You Can’t Stop Me (12 page)

Riding the other
Crime Seen!
bus, J.C. Harrow got out his cell phone by the second ring.

“It’s Laurene.”

“What have you got?” he asked. She wouldn’t be calling just to be sociable.

She filled him in on the startling discovery Jenny Blake had made—twenty-two separate attacks in the past decade that matched their killer’s MO!

He said, “We have no idea how many might be related to our cases?”

“No,” Laurene said. “But I’m betting the number isn’t zero.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out. We’ll have to look into all of them. Check to see how many of the murdered mothers were missing a wedding ring.”

Laurene’s pause seemed endless to Harrow.

Finally she asked, “J.C.—with this revelation…aren’t we going to have to turn this investigation over to the Feds?”

He desperately wanted to say no, but they both knew the answer to the question. Christ knew how many lives were at stake here….

“Of course, turn over what we have…but first, make copies of everything, and tell Jenny to e-mail me the list of all the crimes.”

“So we’re not backing off?”

“Hell, no. We are, however, going to let the Feds know what we think
may
be going on, and they can investigate or not, their choice, their pace. In the meantime, we’re full speed ahead.”

“That is good to hear,” Laurene said. “Where do you want to start?”

“Your team will gather what you can there, and I’ll start on the Socorro killings. Makes sense, ’cause I’m just outside of town.”

“You are?” she said, surprise in her voice. She hadn’t mentioned these latest killings, specifically. “You’re on top of those killings, then? The, uh…”

“Reid family,” Harrow finished.

“What are you, J.C., a frickin’ witch? How in the hell did you know that?”

“I got a phone call late last night.”

“From?”

“Kate Pierson with the New Mexico state crime lab. Know her, Laurene?”

“No. Why’d she call you?”

“She’s an old friend.”

“No, J.C.
Why
did she call you?”

“Missing wedding-ring finger. And get this—gun in the Reid killings was the same three fifty-seven used at my house.”

An even longer pause from Laurene.

“We
are
on the right track,” she said softly.

His voice was soft but had a tremor that threatened eruption. “I’m closer than I’ve ever been.”

“You know, J.C., if you strangle him on TV, the ratings will be great, but you might find yourself hosting the San Quentin Follies next season.”

Her grim humor made him laugh.

“I take your point, Laurene, and I do apologize for not filling you in sooner.”

“Apology not accepted. I’m supposed to be your number two.”

“You are. As for now, we’ll play ball with the Feds, all right…but let’s make sure
we’re
the ones who find this maniac.”

“It’ll be us, all right,” she said, and they signed off.

None of that had been caught on camera, and Harrow was glad of it. This was sensitive information.

Chris Anderson, seated across the aisle from Harrow, said, “Sir? We’re pullin’ up to the sheriff’s office.”

Harrow looked at his watch—just after 10
A.M
. They’d already been on the road since finishing the show on Monday, and had driven all night, after Harrow got the call from Kate Pierson.

“Good,” Harrow said. “Let’s go.”

Soon Harrow found himself standing on a bright, sunny street in front of a new two-story county administration building with old-fashioned mission styling, a facility that housed both the sheriff’s office and the county’s other departments.

Up and down the street, pedestrians passing each other smiled, spoke, waved. Modest traffic moved smoothly along, and Harrow felt he’d stepped into some sort of Southwestern Norman Rockwell time warp. Or he would have if they hadn’t been here to investigate a triple homicide by the serial killer they were chasing….

Automatic doors whispered open, and Harrow entered the modern, efficient-looking office building that hid behind the mission facade. At a round modern light-wood desk to the left of the atrium lobby, a young uniformed deputy manned a guest sign-in book.

The kid—who had a butch haircut and a well-scrubbed fresh-out-of-the-academy look—was reading something on his computer screen.

“Help you?” he asked automatically, barely glancing.

“Son,” Harrow said gently, “if you want to grow up to be a policeman, you’re going to have to learn to be more observant.”

Now the kid looked up and saw before him Harrow with his posse of Anderson, DNA expert Michael Pall, Arroyo with camera, and Ingram with boom mike.

“Here to see Sheriff Tomasa,” Harrow said.

