Magic Line (9 page)

‘And got out of the van?'

‘Sure. Wouldn't you, if a guy put a gun in your ear and told you to? And that crazy fool came right out behind me and told me to take off my shirt.'

‘Did he drop his own shirt when he took it off ?'

‘Did he what?'

‘Did he drop the bloody shirt he took off right there?'

‘Hell, I don't know. Cars were honking, the cop in the back of the ambulance was yelling . . . last I saw of the crazy patient he was walking around the corner toward the front of the hospital, pulling on my shirt. I don't think he had anything in his hands . . . but right then the cop fainted and Blake started screaming at me to drive on – Blake's favorite answer to any problem, scream at somebody. I drove on to the emergency entrance and helped unload the bloody cop. And everybody kept asking me, ‘Why are you working without a shirt?”

‘So that shirt might be right there near the emergency entrance somewhere?

‘Could be, for all I know.'

Nearby, a bell began to ring insistently. Sergeant Graves called something through an echoing PA system.

‘OK, Maury,' Sarah said. ‘Thanks, I'll let you get back to your nap.'

‘Yeah, well, the way it sounds right now,' Maury said grimly, ‘it's going to be a while before anybody does any more napping around here.'

Feeling guilty and triumphant by turns, Sarah went outside, found Delaney and asked his permission to go look for the shirt.

‘That's not best use of your time,' he said. ‘Call Midtown and have them send a uniform to look for it. I was just coming to find you. They called off the containment – the guy got away.'

‘Damn.'

‘Yeah. So now I'm thinking . . . so far as we know, we don't have anything yet that will help us ID that guy, do we?'

‘No. He's got his weapon with him. He was wearing gloves – we may not have any prints. There might be some of his DNA on the floor—'

‘But he was lying under the one you call Brush Cut, whose blood was all over him – that's going to take some time to sort out.'

‘You look like you're thinking of something.'

‘The rescue truck – especially the gurney. If it hasn't been cleaned up yet—'

‘Oh, crap,' Sarah said, ‘I have to call that firehouse again? But yes, OK, that's a good idea,' she said, already dialing.

The sergeant's voice was not cordial after she heard who was calling. ‘What do you need, Detective?'

‘Sergeant, is the small rescue truck in the station right now?'

‘Uh, yeah. Maybe not for long, though. Everything else went out on that last fire call.'

With her voice crackling with stress, Sarah explained that the escaped suspect had left no fingerprints, nothing that identified him, and that he was loose in Tucson right now. ‘So we were hoping . . . is it possible the gurney cover hasn't been changed yet?'

‘I took it off myself and put on a clean one. Tell you what, though' – the shift commander was warming up a little, getting engaged in the problem – ‘this place has been so crazy busy tonight, maybe— Hold on a minute.' There was some thumping, some murmuring. Then Sergeant Graves was back, saying, ‘Well, that was lucky.'

‘What?'

‘I set the used cover down on a bench till I got the clean one put on, and then, so many interruptions . . . I never put it in the laundry sack.'

‘Sergeant,' Sarah said, ‘that's not just lucky, that's beautiful. And the truck is still there, right?' She was thinking about the escapee climbing in the front seat, sliding out the driver's door . . . gloves or no gloves, he had to leave some sweat behind.

The sergeant was very reluctant, though, to put the small rescue vehicle out of service for the rest of the night. ‘What if we get another emergency? I need wheels!'

‘Sergeant, I think we just encountered a problem for guys above our pay grade,' Sarah said. ‘Let's see, what time is it? Almost two.' She thought for a few seconds. ‘Well, it's too damn bad, but looks like we're going to have to wake some people up.' She ran and found Delaney.

‘Yeah, I'll call the night shift commander,' Delaney said. ‘He can shuffle some equipment around. While I do that, you call the crime lab, tell them to wake up a DNA specialist if they don't have one working. Tell them a killer's on the loose, and we need a twenty-four-hour emergency run on whatever they can get off that gurney cover and the front seat of the truck.' As she started to open her phone he added: ‘Tell her to call me if there's any problem getting that started. We need results ASAP!'

He was chewing gum like a mechanical alligator and his cheeks had relaxed. ‘You look as if something good happened,' Sarah said.

