Night Eyes (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 2) (3 page)

Adam stared at a coil of smoke that hovered over the dash and then fixed his eyes on the man behind the wheel. Wavy hair, a straight nose, eyes that smiled.

“Do you have a nickname in scouts?” the man asked.

“No.”

“I bet you do. Bet it’s a good one.”

Adam wasn’t going to tell him. It was like a trump card you played at the end of a game.

“Know what I think? I think you don’t trust me.”

Damn right, Adam thought. What was there to trust? He had the inexplicable sense the man studied him like an unusual insect and it stirred a wild fear inside, the kind where you wake from a nightmare all wrapped up in sheets. “Where are we going?”

“Where no one will find us.”

The man drove one-handed, right hand resting on his thigh where that cigarette smoked for all it was worth. His eyes seemed to shift across Adam's face and then back at the windshield. “So you’re a scout. Think you can be brave for a few hours?”

Adam nodded and kept his eyes on the road. If it was only for a few hours, he could handle almost anything. The digital clock read eleven fifty-nine and they were driving east on Paseo Del Norte. Every time they went under a street lamp, he could see the paint on the door frame. Black and shiny, and the cab stank of smoke.  

Adam was certain he had missed an important detail. His mom was a doctor at Rust hospital and she rarely got home before eleven. He tried to hold fast to an image of her and suddenly felt like having a good cry.

Crying’s good,
so his mom said. It lets out all the sadness and makes way for a chuckle or two. It was true. After a good cry came laughter, only Adam didn’t feel much like laughing. He could still hear gunshots and smell the stench of firecrackers under his nose. “You shot my dad,” he said.

“It was an accident. Gun went off because of the dog.”

“He’s trained to attack.”

“So I noticed.”

“We should stop. Go back―”

“No going back. Never good to go back.”

The man crushed the cigarette in the ashtray and reached into glove compartment. He snatched a yellow container and popped the lid, palming two large pills into his mouth before flushing them down in a single swallow.

“Name’s Ramsey,” he said, sliding a map off the top of the dash and resting it in his lap.

Adam already hated him. He wanted to put up a wall between them thick enough to protect himself, thick enough to hide behind. And he wanted his cellphone back.

The cellphone. It had a tracker.
Adam bit his lip, fingers balled together in his lap. If his mom remembered… if only she remembered.

Ramsey’s eyes kept flicking from the rearview mirror to the clock and then down at the map. His finger seemed to trace I-25 all the way to a patch of dark green where the word Gila National Forest was poised on the arc of his fingernail.

It's too far away,
Adam thought, suddenly wishing they could stop, hoping he could make a dash for it. “Mr. Ramsey? I need to pee.”

“There’s a truck stop in about four miles. We’ll stop there.”

Adam studied Ramsey out of the corner of his eye. A shadow of stubble rested on his upper lip and chin, and his cheeks were high and round. It made him look a bit girly, only he was probably mean enough to eat a plate of food and watch Bones at the same time.

The truck stop had no bathrooms, no stores, just a weigh-station off the side of the highway and two tall street lamps. He saw a large Peterbilt parked beside a clump of trees, too far away to shout at.

Ramsey walked around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. “See this?” he said, jutting his chin at the gun in his hand. “You run, I shoot.”

Adam swallowed and nodded. He jumped down onto a cracked pavement where grass burst through a pothole and the headlights cast a beam along the road. He could see well enough, but if he walked towards the hood where two halogen lamps gave off an eerie yellow glow, the trucker might see him too.

He could make out a few portables in the distance and a car lot of rusted out parts. He didn’t dare run. Didn’t dare look behind him at the man with the gun. All he could do was water a small piñon tree because his bladder was complaining.

Before Adam zipped up his pants, he had an idea. A Bible tract in his pocket talked about a big forest and if he could get to it without making Ramsey all jumpy and suspicious it might help the police find him.

Keeping his head down and angling his body slightly towards the headlights, he pulled out a handful of tracts. He found the one he wanted and balling it up in a fist, made a big deal out of his zipper before letting the tract drop between his fingers. The tiny ball of paper drifted between tall blades of grass, dashing about in the wind like a frantic grasshopper. It was a chance in a million. But a chance all the same.

When Adam turned, he saw Ramsey leaning against the fender. The gun made him start. Dangling first against Ramsey’s leg, then the muzzle came up a couple of times to make a point.

“Get in! We’re not stopping again.”

Adam barely nodded. He struggled to breathe, to think, to do anything but let Ramsey know he was scared of that gun. He hoisted himself into the passenger seat as Ramsey slammed the door, walked around the front of the truck, aiming the gun right at him.

“Better get some sleep,” Ramsey said as he climbed in, switched on the heater and scooted that gun under the driver’s seat.