Agape, the deputy managed a nod. Then: “May I tell him who’s calling and why?”

“J.C. Harrow and crew from
Crime Seen!
Called ahead.”

Before long, the sheriff was there in the lobby, coming over to them with his hand extended to Harrow.

“Mr. Harrow,” he said, and they shook hands. “Roberto Tomasa. You spoke to my secretary on the phone.”

“Yes, sir. I know this is short notice.”

Harrow made the introductions and more handshaking followed, quick, perfunctory. The sheriff was burly, about forty, with an easy smile and a steel grip. His face had more pockmarks than old cement, and his nose may have had a shape once, but not for a long time. He had a bushy, droopy, damn near bandito mustache, giving his face the impression of a frown even as he grinned at Harrow, moving everyone to a discreet corner of the lobby.

“Normally we wouldn’t have much to say to a TV crew,” Tomasa said, “especially at so early a stage of the investigation.”

“I understand,” Harrow said.

“You were a sheriff yourself, weren’t you? Retired?”

“Yes. Was at the state crime lab, after that.”

Mischief danced in the sheriff’s eyes. “Also saved the President.”

“Guilty.”

White teeth flashed under the droopy black mustache. “Tell me why I should receive you in my office,” he said—no anger or bitterness in his tone.

“Weren’t you expecting us?”

“My secretary gave me your message, you were coming. That’s not an appointment, Mr. Harrow. And it sure isn’t an invitation.”

“Kate Pierson—”

“Is with the state crime lab. Not on my payroll. Doesn’t represent the Socorro County Sheriff’s office.”

“Uh oh,” Anderson murmured.

That drew a glance from Tomasa, but Harrow spoke up, locking eyes with the man. “Sheriff, we’re not here to step on any toes.”

“Good.”

“But I do think we can help you.”

“Kind as your offer is, Mr. Harrow, we have handled murders in Socorro County before.”

Harrow kept his tone easy-going, but his rhetoric amped up. “Sheriff, you know as well as I do that if this
is
a serial killer, you need all the help you can get.”

“The FBI, for example.”

“Yes, but they aren’t here. We are. I am. And if we’re up against who and what I think we are, we can
all
use help. We now believe the same murderer may be tied to as many as fifty-some homicides over the last nine years.”

That got Tomasa’s attention. “That seems impossible….”

“I wish it were,” Harrow said. “Kate Pierson, protocol be damned, called me because the bullets from your victims match the gun the killer used at my home. Also, the mutilation of the female vic’s left hand mirrors what we believe to be the killer’s current evolving, devolving M.O.”

Tomasa held up a hand. “Mr. Harrow, I am not unsympathetic to your feelings. But
because
you are emotionally involved in this matter, you have taken your search to an extreme…” He gestured toward the crew. “…that exceeds any accepted law enforcement conditions or ideals.”

“I’m not working in law enforcement. But I am still, in my way, a public servant—like the men whose families this perpetrator targets.”

“I understand your sincerity, Mr. Harrow. But I
am
working in law enforcement.”

“Did you see the broadcast Friday night?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Then you know I’ve recruited some of the best people in their respective forensics fields in the country, if not the world. Do you have the budget to assemble a team like that?”

Frowning in thought, Tomasa said nothing.

“Another thing, Sheriff—some people in this country don’t like to talk to the police, no matter why, no matter what, no matter when.”

“That much I know,” Tomasa admitted.

Harrow gave the sheriff the kind of world-weary smile law enforcement professionals often traded. “Funny thing is—a lot of those same people can’t
wait
to run their mouths in front of a TV camera. Like these we have here?”

And suddenly Tomasa roared with laughter that echoed through the atrium.

“All right,” the sheriff said. “You can talk to your friend Pierson and see the bullets and whatever else you want, with my blessing…but I need from you one thing.”

“Name it.”

“You must talk to one of Reid’s neighbors.”

“Well, no problem,” Harrow said.

“You say that now,” Tomasa said slyly, the bandito quality slipping through the droopy mustache, “only because you haven’t met
Archie Gershon
yet.”

