Magic Line (8 page)

The loop started over at the beginning, the runner looking around frantically at the sound of the siren. ‘Is that a pistol in his belt?'

‘Looks like it. Guess I'll copy a couple of frames, send them down to ballistics. They might be able to ID the weapon.'

‘I should think so, yeah.' She drained the last of her water. ‘I'm taking one of these for the road. I got too dry back there for a few minutes, almost turned into part of the desert.'

‘Yeah, you gotta be careful the first couple of weeks of summer. The heat can kill you while you're thinking about other things.'

Getting up off the stool, she felt fatigue cramp all her muscles. She told her feet to quit complaining and carry her out to the cooler. They gimped a little, but they made it. The ice made a nice slithery tinkle when she pulled another water bottle out. She set the bottle down, scooped up a double handful of ice and buried her face in it. When it started to burn she dropped it on the gravel and let the air dry her skin
.

Aaahh!
Good to go again.
She uncapped the second bottle, enjoyed another cold swallow, and shook herself. Feeling her cramped muscles loosen up, she looked across the lot at the dingy old Ford cargo van in the driveway. Least interesting vehicle I've seen this week, she decided, and walked toward it, wondering,
Now, what will Officer Studly
have found fascinating about this heap that I would never notice?

When Oscar Cifuentes joined the homicide squad last year, he had been preceded by a reputation as a tireless womanizer whose other major interest was auto mechanics. Sarah thought the first was pitiful and the second boring, so for the first couple of months she was polite but cool toward the new detective. But when a case erupted into a crisis involving a vintage car, Cifuentes showed her he could be quick and enterprising, and was profoundly knowledgeable about rolling stock. Now that they'd worked a few cases together, they were practically buds. No chemistry, that was part of it – it was somehow clear from the start that he was never going to try any of his Mr Irresistible moves on her. And she liked the patient way he picked at a puzzle till he unraveled it.

The sign on the side of the van read, ‘Bestway Carpet Cleaners.' A glance inside the open rear doors confirmed that the cargo space was filled with industrial-size vacuums and scrubbers
. I suppose he's already noted the tool marks on the license plate.

Cifuentes sat in the open passenger doorway, reading. When she walked up beside him he looked up and said, ‘Doesn't look abandoned. The registration's in the glove compartment.'

‘Valid, you think?'

‘Matches the model number and the VIN.'

‘But not the license plate, I bet.'

‘Oh? Haven't got that far.' He climbed out, carrying the form, and walked back. ‘Bingo. Oh, you spotted the tool marks, huh?' He smiled. ‘Thought you said you didn't give a damn about cars.'

‘I don't. But I put in my year and something in auto theft.'

‘Oh, right.' They stood together by the open rear doors, looking in at the jumble of equipment. ‘What's your impression of the cleaning gear?'

‘Well used but still in working order.'

‘That's what I thought.' He tapped his lip. ‘So, a working cargo van, recently stolen from—' He looked at the slip. ‘Edward Benson, up in Oracle. This the new trend for thugs? Swipe a service truck to do the dirty deed?'

‘Or Benson's one of the bodies in the yard?'

‘Don't think so – this van was boosted. The ignition is spun.'

‘Ah. You checked the reports yet?'

‘No. I just found this.'

‘If Benson's a small business owner who just lost his cargo van, he'd report the theft right away.'

‘Yes, he would.' He pulled out his keys, jingled them once in his hand, thinking, then stuck them back in his pocket and said, ‘My car and laptop's way down at the other end of the block. I'm going to take this over to Woody and let him type it in.'

‘Fine.' She walked along with him. ‘Did the techs find anything interesting on this vehicle?'

‘They took candy wrappers downtown to check for prints. One promising lift on the passenger door, Gloria said. DNA later, maybe.' They both shrugged. DNA would help lawyers in court, way down the line, if they were all lucky. Right now, a killer was on the loose in Tucson. They couldn't wait for DNA.

‘The fact that the VIN wasn't changed,' Sarah said, ‘and the registration was still in the van . . . if Benson's not in on the caper, what does that tell you?'

