The Laura Cardinal Novels (115 page)

The caller wasn't a sheriff's deputy, though; it was Victor. “We've got Lourdes.”

Laura's pulse quickened. “Where'd you find her? Is Angela with her?”

“Nope, just Lourdes. But we're pretty sure where she is. You know that old steak house on Arizona 79? Hennessey's Steak House and Bar?”

Laura remembered it. As she recalled, it was probably seven or eight miles from the turnoff to Trinidad Ranch.

Victor said, “Lourdes was just pulling up outside Hennessey's when one of our own spotted the car. When he turned around to check her out she was getting out of the car—-took one look at him, jumped back in, and laid scratch outta there. Fortunately, we already had DPS all over that road, they put out a spike strip, and
voila
!”

“Is she talking?”

“Nope. But before she got in the car, she started yelling to somebody in the steak house. The patrol officer didn't know Spanish, but he could swear she was warning them.”

“You think Angela's in there?”

“They could have set it up for a meet. It's memorable—just that one building on that long stretch of road.”

“I'm on my way.”

“See you there.”

Laura pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant just as Victor arrived from the direction of Tucson. There were two highway patrol cars and a sheriff's vehicle. Pulled up at an angle, doors open, replaying the scene of earlier today.
Déjà vu
all over again.

Hennessey's Steak House and Bar was a long white building of stuccoed adobe. She could tell it was an old structure. One side looked as if it had originally been a small ranch house, with a slight pitched shingle roof. There was a small square window near the eaves of the pitched roof—an attic window. No window pane, though, just open space. Blackness.

She shaded her eyes and squinted at the attic window. Thought she saw a movement, but she couldn't be sure.

“How long have you been here?” she asked the highway patrol officer.

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Has there been any reaction from inside?”

“Nope. We announced ourselves, but there's been nothing.”

She looked up at the attic, and her heart shifted in her chest. Did she really see a movement? If she did—if it was Angela—they would have a dangerous situation. Angela would be above them as they went up the stairs. She would have the upper hand.

“Do you know how she got in?”

The highway patrolman—his badge said Wasson—-motioned to the right. “There are three windows on the side. All of 'em boarded up, but one looked like it's been pried out enough for someone to get in. Could have been the suspect. Could have been transients, too, looking for a place out of the weather.”

She stared at the building, barely registering the faded blue cursive writing under the eaves: HENNESSEY'S STEAK HOUSE AND BAR.

The boarded-up windows were covered with graffiti. She imagined a few people had spent time inside.

“We have someone at the back door and at every window that isn't boarded up,” Wasson added.

Laura knew there were two options. One was to wait her out—for hours if need be. That would be a SWAT operation and would come with a hostage negotiator. The other option, equally defensible: Go in now.

It was now the hottest part of the day. The temp must be over a hundred and ten. The air was like an oven, the heat a live thing clawing at her breath. Out here under the oppressive sky, the sunlight bounced hard off the metal of the cars, and heat waves rose off the desert floor like fumes from a jet engine. Plenty of humidity, but no rain in sight. Laura herself was slippery with sweat, beads of it prickling her scalp under her hair, trickling down her sides. The only dry place on her was her mouth and throat.

She had a bad feeling.

She called her sergeant. Jerry asked her to describe the situation. She tried to keep her voice low and calm:
just the facts, ma'am
. “Do you want to send a SWAT team?” she asked him.

He covered the phone, and she heard muffled conversation, then he came back on the line. “No, the lieutenant and I both agree. You handle it. Use your best judgment.”

She closed the phone, took a deep breath, and looked at Victor.

“We're going in.”

He gave her a quick nod. They had done this before.

Laura said, “You and I will go in the front. I go low, you go high.” She glanced at Wasson. “Officer Wasson, I want you at the back. You say there's just the one back door?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Don't go in until I say it's clear.” She didn't want them to go in at the same time and possibly shoot one another by mistake. “Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He started for the back. Laura waited for him to get in position. Watched the sheriff's deputies, all of them tense and ready, covering them from the front. “Police!” Laura yelled. “Come out now!”

