Robert Crais - Free Fall

Mark Thurman crossed the parking lot to his blue Mustang even before Eric Dees had pulled away. He tossed his cup into a big cement trash container, climbed into the Mustang, and pulled out onto Roscoe heading east. Pike and I trotted back to the Jeep and roared through the car dealership and out into traffic after him. The salesman in the blue sport coat watched us go, then made a big deal out of saying something to the saleswoman who’d come up beside him. I think he gave us the finger.

We followed Thurman up onto the 405 and climbed north through the valley past Mission Hills and the Simi Freeway interchange and the San Fernando Reservoir. I kept waiting for him to exit, and maybe head west toward his apartment, but he didn’t. We continued north into the Newhall Pass and the Santa Susana Mountains until the 405 became the Golden State, and when we came to the Antelope Valley Freeway just before Santa Clarita, Mark Thurman exited and followed it east, up through the San Gabriels. I said, “Thurman’s from Lancaster.”

Pike glanced at me.

“Mark Thurman is going home.”

The landscape became parched and barren and more vertical than not. Pockets of condominiums clung to the mountains, and fields of low-cost housing spread across creek beds, and huge billboards proclaimed YOU COULD BE HOME NOW IF YOU LIVED HERE. Ten years ago, only rattlesnakes and sagebrush lived here.

Thurman followed the freeway through the mountains past quarries and rock formations and drop sites for dead bodies, and then we were out of the mountains and descending into the broad flat plain of Antelope Valley. The valley up there is high desert, and the communities there grew up around top-secret military projects and government funding. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier up there. Edwards Air Force Base is there, with its shuttle landings and Stealth fighters, and, beyond that, the Mojave Desert spreads out to the north and east, a hot dry desolate plain that is ideal for crashing top-secret government hardware. In the foothills of the San Gabriels there is water and fruit orchards, and, in the winter, there is even snow. But the valley is different In the valley, there is only scrub brush and heat and cactus, and secret things that no one is supposed to know.

Maybe six miles after we descended out of the San Gabriels, Mark Thurman left the highway and turned into a flat middle-class housing tract with stucco houses and azalea bushes and two-car garages so filled with the clutter of life that at least one of the family’s cars had to stay in the drive. We turned in after him, and Pike shook his head. “No traffic and no movement We follow him in there, he’ll make us.”

“Then let him go.”

We let Mark Thurman draw ahead and turn and disappear from sight.

We pulled to the side of the street and waited, and maybe five minutes later we started again. We made the same turn that Mark Thurman made, and then we drove slowly, crisscrossing the subdivision streets, and looking for his blue Mustang.

Two streets over, we found it, parked in the open garage of a pleasant two-story house with a neatly kept lawn and a fig tree in the front yard.

We parked in the drive behind the Mustang, walked up to the front door, and rang the bell. Footsteps came toward the door, the door opened, and Mark Thurman looked out at us. I said, “Hi, Mark.”

Mark Thurman tried to shove the door shut. He was big, and strong, but he started the move too late and we had the angle.

The door crashed open, and Joe Pike went in first and I went in after him. Thurman threw a fast straight right, but it was high over Joe Pike’s left shoulder. Pike hit Mark Thurman three times in maybe four-tenths of a second. Once in the neck and twice in the solar plexus.

Mark Thurman made a choking sound, then sat down and grabbed at his throat.

Somewhere deeper in the house a voice called, “Who is it, Mark?”

I called back. “Mark lost his voice, Jennifer. Better come out here and give him a hand.”

Jennifer Sheridan came out of a door off the back of the entry and saw Mark Thurman on the floor. When she saw Thurman she ran to him, yelling, “What did you do to him?”

Pike said, “Hit him.”

We pulled Thurman to his feet and helped him into the living room. He tried to push away from us, but there wasn’t a lot of umphf in it. I said, “Take it easy. We’ve got the gun.”

Jennifer gave confused. “What gun?”

Pike showed her Mark’s revolver, then stuck it in his belt. “Is anyone else here?”

Jennifer followed us into the living room, hovering around Mark Thurman as we put him into a green Naugahyde Ez-E-Boy. “No. The house belongs to Mark’s aunt, and she’s away. That’s why we’re using it”

Pike grunted approval, then pulled the drapes so that no one could see in from the street.

Jennifer Sheridan touched Mark Thurman’s face with her fingertips. His face was already starting to puff. “I’d better get some ice.”

He tried to push her away. “Goddamn it, why’d you tell them?”

She stepped back. “I didn’t.”

I said, “I’m a detective, Mark. I did a little detective work and found you.” I told him about watching Akeem D’Muere’s, and about picking up Dees and following him to Tommy’s.

Thurman tried to act like it was no big deal. “So what? That doesn’t prove anything.” He looked at Jennifer. “Jesus Christ, Jen, this guy is a wanted fugitive.”

She said, “No, Mark. He wants to help us. He got into trouble trying to help.”

Mark yelled, “Don’t tell this guy anything.” Panicked. “He’s just making guesses. He doesn’t know anything.” He tried to push up from the chair, but Joe Pike shoved him down.

I said, “I know that the Premier Pawn Shop is owned by Akeem D’Muere. I know that eleven weeks before Charles Lewis Washington died, D’Muere hired a security contractor called Atlas Security to install a hidden surveillance camera at the Premier.” When I said it, his face dropped maybe a quarter of an inch. He tried not to show it, but there it was. “The camera was there when you guys pulled the sting. It would’ve recorded what happened.” I felt like Perry Mason, laying out my summation for the court. Did that make Jennifer Delia Street? Was Pike Paul Drake? “Akeem D’Muere has a tape of what happened that night, and because he has the tape he has you.”

Jennifer moved behind him and put her hand on his back. “It’s killing him.”

“For Christ’s sake, Jennifer, be quiet.” He was looking scared.

Jennifer said, “That’s why it went so bad for us. They made him swear to keep quiet and he did, but he just isn’t like that.”

Mark said, “Eric’s taking care of it. Don’t admit anything. What if he’s wired?”

Jennifer Sheridan pulled at him, trying to make him see, trying to make him come to his senses. “He’s not wired and Eric’s getting you into trouble.” She turned from him and looked at me. “He thinks he’s protecting them. He wasn’t part of all that. He’s not like the others.”

“Nothing happened, goddamn it.” Thurman pointed at me. “I’m telling you that nothing happened.”

“Damn it, Mark,” she shouted. “Stop protecting them. Stop lying for them.”

I said, “Leave him.”

They looked at me as if I’d fired a shot into the floor.

I said, “He doesn’t love you, Jennifer. He’s willing to take you down with him, just because he isn’t strong enough to stand up to the guys he works with.”

Mark Thurman boiled up out of the chair like an angry bull and hit me with his shoulder, driving me back across the living room. Jennifer Sheridan shrieked and yelled, “Mark,” but then Pike was next to her, wrapping her in his arms.