The Nightmare Thief

by Meg Gardiner

“What time did you last hear from her?”

  “Got the text message just before four P.M. She was on the trail returning from the abandoned mine.”

  Evan rolled out her USGS topographical map on Jo’s kitchen table. “The mine is here. Jo’s message indicated she was approximately here”—she tapped a spot—“and even if Jo’s a slow hiker, she should have made it back to her truck in an hour, max.”

  Tang stared at the map. “She’s absurdly fit. She’d think this hike was playtime. Was she by herself?”

  “Gabe went with her,” Tina said. She balled her hands into fists. “You think something happened?”

  “I do. But don’t panic. She could have gotten a flat tire. Quintana’s with her. That alone should reassure you.”

  Tina nodded tightly, looking the opposite of reassured, as though thinking: If something had happened to Jo even though she was with Gabriel Quintana, things had to be bad.

  Evan put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Think we could rustle up some coffee?”

  She didn’t want to be presumptuous, but if Tina didn’t do something, she was going to pop like a jack-in-the-box.

  Tina nodded briskly. “Good idea.” She rounded the kitchen counter and began preparing a pot.

  Evan turned to Tang. “What do you know about Ruby Kyle Ratner?”

  “What do you know? Run me through it.”

  Evan explained how Jo had found Wylie’s cell phone, discovered he’d been carjacked, and heard the carjacker’s muffled threats. She described how she herself had pieced together partial phone numbers and uncovered Ragnarok Investments. And how she’d met Mrs. Ruby Ratner, the pistol-packing muumuu.

  From her jacket she got the flyer Mrs. Ratner had given her. “I know Ruben Kyle Ratner’s an ex-con with a violent record. You could use his photo to terrorize inmates at Gitmo.”

  On the flyer, Ratner looked lean and leathery. The white ring around his eye gave the appearance of crazed light leaking from within. His gaze was beyond intense. In it, Evan read both cunning and a challenge. What you looking at?

  Tang took the flyer. “This is off the record. Background only.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  Tang didn’t carry a purse. She wasn’t even wearing a badge. Clearly she’d been off duty. She took her phone from her jacket and pulled up the camera roll. On it she had uploaded a series of photos of Ruben Kyle Ratner.

  “Here’s an early mug shot.”

  He was softer physically. Much heavier. He was in his early twenties, and he weighed perhaps seventy-five pounds more than he did now.

  “Prison takes the weight off and turns it into muscle, doesn’t it?” Evan said.

  “And into poison,” Tang said.

  The early-edition Ruby had smooth, round cheeks, like an egg, and a bushy Pancho Villa mustache. A long ponytail hung down his back.

  Tang said, “When that lawyer disappeared, the department had its eyes on this guy. You’ve just brought him back onto our radar.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Caveat—Phelps Wylie’s disappearance was not my case. None of this stuff has officially crossed my desk.”

  Tina looked up from the burbling coffeemaker. “Didn’t Jo get in touch with you?”

  “Of course she did. She tried to sweet-talk me into giving her information about the case. But we had no leads strong enough to be considered probable cause.”

  “What kind of leads did you have?” Evan said.

  “Most of them turned out to be dead ends.”

  “Whose ass are you hanging a big fat towel over? What information did the SFPD have?”

  “It was deemed of interest but not dispositive. Until tonight.”

  “You knew about Ratner?”

  “I didn’t. But—”

  “He’s dangerous?” Tina said, rounding the counter and approaching Tang. “And you knew it and didn’t tell Jo?”

  Tang put her hands in her jacket pockets. She looked smooth and implacable. “The department had a lead on a possible—I emphasize, possible, as in tentative, speculative, uncertain—connection between Wylie’s car and Ratner.”

  “The Mercedes?” Evan said. “What connection?”

  When Wylie’s car turned up abandoned in a Calexico strip mall, everybody had gone wild, thinking he might have crossed the Mexican border and fled the country.

  “It’s a five-hundred-mile drive from San Francisco to Calexico. Farther than a Mercedes can go on a single tank of gas,” Tang said.