No answer.

“Police!”

The sound thudded in the silence, not even an echo.

The door to the steak house had a padlock. Laura mimed a cutting action with her fingers to one of the sheriff's deputies to get a bolt cutter from the back of her Yukon and to follow them. They were careful to walk to the edge of the building and follow the wall, staying under the windows, even though they were boarded up. She nodded to the sheriff's deputy, and he sheared off the lock.

She nodded again, and he worked his way back behind his car.

Victor stood on the right side of the door, gun drawn and ready. Laura crouched on the left, the SIG slippery in her sweating hands. “On three,” she said.

Victor shoved his foot into the door, and it shuddered open.

“Police! Don't move!”

Both of them aiming into the darkness, Laura's gun scanning back and forth. Thinking at any moment they could be ambushed and killed.

“Police!”

There was no sound except for pigeons in the rafters.

A square of light on the floor in the darkness from a hole in the roof.

“Clear!” Victor yelled.

There were three rooms in the steak house. They cleared every one of them.

No sound except for the flapping of feathers, the cooing of doves.

All the appliances had been ripped out except for the tall counter where waitresses gave their orders and a stainless steel area for putting together the plates of food.

Stairs in the back, behind the partition to the kitchen.

The doves chortling softly.

Laura looked at Victor, her regular partner most of the time. Victor, who had five kids, one them only a year old. She decided if anyone was going to get shot, it would be her.

Laura was scared, but more than that, she was angry. Her anger rose up in her from a place she hadn't known existed. She realized then that she wanted Angela. It was between them and only them. It had been like that from the moment Angela had lied to her at the Brashear house. Eliciting her sympathy and playing her for a fool. Angela had killed Chris and nearly killed Jaime. She had killed three little girls that Laura knew of. That would end now.

“I'm going up,” she said to Victor. “Cover me.”

He was about to argue, but saw her face, conceded: “I'm right behind you.”

She started up the stairs, Victor behind and to the side, his gun trained on the opening at the top. The opening lighter, from the sunlight coming in from the small window. Dust motes snowing down.

Laura's heart felt like an engine revving madly in her chest. Fear clamped down on the rest of her, numbing. She knew there was heat in this stiflingly close stairway, but her extremities felt cold, the SIG frozen in her hand. The stairway seemed to narrow before her like a tunnel.

Up, quietly, each step painfully slow.

Nothing moving up there. Not a shadow, not a sound.

She kept seeing, in her mind's eye, Angela leaping out like a jack-in-the-box.

She reached the top step, twisted, and aimed.

The attic was empty except for some old chairs and tables. The sun pouring in through the small window. A shred of curtain moving slightly.

“Clear!” she yelled, surprised at how hoarse she sounded.

The curtain had been what she had seen from outside.

Suddenly, her legs felt weak. But Victor was right behind her, so she made sure she stood tall.

The fixed-wing aircraft would refuel and come back, but it would take time to fly from Phoenix. They were losing the daylight, as well as their best chance to find Angela Santero. Laura and Victor decided to go back to the Trinidad Ranch and follow the tracks left by Purvis's truck.

“What I don't get,” Victor said as he took the dirt road out past Purvis's trailer, “was why she didn't meet Lourdes at the steak house? She’d had a good enough head start.”

The answer came three miles from ranch headquarters. They’d found the truck in a desert wash, stuck in the sand. There were signs that Angela had tried to dig herself out, but had given up and abandoned the vehicle.

Laura glanced at the dirt two-rut lane ahead of them. “What do you think?”

“I'm guessing she took the road.”

The road was cut through a series of small, brushy hills—empty desert. They scanned the ground for footprints, but the dirt of the lane was hard and rocky.

Laura looked up and down the wash. There were plenty of shallow impressions in the sand, but she couldn't tell if they were from horses, cows, or people. In the distance, she could make out a corrugated tin roof rising above the mesquite. “She could have gone that way, too.”

They decided that Victor would take the road, and Laura would explore the wash on foot.