I won't sleep,
Adam thought.
I can't. I'll watch every car that goes past and memorize the make and model.
He felt his tongue poke through his top teeth in concentration taking care to preserve all the energy he had. Listening to the hum of the engine, he could see little out of the window except rolling hills and the tops of piñon trees ‒ a roughly hewn landscape where dinosaurs once roamed. He wanted to shut out the sound of gunshots, and all he could see were his father’s eyes flickering as he lay there on the floor.

Adam knew his dad had seen him, knew he was frightened. Tried to warn him, tried to tell him to run away while he still had the chance. Adam worried that thought, even to the part where he saw Ramsey grabbing his dad’s wrists and tying them behind his back.

Adam shifted uneasily beneath the seat belt, feeling dazed by the day’s events. Squinting under the fluorescent glare of an oncoming car, he lifted his chin slightly. All he could see was sagebrush streaking past the side window and miles of rugged wasteland you wouldn’t want to get lost in. Signs to Los Lunas and Belen took them through meadows and flat-topped mesas, and a filigree of clouds spread out before the moon in the shape of a lazy dog. A spine of rock hovered in the distance under a thick blanket of stars… that’s when his eyes became heavy. 

It seemed like a few minutes before the truck jolted and woke him up, hotter than a furnace, heat blasting from the vents. The clock on the dash said twelve twenty-six.

“Dark isn’t it?” Ramsey said.

The voice pulled Adam up short, hard, cruel, the type of voice that gets deep inside and stays there. He was suddenly afraid of it. His scoutmaster had always told him to watch for marking points and as far as he could see they were still headed south on I-25.

Adam glanced at Ramsey. His arms were cabled with muscle beneath a black tee shirt and his fingers tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “Where are we?” he asked.

Ramsey must have known the answer. He just wasn’t talking.

Temeke forced a smile at a few familiar officers in the driveway. Typical Duke City PD all looking at him with conspiratorial glances and whispering things they thought he couldn’t hear. Probably licking their lips wondering what was in that brown bag under his arm. Not a flaming chicken sandwich that’s for sure.

“ . . . wouldn’t be tolerated downtown,” said a piggy eyed Lieutenant. “How he made rank I’ll never know. Must be handing out promotions for stupidity these days.”

Pulling a packet of cigarettes from a top pocket, Temeke lit one up and took two long drags to get his mind working. Smoke oozed from his nostrils and he fanned it away with one hand.

The department had accepted him under protest and ever since his brother-in-law, Lt. Alvarez, wound up in hospital from a gunshot wound, Temeke had been fighting his own wars since then. Hackett was a crawly bastard, told Temeke he was the department’s most recently commended detective. Commended? My ass. More like
criticized, belittled, hated
. 

Talking of hated. His wife had left him before Christmas. Serena couldn’t stand the loneliness, the fights, and the long hours wondering if he would ever come home. So he’d locked himself in a room in Motel 6 one night with a bottle of whiskey and a bag of sleeping pills. It could have been viewed as a suicide attempt; he viewed it as a booze-up followed by a good night’s sleep for once. Trouble was, a pastor patrolling the upper gallery saw fit to knock on his door and hand him a Bible tract. He said it would help. He said it would heal.

Load of guff, of course. The big geezer in the sky was supposed to make everything better. Only it wasn’t better. It was never better

The wind churned up a bit as he walked over to the Explorer. Detective Malin Santiago scratched a few notes in a spiral notebook, dark eyes sparkled beneath arched eyebrows and teeth flashed behind a sensuous mouth.

“Glad you decided to show up. It’s Monday morning,” he said, checking his watch. Twelve thirty-six. “Next time answer the bloody phone. I called three times.”

“Correction,” she said. “You called twice.”

“Should have seen that swimming pool of a puddle when you pulled in. Gave the Unit Commander a right old soaking.”

Malin slapped a hand in front of her mouth, eyes wider than cups. She looked as guilty as a priest with a copy of Playboy in his hymnbook.

“You talked to Wendover?” He saw her nod. “So what have we got?”

“He said the boy’s got merit badges in navigation, fitness and scout spirit. Got good night eyes. That’s his troop nickname. Oh, and this,” Malin said, holding up an evidence bag with a slip of yellow paper about six inches long and one inch wide. On one side was a bible verse and on the other a series of numbers. “License comes up under a―”

“False name, false address.” Temeke blew out his cheeks and sighed. He handed Malin the brown paper bag hoping she wouldn’t look inside. “And unless the sky’s raining Bible tracts, I saw another one of those a minute ago.”

He pinched out his cigarette and tucked the remainder back in his shirt pocket. Walking to the front of the car, he peered into the radiator. Nothing there. He looked up and down the street, hadn’t considered the wind.