‘Vehicle was probably snatched off the street earlier today, just for this job. They intended to ditch it right away, so they didn't bother being thorough.'

‘Yeah. Quick and dirty. Let me know about Benson, will you? I gotta go see how Ollie's doing with the guns and ammo.'

Oscar laughed. ‘He's had two guys helping him cut sections out of drywall and siding for over an hour. This house is going to look like a lace doily by the time he's done.'

‘I'm never going to be done.' Peering up from the baseboard where he crouched, his Leatherman drooping from his limp hand, Ollie crossed his eyes and let his tongue hang out. ‘My destiny is to continue cutting careful sections out of this stinking house until my right hand breaks off at the wrist.'

‘Oh, and I suppose when it does,' Sarah said, ‘you'll start whining about needing a doctor.' Ice-water was percolating through her tissues, doing wonders for her sense of humor. ‘How many slugs have you collected so far?'

‘They're stacked on the kitchen table; take a look.'

‘Shee,' she said, looking at the table. ‘You did all this while I was gone?'

‘Me and my team. Delaney got me two helpers out of city maintenance when he had to put Jason on the scene. See those two guys out there in jumpsuits? They're digging the last slugs out of the trees.'

The guns were all there on the table too, ranged on a soft cloth at one end, waiting for Ollie to disarm them before bagging and tagging.

‘Hey, you found the Glock.' It lay on the table, beside its magazine, baseplate and spring, the pieces side by side on the towel.

‘By accident, after I quit looking. I went out in the yard to get my helpers started, turned on my flashlight, and it shined right on the Glock. It was up in the crotch of that palo verde tree. I guarantee I could not get it to hang there on purpose if I tried all day.'

At the other end of the table, heaps were taking shape – squares of drywall in one pile, outdoor siding in another, clumps of tree bark in a third. Each section had a slug in its center and was bagged in clear plastic. Each bag carried a tag describing the exact location where it was found. Ollie Greenaway's team did neat, careful work.

‘You found anything yet that doesn't look like it could have come from the guns you've got here?'

‘No. But that's very preliminary. Why?'

‘Well, somebody had to fire the last shot. From the position of the bodies and the weapons it looks like it must have been Mr Brush Cut. But then who killed him?'

‘Ah, Sarah, leave that for the lab. We do all this collecting; the least they can do is carry the water from there.'

Jason stuck his head in the open front door and said, ‘Sarah, somebody's waiting for you down by the tape line.'

‘Oh?' She walked over and he pointed. Will Dietz was standing there with his arms full. She ran down, smiling. ‘Brought you some snacks,' he said, passing the sacks. ‘Careful, this one's coffee.'

‘You are a prince among men,' she said, ‘and I will thank you appropriately at a later time.'

‘When you get your strength back.' He gave her the half-wink that passed for terms of endearment during working hours. ‘How's your long day going?'

‘It's a big mess. We'll be here a while yet.' As he turned to go she asked him, ‘You heard anything on the containment?'

‘Just that there is one. They after somebody you want?'

‘Yeah. He's a bad one, Will, watch your back tonight.'

‘Always do.' He got into the driver's side of his vehicle and rode away with his face set in its standard street-cop expression: No Big Deal. Watching him go, she felt lucky and, momentarily, not at all tired.

She pulled a warm apple Danish out of a sack, walked back into the busy crime scene house and ate it leaning against a kitchen counter. She had been appalled the first time she watched crime scene detectives ordering in pizza at a crime scene. But she was a seasoned homicide detective now and accepted that the hard mental work of an investigation burned through calories like wildfire and made her ravenous. So she relished the good pastry and fresh coffee, ignoring the bloody crime scene all around her. When she was done she went back to work with fresh energy.

Delaney, his face like an overwound clock, walked into the house and asked Ollie, ‘You found the Glock yet?'

‘Yeah, it's there on the table.'

‘And you got all the rest of the weapons sequestered in here, right? Have you disarmed them yet?'

‘No. I want to list them first, with the ammo just as I found them. When we start diagraming how this all went down, the bullet count might make a lot of difference.'