‘Yeah, finally. Soon as you make your phone calls, come on to the backup van,' he said, heading toward it. ‘Woody's got an answer back on the two wallets we found in the yard.'

SEVEN

I
n the backup van, Woody had pulled the records up. All the detectives were coming in from the yard. Sarah stuck her head in between Jason and Ray, trying to see the screen, and they let her squeeze through to the front since she was shorter.

The mugshot showed a white male about thirty years old with thick hair growing low on his forehead, a mean mouth and turned-off eyes. The satiny gray drape of the Pima County detention system covered his shoulders.

Jason said, ‘That's the guy by the door, isn't it?'

‘Yeah, Clipboard Man,' Sarah said.

‘Earl LeRoy Klutzbach,' Delaney said. ‘Anybody know him?' They all said no. ‘This was the man nearest the house, right? We think he had the Glock?'

‘Stands to reason,' Jason said. ‘Pieces of it lying on the gravel, about six inches from his hand. Ollie find the rest of it yet?'

‘Yes. Where is Ollie? Still in the house?' Delaney stepped outside and asked a uniform to fetch him, came back in and said, ‘OK, Woody, let's scroll down to the arrest record.' It came up and they stood silent, reading.

‘Well, that's odd,' Jason said. ‘Just one arrest?'

‘One is plenty,' Ray Menendez said, ‘when it's aggravated assault.'

‘But with no previous arrests? I wonder what set him off,' Jason said.

‘Somebody fooled with his wife . . . or girlfriend? I remember some stuff about that case now . . . let me think.' Delaney poked three fingers into a patch of skin between his eyebrows, trying to pull the memory out of there. ‘He wasn't my collar – he was arrested out in the county, in a wildcat cluster west of Marana. But the crime happened in Tucson so we got the case, and that's what I remember, the courtroom and his conviction. By the time of the trial the woman had been in therapy for a long time and she was still so terrified of being in the same room with him; she wept most of the time she was on the stand. The man she was diddling with, last I knew he still couldn't walk right.'

‘Earl's been safely off the street ever since,' Ray said. ‘See? Right out there in Wilmot all this time – almost twelve years.'

‘Too bad he got out. What, six weeks ago? Didn't take him long to stir up more trouble. Let's see the other one, Woody.' Delaney turned and nodded at Ollie, who climbed into the already-crowded space and peered over shoulders at the screen.

A similar but much uglier face appeared there, broken-nosed and scarred, with a vacant expression. ‘Same mouth and hairline,' Delaney said. ‘Oh, these two are brothers.' The name under the second mugshot was Homer Evan Klutzbach.

‘I know this guy,' Ollie said. ‘Hell, you all know this guy, don't you? Every cop in town's arrested him one time or another.'

‘I never did,' Sarah said.

Ray said, ‘Is this the guy with the weird laugh? One funny eye?'

‘And he rambled, right?' Jason said. ‘Never gave a straight answer?'

‘That's the one,' Ollie said.

Delaney said, ‘You know him so well, how come none of you ID'd him out there in the yard?'

‘He had about a dozen holes in him,' Jason said, ‘and he was lying on what was left of his face.'

‘I feel kind of disadvantaged,' Sarah said. ‘I mean, how did I miss Homer? His whole record's local. What's he got there, fifteen, sixteen arrests?'

‘And every time you brought him in,' Ollie said, ‘you had to spell that miserable name. I bet I can still do it.' He turned his back to the screen and spelled Klutzbach, eliciting low whistles of admiration. He made a little mock bow and shrugged it off, but then couldn't quit talking about it. ‘It's kind of a grabber, actually. Klutzbach. You can imagine how kids in school probably teased him . . . called him Klutzy.' All the other detectives nodded. ‘I kind of like hard names; once you learn them they're easier to remember.'

‘OK, we like his name, what else?' Delaney said, impatient. ‘Why only five convictions, I wonder?'

‘Well, he was the kind of a guy that leads naturally to sloppy police work,' Ollie said. ‘It was such a pain to have him in the car with you that you'd do anything to get him out of there and go back to talking to actual humans.'

