CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sarah watched a pair of plainclothes detectives going door to door at the posh condo complex near the County Courthouse. Downtown had become the place to be since the Oklahoma City bombing. If Timothy McVeigh had any idea how his act of terrorism would stimulate the city center, he’d have tossed his explosives into a landfill and spared 168 lives.
Sarah guessed the condo-dwellers were mostly retired lawyers. They’d been carried to the economic summit on the backs of accident victims and criminal defendants and wanted to stay close to the source of wealth and glory. She felt a flush of shame at that unworthy thought. Not nice to hate people you don’t know, even if they’re rich. But it’s so easy. Class envy is the natural state of things when you’re looking up from the bottom.
Was envy a cardinal sin or just one of the little venal ones? She’d Google it later. Right now Sarah had to concentrate on the assignment given to her by Archie Chatto, a person on an even lower rung of the social ladder than herself.
Society’s rules didn’t apply to Archie. He was like ET with muscles and tattoos, a stranger in a strange land. He was a wild Indian let loose in twenty-first century America. He routinely outwitted his enemies with a revamped eighteenth century strategy:
Chicks dig scars.
Broken bones heal.
Glory is forever.
It still worked. Sarah finally understood Marie’s fascination with Archie Chatto—not necessarily a good thing—but she was never going to understand the man. Her sketchy background in undergrad anthropology didn’t help at all. Would Sarah Bible, BS, MS, PhD, understand Archie any better than Sarah Bible, BS-in-progress? Not a chance, but in the college of hard knocks, spending time with a renegade Apache might
qualify her for advanced placement.
“We need a white policeman on our side,” Archie told her when he laid out the plans for the day. “Rank is good, someone with a detective’s gold shield.”
“Impossible.” Sarah knew that word didn’t mean anything to Archie. It wasn’t an argument, really. It was more of an expletive, like “awesome” or “super.”
“Indians know how to catch a fish without losing the bait,” he said.
Sarah would go along. Even though she had her doubts. Even though she remembered from her anthropology studies that traditional Apaches did not eat fish.
“Fish is good fertilizer,” Archie told her. “It makes the corn grow tall.”
Apaches didn’t plant corn either. They borrowed it by force from the Pueblos and never gave it back. But Sarah didn’t waste time arguing with Archie. She listened carefully as he told her what to do.
Policemen generally travel in pairs, but the detectives she watched were splitting up. Interviewing condo-dwellers was a waste of time. A career criminal wouldn’t stay within shooting distance of downtown OKC. All the cops knew that. Any criminal who could mastermind an escape from a third floor courtroom was way too smart to stay in Oklahoma. But just in case he wasn’t, they were checking out the downtown area where politically-connected rich people lived.
“Filling in the squares.” That’s what Archie called it. They would search the surrounding area because they would be criticized if they did not, but they wouldn’t approach the search with any caution.
“The county jail, the city police department, and the county courthouse are all close by. The police will feel safe. They’ll split their teams.” Archie had a lifetime of sifting through the nuts and bolts of police procedure.
“I’m a high profile case, so the cops will put on a show,” he told Sarah. “Lots of detectives flashing gold shields to civilians. All we need is one. You’ll know him when you see him.”
Sarah picked out a likely candidate as he walked out the front door of a condominium that cost more than the young officer would earn by the time he reached retirement age. The cop was too short to play basketball. His frame was too slight for football. He looked too bored to be a lawyer and too distracted for the business world. Law enforcement had been his best option.
Clothes make the man. The detective wore a checkered sport coat and green slacks that struck his ankles three inches above the soles of his wingtip shoes.
White socks—how stylish.
He had the requisite black hair, and blue eyes. He was in his mid to late twenties with no facial hair or distinguishing scars. Just what the doctor ordered, if the cop was open to the brand of persuasion Sarah had learned watching Marie in action. True confession stories and romance novels, instead of nursery rhymes and children’s books. Thanks for the memories, mom.
“Officer!” Sarah carried one of the “Have you seen this man” leaflets the cops had posted all over this part of town. She approached the policeman with the same caution she would use with a stranger’s pet Rottweiler—bold, but careful to make no sudden movements. Lawmen and attack dogs read body language. They can detect the scent of fear at a distance of thirty yards. They like the way fear smells. It reminds them of undercooked meat and sex.
“Excuse me,” she consciously slowed her breathing and thought about the only useful things she had learned from her mother.