‘I guess that's right,' Delaney said. ‘But why don't you do that next so we can get the weapons bagged and tagged?' He frowned at the neat array on the table. ‘I don't like them lying around like this with everybody walking through. If you step out – we've got people working here now that aren't even sworn.'

Ollie's face froze into a craggy slope of freckled rock. The usually cheery clown morphed into a proud detective with twenty years' experience, unaccustomed to having his work criticized. Oblivious to the anger he was leaving behind him, Delaney, frowning and thinking so hard he forgot to chew his gum, stomped out over the bloody doorsill.

‘Go shit a brick, Sergeant,' Ollie said softly behind him. ‘Whose idea was it to bring in the extra crew?' He'd waited till Delaney was out of earshot though, Sarah noticed. Proud or not, he was still too mindful of his mortgage to get in a pissing match with his boss.

‘Listen, don't waste your energy getting mad,' Sarah said. ‘We've still got a lot of miles to—' She stopped, staring out the door.

‘What?' Ollie said. ‘You see something?' But she had already bolted out the door, calling, ‘Boss?' because she had just remembered what she should do next.

Delaney didn't hear her and kept right on walking. Not willing to scream at a crime scene, she broke into a fast trot and caught him just before he reached the tape. When she was directly behind him she took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘Sergeant?'

He whirled, bug-eyed, and said, ‘
What?
'

‘Sorry.' She gave him a minute to recover before she said, ‘The shirt.'

‘What shirt?' Back to his stony calm, he stared past her left ear, concentrating on some info nexus in the middle distance while she told him about the shirt stolen from the firehouse driver. ‘Fitz said he changed right there in the street,' she said. ‘Chances are he just dropped the bloody shirt and left it there.'

‘Might have. Did Fitzgerald say where they were when this happened?'

‘He couldn't remember exactly – somewhere near the hospital. But the driver should know.'

‘You know the driver's name?'

‘No. But somebody at the fire station ought to.'

‘Which station?'

‘I don't know. But what use is it being a detective if I can't find that out? OK if I—'

‘Sure, go for it.'

She called 911, got the attendant who answered the phone to read his dispatch sheet and tell her he'd sent the rescue squad from Fire Station Eighteen to the house on Spring Brook Drive tonight.

‘Twice tonight, actually.'

‘Um, yes. We thought we didn't need them, then we did. Now I need to find that driver again. So may I have that number, please?'

The phone rang twice at the firehouse before a brisk female voice said, ‘This is Sergeant Graves.'

‘This is Detective Sarah Burke, Sergeant. Are you in charge of the shift?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘So was it you who sent the emergency rescue truck to the house in Midvale Park tonight?'

‘Yes. Twice, actually.'

‘Yeah, we're really sorry about that. There was a . . . mmm . . . little mix-up about the first call. And then, the second time, there was an incident—'

‘Is that what you call it, an incident? Maury said he almost got his head blown off.'

‘Yeah. I'm sorry about that, too. But – Maury was the driver when the prisoner got away?'

‘Yes.'

‘I need to speak to him.'

‘Well . . . he's on break right now.'

The firehouse crews worked twenty-four-hour shifts, Sarah knew, and Maury's ‘break' meant he was getting some shut-eye in his cubicle after his wild ride.
But I need that
shirt.
She tuned up her Moses voice again and said, ‘Well, then I'm sorry for the third time, but I'm a homicide detective on the trail of a very bad guy, so let me speak to him now, please.'

There was a moment of dead silence while Sergeant Graves, presumably, took a deep breath. Then her calm, sensible voice said, ‘Hold on.'

Maury Mangen's phone rang three times before he answered, sounding sleepy. Not wasting any more time on sorry, Sarah identified herself and said, ‘I need to know where you were when the man you were transporting took your shirt.'

‘Uh . . .' She listened while he breathed. ‘I was on Campbell, a couple of blocks south of the hospital. In four lanes of traffic, doing fifty in a thirty-five zone, when he stuck that gun in my ear and told me to stop the truck. I had the siren going, and in another block I'd fought my way into the turn lane for the hospital, so I stopped.'