It was slow going. Laura stayed to the center of the
arroyo
because the mesquite on either bank was impenetrable. Fifteen minutes later, she reached the building, which turned out to be an abandoned barn structure.

Now what? Up ahead on the bank alongside the wash, she spotted a cow pen. When the cows saw her, they started bawling. She saw hay scattered by the wire fence. Laura decided to continue; there might be a ranch house nearby.

She walked up out of the wash and along a narrow dirt lane, which flickered in and out of tree shadow. The sun was low in the sky now, and in another half hour, it would be dusk. She strained her eyes, looking for habitation.

Her eye caught a sudden movement on the right—at the exact moment she heard the revving of an engine.

A truck shot out of the trees.

Laura saw the grill, felt the heat of the engine as she dove sideways, hitting the dirt. The sound of the engine was deafening, the big tires slicing up the ground inches from her ear.

Shocked and bleeding, Laura lay still for a second. Only for a second. Then self-preservation kicked in, and she scuttled backwards into the trees, putting the trunk of one of the mesquite trees between her and the truck.

Brake lights flared and the Chevy shuddered to a stop. Laura darted to a tree farther back as she heard the engine rev again. The truck shot backwards, sideswiping the mesquite tree she'd hidden behind.

The driver's door shot open, and Angela Santero hopped out. She held a gun expertly in a double grip.

Laura inched behind a thicker mesquite and pulled her Sig. Her heart was jumping, and the gun grip seemed to jiggle in her hand. Adrenaline. She braced her arm against the tree, willing her heart to slow down, listening as Angela tramped around in the tall grass.

“I know who you are!” Angela shouted. “You're not gonna stop me, so you'd better get the fuck out of here!”

A bullet whizzed by the mesquite trunk. More shots, hitting trees and going wild—all over the place. Angela was shooting, but not aiming. Trying to scare Laura away, but it was clear she didn't know Laura's exact location.

The shooting stopped, and Laura heard Angela reloading. She tried to count the number of shots fired, but her mind wouldn't cooperate. She was too scared. Too scared to think beyond the mantra:
cover, conceal, escape
.

“Fuck you!” Angela yelled, shooting twice more.

Laura heard the truck door creak open, then slam shut. Angela gunned the engine and the truck shot forward, jouncing onto the rutted lane. It was an old ranch truck, probably stolen because the owner left the keys in it, as ranchers often did.

Laura steadied enough to squeeze off a shot.

The right back end of the truck dropped as she shot took out the tire.

Angela's foot slammed hard on the accelerator, the truck's back end slewing, trying to gain purchase. Laura shot out the front tire and the truck tipped for a crazy moment, then righted itself, and the engine died.

Laura's training kicked in. She came up on the right side—as close to the blind spot as possible. Angela gunned the engine again. The truck went nowhere; the shift lever was in Park. Laura yanked the door open, her gun aimed at Angela's head.

“Both hands on the wheel! Do it now!” Laura's gun fixed on Angela's angry face.

“You won't shoot me,” Angela said, her hand going down to her right side.

“Right hand! On the wheel! Now!”

Angela laughing. Her arm wriggling. Reaching for her gun.

Laura's left hand shot out. She grabbed the girl's hair and knocked her head against the steering wheel. Holding her nose-down against the wheel with one hand, Laura pulled hard on the girl's wrist with the other, bending it back until she heard the crack.

Angela cried out and went limp. Laura used her temporary shock to haul her out of the truck and shove her stomach-down on the ground, pinning her with a knee while she cuffed her.

She pulled Angela to her feet and pushed her up against the truck.

“My wrist!” Angela screamed. “You broke my wrist! You can't do that!”

Seems to me I already did
.

Laura knew better than to say that. But God, she wanted to.

Angela screamed every obscenity in the book. She sounded just like a howler monkey Laura had seen at the zoo.

As Laura spread the girl's legs with one foot, she said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you—”

“I'll be out in a couple of hours. You think Nina Brashear is going to let this happen to me? She loves me!”