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He called Bonny. “I’m gonna need more help, now there’s a secondary crime scene. Where’s Tess?”

“She’s been advised of the secondary crime scene at the slag heap. But right now she’s working the case from another angle,” Bonny said.

At that moment, Pat could have thrown his phone against the wall.

It wasn’t right. Here he was, with two bloody scenes and no help. They were both detectives. He was still a detective. Bonny should tell him where Tess had gone. But he wasn’t about to ask. No way he’d give Bonny the satisfaction.

All he said was, “I could use her here.”

“I’m sure you could,” Bonny said. He sounded sympathetic but unmovable. “As soon as she’s available, she’ll meet you at the scene.”

As soon as she’s available.

To hell with him.

To hell with them all.

For a moment Pat was temped quit right then and there. But he was six months away from retirement. His mother always told him, “Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.” He swallowed his bile. “Anything else?”

“You measured the scene and collected evidence?”

No, I’ve been lunching at the Casbah. “You mean doing my job? Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Bonny said. “I was just thinking out loud. When do you think you can get to the mine?”

“Soon. I’m gonna need some help, though.”

“I can send another deputy, but we’re running out of them,” Bonny said. “Never saw anything like this—five homicides that we know of. It’s a good thing I have you both working this.”

Pat swallowed again. He had to take it. He had no choice. And meanwhile, Tess McCrae was out doing God knew what, following “leads,” looking for the bad guys with that X-ray vision of hers.

Sometimes, X-ray vision wasn’t enough. Sometimes it took years of working as a detective, years of putting in the time, the late nights, the long days, to know what you were doing. To be a real detective.

Four years in Albuquerque didn’t quite do it, Pat thought. No matter how talented you were.

Chapter Thirty-One

JERRY FOLLOWED TALIA off the jet and into the silver Range Rover with the Desert Oasis insignia on the side. The Desert Oasis Healing Center logo was the proud but Roman-nosed profile of a Plains Indian, maybe a Sioux warrior, against a background of what he could only guess were the concentric circles of an open-pit mine. The guy driving the Range Rover was dressed like an Australian and had an annoying fake Australian accent. But Talia liked him. Jerry could tell because Talia was all over Jerry, doing it for the fake Australian’s benefit. She’d been on strike sexually, but now feathered kisses along his neck and reached down between his legs. Fortunately, the leather man purse she’d bought for him for Christmas and insisted he take everywhere was between her long lacquered nails and his genitalia.

You can take the actress out of the trailer park…“You have to excuse our friend here,” Jerry said. “She was so upset over Max’s disappearance, she took one Xanax too many.”

“That’s all roight—I’ve seen it all before, mighty,” the fake Aussie said. “We’ll be there in two shikes of a lamb’s tile!”

Gordon met them in his usual regalia. The fringed deer hide jacket was white this time. But Gordon looked pale under his tan and seemed distracted. Normally, his gaze was a laser. His voice was a laser. His personality was a laser. But now he looked…stunned.

“What’s up?” Jerry asked, not expecting a real answer. Gordon wasn’t into sharing. He liked to deliver his tablets from on high.

But Gordon said, “We’ve run into a snag.”

“What?”

“Max is gone.”

“Gone? You said Shaun had him.”

“I can’t raise her.”

“I thought Shaun would have him by now.”

Gordon shrugged.

“What? You’re shrugging? You don’t know where he is? You don’t have a clue?”

“No, and so far, we’re OK. I’ve done damage control with the press and the cops. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve made it clear I’m safeguarding his privacy. But there’ve been so many sightings—the rumors are flying. I’ve put it out that he has a stunt double who looks a lot like him, which is true, one of the paps ran with it. There are all sorts of stories going around, which can only help us. As long as nobody knows anything, and we stick to the script, we should be fine.”

But Gordon didn’t sound fine. Jerry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His brother—the stonewaller of the century—was having a major meltdown.

For a moment—a brief moment—Jerry savored this.

Then he decided it was time to get down to work. “Gordon, you’d better tell me everything. You said you fucked him up. What did you do? Did you plant anything in him that would turn him into a killer? Like The Manchurian Candidate ?”

Gordon stared at him. His eyes were like fixed blue marbles in his tanned totem of a face. “No way. All I did was make him impressionable, so we could herd him the right direction.”

“You mean the stuff about freezing on command, right?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“Sarcasm isn’t going to help this situation, Gordon. You’ve been known to improvise.”

“Improvise.”

“Yes, improvise. You’ve really screwed it up this time.”

“Fuck you.”

“Well, fuck you.”

Gordon pinched the spot between his eyes and his nose. “Look, this isn’t doing us any good. I have to think.”

“Ha! You’re finally getting it that Shaun might not be the goddess you think she is. She snowed you, Gordon. Maybe she was good with the Russian mob, but why can’t she handle one drunk and stoned actor? Master criminal my foot! She’s barely sane.”

“I’ve seen her sharpshooter medals. She’s legendary.”

“Yeah, so?”

“She’s killed a lot of people, Jerry. And never went down for any of them.”

Gordon loved to use terms like “went down.” Like it made him sound tough. “OK, so she’s good,” Jerry said. “But maybe motherhood’s changed her.”

Gordon waved Jerry’s theory away. “That’s ridiculous. I’m sure she’s secured him by now and is on her way. We’ve got to have a little faith.”

“Faith, huh? We’re down to praying , now?”

“This is no time to switch horses. She’s the only one I know who can drill a man from ten feet away in the heart with a twenty-two. And kill him dead. That’s what I hired her for. Because she can shoot like that, and she can kill without conscience.”

“There are plenty of people like that, Gordon. You should have dug deeper.”

“Actually, there aren’t. In fact, there are very few with her particular skill set.”

“So where is she now, Gordon? Can you tell me that?”

“I don’t know.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

THE CAR CAME to rest upright—amazing. The Caprice had turned around, 180 degrees, and slid backward down the steep embankment.

Max thought: a big, heavy car. It had saved them. He looked at Tess McCrae. She was trying to get the seat belt off. Her movements were slow, but everything else was slow too, and when he moved his fingers it felt as if he were trying to pull taffy—everything seemed to slip out of his grasp. The gun was on the seat and he needed to pick it up, get some control here. His mind was so scattered he didn’t even think about the truck that had run them off the road until he heard the click of feet on rock.

Max glanced around—there seemed to be all the time in the world. Everything was quiet. He felt weightless, under water. But he could see the kid scrambling down the embankment, balancing a gun and his yo-yo. The kid shucked the yo-yo loop from his finger so he could hold the gun in both hands.