  She pulled up a new photo. “Nine P.M. the day Wylie disappeared. Truck stop on I-Five in Bakersfield.”

  It was a still, grabbed from a CCTV surveillance video at a gas station. Center of the frame, license plate fully visible, was Wylie’s black Mercedes.

  Nobody was in the car. But walking toward the minimart was a man in a hooded parka. He was white, wearing sunglasses. That was all Evan could discern.

  “We think it’s Ratner,” Tang said.

  “He paid with a credit card?”

  “Cash.”

  “Why do you think it’s him?” Evan said.

  Tang flipped to another photo: inside the minimart, the man with the parka at the counter. Paying for gas and cigarettes and a package of Hostess Ho Hos.

  “He withdrew money from the ATM in the minimart,” Tang said. “With an ATM card belonging to Mrs. Ruby Ratner.”

  Tina brought the coffeepot. “You’ve positively ID’ed him?”

  “No. These photos are not any kind of proof. But they raised our suspicions. Especially because Ratner is on parole and it’s a violation for him to leave San Francisco without informing his parole officer.”

  “So why didn’t you arrest him?” Tina said.

  “Mrs. Ratner reported her ATM card stolen that morning. And she alibied him. For what that’s worth.”

  “But you knew this felon was the car thief and you did nothing, and now he’s done something to Jo?”

  Tang raised a hand. “Tina, I knew none of this until forty-five minutes ago. After you phoned me, I checked it out. What I can say now, with much greater assurance, is that because of the evidence Jo and Evan have uncovered, it looks like Ruby Ratner was involved in Wylie’s disappearance.”

  “Involved? He caused it,” Tina said. “And he’s out there. You have to find Jo.”

  “We have no evidence that Ratner is within a hundred miles of Jo.”

  Evan said, “But you’re worried, or you wouldn’t have brought up his name.”

  Tang’s face was tense. “If he’s involved in Wylie’s disappearance, it’s very bad news. He is not somebody I want Jo to come in contact with, outside of custodial interrogation. In which Ratner is cuffed and shackled to the floor.”

  Evan’s stomach tightened. “You’d better tell us.”

  “You want me to start with the bank siege or with the mutilations?”

  32

  Tina sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed her temples. Evan poured coffee for all of them.

  “Ruben Kyle Ratner dropped out of high school and struck out for the rodeo circuit,” Tang said. “Tried to make it riding saddle broncs. Didn’t get far. Made ends meet by petty thievery. Eventually he switched to rodeo clowning, which proved frightening.”

  “He didn’t draw the bulls away from riders who got thrown?” Evan said.

  “He did, but somehow always managed to circle back toward the cowboy. And if anybody got trampled or gored, he found it amusing.”

  “Fun guy.”

  “He was fired from a number of rodeos. When he left, they’d find tires slashed, other vandalism. Eventually they found horses injured.”

  “Oh no,” Tina said.

  “Ratner is a first-class psychopath.”

  Tina stood, one hand pressed to her lips, and walked to the French doors. The rising moon cast white stripes across her face through the shutters.

  Evan said, “You mentioned mutilation. The horses?”

  “He knew how to hobble them. S
ome had to be put down.”

  Tina’s hand trembled. “Oh my God.”

  “And the bank siege?” Evan said.

  “When he was a juvenile. He was the driver, who got tired of hanging around on the street while his buddies grabbed the cash inside.”

  “He left the getaway car and went into the bank?” Evan said. “Impulsivity is an issue, I’m guessing. And impatience.”

  Some people said the same about her. She declined to consider the comparison.

  Tang nodded. “He ambled in just before the police arrived. His buddies barricaded the front entrance. He ran out the back and ratted on them, like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “Not a team player, then.”

  “He got leniency from the court, because of his age.”

  “So he’s moved on, in terms of his criminal ambitions. Substantially.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Tina turned from the doors. “And this guy now advertises his services as a handyman? So somebody’s grandma may hire him to paint her kitchen?”

  “Not everybody runs a criminal background check on casual laborers.”

  Evan said, “I’d venture that almost nobody does.”

  “And you’d be correct.”