A honeysuckle bush hung over a wall, spent shoots pruned to encourage new blooms in spring. In the fulcrum of two branches he thought he saw a hint of yellow and reaching into the vine, he snatched it. It was identical to the other, only this one didn’t have a car license number on the back.

Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?”
Neh 2:6
.

The word
journey
send a cold shiver down Temeke’s back. “What do you make of this?” he said, slipping into the passenger seat.

Malin turned the dome light on, angled the paper to one side, read it and handed it back. “It’s from the book of Nehemiah. He was a cupbearer to the king. There’s no relevance.” 

“Doesn’t have to be. I think Adam dropped this one on purpose. It’s a bit Hansel and Gretel, but I’m thinking he might drop a few more.”

Malin ran the edge of her notepad along her bottom lip and smothered a yawn. “Bit far-fetched isn’t it?”

“That I found it or the kid left it?”

“Both.”

“What other merit badges does our second class scout have?”

“Apart from a Baptist Church emblem, he has orienteering and hiking. Not very helpful if he’s locked up in a basement.”

“He’s on the road,” Temeke said, dropping the tract in the evidence bag. “Whoever took him registered the truck in a false name. A big truck, the type you take up a mountain.”

“There’re over eighty mountain ranges in New Mexico,” Malin muttered. “Looks like our only witness has been kidnapped.” 

“What’s his scoutmaster like?”

“Charles Wendover. Ex-marine. Fifty-six, fit and sharp.” 

“An ex-marine knows a thing or two about survival. How resilient is a twelve year-old?”

“Depends on the kidnapper.”

“This kidnapper shot the Mayor. Means he might not give a toss about the boy.”

Malin tucked a loose strand of black hair behind one ear and dropped her notepad between the handbrake and the consol. “He’ll call us to make an exchange. Money for the boy. That’s how it works.”

“He’ll negotiate before he asks for money. Working us up, that’s what he’s doing. And he’ll draw it out as long as he can.”

Malin looked down at the brown paper bag on the consol. “What’s that?”

“You don’t miss a trick, do you Marl? One of Adam’s tee shirts. It’s been worn.”

“You know you shouldn’t cross that line.”

Temeke knew Malin wouldn’t say anything. She was his partner. Nothing tighter than family. “Fowler said the old dog’s gone missing.
Adam’s
dog. Might want to find that dog. Ex-military so they say.”

“So, what did we miss?”

“Opportunity. And timing. This guy waited until Adam came home. He only had twenty minutes to get him out of the house before his mother arrived. I would say that was excellent timing.”

Malin shuddered. “Someone just walked over my grave.”

“Feel like going for a drive?”

“It’s past midnight. Feel like going home to bed. It’s time Hackett got you a driver.”

“Know anyone? No, I didn’t think so. Step on the gas.”

Malin chuckled, turned the key in the ignition and let the car idle for a while. Without looking out of the window she muttered the word
Hackett
and nodded politely at the approaching Commander with a cell phone pressed to his ear.

A stocky man in his fifties, hands in pockets and a scowl leaned in through the driver’s window and peered over his half-moon glasses. “I think I’ve come up with something. How would a
raise
work for both of you?”

“That would be nice, sir,” Temeke said. “How much were you thinking?”

“Not that kind of raise, you moron. The type where you
raise
your freeloading butts off those nice warm seats and go after your witnesses. We don’t want a bunch of boy scouts and an ex-marine putting us to shame now, do we?”

“No, sir,” they said in unison.

“Two things. Adam’s phone’s on teen-safe tracker. Shows the general area of Main Street and I-25, Los Lunas. They’re headed south. And another thing, a trucker just called. He was just settling down in a rest stop on I-25. Gave the nearest cross street as State Road 317 out by Isleta. He saw a black pickup about ten yards behind his rig. Couldn’t be sure, but he said there was a man leaning against the truck watching a boy taking a leak. Says he thinks the man had a gun. Made him feel uncomfortable enough to call 911. Says he’ll wait for you if you hurry.”

“We were planning on going that way, sir,” Temeke said. It was a lie but it was worth provoking the boss.

“You were?”

“A vague scent sir. Can’t explain it. Can’t defend it.”

“Well, get on with it then. Oh, and by the way, I’ll be holding a press conference tomorrow morning bright and early. Make sure you keep me posted.” 

Malin was already cruising out of the driveway before Temeke could respond, tires screeching as they veered onto Coors. “Why didn’t you show him that Bible tract?” she asked.

“Because we don’t want anyone knowing about our little paper trail. And we don’t want the press having a field day over it either.”

They slowed at the hill before the Chevron gas station where an old black dog sat on a grass verge, sweeping the ground with his tail. A name tag dangled from the collar, metal and shaped like a bone.

“If that’s who I think it is,” Temeke said, “it’s our lucky day.