrorism task force.” Koertig looked her in the eye. “Is it for real or just a practice exercise?”
Jude sipped her tasteless coffee and reminded herself to bring another mug down here next time she made the trip. Her last one got broken and she hated Styrofoam. “I can’t say for sure, but it sounds like the real thing.”
“What the hell are they thinking?”
“They’ve brainwashed themselves,” Jude said absently. “They lost their way. The blue-collar world is disintegrating around them and they need to blame someone. It’s really not surprising that they’ve latched onto an ideology that makes them feel important and gives them a role to play in something bigger.”
Koertig treated this analysis with the solemnity it deserved, concluding, “Numbnuts looking for their fifteen minutes.”
“In a word, yes.” Jude returned to the topic at hand. “Those two kids. Where are they?”
“Durango PD located them this morning after the Lexus was called in. I sent one of the rookies to take their statements. They’re with Child Protective Services now.”
Jude sighed. Durango hosted a permanent population of homeless kids drawn by the town’s laid-back atmosphere and prosperity. Most had already been through foster homes and skipped town as soon as they were placed in another one. Koertig handed the witness statements to her. They tallied, and the descriptions of the men were reasonable for the time of night and weird lighting. One of the boys had also noticed the tattoos.
“Nice work,” Jude said.
Koertig shook his head, still confounded by the idea of Russian hoodlums in their sleepy corner of the universe. “So this was a hit?”
“It’s looking that way. If we want to make a lot of assumptions.”
“The parrot was talking Russian.” Koertig located Jude’s notes from the interview with witness “Oscar Maulle.”
“Yes, and he used the word grokhnut. It means shoot or kill.”
“Maulle had friends in low places. The bulldog clips on the wounds. Is that a Russian thing? I heard they’re sadistic.”
“I think if they wanted to torture Maulle, they could come up with something more gruesome than that,” Jude said.
“Anton…the human slime,” Koertig mused. “Is that a Russian name?”
It wasn’t Petya, Kostya, or Sasha, but the playwright Chekhov was Anton. Jude remembered that much from high school. “Could be,” she said.
“Any progress on the South African security guard?”
Jude had called in a favor with Arbiter. Hugo wouldn’t be hard to find. “Not yet, but I should have his details tomorrow.”
“I almost forgot, we found the Cadillac, too,” Koertig said. “The driver’s a moron. They arrested him in
Mancos last night. He set himself up under a parachute at the camping ground, smoking weed. It caught fire.”
“Jesus.”
“Could have been a conflagration, but that old guy who runs the taxidermist shop emptied his waste bucket on the flames.”
Jude grimaced. “Striking presence of mind.”
“They’re enemies,” Koertig said. “The moron plays loud music all night so the taxidermist calls the marshall. Last week the moron calls in a complaint about the old guy peeping in the ladies’ bathroom block.”
Jude drained her coffee and got to her feet. “He’s a stellar witness, in other words?”
“Oh, yeah. The kind that makes your Russian mafia psychos look credible.”
As they tromped out of the room, Jude said, “You know we’re going to have to search that goddamn house again tomorrow.”
Koertig slapped the file against his leg. “I had a bad feeling about that.”
*
The Calloways coped better with the death of their relative than the shortcomings of their accommodations. Jude had suggested they interview the family as a whole since they weren’t making the cut as suspects.
“I hope we can expedite this,” Jim Calloway said. “I have a summit in Dallas starting Thursday, and the bed in our hotel is giving me a neck problem.”
“He’s talking about a golf summit,” Pippa said. “Important stuff.”
“You know how long your father’s had his name down for this,” Delia Calloway chided her. To Jude and Koertig, she explained, “It’s a Chuck Cook intensive.”
“Three Hall of Famers are doing demos,” her husband added.
“You people make me sick,” Pippa said.
Jim Calloway continued undeterred. “Inspiration, that’s what it’s all about.”
“Tiger Woods is a guest,” Delia Calloway added, tweaking the modest string of pearls at her throat.
“Have you ever met him?” Koertig asked them.
“I’ve been at the same table.” Calloway spoke with the awe of a man who’d broken bread with the Almighty Himself. “Talk about charisma. Talk about class. And his wife. Gorgeous.”