Deadeye

by William C. Dietz

  Omo stood to one side so Lee could enter first. She was expecting some sort of western motif and was surprised by the Italianate furniture and a Tuscan paint scheme. Lee’s mask did very little to mitigate the stink of stale cigarette smoke. “Please have a seat,” Mrs. Rictor said. Lee chose a chair next to their hostess while Omo perched on an uncomfortable-looking couch. “I saw the news stories,” Mrs. Rictor said. “El Cabra was killed. Is that why you’re here? Did you find evidence that he was responsible for my son’s death?”

  “No,” Lee replied. “Although that is a distinct possibility. We’re here because we have a witness who was present when your son sold a girl named Amanda Screed to a group of men out in the desert. People who weren’t part of the D-Dawg gang. We want to know who those people were.”

  For the first time, Lee saw what might have been a look of concern in the other woman’s eyes. “Well, as I told you before,” Mrs. Rictor said, “Vincent fell in with bad company. But I never met any of the people he hung out with. Nor did I want to.”

  “I’m inclined to believe that,” Omo responded. “But I think you know of them even if you never encountered them face-to-face. And, after your son died, I think you went to his apartment or some other location and removed a very large sum of money. Dirty money . . . If so, that would make you an accessory to a kidnapping. Or a number of kidnappings.”

  “That’s absurd!” Mrs. Rictor said hotly.

  “Is it?” Lee inquired. “You had a mortgage on this house until a week ago. Then you paid it off. Along with the loan for the especiale outside. If Deputy Omo is wrong, where did the money come from?”

  Mrs. Rictor looked defiant. “Maybe I saved the money . . . And maybe I’ll use some of it to hire an attorney.”

  “You can if you want to,” Omo acknowledged. “Although you won’t have much money left by the time the legal process is over. Or you could tell us what we want to know. The money, and where you got it, is a side issue as far as we’re concerned.”

  Mrs. Rictor looked at Lee and back again. “If I tell, you’ll leave me alone?”

  “Yes,” Lee replied. “Unless we come across evidence that you knew about one or more abductions in advance and/or played a role in carrying them out. Then we’ll come looking for you.”

  Mrs. Rictor was holding Sugar in her lap. She was silent for a moment. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ve never heard of Amanda what’s her name. But Vincent told me that he did business with a man named Tom-Tom. ‘Side jobs.’ That’s what he called the deals Hermoza wasn’t aware of.”

  “Good,” Lee said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Did Vincent tell you anything else about Tom-Tom?”

  Mrs. Rictor shook her head. “No, not really . . . Well, there was one thing. My son said that Tom-Tom has two heads. Two people really . . . Sharing one body. And both are named Tom.” They questioned Mrs. Rictor about the man with two heads, but she didn’t have any details to offer, or if the woman did, she wasn’t about to share them.

  So they left. Once Lee was in the truck, she fastened her seat belt. “Well,” she said. “That was interesting . . . How many two-headed men can there be? We should be able to find him, I mean them, by this time tomorrow.”

  Omo looked at her. “That wasn’t funny, Cassandra . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a quarter million two-headed people in the Republic of Texas. And I doubt any of them wanted to be born that way.”

  Lee heard the pain in his voice and wondered the same thing that had occurred to her so many times before. What was behind the mask? “I’m sorry, Ras . . . That was stupid.”

  Omo drove her back to the hotel and agreed to meet at the headquarters building in the morning. Maybe, if they were lucky, Tom-Tom had a criminal record. If so, they would be in jail, on parole, or out and about. Even then, there would be a last-known address in the database. And that would provide them with a starting point.

  So Lee said good night, got out of the truck, and made her way through the shabby lobby to the one elevator that actually worked. Her plan was to freshen up and call out for some pizza.

  After exiting the elevator, Lee made her way down the hall to her room, stuck the keycard into the slot, and saw the green light appear. As she entered, she was vaguely aware of the pine-scented deodorizer in the air, the dull rumble of the TV in the next room, and the fact that the bed was made.

