Higgins had tuned to his radio to the frequency used by the Ridgecrest substation and now asked over that traffic, “Are you pulling another Carrara on me?”
Michael rolled his eyes but said nothing for the moment.
“Level with me—why are we zeroing in on Tiffany? It’s more than this afternoon’s shooting, isn’t it? Has to be.”
Michael reached over and turned down the volume on the Motorola. “Even before the shootout on the ridge above Dulcie’s trailer, I was beginning to think there had to be three conspirators—”
“Wait—you mean Joanna Wallace, the subject calling himself Carson and one more?”
“Yes, though I wasn’t sure about Joanna until this morning. My point is—there was simply too much for two people to do, too much ground to cover...” The snag, he explained as briefly as he could, for Higgins had pulled into the cop space outside the emergency room, had been linking Joanna to Carson. There had seemed no way, at least not until Michael recalled Tiffany’s background. He’d worked for Las Vegas Metro prior to transferring to Kern County, and Michael now assumed that Carson had been with Metro too, some detail like organized crime, through which he would have rubbed elbows with the staff of FBI’s Las Vegas field office, making him familiar enough with their jargon and operations to pass himself off as a former special agent. “And yes, R.J., this is like Carrara,” Michael went on with mounting anger. “I’m filling in the blanks with hunches. It’d be nice to know they won’t be held against me at a later date, but I don’t have that luxury right now. I’m back on probation and that pig in the seersucker suit you just saw warned me two weeks ago that I’d be fired if I acted on wild speculation. If anything, Carrara was that.”
Higgins turned off his engine, then asked quietly, “What landed you back on probation?”
“I sat on an arrest warrant for my brother.”
“Why?”
“So I could take him down myself.”
“And did you arrest him?”
“Of course I did.”
“Good.” Higgins smiled, dimples and all. “What about Tiffany?”
“At our first meeting,” Michael went on hurriedly, “I saw he had a tattoo, an armband weave of Mojave Greens.”
“What’s that?”
“Rattlesnake native to this area.”
“So, what, a popular design for getting inked up here? A cult thing?”
“A very exclusive cult...” Michael paused, reliving the minutes in which he hobbled from the Hummer back to the Cessna, shaking off the frenzied hands of the pilot, peering down into the cabin. The force of the bullet had flopped Joanna on her left side, and the short sleeve to her jumpsuit had ridden up onto her shoulder. For Dulcie’s sake, he had expected to feel some vindication. But none came, just revulsion, sorrow and a sense he’d failed. “Joanna Wallace had the same tattoo.”
“You’re suggesting Tiffany took her out to save himself?”
“Yes.”
“On the basis of a snake tattoo?”
“More than that. Joanna was being coached by a cop insider—do the killings remotely so the trail gets cold, dole out the evidence in a way it’s guaranteed to be misread, leave some contradictions and loose threads so it all feels real to the dicks. Joanna knew of Razin because of Kincannon’s old contract with the Iranians. But, before Las Vegas Metro, Tiffany had been with LASD at Lancaster Station—”
“Ah, so he was there when the Iranian air force officer was dumped in the gravel pit.”
“No.”
“No?”
“But he almost surely heard about it. Look R.J., I’m too whipped to go through all of this right now. And short on time. Either you’re in or you’re out.”
“And what do I get if I trust you?”
“Closure on Razin. And proof this had nothing to do with Teheran. If I’m right, you’re free to get back to your regular caseload.”
Higgins tapped a knuckle against his forehead, then asked, “What’s the plan?”
“If Tiffany’s still inside, we’re here to get my wound re-sutured. If not, let’s get on the road again right away.”
They used their credentials to breeze to the head of the waiting list. Once past the admitting desk, they claimed the first examination table they came to. Higgins whipped the privacy curtain all around while Michael sat and tore off his old bandage and discarded it. He was riffling through the drawers in the table for fresh gauze when the doctor slipped through a slit in the curtains and asked, “What’s going on here?”
