Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

Harrow gave Moreno directions to the Shelton house.

In less than ten minutes, Moreno and his camera crew pulled up in a van marked with the call letters and channel number of UBC’s Wichita affiliate.

Moreno got out, came over, and the two shook hands.

“Sorry about this, man,” the affable reporter said.

“Not your fault.”

Harrow had just finished introducing Moreno to the locals when Laurene and Choi came out.

Choi trotted up and said, “Boss — there was a jewelry box under the T-shirt. I left it for the feds, but... I sneaked a peek. It’s full of wedding rings. Fifteen or twenty of ’em.”

One of them Ellen’s, Harrow thought, filled with excitement and dread.

“No fingers, though,” Choi added.

In her latex-gloved right hand, Laurene bore an envelope. She ignored the sheriff and handed it to Harrow.

Harrow asked, “You’re not worried about prints?”

She shook her head. “They’re frickin’ everywhere. He’s not hiding.”

Harrow accepted the envelope. In big block letters, HARROW was printed across the front. He opened the envelope and fished out a piece of paper.

Gibbons came up to him. “J.C., that’s evidence ...”

With just a sideways glance, Harrow communicated with Hathaway, and the camera’s eye switched from Laurene and Harrow to the sheriff.

“It’s addressed to me,” Harrow said.

Gibbons, realizing he was on camera and that the whole nation would be siding with Harrow and not him, wisely backed off.

The letter was printed in neat block letters not unlike the envelope. Harrow read:

Mr. Harrow,

Carmen Garcia is alive.

For the time being, she is well. I have been trying to communicate with you and others for a very long time. You are the only one who has even come close to understanding.

We need to talk. I would suggest that you come alone, but we both know that is not possible.

I will say simply if you wish to see Carmen Garcia again (alive) that you come to the address listed below.

I look forward to meeting you.

P.S. Your wife and son did not suffer.

Below was an address.

Working to keep his emotions in check, Harrow handed the letter to Gibbons, who read it quickly.

“My God,” Gibbons said.

Harrow asked, “Recognize the address?”

The sheriff nodded numbly. Jerking a thumb toward the crackerbox behind him, Gibbons said, “Shelton bought this house after his family died. This address?” He held up the letter. “That’s the house he lived in when his family was murdered.”

My God indeed, Harrow thought.

“Ten years of this man’s life,” Harrow said, “have been building to this moment.”

Gibbons and the rest, including the camera, just stared at him.

“Let’s not disappoint him,” Harrow said.

While the others loaded equipment and crime scene kits back into their vehicles, Harrow made two stops. The first was Jenny Blake, about to get on her bus.

“Find me everything you can about Shelton,” Harrow told her. “Find out what happened to his family, and get me everything you can about the investigation. Apparently there were two inquiries — local followed by state, when there were some conflict of interest concerns raised.”

She frowned. “But aren’t you going after Shelton now?”

“Yes. I may be in the thick of it when you come up with anything.”

“But you want it anyway?”

“I could well need it. Boil it down.”

“I’ll try not to be verbose,” she said with a perfectly straight face, then she disappeared up into the bus.

Next stop was audio expert Nancy Hughes. The blonde with the ponytail was packing up her boom mike to put in the trunk of the rental car.

He asked, “Can you rig me a special earpiece?”

“How special?”

“I need it for the usual reasons, particularly so Jenny can get to me. But for the main feed, I want to hear the sheriff and his deputies communicating.”

Hughes sneaked a glance over at the Tahoe, where the sheriff was conferring with his two deputies. “You don’t trust the local good old boys?”

“Our suspect has an unhappy history with local law enforcement. There’ll be guns and more guns at this shindig. I just want to know who’s doing what, so neither Carmen nor I wind up collateral damage.”

Nodding, Hughes said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem — I may need some help tapping into their radio frequency.”

“Check in with Jenny on that, but try not to take up too much of her time.”

“Okay. Still, J.C. — that’ll be a lot of voices in your head.”

He gave up half a smile. “Maybe I’m used to that kind of thing.”

She grinned back, and took him by the elbow into the makeup Winnebago, where she wired him for sound and provided the earpiece.

Minutes later, when Harrow emerged, Gibbons came over. “J.C.! You want to ride shotgun with me again?”

“Sure, Herm. Particularly if it’s a real shotgun.”

“Ha! Come on, then.”

The deputies Gibbons had summoned from Smith Center had already set up a perimeter at the Shelton house. As Gibbons drove, he radioed to reroute them to the new target, and told them to set up a much tighter perimeter there — nothing in, nothing out.

Glancing at Harrow, Gibbons said, “You know that means your cameras too.”

“I’d do the same,” Harrow said with a shrug.

And back in his sheriff days, he would have. But now he knew that Hathaway and Arroyo were used to working commando style, even if the crew from the Topeka affiliate wasn’t. No matter how big a perimeter Gibbons set up, no matter how tight, his two principal cameramen would find a way to get the shots.

And at this point, Harrow doubted if he could even call them off if he wanted to. Hard news was in the air, and this was the Crime Seen! story to end all Crime Seen! stories... maybe literally.

Shifting subjects, Harrow asked the sheriff, “What exactly did happen to Shelton’s family?”

He’d pitched the ball casually, lobbed it in; but there it was.

At the wheel, the square-jawed Gibbons gave him a sharp look in the darkened car. “You of all people can’t be thinking of taking his side?”

That response blindsided Harrow.

He tried to chalk it up to Gibbons being defensive about his old boss’s reputation. After all, the state police had already questioned their investigation, and found no wrongdoing.

“It’s not about taking sides, Herm. It’s about going in to talk to this guy, and wanting the background, so he doesn’t just dismiss me out of hand.”

“Fair enough,” Gibbons said, feathers unruffling. “Shelton worked second shift at the radiator factory in Smith Center. It was a Friday in September, ninety-nine. He got off early that day. Gabe always claimed he took half a day off, to go home and surprise his wife and son with a weekend trip. Which always seemed like a lame-ass story to us, pardon my goddamn French.”

“So what happened?”

“Which version you want?”

“How many you got?”

Gibbons sighed. “I’ve got to tell you, even though I believe one of the two versions — and it’s sure as hell not Shelton’s — there’s really no proving either.”

“Okay. Start with Shelton’s.”

“Gabe claimed it was a home invasion. Said that coming from work, he got passed by a speeding car heading the opposite direction. Said there were three men inside, and all of ’em were wearing black ski masks. Then when he got home, Shelton says, he found his family murdered. Shot, almost execution-style.”