  She took the jacket off and threw it on the single chair. The shoulder holster was next, followed by the Smith & Wesson. She didn’t undress, though. That would have to wait until after the pizza arrived. She could have a Coke however . . . And went over to the bar-style refrigerator to get one.

  Lee opened the door, saw the usual array of cans, and was about to reach for one when she saw something that shouldn’t be there. It was a clear plastic bag. And a fairly large one at that. She pulled it out, turned to hold it under the ceiling light, and realized she was holding a couple of bones. For a dog perhaps? Left there by a previous guest? No, there was something about one of them. Lee opened the bag, took both bones out, and instinctively fit them together. A human femur! One which had been broken in half! The Bonebreaker . . .

  Lee let go of the bones, whirled, and snatched the revolver off the chair. Her heart beat wildly as she scanned the room. There was a knot of fear where her stomach should have been, and the .357 was trembling. Pistol extended, she entered the bathroom. Nothing.

  Lee returned to the room at that point and sat on the bed. Ten minutes passed while she sat there clutching the pistol. But that was stupid, and she knew it. He, assuming the killer was male, wouldn’t attack on that particular night. The whole idea was to scare the crap out of her and make her suffer.

  So she picked the bone fragments up off the floor, put the Smith & Wesson aside, and went through her suitcase item by item. Had he or she been able to plant a tracker on her somehow? Or was the serial killer working the old-fashioned way—watching and following?

  But the search didn’t produce anything other than dirty laundry. And when it was over, she still had to get some rest. Sleep refused to come, however. All she could do was lie on the bed and wait for the sun to rise. Once it did, Lee got up, showered, and put the bone fragments in her briefcase. Breakfast consisted of coffee and a sweet roll consumed in the lobby. From there, she went out to the rent-a-wreck, which she subjected to a careful inspection. And that produced what she thought it would. A magnetic tracker that was attached to the frame. She threw the device out the window on her way to work.

  People knew her by then, so it was a lot easier to get through security. Lots of men and some of the female deputies liked to flirt with her—and Lee handled that the same way she did back in LA. For the most part, a joke or a change of subject was sufficient to put them off without hurting any feelings.

  Once Lee arrived in the bull pen, she went in search of Omo and found him in front of his computer. “Got a minute?” she inquired, and led him to a vacant conference room. The bones rattled as she dumped them onto the wood table. Omo looked up from the bones to her face. “Where did you find these?”

  “In the refrigerator in my room.”

  “Any signs of a forced entry?”

  “None.”

  “He bribed a maid, then . . . Or slipped into the room when she wasn’t looking.”

  “Probably.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? Especially here. Keep working. But I promised to tell you if something took place, and now you know.”

  “Don’t worry, Cassandra . . . We’ll spot the bastard. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Lee wasn’t so sure, but she nodded anyway. “Right.”

  Omo picked one-half of the bone up and turned it over. His long, tapered fingers would have been suitable for a surgeon. “What’s this? Who is Larry Evans?”

  Lee took the bone fragment out of his h
ands and stared at it. The inscription was barely legible, but sure enough, the name “Sgt. Larry Evans” had been scratched into the femur with a sharp instrument. Sergeant Larry Evans was the Bonebreaker’s second victim. He’d been killed during the month of April in 2055. His head and torso had been left next to the Hollywood Freeway—but the rest of the body had never been recovered.

  Suddenly, the coffee and the roll came surging up her throat and shot out onto the table. Omo managed to grab a wastebasket and get it under her chin before her stomach convulsed for a second time, and the rest of her breakfast came up.

  It took the better part of five minutes for the heaves to stop, and once Omo knew Lee was okay, he left to get some paper towels. There was a sink in the room, and, together, they managed to clean up. The smell was pretty bad, though—and Omo’s solution was to make a fresh pot of coffee. “Our coffee always smells like vomit,” he said. “So no one will notice.”