Prone in a ditch under hot sun, next to a narrow gravel lane that wound its way up to the one-story rambling white clapboard of one Archibald Gershon, Harrow understood why Sheriff Roberto Tomasa had seemed both eager and amused to have the
Crime Scene!
host handle interviewing the recluse.

Gershon lived on the property next to murder victims the Reids, and the sheriff had figured the old man may well have seen something.

“Archie’s known to keep track of what goes on in and around his property,” the sheriff had said.

“How do you know anything about the man, if he never steps off that parcel?”

“I didn’t say he never stepped off that parcel—he comes to town once a month. Him and me usually share a beer and some talk. No, it’s just anybody stepping foot
on
his parcel that’s a problem.”

They had left the sheriff’s office in two vehicles—Harrow and Tomasa in the departmental Tahoe, trailed by the
Crime Seen!
bus with Pall, Anderson, Arroyo, Ingram, and their driver (other staff members having been dropped at their motel).

Right now they were pulling up to the foot of the place, to large red hand-painted letters on weathered white-painted wood near the gate:
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
!
SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT TWICE
!

Harrow frowned. “You just let him get away with shooting at anybody who comes near his place?”

“My predecessor hauled him in, three times. But in this part of the world, people value their privacy. Not a judge or jury around here woulda gave him so much as a fine. Anyway, there haven’t been any incidents lately.”

“
Nobody’s
welcome?”

“The only person who’s been up here in the last ten years who didn’t draw gunfire was the Direct TV installation guy…The coot does love his TV.”

“Unless he has a dog,” Harrow said, with a dry chuckle, “it’s probably his only company.”

In the ditch now, it didn’t seem so amusing.

And Gershon was true to his word, or anyway true to his sign: when Tomasa’s SUV had pulled up to the gate, a bullet punctured a tire, and a second one took out part of the red and blue light on the roof. That’s when Tomasa shoved the Tahoe into park, and suggested they vacate the vehicle.

Harrow had rolled out the passenger side, hit the gravel hard, then continued on, dropping down into the drainage ditch next to the road. With the open driver’s side door for cover, Tomasa got to the back of the SUV, then ducked behind the Tahoe, all the while gesturing for the bus to back off.

Then, just after a third round pierced the Socorro County shield on the driver’s door, Tomasa came around the vehicle and dove into the ditch next to Harrow.

“Man of his word,” Harrow said. “Sign
said
he’d shoot. I’m just glad he’s as good at it as he is.”

“You picked up on that, huh?” the sheriff said with a rumpled grin. “Yeah, most people think ol’ Arch misses them. Truth is, he could pick off a gnat’s eyelash at two hundred yards.”

“Not every crazy survivalist,” Harrow said, “shoots like that.”

“He’s no survivalist,” Tomasa said. “And I wouldn’t bet on crazy, either. He just doesn’t like company.”

“Who
is
this character?”

“Late at night, in certain bars around town, you may hear how Archie was one of the boys on the grassy knoll.”

Harrow gave the sheriff a look.

“Just passing it along, Mr. Harrow. Don’t claim it’s gospel.”

They heard a vehicle door slam—the bus’s, out in the country road below the Tahoe at the gate—and watched as Pall and Anderson jumped out, followed by Maury Hathaway, lugging his Sony cam. Soon the three men were hunkered down in the ditch with the
Crime Seen!
host and the sheriff.

“What the hell are you doing?” Harrow said. “Bullets are flying. You should’ve stayed put.”

Veteran cameraman Hathaway said, “Didn’t get the memo.”

Young Anderson said, “We’re fine. That guy’s a good shot. He’s just trying to scare us.”

“Really?” Harrow asked. “What if he missed?”

Hathaway said, “We’ll stay put unless you say otherwise. I wouldn’t risk my head
or
my camera.”

A fourth bullet kicked up dirt by the edge of the ditch.

Tomasa yelled up toward the house: “Goddamn it, Archie,
stop
that! You known damn well it’s Sheriff Tomasa!”

As if the preceding bullets had been so much friendly conversation, a rough-edged voice called down,
“I know who you are, Roberto!”

“I thought we were friends!” Tomasa yelled.

“We are—that’s why you’re alive…now get the hell off my property!”

“I just come to talk!”

