by Jon Talton
“So? Did this Juan kidnap my brothers?”
“No. There was a very good Phoenix detective on this case named Joe Fisher. He ran down several suspects, including Juan Alvarez, who had an alibi and was also a good police informer. I didn’t know that.”
“Can we leave now?”
“Just a sec,” I said. “You see, Fisher’s notes had disappeared from the case files. But I learned that detectives in his era dictated their notes to a stenographer, and they were sent to the old I Bureau.” Yarnell sighed impatiently, rested his hand against the bricks and drew it back. He stared into the burial chamber as I continued. “The point is, there was a duplicate set. Fisher was running down other suspects because he never believed Talbott acted alone. He didn’t believe Frances Richie was involved at all.”
Yarnell turned back to me, a stream of sweat dropping down onto his fine temple. He started back out but I barred the way.
“What?”
“You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Mr. Yarnell?”
“What are you talking about?” He pushed around me and walked quickly back to the main passage, where he could stand up straight again.
“Thanksgiving night didn’t happen the way you told me,” I said, following him.
“Joe Fisher didn’t believe you, either. In his notes of your interview, he wrote that you seemed to be covering up something, that you made contradictory statements about your whereabouts that night. That’s because you were here. After the house had turned in, you and Uncle Win took the twins out to the car and drove away and brought them here.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Jack Talbott took those boys! Your dead detective didn’t know anything but that.”
“What did you tell your brothers? That they were going on an adventure with you and Uncle Win?”
“Jack Talbott!”
“Jack Talbott was in the city jail sleeping off a drunk. He was nowhere near the house that night. The boys were taken out by you and your Uncle Win.”
“That was more than fifty years ago,” Yarnell spat.
“And the man who saw it is still alive,” I said, watching the words register on his face. “He’s already signed a statement.”
Yarnell’s mouth opened, a dry paste clinging to his lips. He said, “Paz.”
“Paz saw you and your uncle carry Andrew and Woodrow out to a car and drive away that night.”
“I…”
“How did it go down?” My voice was quiet but still echoed off the walls.
Yarnell found his poise again, folded his arms and looked at me contemptuously. All the Scottsdale charm was gone. I wouldn’t be invited back to the gallery.
“You’re the history professor,” he said. “Tell me a story. I bet it will be a good one. Then I’m going to get the best law firm in Phoenix to sue Maricopa County and you personally for harassment.”
The closeness of the underground chambers seemed to advance on us as I started talking. “How’s this story? Win Yarnell had been thrown out of his father’s company because he couldn’t keep his gambling under control. Then he was thrown out of the will. He staged the kidnapping to get enough money to repay Bravo Juan. Or maybe as leverage to get back into the will. Either way, the twins were the only assets he could grab.”
I stared hard at James Yarnell. “Where does a sixteen-year-old snot-nose kid come in?” I asked. “Maybe you liked to come down here and gamble with your uncle. It must have been very forbidden and exotic to hang out with gangsters, even the small-timers Phoenix was growing then.”
“Jack Talbott…”
“Jack Talbott was an accomplice,” I said. “Nothing more. He was your uncle’s gambling buddy. My guess is that the plan was for Talbott to hold the twins until the money was paid. Maybe he was just the bagman. Either way, somebody screwed up. Talbott implicated your uncle as he was being led to the gas chamber. Only your grandfather’s influence kept it out of the newspapers.”
Yarnell smiled with a perfect set of teeth. “Is that the best you can do?”
“Isn’t that good enough?”
“No,” he said. “To hell with you.” He started up the ladder.
I said quickly, “Maybe you didn’t care about Andy and Woodrow because they weren’t really your brothers.”
He took a hand off the rung and faced me with fury in his blue eyes.
“I have the birth certificates. It names twin boys born on Andy and Woodrow’s birthday in 1937.” A muscle in his neck started throbbing. “The mother is named as Frances Ruth Richie, age twenty. The father is listed as H.W. Yarnell. Senior. Your grandfather. Andy and Woodrow weren’t your brothers. They were your uncles.”