  Lee laughed in spite of herself, and they were well clear of the room by the time the vice squad entered to have a meeting. They went outside and circled the building so Lee would have time to regain her composure. She told Omo about Evans, and the deputy shook his head. “You’ve got to be careful, Cassandra. This guy is toying with you. He’ll come for you one day. Maybe you should report this.”

  “No,” Lee said firmly. “Arpo will send me back to LA if we do . . . And McGinty would go crazy. You were on your computer when I arrived. What, if anything, did you discover?”

  Omo shook his head. “I couldn’t find a single person named Tom-Tom, never mind two of them.”

  “Damn.”

  “So we need a plan.”

  “Yes, we do,” Lee agreed. “Here’s a thought . . . Something that came to mind while I was staring at the ceiling last night. Rictor sold Amanda to Tom-Tom. So, if we dig into the Rictor murder, maybe we’ll come up with information that will lead us to Tom-Tom.”

  “I don’t know,” Omo said doubtfully. “That sounds like a long shot.”

  They were upstairs by then and crossing the bull pen. “Okay, Cowboy,” Lee said. “Have you got a better idea?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then . . . Let’s get to work. A deputy named Haster was working on the Rictor case. Let’s talk to him.”

  “We can’t,” Omo replied. “One of the Tecs shot Gus in the face.”

  That was when Lee remembered the memorial service and realized that Haster had been one of the deputies buried that day. He had a wife, too—and a couple of kids. She felt stupid. “I’m sorry, Ras . . . I forgot.”

  “There were a lot of them,” he said bitterly. “Come on . . . I’ll take you over to meet Lieutenant Ducey. She’s in charge of Homicide. Who knows? Maybe you can use Haster’s desk.”

  It was a short walk, and Ducey looked up as they arrived. “Hey there, Omo . . . Nice work the other day.”

  Ducey’s black hair had been separated and woven into braids, each of which seemed to have a life of its own. They writhed like snakes as the introductions were made, and Ducey listened to Lee’s request. The lieutenant had brown skin, a no-nonsense manner, and was wearing turquoise rings on three different fingers. “Sure, hon,” she said. “You can use Haster’s desk. We’ve been shorthanded since he was killed, and truth be told, the Rictor case has a low priority. I mean the guy was a gangbanger . . . Somebody was bound to kill him sometime.”

  Even though Ducey’s comments weren’t politically correct, Lee understood. Having written Haster’s password on a scrap of paper, she sat at his computer and went to work. Lee was familiar with the general outlines of the case, having read some of Haster’s stuff earlier.

  But now she was reading the material with a completely different attitude. Rather than skimming, looking for potential connections to the Screed abduction, she was reading Haster’s files the way a homicide detective would. As a result, she was paying attention to details such as how Rictor had been killed and where the body had been found. Both of which had been withheld from the news media as well as the dead man’s family. Lots of police departments did that so they could use the information to sort suspects.

  And the way Rictor had been killed was very unusual. His body had been found with an aluminum arrow sticking out of his chest. Specifically, a tan arrow with a nock made out of injection-molded polycarbonate. That made it a very sophisticated weapon, which had probably been manufactured in Pacifica or another high-tech enclave.

  All of which was interesting but beside the point. The real so-what was the fact that Hermoza and his gang were all about killing people with firearms. Hermoza’s .50 caliber handgun was an excellent example of that preference. So it seemed likely that the person or persons responsible for Rictor’s death killed him for reasons that had nothing to do with Hermoza or the gang leader’s wife. And those individuals might know who Tom-Tom was.

  Then there was the matter of where the body had been found. And that was in a remote spot on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation located ten miles east of Phoenix. There were plenty of photos to look at, and as Lee swiped through them, she saw that the murder had taken place in front of an ancient Airstream trailer.