Young men are full of pride and testosterone. They like their women nervous. He’d see her as a pleasant diversion. Maybe a potential conquest. Plenty of room on this young man’s gun for notches.
“It’s probably just my imagination.” Sarah smiled, tipped her head down, and looked at the policemen through upturned eyes. She considered fluttering her lashes. But that might seem contrived, even to a man who’s mind was stuck in the reproductive mode.
“Yes, miss?” He puffed up his chest a bit. He flexed his muscles and struck a pose Sarah had seen on the cover of GQ magazine. He’d taken the bait. Now if she could set the hook.
“I think I saw this man.” She pushed the paper toward his face too close for him to read, but close enough for him to see the slight tremor of her hands and the droplets of nervous perspiration her fingers left on the margins of the page. When the detective took the pamphlet from her, Sarah retracted her hands and clasped them behind her back like a little girl who has been caught at something naughty.
Helpless. Completely at your mercy. It was so easy to manipulate young men. Like shooting fish in a barrel, and not a big barrel either. Sarah could tell from the policeman’s crooked smile exactly what was on his mind.
“Sorry,” She heaped self-deprecation into her voice. She ended every statement on a slightly elevated pitch, enhancing the verbal uncertainty men found so charming. “I’m sure it was nothing. I shouldn’t have bothered you.” She turned and walked away carefully striking her best lines as she retreated. She looked over one shoulder, imitating a pose she had seen her mother do, copied from a classic Grace Kelly pin up from an earlier more innocent time.
Maybe the policeman wouldn’t notice Sarah wasn’t actually Grace Kelly if she made her bottom sway just so.
It only took three steps. “Wait, miss.”
Success.
“Where did you see this desperate character?” The policeman flashed a patronizing smile and looked her over carefully.
Checking me out, she realized. Imagining what I look like naked. That’s how he would describe her to his superiors later on. A naked girl with a smitten look who wanted to have his babies. Could have fooled anybody.
“By the botanical garden,” Sarah told him, slowing her walk, moving him in her pre-planned direction with the deliberate skill of a border collie rounding up a stray lamb.
“Silly me,” she picked up the pace a little, as she retrieved her cell phone. “I took his photograph.” She fumbled with the instrument, running through a series of floral photographs, and a wide-angle shot of the cylindrical terrarium-like structure in the center of the Myriad Botanical Gardens.
“I believe he’s just after the Crystal Bridge.”
He wasn’t just after the Crystal Bridge, of course. He was at least fifty pictures into her memory card.
“Not a very good
photo I’m afraid. I didn’t want him to notice me.”
“It could be him.” The man in the blurred picture was either Native American or Hispanic, and his arms were covered with jailhouse tattoos, just like Archie Chatto’s.
They continued walking toward the botanic garden.
“Not much farther.” Sarah had successfully separated the detective from his partner. Now if she could keep him busy, too busy to place a call.
“He wore a T-shirt,” Sarah said. “There were Indians on the back . . . Native Americans, I mean. There was something written under the Native Americans. I think it was ‘Homeland Security.’” Sarah heard the leather soles of the detective’s shoes skid to an abrupt halt. They had reached the edge of the Myriad Gardens Botanical Park.
“He wore a button on his shirt.” Sarah’s fish was on the line now. It was time to start reeling him in. “White with red letters. It said Free Leonard Peltier. Any idea what that means?”
The detective had reached the speechless phase of the operation. The game had changed from Vagina Quest to Cops and Robbers but so far, it was still a game.
The policeman reached for his cell phone. Time to alert his partner. The suspect had been sighted. Sarah’s charms all but forgotten.
Now .
“There he is.” She grabbed the policeman’s hand, the one that held his cell phone. “That’s the man!” She gave the detective’s hand a shake violent enough to send his cell phone flying to the ground.
Archie Chatto stepped into the path leading to the Children’s Garden trail. He saluted the policemen with the middle finger of his right hand. Close enough to read the upside-down capital letter A. One fourth of the word, hate. A prison sentiment recorded so long ago, the blue ink was already beginning to fade. Archie turned and disappeared down the paved trail before the detective could order him to stop.
Sarah raced ahead, crushing the policeman’s cell phone under her shoe. She took another couple of steps forward before the detective sprinted past her, much faster than she expected.
Is Archie quick enough? She didn’t doubt it for a second.