“This detective needs you to look at his gunshot wound,” Higgins replied.
The physician’s indignation gave way to concern. “Is this related to what happened at Inyokern airport?”
“Indirectly,” Michael said. “How long will it take you to sew me back up?”
“How old is this wound?” the doctor asked, examining it.
“About a week. How much time will it take to get new sutures in?”
“Ten minutes. Didn’t anybody tell you stay off this leg for a while?”
“I vaguely recall some advice like that,” Michael said. “Is Deputy Tiffany still here? We’d like to pop in on him for a quick hello.”
“No, he was released about a half hour ago.”
“Please slap on a dressing and wrap it up, doctor. We’ve got to get going.”
“We can afford ten minutes, Michael,” Higgins insisted. “You get tended to. Meanwhile I’ll go out to my radio and run that subject for registered vehicles.”
“Not locally, though.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Higgins said, rushing out.
He’d meant that he was going to run Tiffany’s name through the Sacramento data base for the vehicles he owned—but not with the help of a Kern sheriff’s dispatcher.
“You want a local anesthetic?” the doctor asked, donning a headlamp.
“No, I’m already stumbling around like a drunk.”
The physician’s breath whistled through his nose as he got to sewing. “Must say your fellow deputy surprised me,” he murmured.
Michael decided not to correct his assumption that he was with the local sheriff’s department. “In what way?”
“Well, I would think SWAT personnel get inured to the kind of thing he had to do this afternoon. But that poor fellow was really shaken up. Just between us, I think you all should keep an eye on him for a while.”
Michael flexed his jaws against the prick of the needle. “Sometimes it gets too close for comfort.”
Ten minutes later, Michael burst through the automatic double doors into a cadence of crickets. Michael no sooner got in the sedan than Higgins said, “Tiffany owns one vehicle—a brand new Dodge pickup.”
“And I’ll bet he doesn’t have the original tires on it.”
“But it’s brand...” Then the significance hit the agent. “That was the truck you saw on the ridge.” He backed out of the parking spot. “Where to? Tiffany’s apartment? I got the physical address off his truck registration.”
Michael hesitated. They had one brief window to nail a SWAT-trained and emotionally unhinged man. If the deputy eluded them this evening, it would turn into a long, internecine struggle, complicated by personal and agency loyalties. And once Tiffany’s attorney got involved, conviction might be iffy. The juries in these isolated communities trusted their cops and found it hard to believe they could be crooked. But guessing the man’s next move on a vast chessboard of mountain and desert wasn’t easy.
“Michael, where to?”
“Indian Wells, Kincannon’s mansion. Backtrack how you came in from the airport.”
They were speeding west on Inyokern Road when the agent took a cell phone call. “Okay, thanks.” He disconnected and glanced smugly over at Michael. “That was our Bakersfield R.A. His clerk friend with the sheriff’s coroner office just got back to him. They are missing some body bags. But not two of them. Three. What’s your read on that?”
“Scott Tiffany had plans for me. Sti
ll does.”
Reaching Indian Wells in full darkness, Michael had Higgins park across Route 14 from the bluff on which the vacant mansion stood. Michael had him pull in behind a screen of willows along an irrigation canal and switch off his lights. They let down their windows, and the agent stilled the engine.
The moonrise was several hours away, but in the strong starlight Michael could make out the massive forged-iron gate where two weeks ago Tiffany and he had waited for Joanna to arrive to open it for them. The gate was shut tonight as it had been then and at eight this morning, when Michael swung by before his meeting with Joanna at AEI headquarters. He had hoped to find a way around, so he could revisit Carl’s hideaway. But there hadn’t been time, and Gorman’s warning to back off and confer with him if met with any resistance had been fresh in Michael’s mind. Now he realized that Tiffany had known the gate code as well as she, and the wait a week-and-a-half ago had been needless.
“Where’s the big house?” Higgins asked.
“Just over the brow of the hill.”
“The R.A. said it was something else. Grandiose but empty inside.”