‘Man, he made full use of our facilities, didn't he?' Ray said. ‘Starting with that little stretch in juvie way back in '98, he's been in almost every lockup. Eight months in Pima County, and since then he's been to Florence and Yuma and back to Florence . . . just got out of there three weeks ago. Short liberty.'

‘Most of his arrests had something to do with auto theft,' Ray said. ‘And the last two convictions were for carjacking. Are you sure you don't recognize him, Oscar?'

‘I usually remember the cars better than the thieves,' Cifuentes said. ‘Maybe if I saw an earlier photo. He looks as if he's recently put on weight.'

‘That's State Prison for you. They don't exercise enough and the food is all that prefab crap. Most of the guards look the same way.'

‘He had to know all the local mopes,' Delaney said. ‘Get in touch with all your snitches tomorrow, find out what they know about this invasion. There must be gossip on the street – there always is.'

‘I wonder what induced him to try hitting on a stash house?' Ray said. ‘Seems a little upmarket for Homer.'

‘Maybe just following his brother the wife-beater,' Oscar said.

‘Or maybe they were both following the ex-dead-guy,' Sarah said. She blinked a couple of times and asked, ‘Did the lights just go dim for a second?'

‘No,' Delaney said. ‘You're just getting exhausted. We all are, but we better make one organized effort to find the money before the boarding-up crew get here.'

He assigned a room to each detective while he took the garage. ‘You're looking for something heavy and secure,' he said. ‘A safe or a money box.'

Sarah looked around, assessing the job. ‘Lucky thing, it's all tile floors and no carpet.'

‘Or wallpaper,' he said. ‘So let's get to it. Everything's fair game.'

They put on fresh gloves and tore the place apart. It was fun in a way, after a long day of being so careful with everything. Ray and Jason took out all the drawers in the bedrooms and studied the undersides, threw everything out of the closets and moved the beds. Ollie made a real mess out of pans and dishes in the kitchen, dismantled the stove, moved the refrigerator out and said, ‘Damned if I'm sweeping
that
up.'

Sarah, in the living room, tipped over all the chairs, emptied the drawers in the console and swept everything out of a bookcase. It was full of ammo boxes, papers for joints, scissors, a couple of roaches and two bags of size nine white cotton socks, but no books. Finally she tore down the drapes. There was one Velcroed pocket built into the bottom seam of the drape on the front window. It looked like it had held a secret stash of something once but it was empty now. She was holding it open, sighing over it, when her eyes were caught by a round oak table in a corner near the kitchen door.

‘Ollie,' she said, ‘see that table?'

‘Dining-room table. What about it?'

‘Why's it crammed into a corner? Funny place to eat. Help me tip it over, will you?' It had a fat pedestal base and was heavy. As soon as they laid it on its side they both said, ‘Hah!'

Ollie stuck his head out the door to the garage and said, ‘Boss? Think we found something.' Delaney came in and stood with them, looking down at a trapdoor.

‘Well, now,' he said, ‘isn't that a pretty sight?' It had a steel ring countersunk near one edge. Ollie brought a kitchen knife and lifted it out of its groove. Delaney hooked one finger in it and lifted. The other detectives were all in the room now and as the door came up Sarah heard them all make the same sound, ‘Aahh.'

‘Regulation steel safe,' Delaney said. ‘Nice work, guys.'

Jason said, ‘Probably chock full of money, huh?' All the tired faces in the room were wearing a new expression, Sarah saw – engaged.
Nothing like money to wake everybody up.
Even though it wasn't theirs, they all wanted to see it.

‘Looks like a standard Rotary lock. Going to take an expert to crack it, I guess, unless we find a combination in that laptop we sent to the lab.'

‘Not to mention how freakin' hard it's going to be to pull it up out of there,' Jason said. ‘Unless – did you try it?'

‘What? No.' Delaney looked irritated. ‘Why would anybody—' He bent and turned the handle, gave a little grunt of surprise, and lifted. The door opened wide without a squeak. Jason crowed happily.

They all looked into the dark, funky-smelling interior. An odd kind of silence fell, in which Sarah thought she could hear everybody breathe. Finally Delaney said, ‘Nice and neat, isn't it? All counted and banded. Wow, it's a lot.'

‘Anybody want to guess how much?' Ray said.

‘A down payment on a nice house,' Sarah said.