The detective was deceptively unfit; his wind failed after a few seconds. He kept pace with Archie through the short Homesteader’s Garden trail, but lost ground quickly when the chase led across a broad expanse of open ground toward the Crystal Bridge. The two men had run less than thirty yards when the policeman slowed his pace to a brisk walk.
Sarah followed the action from a safe distance and shouted words of encouragement as the detective’s energy flagged. Her words kept him going, but she longed for pair of pom-poms and a cheerleader’s pleated skirt.
Archie slowed down when the sound of pursuing footsteps faded. He turned around and walked backwards for a dozen paces so the detective would be sure to make a positive identification.
Sarah could see how he struggled against the instinct to make a clean getaway. What would Geronimo think of him now? Two hundred years of Apache tradition cast aside for a white woman’s love.
Archie took a trail beside a one-acre water garden. He followed the winding pathway into a section of the park featuring water plants, ferns, and cypress trees.
The detective speed-walked forty feet behind his quarry under a footbridge and across a cement platform that served as a stage during festival days. He lost sight of Archie beside a faux waterfall that emptied into a pool filled with blooming water hyacinth and lotus.
But not for long. Archie emerged from a collection of rhododendrons that had peaked a few days earlier. He waved to the cop and disappeared behind a boxwood hedge being trimmed into a topiary display by a troop of Hispanic gardeners.
The detective shouted, “Stay where you are!” He waved his gold shield over his head as though a display of rank might persuade the fleeing fugitive to surrender. His command sent the hedge trimmers running in all directions, but Archie took the time to offer him another one-fingered salute before he vanished behind a stand of flowering azaleas.
The pursuit went on long enough to tire the detective, but not quite long enough to make him give it up. He chased the runaway Apache down trail after trail until he was totally turned around among a clever arrangement of fuchsia and lantana. Then when it seemed all was lost, there was Archie Chatto, sitting on a park bench in the exact center of a dead end circle of terraced plants, holding a magazine.
Maybe it was Archie Chatto; the detective couldn’t be sure.
Black hair. Arms covered with blue ink.
The suspect wore a T-shirt featuring renegade Apaches and, if the detective’s eyes did not deceive him, a white button was pinned to his shirt, a white button with red letters.
Of course it was Archie Chatto.
“Let me see your hands!” The policeman withdrew his side arm from a holster under his left armpit. He held it in a double-handed grip and approached the suspect slowly while checking the surrounding area for pain-in-the-ass civilians who might be hit with a stray bullet.
A shootout would be nice. An appropriate finale for the embarrassing chase. In fact, a firefight might be pretty much a certainty, even if the suspect was unarmed. No one would look too carefully at the violent death of a confessed cop killer, and a gunfight always impressed the ladies.
“Go ahead,” the detective said in the Clint Eastwood impersonation he had been practicing ever since he first heard it. “Make my day.”
But the suspect didn’t run. He offered no resistance. That was the only thing about this man that made the officer doubt, even a little bit, that he was the notorious Archie Chatto.
“Stand up! Place your hands on top of your head and lace your fingers!” It was the young detective’s day for cool police quotations. He hardly ever got to handcuff anyone. That was the province of uniformed officers. He stepped behind his suspect and nudged the man’s feet far enough apart to keep him off-balance. In seconds the man’s hands were cuffed behind his back. That was the diciest part of arresting a dangerous criminal. It took two hands to secure a pair of handcuffs; for a brief moment the officer had to holster his pistol. But everything went smoothly; perhaps this Archie Chatto wasn’t quite up to his reputation.
“For my safety,” the policeman said. “You’re not under arrest at this time.” He turned the suspect around so that he could make a positive identification.
“What’s your name? Don’t even try to lie to me!”
“My friends all call me Robert,” the suspect said. “Is there a problem officer?”
At that moment the detective’s eyes found the button on Robert’s T-shirt and soured his fantasies of promotion and sexual favors. The button said “Yes We Can!” His lips moved when he read the message.
“Dude! Are you a Barack Obama supporter?” Robert asked. “I knew there had to be another one somewhere in Oklahoma, but I never thought we’d meet like this.”
Not Archie Chatto, the detective understood. As he looked closer at Robert he realized this was not even the man he had chased through the park. This man was younger. The blue ink on his arms was just a collection of lines and smudges, not jailhouse tattoos.