“Yeah,” Michael said, “says a lot about Kincannon’s empire.” Joanna had not volunteered that she’d taken the resident agent to the mansion, only stated that he hadn’t gone up to the hideaway. Last night, Michael would now guess, it’d been Tiffany in the Kern cruiser, making sure the Inyo detective didn’t venture up there for a look around, after being tipped off by Joanna as soon as she drove away from the restaurant.
What had Carson said in the columbarium? And the great pea and shell game goes on.
Michael was running his eyes over the darkened foothills when he saw a burst of red light in one of their high ravines. “You catch that, R.J.?”
“Looked like brakes going on and then off again.”
“That’s exactly what it was,” Michael said. The driver of the vehicle was coming down off the mountain using the stars, his headlamps extinguished. But there was nothing he could do about his brake lights, short of removing a fuse.
Higgins reached over to take his binoculars from the glove compartment. “How far back is Kincannon’s private cabin?”
“It’s more like a cliff-dwelling than a cabin. Maybe two miles.”
Michael illuminated his wristwatch dial.
Precisely eight minutes and forty seconds later, a large American-made pickup truck emerged from the grounds adjacent to the mansion and started down the paved driveway toward the gate. A difference was immediately apparent—it now had a camper shell covering the bed. The driver continued to run without lights, although in slowing he had to hit his brakes again, and the red lamps held steady as he stopped to open the gate.
“You said nothing about a shell on that Dodge,” Higgins remarked.
“Didn’t have one, then. Maybe he just bought it to hide something in the bed.”
“Is it Tiffany?” The agent handed the glasses over to Michael, who had to adjust the focus. The figure was nothing more than a silhouette, but he’d bloused his pant legs into his boots—his clothes had the cut of a SWAT uniform. Michael tried to see through the windows of the shell, but there wasn’t enough light for that, and the glass was possibly tinted. “It’s him.”
“Want me to pull the stop ASAP...?”
Tiffany had gotten back in his truck and was proceeding down the driveway toward the highway, the gate gliding shut behind him.
“Michael...?”
“Tail him. But at a distance. We’re going to need some probable cause that stands up to the scrutiny of five hundred of his fellow deputies.”
Tiffany turned north on Route 14. As he accelerated past Higgins and Michael, he passed under a street light, which confirmed that the glass to the side windows and the lift-gate of the camper were tinted, as were the crew-cab door windows. That was the end of any hope that they could pull him over by catching something in plain view.
“Here goes,” Higgins said, leaving the willows and falling in behind the Dodge.
A few miles up Fourteen, Tiffany turned east on Route 178, but just when it seemed that he was bound for the city lights of Ridgecrest, he veered onto Highway 395 and struck south across empty flats. Twice he slowed, as if checking his mirrors to the rear, and once he stopped completely in the middle of his lane, forcing Higgins to brake along the shoulder to maintain his interval. “I do this for a living, Michael, but damn—it’s hard to shadow somebody across country this open.”
Then the Ridgecrest dispatcher raised a patrol car: “Be advised, CHP is out of position on a TC. Just got a cell call from Deputy Tiffany, who’s in his personal vehicle, reporting a possible DUI in a brown Crown Victoria, on Three-ninety-five...”
“Turn around, R.J.—he’s made us.”
“Now what?” Higgins asked, flipping a U-turn.
“I have an idea where he might be headed.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“We’ll always have Carrara.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Michael had Higgins take the first dirt road south of Woody Bryant’s trailer. It wound up toward the Panamint Range and the western border of Death Valley National Park. But they couldn’t go far in the FBI sedan; washouts soon made the track impassable to all but four-wheel-drive. Michael searched for a place in which to hide the vehicle from highway view. He finally settled on a shallow gulch.
“Should I take my radio handset?” Higgins asked.
“Don’t bother,” Michael said. “we’re in a dead spot. Grab your shotgun and a big-cell flashlight, if you have one.”
“Yes.”