“Those records were sealed!” Yarnell hissed. “No one was supposed to…”
“Frances Richie was Hayden Yarnell’s mistress,” I said. “When I met her, she kept talking about this man she loved, and I assumed it was Jack Talbott. She meant your grandfather.”
“He was an old fool, a dangerous old fool.” He shook his head violently. “And that little whore.”
“Nothing new under the sun,” I said. “Families have been killing each other since Cain and Abel.”
Before he could turn to climb out, I fired my right fist at him, a nasty hook. If it had connected, it would have broken his nose, easy. I was counting on something else.
He caught my fist with his hand, a fast, graceful motion. He was strong, damned strong.
“Appearances are deceiving,” I said. “You’re a lot tougher than you look.”
He pushed my hand away, then drove the flats of his palms into my chest to push me back. “Leave me alone!” he shouted. It hurt like hell, but I wouldn’t let him see it. I cuffed his wrists away with an outward swing of my arms, then I shoved him roughly against the ladder. It clattered but stayed in place.
“You think we’re talking history here, Yarnell? You seem strong enough to drive a stake into a man’s chest. I think you killed your brother. Max started asking questions after we found the remains. You couldn’t have that, could you?”
A new expression rippled across his face, almost like a weather front changing from hot to cold. Something like fear appeared. Then he quickly pushed it down deep.
“A punk named Hector gave you up,” I said.
“You don’t…”
“Oh, I do. I was in a motel carport with him alone, just him and me with guns on each other. He told me all about you. That shooting at the art gallery was just an act.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I checked Hector’s cell phone records. He made a dozen calls to your gallery in November. He made five in October.”
He cursed under his breath. Then: “So why the hell aren’t I under arrest?”
“Because nobody else knows yet,” I said. “The cops came bursting in and shot Hector to death, and you must have seen that on TV and thought you were home free. They think Hector did it. Or some environmental terrorist. Or both. But, see, Hector told me before they got there. Only I heard it. And if you fuck with me, everybody will know it.”
Yarnell stepped back and smiled. He shook his head and chuckled. “So this is what this is about.”
I was silent for a long time. Neither of us moved. Finally, I said, “It’s a fifteen-year bull market and the only people who haven’t gotten rich are teachers who didn’t buy Microsoft stock and honest cops.”
His face relaxed a notch. He shook his head. “You have to think about your future. You’re probably sick of shits like me living an easy life while you live paycheck-to-paycheck. You didn’t make any money as a historian, and now you can’t make any as a cop.”
I didn’t answer.
Yarnell rubbed his shoulders. “And what if I don’t go along?”
“You go down for your brother’s murder.”
“That’s bunk,” he said. “I didn’t kill Max.”
He started up the ladder and I let him go.
I heard his voice from the top
. “You’re just a dirty cop who made a big mistake.” Then I heard his footsteps echo through the big room and the heavy door clanged shut.
I waited five minutes, then climbed up the ladder. The place was empty as a looted tomb. A layer of dust hung in the air at eye level. I reached down in my shirt, pulled up the little microphone and spoke into it.
“He’s gone. I don’t know if he went for it or not. I’ll meet you over at Madison Street in a few minutes.”
I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled the rig off, a little strand of fiber optic held by surgical tape and a battery down by my belt. I wrapped it up and slid it into my pocket. Then I shut down the lights, listened for a moment to the silence of the awful place, and quickly stepped outside.
Chapter Forty-two
The two men rounded the corner from the street as I stepped out the door. For just a nanosecond, I stood and stared in disorientation. But the guns they were carrying got my attention. I slipped back in the building just as they saw me and started running after me.
The door wouldn’t lock from the inside. I moved as quickly as I dared through the dark room, panic starting to jelly the muscles in my legs. I dropped to the floor at the far end of the building just as sunlight spilled into the passageway and footsteps pounded toward me. Then the door closed and the world was utterly black again. I could hear footsteps scuttling across the concrete. I connected where I had seen those two bulked-up goons before: in the reception area of Yarneco, wearing oversized suits.