“
Be in town next week, Roberto! We can talk then.
”

“I need to talk today!”

“If I wanted to talk to anybody out here, today? I wouldn’ta put up that sign. You do read English, don’t you, Roberto?”

Tomasa, sighing, turned to the little group in the ditch. “Hard-headed old bastard.” To the house, he called, “You don’t have to talk to
me
, Archie!”

“I know I don’t!”

“No—that’s not it! I brought someone
else
to talk to you!”

“Maybe you read English, but doesn’t seem like you understand the spoken word.”

The spoken word?
Harrow thought. What kind of erudite hermit lived up that hill?

“Somebody come a long ways to talk to you, Arch!”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody today, Roberto. Already jawed long enough!”

Jawed long enough?
Was this guy Gabby Hayes or Alistair Cooke?

Then, to punctuate his point, the old man fired a round over their heads.

“Maybe this is more trouble than it’s worth,” Tomasa said. “Chances are he didn’t see a damn thing.”

“We’re here,” Harrow said with a shrug. “My suit already needs dry cleaning, and probably some mending. So how about you let me try?”

“Up to you. Just don’t raise your head too high—he’s liable to separate you from it.”

“He could probably part my hair, if he wanted.” Then, toward the house, he yelled, “Mr. Gershon, this is J.C. Harrow! I’d like to come up and speak with you!”

Silence.

“Mr. Gershon, my name is—”

“I heard you!”

“I’m with a TV show called—”

“I know what the show’s called! And I don’t believe for an instant J.C. Harrow’s in a ditch at the bottom of my hill! I don’t think the Fonz or Sergeant. Bilko or Gil Grissom is, either!”

“…You got a scope on that rifle?”

Gershon said nothing.

“Take a look at that bus on the road outside your drive! Name of the show’s painted all over it!”

They waited several long, tense moments, peeking over the lip of the ditch like kids watching a ball game over the centerfield fence.

Finally, the door of the house opened, and a string bean in camouflage T-shirt, jeans, and tennies stepped out onto a cement stoop four steps up. Gershon was old, all right, with long, lank silver hair to prove it. He held a model 597 Remington rimfire rifle with a scope—Harrow had one at home, damn good gun.

The king of the hill sighted down through the scope.

Realizing that the man was trying to get a better look and probably not getting ready to fire, Harrow pushed himself to his feet.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tomasa demanded.

With uncharacteristic energy, from down in the ditch, Southern boy Anderson said, “Come on, sir—you know better!”

“Boss!” Pall yelled, overlapping the young chemist. “Get
down
—”

But Harrow stayed on his feet—his calling card was his face, the proof of his words his famous appearance. He stepped back up onto the grassy slope—the place was not fenced off, despite the gated gravel drive—and gave Gershon a good look and a clean shot…if that was what he was looking for.

“Be a son of a bitch! You
are
him!”

Harrow just shrugged elaborately with open arms.

“Come on up!”

“What about my crew? And the sheriff?”

“No. Just you!”

Harrow took a few steps up the slope—the grass was cut, not shaggy with weeds.

Pall whispered: “What do you want us to do, boss?”

Without turning or even halting his climb, Harrow said, “Stay out of range of that Remington. Probably ought to keep low and ease back to the bus.”

Anderson said, “What about you, sir?”

Moving upward but not quickly, looking up at the skinny figure with the rifle, Harrow said softly, “I’ll be fine. Sheriff, can I tell Mr. Gershon if he cooperates, there’ll be no charges for the gunplay?”

Tomasa said, “If you come back with your head attached, Mr. Harrow? We’ll let it slide.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Harrow went on up the hillside, cutting over and stopping in a circle of gravel in front of the well-tended, unpretentious, if weathered, house. A ’98 Chevy Silverado pickup in the turnaround was showroom clean. Still, everything about the place said
stay away
. Bushes with long thorns scratched at windows and crowded the narrow stoop. The front screen was closed, the inside door open, a mangy hound visible at the screen, his nose working, his growl barely audible.

So he does have a dog for a friend,
Harrow thought.