While Higgins gathered the equipment, Michael climbed a slight rise. The floor of Panamint Valley, scabbed over with salt like its deeper sister to the east, was reflecting the starlight strongly enough to show him its features. One-half mile to the west, a 10,000-foot long bluish scar revealed the Navy’s yet unfinished Improvised Explosive Device test track, the construction site Woody had pointed out to him more than two weeks ago. It was unlit tonight, the workers on furlough until tomorrow when the pouring of the concrete would begin. After that, the track would be laid down almost without interruption until complete, and halting work on it would be seen by the Pentagon as imperiling national security—something Scott Tiffany would have taken into consideration.
The only artificial lights for miles were the dim pinpricks from the lamp-lit windows of Woody’s Airstream.
Michael looked south, retracing the highway Higgins and he had just taken from Ridgecrest, checking it for headlights.
None.
Yet.
He knew he had made an all-in bet that the deputy was headed here, a hunch based on what Tiffany had let slip during their first meeting, asking how progress on the construction of the IED track was going. If Horace Dock hadn’t spotted the Hummer on the Eureka playa back in May, the deputy could have left Carl Kincannon resting in his grave there and even added Carson’s corpse to it last Monday. But feeling Michael’s breath on the back of his neck, Tiffany had been forced to search for a new place, one that had nothing to do with mines or salt pans.
On this gamble, Michael had had Higgins take a shortcut through the heart of Ridgecrest, putting them ahead of Tiffany, who—hopefully—hadn’t continued south on U.S. 395 to some other burial ground. By now, with no brown Crown Victoria behind him, the deputy had felt secure enough to double back toward Panamint Valley.
Higgins joined Michael on the rise. “Which do you want—the flashlight or the shotgun?”
Michael took the light.
“My God, is that the Milky Way?” the agent asked.
“Sure is.”
“I’d forgotten. Amazing. Got to bring the wife back up here sometime.”
Michael led him off the rise to the unpaved road they’d just come up. The pain in his calf was no longer a distraction, it had grown so familiar. He only wondered if he’d be able to run, should he need to.
Higgins seemed to be reading his thoughts.
“How’s the leg?”
“Fine,” he lied.
They were nearly to the highway when high beams glimmered around a bend out of the south. Both men knelt. The vehicle—not a Dodge, let alone a pickup—whooshed past and on its way toward Panamint Springs.
They now hurried across the asphalt, the afternoon’s heat invisibly billowing up off the surface. An expanse of microdunes awaited them on the other side. They were made of fine silt that tugged heavily at their shoes.
Higgins was breathing hard by the time they reached the fence. It loomed out of the dunes, taller and more stoutly built than the rest of the barrier that encircled the base. A wide gate had been built into its two-mile length, for trucks and other equipment to come and go. To the northwest, Michael could see the dinosaur-like hulks of loader, dozers and scrapers parked near the tanks and towers of the mixing plant.
If anywhere, Tiffany would be drawn here, where the pouring would begin and his deposits would soon be covered permanently under ten-inches of concrete. Michael angled off toward the gate, with Higgins following closely behind. On the drive up, they had discussed the deputy’s possible use of the site, and now the agent noted skeptically, “Too exposed for a body dump.”
“That’d be the beauty of it to Tiffany. He’d be hiding something in plain sight, and there’s no chance the Department of Defense will let law enforcement dig here anytime soon.”
A new set of headlights appeared out of the south. This vehicle was slowing, so Michael motioned Higgins over behind a mound of pickleweed. They went prone. The lights swept over their heads, then went out. The driver had shut off his headlamps, despite the quarter-mile of bladed road he had to negotiate through the dunes to the fence.
It was obviously a Dodge truck with a camper shell.
“Good work, Long Shore.” Higgins whispered—Tiffany had gotten out of his pickup less than a hundred yards from them.
Any self-congratulation was tempered by Michael’s knowledge that the deputy would not go down easily. His sniper rifle would’ve been confiscated pending the review, but no doubt he’d kept all his other weapons.
Under the Killer Sun: A Death Valley Mystery Page 25