Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

He walked out into the darkness, kicking the hard ground, thinking.

“Thoughts? Ideas?” It was as if he were talking to the mountains as much as to me.

I moved toward him, wondering if Dowd was watching with night vision. He could take us out right here with a sniper rifle.

“We can’t stay on Cypress.” I stated the obvious through a scratchy throat. “Your place in Dreamy Draw is more secure but not secure enough. It’s also dangerously isolated.”

I had only gotten Lindsey back. Sure, she had left me twice before, but for now it was sweet. The idea of putting her at risk was intolerable, a rocket into my brain. Dowd knew we had defrauded him with the flash drive. He would come to kill us all. And he was the kind of man who would seek out Lindsey first, so my agony would be under way well before he got to me. I would have been responsible for losing them both, Robin and Lindsey.

I said,“You know we’ve got to find him ourselves. Get him first. You know this, right?”

He nodded.

“But for now,” he said, “we need to get out of the Valley. How about San Diego?”

It sounded smart. But one other thing bothered me.

“How many Claymores did they find here?”

“Ten.”

“You’re sure?”

He shook his head and cursed. He could do the arithmetic as easily as I: a dozen stolen, one used on me in Ocean Beach, ten seized tonight.

One Claymore was still missing and I wagered it was with Dowd.

The call came a little after eight p.m. Only one person had called me on the cheap phone I had bought in El Centro.

“Time’s up, Doctor Mapstone.”

“For you,” I said. “You escaped once, you won’t again.”

“Did you ever serve in the military? In combat?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t understand anything. I gave you a chance to serve your country by giving me the list of Scarlett’s clients. I appealed to your patriotism. I appealed to your intellectual side. But, no. You refused to obey my orders. You refused to negotiate.”

“I’m really sorry about that.”

“If you had served in combat, you would know that a soldier can’t let his rage get the better of him. It can overwhelm discipline and training. Effectiveness. So I have to push you with some clearer incentives. I’ve researched you, Doctor Mapstone. I’m going to kill everyone you love. Then I’m going to kill you. And then I’m going to bring the war where it belongs, right here to America.”

“Keep talking, General,” I said. “The trace is working.”

There was no trace.

He laughed as if a private joke had been shared between friends.

“I’m going to start with your first wife, Patricia.” He read out an address in La Jolla. It was Patty’s address. “I know you’re in San Diego. If you come alone and bring the client list, then I’ll let her live. I might even be willing to let you live. But you have to come within the next hour. You won’t find her there. If I’m satisfied you’re alone, I’ll call and give you instructions. No cops. No bullshit. This is your last chance to negotiate.”

Then I was only holding a useless plastic object to my ear, hearing nothing.

But I was not in San Diego.

I was in Phoenix.

I was in the valley of decision.

Sharon and Lindsey had driven the Prelude to Ocean Beach. Find a parking place and leave it, I had told them. It would be two weeks before the police towed it away. Then they had checked into a hotel downtown.

Peralta and I went to the Hotel Clarendon in Midtown Phoenix to wait for the call I knew would come. The Clarendon was where Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles had been assassinated by a mobster’s bomb in 1976. After its restoration, the new owners put a memorial photo gallery in a hallway.

What I hadn’t counted on was him leaving while I was in the shower. “Checking on something with Eric Pham. Back soon,” he had scrawled on the hotel stationery. He had known I wouldn’t let him go without me. “I’m not an old man,” he had barked at me. He had to prove something to himself. At least he was with Pham.

Or so I had thought. In thirty minutes, I had called Pham. He had told me he was held up in a meeting and had canceled on Peralta.

So he had gone on his errand alone. My calls to him went straight to voice mail.

Now, I dressed quickly in black jeans, black running shoes, and black T-shirt. I thought about stopping by the office and unlocking the Danger Room. But, no. There was no time. I didn’t even bring the Python. Instead, I carried the Airlite and two Speedloaders. That would be enough or it wouldn’t matter. At last, I didn’t need the toolbox, only the hammer.

Dowd had let the woman he kidnapped off at Forty-Fourth Street and Camelback. Her car had been recovered at Tatum and Lincoln, in the parking lot by the statue of Barry Goldwater. I made a guess that there was one place nearby where Edward Dowd could hole up: the house of Bob Hunter, Grace’s father. Like Larry Zisman, Bob Hunter had become a loose end that needed to be snipped. It was only a few blocks away.

I called a cab. While I waited, I phoned Isabel Sanchez and asked her to check on Patty, if Patty even still lived at that address.

Then I made one more call.

It was nearly ten when the cab let me out on McDonald. I gave him a twenty-dollar tip and hiked into the desert, a ghost passing the million-dollar homes. The night was moonless, a few prominent stars claiming the indigo vault above, and I was profoundly aware of the possibility of snakes. But I didn’t move with a heavy step. I walked slowly and carefully, aware of every sound, each scurrying noise of an animal that had been disturbed. The sounds of the city were far away.

I came up on the Hunter house from the south and followed the pale adobe wall toward the front. The air was still and hot. My skin was cool and all my senses were notched up high.

The form on the ground was ten feet ahead. I crouched and watched. It wasn’t moving and nobody seemed near it.

Closer, I saw a man prone in the dirt and rocks a few feet off the driveway. He was on his belly and his back contained a messy exit wound the size of a dinner plate. I turned him over carefully. His breathing was shallow and rapid. It was a miracle he was still alive. A bullet had struck him just above the heart. His face looked privileged and tan, even near death: Bob Hunter. He had made his last hike up Camelback. He stared at me without seeing.

“Who’s inside?” I demanded it in a whisper.

He opened his lips and mouthed something. My wife? Maybe that was what he said. His eyes might as well have been glass.

The elaborate porch sconces were turned off but the door was cracked open, as if Hunter had left it that way and gone for a stroll. Or tried to make an escape. Once again, I scanned the terrain. The desert landscaping was done so well, too well.

I pushed the door open and entered with the snubnosed revolver out and up.

High-and-tight stood a few feet away, facing toward me and holding a black semi-automatic pistol in his right hand pointed down. This was the same man who had searched the Prelude at the office, the same man who filched the briefcase from the cheap motel on Black Canyon. He looked younger close up. His eyes narrowed as I kept walking.

“Who am I negotiating with? You?”

His gun arm started up and I made the smooth trigger pull of the Airlite. The walls echoed with the gun’s quick boom as a dime-sized red hole appeared between his eyes and his head snapped back hard. In nanoseconds, the wadcutter bullet fragmented inside his skull and sent a wide shower of red and gray onto the wall. His body lurched back against an expensive floor lamp and both crashed to the floor.