Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

“And the other version?”

“It’s a simple story, about as old as they come. We think, a lot of us anyway, that Shelton committed the murders himself.”

“Why d’you think that?”

“For one thing, he got off early, at seven-thirty p.m., and the 911 call didn’t come in until after ten. Where was he, for all that time? Coroner placed the time of death between eight and nine.”

“Where did Shelton say he was?”

Gibbons shook his head, and his smile was knowing. “You’ll love this — said when he saw his family murdered, he flew into a rage, and went looking for that suspicious car he’d passed.”

Harrow said nothing for a while. Having been in Shelton’s place — or anyway the place Shelton claimed to have been in — he could see how the man might have raced off looking for the killers, full of rage and sorrow and revenge.

On the other hand, this was just the sort of alibi that guilty suspects made up, spur of the moment.

Harrow asked, “Did he find the car?”

The sheriff grunted a mirthless laugh. “Yeah — right where he left it: in his imagination.”

The night out the Tahoe windows was washed in moonlight, the world an ivory-blue that would have been soothing in other circumstances.

“So,” Harrow said, “Shelton claims he went out searching for the intruders’ car — then what?”

“Said, after a while, he just pulled over, and parked. And sat there and cried.”

Harrow could believe that; anyone who’d been through a similar tragedy could. But a hard-bitten law enforcement guy like Gibbons could easily shrug it off.

“Anybody see him, Herm? Sitting by the road crying? You said it yourself — Lebanon’s not a very big town.”

Gibbons shook his head. “Nobody came forward, and we put out the word, that’s for goddamn sure. What’s more, Gabe couldn’t even remember where he parked.”

“Convenient,” Harrow said, his skepticism outweighing his empathy. “Could he identify the car? Did he get the plate numbers or anything?”

“At first, all he could say was that it was a dark four-door.”

“At first?”

“Yeah. When he was first interviewed, that is. Later, he said it was a dark brown Ford Crown Victoria.”

“Like so many cops use, right?”

Gibbons nodded. “In the second interview, maybe an hour or so after the first? Suddenly he’s sure the car was one of the two unmarked Crown Vics the county owned back then.”

Which sounded as weak to Harrow as it probably had to the investigating officers. Witnesses who changed or enhanced their stories automatically slid from the witness category to the suspect list. That Shelton had gone from something so vague to something so specific — especially implicating the sheriff’s department — had to raise alarm bells.

Harrow said, “Surely he’d didn’t just pull that out of the air, deputies killing his family?”

“Pulled it outta his ass is where he pulled it from.”

Harrow tried again: “Why would the sheriff and his people want to kill Shelton’s family?”

Gibbons managed a feeble grin. “That question came up at the time too.”

Again, Harrow had to try a second time: “And?”

“...There were real estate developers or speculators or what-have-you, buying up property in that neighborhood, around then. Shelton claimed the real estate people were using sheriff’s deputies as muscle — you know, to force people to sell.”

“And were they?”

Gibbons frowned at his rider.

Harrow met the gaze evenly. “Chief, I have to ask.”

“Yeah, I suppose you do. And I have to answer. And the answer is no.”

“How’d Shelton get that idea?”

Shrugging, Gibbons said, “You ask me, he was looking to deflect the blame from himself, and the deputies were a target of convenience. After all, we were crawling all over him at that moment. He just made up the first thing that came to mind.”

“No deputies ever worked for those developers?”

“I didn’t say that. A lot of law enforcement guys work second jobs, and in particular do security work for this party and that one. Probably some of our boys did that kind of thing for the real-estate boys. So what?”

Out the window, Harrow could make out a neighborhood that had a few houses and several obviously derelict homes, and some vacant lots. This late at night, no lights were on — the area looked like a ghost town. Still, even in a hamlet where everyone was early-to-bed and early-to-rise, he’d expect to see a light here and there.

But there was nothing.

“Your deputies clear the neighborhood already?”

Gibbons seemed puzzled, then, after a second, got it. “Oh, no... this neighborhood was pretty much all bought up by those speculators. It’s been sitting vacant for a while now.”

“Why let it sit? If they’re developers, why don’t they develop it?”

“Companies that own the houses think they have a plan. Been talk for years about a new four-lane, north-south highway to connect Interstates seventy and eighty. Hasn’t gone through yet, but one of these days...”

Harrow saw it instantly. “And the speculators feel they’re sitting on a goldmine.”

“I suppose.”

“Are they right?”

Gibbons gave an indifferent shrug. “Not my field.”

Moments later, the sheriff pulled the Tahoe to the curb, and killed the lights. The pair sat in the dark for a few seconds. A deputy leading the parade of Crime Seen! vehicles stopped a block farther back.

“Across the street, in the next block,” Gibbons said, with a nod in that direction. “Second house.”

From this distance, Harrow could barely make out the shadowy outline of the structure. “What’s the plan?”

Gibbons’s face was a blank mask. “Well, we’re sure as hell not gonna wait for the SWAT team.”

“Because the county doesn’t have one?”

“Bingo. But we do have a sharpshooter in Colby Wilson. You met him.”

Harrow nodded.

“He can pick a fly off a dog’s ass,” Gibbons said, “at five hundred yards.”

“How often does that come up?”

The two old pros exchanged grins.

The sheriff made a radio call to make sure the perimeter was up. The deputies confirmed the neighborhood had been isolated.

“So your plan,” Harrow said, “is let Colby take him out?”

“That’s it.”

“I have a Plan B, if you’d care to hear it.”

Gibbons said nothing.

“Herm, let me talk to him. Let me bring him in.”

The sheriff’s eyes met Harrow’s. “Are you freakin’ nuts, son?”

Gibbons reminded Harrow of himself when he’d been sheriff back in Story County. If the positions were reversed, he might have said much the same thing.

“I’m asking for a reason, Herm, and it’s not crazy.”

Gibbons stared at him, waiting.

“That’s my team member in there.”

No reaction.

“The note Shelton left at his house was addressed to me. He wants to talk — and he wants to talk to me .”

“ Or he wants to kill the big-deal TV star and get his fifteen minutes.”

Harrow couldn’t really debate that one. “Maybe, but if he blames the sheriff’s office for the deaths of his family, what do you think he’ll do to my associate, if he sees one of your men?”

Gibbons considered that.

“And,” Harrow went on, “if he spots Wilson targeting him with a sniper scope, what are Carmen Garcia’s odds to grow old enough to see her grandchildren?”

“Not so good,” Gibbons admitted.

“Herm,” Harrow said, shifting in the seat, “this bastard killed my wife and son. I have killed him in my daydreams and my nightmares — trust me, you can’t want him dead more than I do. But more than anything right now, outdistancing even revenge, I value Carmen’s life.”