Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

“We can make a start. After I kill you, I’ll just call the cops.”

His face flushed with anger. “Then you’re gonna have a bunch of dead cops from my sniper. He’s willing to die to take back his country and he’ll take as many enemy with him as he can…”

“So far, all you’ve killed are white people.”

He forced himself to speak in a reasonable tone. “You can give me your gun, I’ll put the detonator on safe. We can do it at the exact same time. Then we’ll take a ride to get that flash drive. The real goddamned flash drive. If it has the information I want, then I’ll let you live…”

Dowd’s cheek ticked in surprise. Ed Cartwright spoke behind me and then he was standing beside me.

“Your sniper is incapacitated,” he said, cradling a pump shotgun on one arm.

“You killed him?” Dowd’s voice shook.

“I just used the Apache Persuasion Hold and handcuffed him. He’ll live. Probably.”

Cartwright held up a black object that looked like a video-game joystick. He said, “I just made your detonator go limp, asshole. So why don’t you slowly get on your knees.”

Dowd stared at each of us, mouthed a profanity, lifted his thumb from the detonator in his hand.

Nothing happened.

He threw it at me and in those quick ticks of confusion, I allowed the distance between us to close. Rookie mistake-I had worried he would make a move for the AK on the bed-but it was too late. He dove at me and ferociously grabbed for my revolver. It quickly cost me my balance. We fell together onto the hard tile of the floor and I struggled to keep my panic from overwhelming my training. There was also the danger that Cartwright would use his shotgun on both of us.

Dowd’s face was that of a feral dog and he was strong. So strong that he was close to gaining control. We sweated, grunted, and cursed. His face turned dark red. My attempt to knee him in the groin failed. So did his try at head-butting me, but he succeeded in rolling me onto my back and getting astride me. Every muscle in my arms and hands screamed as I watched the gun twist toward me.

That’s when I released my left hand and grabbed the last-option knife.

“Ooof.” He expelled bad breath in my face as I drove the sure little blade into his abdomen. Blood trickled onto my fingers. He still fought but his strength left him. The revolver came loose in my hands and I fired one shot point blank into his chest.

After an eternity that was probably five seconds, I pushed him off with difficulty. Cartwright just watched.

Grabbing Dowd’s shoulders, I shook him hard.

“Where’s the baby, you son of a bitch?”

A trickle of blood rolled out the side of his mouth.

“I tried to warn you…”

His eyes flickered and closed. He didn’t deserve to die with his eyes shut. I shook and cursed him, but I was just yelling at a cadaver.

Cartwright waited a long time to speak. I realized that I must have had a wild look on my face. I patted down Dowd’s body out of habit and forced my breathing down.

“Where’d you get that Airlite, kid?”

I told him: at a gun show.

He held out his hand. I gave it to him.

“You got Speedloaders?”

Digging them from my pocket, I put them in his other hand.

“And the knife.”

I rose unsteadily and gave him the knife and sheath.

“Now pay attention,” he said. “I did the shooting here, not you. Right?”

I slowly nodded, feeling my senses return to human. The room smelled of discharged ammunition and vaporized blood.

“The Indian’s here,” he said, “and the cavalry are on the way. So you best be gone.”

“Peralta’s in there.” I indicated the panic room.

“I’ll take care of him. It won’t be the first time. You go.”

His voice stopped me at the door.

“You did okay, kid.”

I nodded, then walked back through the house and slipped out into the darkness.

In the ensuing days, the FBI made a dozen more arrests and confiscated more weapons and explosives. It was being called the biggest domestic terror conspiracy in modern American history. Peralta gained major cred with the bureau, which promised it would lead to business for us.

The house on Cypress was back to something resembling normal. Did I dare trust it? Lindsey was reclaiming the gardens, fighting against the rising heat. I was cooking and reading. At the moment, we were both naked in the bedroom and sipping martinis. Coleman Hawkins was on the stereo with perfect synchronicity, Cocktails for Two . Among the things Lindsey had purchased on her shopping trip were two sets of garter belts and sheer stockings: bad-girl black and virginal white. She was wearing the black and draping one leg over me.

“Are you going to stay?” I asked the question that had been metastasizing inside me, fearful of the answer.

She held out her glass. “If you’ll take me back, History Shamus.”

I clinked my glass against hers. “Gladly.”

Oscar Peterson came on. The Maharajah of the Keyboard, as Duke Ellington called him, sealed the deal.

“You’re crying.” She held my face close and wiped my wet cheeks. “Are they good tears?”

I nodded. But they were, in fact, a mixed bag.

“Happy that you’re back,” I said. “I want to do everything I can to put us back together…”

“Me, too.”

“And I’m sad for all the ones we lost. At least some could have been saved if we’d been faster or smarter. I can’t say we covered ourselves in glory on our first case. Grace, Felix, Tim, Larry Zip, Bob Hunter, his wife, all dead. We might have stopped some of it.”

“Dave, you can’t take all that on yourself.”

“The only one who got away was Addison.”

Lindsey cocked her head.

“Grace’s friend,” I explained. “Aside from Tim’s parent’s, she was the only one Grace and Tim had contact with while they were hiding out in O.B. She left school and went home to Oklahoma they tell me. A good thing. But I can’t forget holding that baby after I changed him. Now he’s in some hole out in the desert. What a shitty thing.”

And I cried.

Lindsey held me close for a long time.

Finally, she said, “Addison is a really bad name.”

“That’s what I think.”

“Mind if I try a hunch?”

We drove east from San Diego through Poway and Ramona on the old Julian Road. Suburbia slipped away and the hills and mountains surrounded us. Ahead were the Anza-Borrego Desert and the little town of Borrego Springs. We climbed around Grapevine Mountain, huge rocks leaning in on us, and then the desert valley emptied beneath.

Patty and I had been here many times. We made a ritual of staying one weekend a year at a little inn at Borrego Springs. It was a single-story speck in the desert surrounded by rocky, bare mountains. I remembered that it had a traffic circle. And I remembered a photo that Patty had taken of me on a hot day, surrounded by barrel cactuses in bloom.

But our trip to the badlands today was not for pleasure. The temperature was over one-fifteen and the town was emptied out of all but the hardiest year-round residents. A room would be cheap this time of year.

The traffic circle was still there: Christmas Circle, and a little beyond was a simple little motel with statues of desert bighorn sheep out front. Patty and I had stayed at the tonier Borrego Valley Inn, with its Southwest architecture and private patios. But I had seen this motel many times, never giving it a second look.

“There,” Lindsey said.

She pointed to an older Toyota sedan parked in front of the ranch-style block of rooms. It was the only car in the lot. Peralta parked fifty feet away and we all piled out of the pickup truck.