Up on the stoop, Gershon held the rifle easy in his hands. The old boy wore no glasses, his gray eyes bright if suspicious, his skin leathered from life in the sun, the angles in his face suggesting an American Indian in his ancestry, the lank, silver hair lifting a little in the breeze. He was slender but hard and sharp, like boards positioned at angles on an obstacle course.

“Never miss your show,” he said, genial but low-key, rifle lowered now but ready when need be.

“Never miss a shot, either, do you?”

Gershon smiled—his teeth were mildly yellowed but his own; he was sturdy-looking for a guy his age, which was easily seventy. “If you mean, could I have hit if you if I liked? You know I could. I ain’t prone to missing.”

“You’re going to have to make up your mind, Mr. Gershon.”

“How’s that?”

“Are you a crazy old coot out of
Li’l Abner
, or are you a smart, seasoned veteran of wars unknown who chooses to live apart from the human race?”

“…You know why I like your show, Mr. Harrow?”

“No.”

“You ain’t no…you’re no phony. No wannabe. You and your people have helped put bad guys away, and I can admire that.”

“We try,” Harrow said.

Gershon stepped down the few concrete steps and offered a hand, which Harrow shook. The grip was firm but didn’t show off.

“How pissed off is Roberto?”

“How pissed off do you think? You shot at his vehicle. Blew out a tire, popped his cherry top, and put a hole in the door. That’ll cost the county money, and he’s got to explain it.”

“He knows who’s to blame,” Gershon grumbled. “We’re friendly, you know. No secret to Roberto that I value my privacy.”

Harrow lifted his eyebrows. “I appreciate that desire, Mr. Gershon. Public service was bad enough, but now I’m
really
in the fishbowl. You mind if I call you ‘Archie’?”

The breeze riffled the long wispy silver hair. “Not if I can call you ‘J.C.’ Where was it you sheriffed? Idaho? Ohio?”

“Iowa. Story County. Just north of Des Moines. Good farmland there. Good people too.”

“Not sure there is such an animal.”

“What?”

“As ‘good people.’”

Harrow shook his head. “Not all people are bad. You said yourself, you like how my show puts bad guys away. That suggests good people getting help.”

His host thought about that momentarily. “I’m going to smoke. You want one?”

“Sure.”

Gershon leaned the rifle against the stoop, fished a pack of smokes and a lighter from a pants pocket, and lit up. Then he passed the lighter and cigarettes to Harrow, who joined in.

“Sheriff Tomasa, for example,” Harrow said. “He’s one of the good people. The good guys. Don’t you think, Archie?”

“Better than most.”

“I like him too. What about your neighbor—George Reid? Was he good people?”

“That’s why you’re here, of course—the killings.”

“You know it is. Reid a good neighbor?”

Gershon grinned. “Why, you suppose if you asked him that he’d’ve said
I
was? No, we weren’t really neighborly. He was just the stranger who lived over there…” He pointed west. “…and did me the favor of minding his own business.”

Harrow looked toward where the sun was lowering, about to drop behind the hills for the night. “He had kids, Archie.”

“Yes, he did. They were never any trouble to me either.”

“Whoever did this killed Reid’s kids.”

“I know. World’s a shithole, and it can suck a kid down fastest of all.”

For a shithole, the world looked beautiful right now, dusk settling in on the recluse’s perch with gentle tones of blue and gray.

“Archie, you see anything that night? Hear anything?”

“If I had, don’t you think I’d’ve told Roberto?”

“No.”

“Why, because I’m a nasty old hermit? A misanthrope who’s given up on the world and everything in it?”

“No. You love that old hound dog, for instance. And he’s part of the world.”

“You think you got a bead on me, J.C.?”

“I think you’re hiding in plain sight, Archie. I think you’re waiting to see which catches up with you, first—people who come around to kill you, or just the darkness that eventually swallows us all.”

He stared a long time at Harrow, who could see the shadows of approaching night washing over the old man, and they just stood there smoking.

Finally, Archibald Gershon said, “Why don’t you come in for a beer?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

The living room was large and knotty pine, lined with built-in shelves holding volumes of as many varieties as a well-stocked college bookstore—novels, both popular and literary from many decades, non-fiction works on politics and world history, philosophy, poetry, engineering.