Robert told the cop, “My little nephews did that,” when he saw the officer scrutinizing the marks on his skin. “Did it with a Sharpie, man. That shit don’t even wash off. You know?”
The detective felt an apology fermenting in the back of his throat. It almost broke through, like an uninvited gas bubble, but he stifled it just in time with a memory he dredged up from his police academy days. “Never apologize to a civilian unless it’s the only way to avoid a write-up.”
Perhaps this citizen/slacker was doing something that would validate his arrest. In the detective’s experience, people were almost always doing something that was at least a little illegal. He glanced at the magazine Robert had been reading. It lay peacefully on the park bench, miraculously undisturbed by the summer breeze and piled in the center of its cover was something that would arouse the curiosity of any cop.
A suspici
ous substance in plain view—that’s how he would describe the mound of yellow powder in his arrest report.
“What’s this?” It was the wrong color for cocaine. Maybe it was heroin, or some new diabolical form of methamphetamine. It was surprising that the wind hadn’t already blown it away.
“People Magazine,” Robert told the cop. “Pictures of the fifty most beautiful people of the year. Angelina made it again.”
The mound of yellow powder covered the midsection of a young blonde female starlet. The policeman thought she might be Brittany Spears or perhaps Brittany’s little sister, Jamie Lynn. They looked too much alike to differentiate from several feet away. Was this one pregnant? The heap of yellow powder made it impossible to say.
The detective puzzled over the identity of the girl on the cover of People when Sarah appeared on the scene.
“Is this the man?” the officer asked.
She approached Robert too quickly to be warned away by the arresting officer. She extended her right hand and ran over Robert’s face in a perfect imitation of a blind patron of the arts examining a classical Greek sculpture.
“Not the man I saw.”
The policeman was so pleased with his serendipitous drug bust that he didn’t even wonder how Sarah had found him so quickly.
He asked, “Can I use your cell phone?”
She seemed to be confused by the question.
“You stepped on my cell phone.” He ended the statement with a nervous laugh, embarrassed at having mentioned the incident. “I have to call for transport. I didn’t expect to make this kind of arrest. I don’t even have an evidence bag for the suspect’s drugs.”
“Drugs!”
The cop picked up Robert’s magazine and carried it to Sarah, like a garden party waiter offering a choice of canapés to an important guest.
He held his breath while she inspected the mound of yellow powder.
Sarah waited until the moment the detective inhaled and then blew the mound of powder into his face.
It took three seconds for the policeman to collapse, long enough for him to realize he had been duped by this young woman and the slacker he had just arrested—and probably by Archie Chatto, too. When three seconds had gone by, other thoughts overwhelmed the detective’s mind, important thoughts that would be lost in the black recesses of anesthesia. He wanted to give Sarah a piece of his mind, but there were so many pieces and so little time. The policeman had the strength to utter two words before he hit the ground.
“Krispy Kreme,” was what he chose to say. The password to cop heaven.
“I wonder what he meant by that?” Sarah asked Archie Chatto as he joined them in the protective circle of decorative plantings.
“You’ll never know,” Archie told her. He conducted a thorough search of the unconscious man.
The first thing Archie took from the detective was a handcuff key. “Can’t have too many of these.” He uncuffed Robert.
Then, Archie relieved the policeman of his gold shield and his 9mm Glock in its shoulder holster.
“Consider yourself deputized.”
Before Robert accepted the fruits of their elaborate crime, he positioned the detective in the Red Cross approved manner. He held the pistol for a moment, then gave it back to Archie.
“I’ll carry the weapon later,” he said, “If you think I should.” Surely the badge was all he would need to impersonate a policeman. He opened the leather case that held the badge on one side and detective Jerald Daugherty’s Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation ID on the other. Robert didn’t think he looked much like the detective, but Archie said they could be brothers.
“Like you were fraternal twins who were separated at birth.”
Robert looked at the picture again. Considering his childhood, anything was possible.
Sarah asked him why he didn’t blow the spirit powder into the detective’s face like they had planned.
He wanted to give her a flippant answer. He wanted to say, “Why should I have all the fun?” but he did not. He had become lost in the role he was playing. He had become the slacker doing drugs on a park bench so thoroughly that he hadn’t been able to shake it off when it was time to become Robert Collins again.
“Don’t play it so real next time,” she said.
He wanted to give her reassurances, but he could not. That was the reason he did not want to carry Detective Jerald Daugherty’s pistol.
Owl Dreams Page 32
