Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

“Good.”

“But I do think we can help you.”

“Kind as your offer is, Mr. Harrow, we have handled murders in Socorro County before.”

Harrow kept his tone easy-going, but his rhetoric amped up. “Sheriff, you know as well as I do that if this is a serial killer, you need all the help you can get.”

“The FBI, for example.”

“Yes, but they aren’t here. We are. I am. And if we’re up against who and what I think we are, we can all use help. We now believe the same murderer may be tied to as many as fifty-some homicides over the last nine years.”

That got Tomasa’s attention. “That seems impossible...”

“I wish it were,” Harrow said. “Kate Pierson, protocol be damned, called me because the bullets from your victims match the gun the killer used at my home. Also, the mutilation of the female vic’s left hand mirrors what we believe to be the killer’s current evolving, devolving M.O.”

Tomasa held up a hand. “Mr. Harrow, I am not unsympathetic to your feelings. But because you are emotionally involved in this matter, you have taken your search to an extreme...” He gestured toward the crew. “...that exceeds any accepted law enforcement conditions or ideals.”

“I’m not working in law enforcement. But I am still, in my way, a public servant — like the men whose families this perpetrator targets.”

“I understand your sincerity, Mr. Harrow. But I am working in law enforcement.”

“Did you see the broadcast Friday night?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Then you know I’ve recruited some of the best people in their respective forensics fields in the country, if not the world. Do you have the budget to assemble a team like that?”

Frowning in thought, Tomasa said nothing.

“Another thing, Sheriff — some people in this country don’t like to talk to the police, no matter why, no matter what, no matter when.”

“That much I know,” Tomasa admitted.

Harrow gave the sheriff the kind of world-weary smile law enforcement professionals often traded. “Funny thing is — a lot of those same people can’t wait to run their mouths in front of a TV camera. Like these we have here?”

And suddenly Tomasa roared with laughter that echoed through the atrium.

“All right,” the sheriff said. “You can talk to your friend Pierson and see the bullets and whatever else you want, with my blessing... but I need from you one thing.”

“Name it.”

“You must talk to one of Reid’s neighbors.”

“Well, no problem,” Harrow said.

“You say that now,” Tomasa said slyly, the bandito quality slipping through the droopy mustache, “only because you haven’t met Archie Gershon yet.”

Prone in a ditch under hot sun, next to a narrow gravel lane that wound its way up to the one-story rambling white clapboard of one Archibald Gershon, Harrow understood why Sheriff Roberto Tomasa had seemed both eager and amused to have the Crime Scene! host handle interviewing the recluse.

Gershon lived on the property next to murder victims the Reids, and the sheriff had figured the old man may well have seen something.

“Archie’s known to keep track of what goes on in and around his property,” the sheriff had said.

“How do you know anything about the man, if he never steps off that parcel?”

“I didn’t say he never stepped off that parcel — he comes to town once a month. Him and me usually share a beer and some talk. No, it’s just anybody stepping foot on his parcel that’s a problem.”

They had left the sheriff’s office in two vehicles — Harrow and Tomasa in the departmental Tahoe, trailed by the Crime Seen! bus with Pall, Anderson, Arroyo, Ingram, and their driver (other staff members having been dropped at their motel).

Right now they were pulling up to the foot of the place, to large red hand-painted letters on weathered white-painted wood near the gate: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT! SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT TWICE!

Harrow frowned. “You just let him get away with shooting at anybody who comes near his place?”

“My predecessor hauled him in, three times. But in this part of the world, people value their privacy. Not a judge or jury around here woulda gave him so much as a fine. Anyway, there haven’t been any incidents lately.”

“ Nobody’s welcome?”

“The only person who’s been up here in the last ten years who didn’t draw gunfire was the Direct TV installation guy... The coot does love his TV.”

“Unless he has a dog,” Harrow said, with a dry chuckle, “it’s probably his only company.”

In the ditch now, it didn’t seem so amusing.

And Gershon was true to his word, or anyway true to his sign: when Tomasa’s SUV had pulled up to the gate, a bullet punctured a tire, and a second one took out part of the red and blue light on the roof. That’s when Tomasa shoved the Tahoe into park, and suggested they vacate the vehicle.

Harrow had rolled out the passenger side, hit the gravel hard, then continued on, dropping down into the drainage ditch next to the road. With the open driver’s side door for cover, Tomasa got to the back of the SUV, then ducked behind the Tahoe, all the while gesturing for the bus to back off.

Then, just after a third round pierced the Socorro County shield on the driver’s door, Tomasa came around the vehicle and dove into the ditch next to Harrow.

“Man of his word,” Harrow said. “Sign said he’d shoot. I’m just glad he’s as good at it as he is.”

“You picked up on that, huh?” the sheriff said with a rumpled grin. “Yeah, most people think ol’ Arch misses them. Truth is, he could pick off a gnat’s eyelash at two hundred yards.”

“Not every crazy survivalist,” Harrow said, “shoots like that.”

“He’s no survivalist,” Tomasa said. “And I wouldn’t bet on crazy, either. He just doesn’t like company.”

“Who is this character?”

“Late at night, in certain bars around town, you may hear how Archie was one of the boys on the grassy knoll.”

Harrow gave the sheriff a look.

“Just passing it along, Mr. Harrow. Don’t claim it’s gospel.”

They heard a vehicle door slam — the bus’s, out in the country road below the Tahoe at the gate — and watched as Pall and Anderson jumped out, followed by Maury Hathaway, lugging his Sony cam. Soon the three men were hunkered down in the ditch with the Crime Seen! host and the sheriff.

“What the hell are you doing?” Harrow said. “Bullets are flying. You should’ve stayed put.”

Veteran cameraman Hathaway said, “Didn’t get the memo.”

Young Anderson said, “We’re fine. That guy’s a good shot. He’s just trying to scare us.”

“Really?” Harrow asked. “What if he missed?”

Hathaway said, “We’ll stay put unless you say otherwise. I wouldn’t risk my head or my camera.”

A fourth bullet kicked up dirt by the edge of the ditch.

Tomasa yelled up toward the house: “Goddamn it, Archie, stop that! You known damn well it’s Sheriff Tomasa!”

As if the preceding bullets had been so much friendly conversation, a rough-edged voice called down, “I know who you are, Roberto!”

“I thought we were friends!” Tomasa yelled.

“We are — that’s why you’re alive... now get the hell off my property!”

“I just come to talk!”

“ Be in town next week, Roberto! We can talk then. ”

“I need to talk today!”

“If I wanted to talk to anybody out here, today? I wouldn’ta put up that sign. You do read English, don’t you, Roberto?”