I called out: “I’m a deputy sheriff and I’m armed!”
Suddenly the whole room seemed to shatter into fragments. I realized someone was shooting, an automatic weapon with a silencer and a muzzle flash suppresser. Pieces of masonry rained down as I slid the Python out of its nylon holster. Its heaviness filled my hand. There was a little spark across the room, and some wooden pallets came apart behind me. His flash suppresser wasn’t perfect. I took aim and squeezed the smooth Colt action. Fire and a deep boom! erupted at the end of my arm. Across the room somebody gasped and fell into something glass. Then he moaned and stopped making any noise.
I rolled to the left just in time before another gun fired in the direction of my muzzle flash. These boys were pros. Rolled and found the edge of the ladder. There was nothing to do but go down. I hit the bottom and frantically pulled out the metal hooks on the ladder. It crashed down into the shaft beside me. I retreated back into the tunnel, down the steps, into the next passage. Only the rough, century-old bricks of the wall guided me through the blackness.
I holstered the Python and fumbled in my pocket for the surveillance wire. Switched the battery on and whispered frantically into it.
“Mike, Mike! Officer needs assistance! Shots fired. At the Triple A Storage Warehouse. Yarnell’s goons have me pinned down. I’m in the tunnels. They are heavily armed.” I left the channel open and set it aside. I didn’t really believe they were still monitoring me. I crouched down in the darkness and waited, the fear all over me. I felt the sweet ache in my abdominal muscles from Gretchen, and wondered why the hell I was doing any of this.
“There’s no way out, Mapstone.” It was James Yarnell. “You miscalculated your little blackmail scheme.”
I pulled the Python out again and nestled it against my face, the coldness of the steel and the acrid smell of the four-and-a-half-inch barrel somehow helping keep down my fear.
“I went to see Max that night he was killed, but I didn’t kill him,” Yarnell said. “I told him he had to give up the Superior project. The banks were going to shut us down. We were leveraged to our eyeballs. We were going to lose everything. I was going to lose everything. Goddamned Hector. I hired his Mexican gang kids to make phone threats, set the fires, be my environmental terrorists—that way we could walk away from the project.
“But Max wouldn’t play along!” he shouted from the edge of the elevator shaft. “So I went out there that night, to try to reason with him. But he was already dead. I found him with that damned petrified wood driven into his heart. For all I know, somebody else was squeezing Max. Maybe you, Mapstone. Maybe you hired somebody to shoot me!”
He paused. “Any questions?”
I had a lot of questions, but I didn’t say a word. I moved carefully back into the tunnels, navigating by memory, going in the opposite direction of the place where Andy and Woodrow had been entombed. I shuffled, trying not to kick anything and make a sound. The heavy mesh of a spider web caught on my arm and made me shudder.
Just then the lights came on and I was blinded just long enough. One of the goons dropped down into the shaft. He strafed the tunnel and something heavy tore into my left foot. My entire left leg was instantly consumed with a bone-deep, searing pain. I fell backward, firing in his direction. The heavy magnum rounds ricocheted viciously off the walls. The goon drew back, dropped to the floor. The Python clicked as it revolved around to a spent cartridge. In my panic, my fire discipline had turned to shit. Too many years away from the academy.
I had retreated to the big chamber, with its garbage and old citrus cases. I hobbled backward painfully, crashing into some wooden boxes, falling flat on my ass. There was no cover. No way out. I reached to my belt and brought out a Speedloader. Opened the cylinder. Steadied my shaking hand. Emptied the spent rounds. They fell like little bells onto the filthy floor. Steadied my hand. I dropped the Speedloader into the cylinder, turned the metal shaft and dropped six fresh rounds into the Colt. I swung the cylinder heavily into place just as the goon stormed into the room and leveled his machine gun at my head.
“Give me your fucking gun!” he huffed.
I was splayed out on the floor, surrounded by the debris of a half-century ago, a steady ooze of blood coming out of the top of my foot. I just stared at the Python and knew I was at the end. “You’re not getting my gun,” I forced out in a hoarse whisper.