  And, judging from where the body was found, it appeared that Rictor had been standing in front of the trailer when the arrow entered his chest. According to the coroner’s report the “. . . arrow’s trocar tip punched through the victim’s sternum. Subsequent to impact, two stainless-steel blades were released. They cut grooves through internal organs, resulting in death. And, if the arrow hadn’t been blocked by Mr. Rictor’s spine, it would have exited through his back. That suggests that the arrow was fired by a very powerful bow.”

  So, because the body had been found on an Indian reservation, it was tempting to hypothesize that a Native American had been responsible for Rictor’s death. But Lee had taught herself to resist that sort of thinking. All sorts of people used bows for hunting—and all sorts of people had access to the reservation. Still, the murderer could have been a Native American, and the same possibility had occurred to Haster. That was why he had contacted the Salt River Police Department and requested assistance.

  The SRPD had been created back in 1967 but had fallen on hard times since the plague, when more than half of the department’s officers lost their lives. Now the once-proud department was down to three officers, who were forced to rely on support from the sheriff’s department where serious crimes were concerned. And one of those policemen, a lieutenant named Bo-Jack, had been scheduled to meet with Haster the day after the Tecs attacked.

  Lee made some calls, got the number she needed, and was able to reach Bo-Jack on his cell phone. After a brief conversation, they agreed to meet at three that afternoon.

  Omo wanted to go but couldn’t because of a hearing related to Hermoza’s death. So Lee borrowed Omo’s truck, performed a 360 on the vehicle, and set off for the reservation.

  Lee’s route took her up I-17 to I-10, and from there to 202. Lee kept an eye on the rearview mirror and took three random side trips in an effort to identify a tail if there was one. It was something she hesitated to do when Omo was present. He’d be willing, no doubt about that, but Lee saw the battle with the Bonebreaker as a personal problem. And something she didn’t want to impose on her partner if she could avoid it.

  Having failed to spot a tail, Lee returned to 202 and followed it to 87. That took her to the point where she could access the East Indian Bend Road. It was more of a track than a road and badly in need of maintenance. According to the instructions from Officer Bo-Jack, she was to follow the road west for 5.6 miles. After that, she was supposed to watch for the sign that read, MINER’S CREEK, and turn right on the next dirt road.

  So Lee set the truck’s trip meter to zero and drove into the heart of the reservation. The outside temperature was in the nineties by then—and the land was so desolate that she couldn’t imagine how anyone could liv
e there without modern amenities. But people had. And plants still did. As Lee bounced along, she saw stately saguaros, desert hackberry, and white thorn acacia on both sides of the track.

  The terrain was anything but flat. As the four-by-four continued west, there were lots of hills and water-cut gullies to deal with. That, plus the washboardlike surface of the road, forced Lee to keep her speed down. And that raised an interesting question. What the hell was Rictor doing out on the Indian reservation to begin with? Maybe Officer Bo-Jack would be able to offer a theory.

  Lee passed a dramatic outcropping of rock on the left and saw the barely legible MINER’S CREEK sign shortly after. The creek was dry, and she had to slow down to five miles per hour in order to lurch up and out of it. Then it was time to shift down into second as the truck bucked up and over the rise beyond.

  The dirt road came up rather quickly thereafter, and as Lee made the turn, she could see fresh tire tracks up ahead. It looked as though Bo-Jack was on time, and she was grateful for that. After winding its way between some rock formations the trail came to an abrupt stop. The Airstream was there, along with some old mining equipment, and a clutch of three palm trees.

  A four-wheel-drive truck similar to the one she was driving was parked off to one side and positioned to depart in a hurry if necessary. It had a winch, a light bar on the roof, and a whip-style antenna. The windshield was cracked, and the Salt River Police logo was mostly obscured by a thick layer of dirt.

  Lee stopped, put the truck in park, and killed the engine. Her boots produced puffs of bone dry dust as her feet hit the ground. “You’re a norm.” The voice came from behind Lee, and she was reaching for the Glock as she turned. The man had been able to approach her without making a sound. He raised his hands palm out. “Whoa . . . That was an observation. Not an insult. My name is Bo-Jack.” It sounded like a single word the way he said it.