James Yarnell stepped in behind him and shone a flashlight in my eyes. I could see a little chrome semi-automatic pistol in his other hand.
“The dentist’s grandson.” He shook his head, playing the light over my bloody left foot. “How much bad luck have you had this month, young man? You find things that were never intended to be found. And now you’re dead.” His expression was something between contempt and pity. “I never did like history classes. What’s the point in looking back?”
I spoke to the barrel of the gun. “Sometimes you find unfinished business.” They were lousy last words.
In the next ten seconds, the silence became just complete enough that we were all startled by a man clearing his throat.
Then the goon’s right knee buckled in a way nature never intended. In the same instant, the room was overtaken by a huge explosion. The goon collapsed, screaming, holding a bloody mass where his knee used to be. James Yarnell retreated, weakly holding out his pistol. Out of the gunsmoke stepped Bobby Hamid.
He walked to the goon, kicked away his machine gun, and shot him again in the other knee.
“There, now you have a match,” Bobby said hospitably.
“Bobby!” I winced.
“Dr. Mapstone, I am saving your life,” he said evenly, then he faced James Yarnell, who by now was on the other side of the room, his back against the wall.
“This is fun,” Bobby said, raising a gigantic, blue-steel automatic in Yarnell’s direction.
“Don’t kill me!” Yarnell pleaded.
“And why not?” Bobby asked, as if a party discussion had gotten heated and it was time for a new bottle of wine. “It sounds as if you have much to atone for, Mr. Yarnell.”
“My family built this state!” he shouted.
Bobby shot him in the left foot, releasing a jet of bright red blood. The pistol and flashlight clattered off to the side, and we were in half-dark again.
“Don’t speak, David,” Bobby cut me off coldly. He walked over, retrieved the flashlight and set it on a carton overlooking Yarnell.
Bobby rubbed his fine chin and aimed at Yarnell’s left knee.
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br /> “No!” Yarnell sobbed, clutching his mangled foot. “What do you want?”
Bobby chuckled. “You cannot possibly give me what I want. Dr. Mapstone, however, is more easily pleased. He would also tell you that you have the right to remain silent, that anything you say can be used against you.” He focused his aim. “I suggest you start talking about this kidnapping. And please don’t bore me, Mr. Yarnell.”
Yarnell’s eyes were wider than seemed possible for human eyes.
“It was Dad and Win together!” Yarnell blubbered. “They had to get Grandpa away from that little whore, Frances. She was pregnant again with his child. They were going to lose everything.”
“Slow down,” Bobby commanded.
“We brought the twins here. Then we went home. Talbott was told what to do, make the call demanding the ransom and pick up the money. After he gave the money to Uncle Win, he took Frances to the border.”
I spoke through my pain. “Why would she go with him? He must have kidnapped her, too.”
“No, no. She went willingly. She wasn’t that bright. She didn’t know anything about the kidnapping. Nobody did for days. Jack told her she would get to meet Grandpa in Nogales and they could be together. You’ve got to get me some help! I’m going to bleed to death.”
Bobby raised an eyebrow. “So?”
Yarnell moaned.
I went on, “But the real plan was to have Jack Talbott kill her?”
“If it came to that,” he said, his face contorted in pain. “Jack was supposed to drug her and get her an abortion. Then pay her to go away. He was given the money for that.”
I asked, “So why was Jack Talbott executed and Frances Richie forced to spend her life in prison?”
“Jack tried to blackmail us,” James said, forcing up some bravado. “The Yarnells don’t blackmail.”
Bobby stifled an exaggerated yawn.
“There was a time when we would have crushed you, towel head!” Yarnell yelled. Bobby mockingly put his hand over his mouth in shock, keeping the big automatic leveled. Yarnell said, “We couldn’t have either one of them talking. Dad put the pajamas in a sack in the trunk of Talbott’s car, just as a little insurance. Dad was smart that way. So if anything went wrong, and the cops searched Talbott, he’d look guilty and nobody would believe him if he blamed the family.”