  “Especially not when said handyman has his mother booking jobs for him.” She eyed Tang. “What finally sent him to prison?”

  “He put a rattlesnake in a guy’s mailbox.”

  Evan squirmed. “I’m guessing that’s the mayhem conviction.”

  The lieutenant’s expression was taut. “The victim spent a month in the ICU and lost his hand.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  Evan said, “What’s Ratner’s connection with Phelps Wylie? Because he did not randomly target him. On the recording from Wylie’s cell phone, the abductor says, ‘You know the score here.’”

  “I don’t know what the connection is. But I know what I’m going to do.”

  Tang phoned the SFPD and asked for an address check and information on any vehicles Ruben Kyle Ratner owned.

  Tina said, “Are you putting out a warrant on him?”

  “I don’t have probable cause to arrest him yet. I need more evidence. But I want to bring him in so we can interview him as a material witness.”

  “That’s not good enough, not if he’s out there with Jo,” Tina said.

  “I know.” Almost delicately, Tang set a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “I’m calling the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office.” She nodded at the USGS map. “Show me again which road Jo would have driven to get to the abandoned mine.”

  Tina looked at her watch. Evan could practically hear the second hand ticking, ticking around.

  Jo held tight to the horse’s reins and peered up the braided trail at the clearing where the bodies lay. In the moon-shattered light, Autumn stood over Dustin’s body. The girl threw her arms wide, dropped to her knees, and wailed.

  Grabbing the saddle horn, Jo awkwardly dismounted and led the horse toward her. The horse danced in a circle. Gripping the reins, Jo knelt at Autumn’s side. “I’m sorry.”

  Autumn’s shoulders heaved. Her breathing came in choked bursts. Her hands, outstretched above Dustin’s body, trembled in the moonlight. She let out another garbled cry, an aching, scathing shout.

  “Autumn.” Jo put a hand on her shoulder. “Hush.”

  Autumn grabbed Dustin’s sweatshirt. She dug her fingers into the fabric. The wail spiraled into the wind and up into the night. Jo pulled Autumn against her shoulder to muffle her cries.

  “No.” Autumn pulled away. She grabbed Dustin’s body and shook him. A long string of drool slid from her lips and stretched and fell on Dustin’s back.

  Jo held on to her. “You have to be quiet. The shooter is out there.”

  Autumn jerked and caught herself mid-cry. Lightning flashed again. Her face was streaked with something beyond fear, beyond nightmare. It was the phosphor shock of death’s finality.

  Jo’s heart went out to her.

  Autumn gritted her teeth and tried to suffocate her cries. Her hands gripped Dustin’s sweatshirt like she could shake him awake. Jo’s eyes welled.

  She’d been there. She’d been in the exact same position as the girl, holding on with both hands, looking into the face of the man she’d loved, seeing him gone. And she’d had to be dragged away, screaming and fighting.

  “We have to go,” Jo whispered. “Now.”

  Autumn was as tense as electrical wire. “I can’t leave him.”

  “We’ll come back. We’ll take care of him. But we have to stay alive.”

  Autumn touched Dustin’s hair. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  In the distance, beyond the meadow in the trees, white lights spiked the night. Headlights. They swept across the landscape as the rancher’s pickup turned in a radius around a curve.

  Kyle was coming back.

  “Come on.” Jo pulled Autumn to her feet. “Get on the horse.”

  She threw the reins over the horse’s head, grabbed the saddle horn, and mounted. The headlights swept across them and kept turning, like a lighthouse beam.

  Then they stopped. The wind swirled, and Jo heard the pickup’s engine. She heard it change gears.

  The lights reversed direction and swept back toward the clearing.

  “Up,” she said. “Hurry.”

  Autumn struggled to pull herself into the saddle. The horse stamped its feet and tried to spin. Jo held tight to the reins. Autumn swung a leg over the horse’s back and grabbed Jo around the waist and struggled onto the horse’s rump behind the saddle.

  “Who killed them?”

  “Kyle.”

  Autumn went rigid. “Kyle? Kyle? He’s one of them?”

  “And he’s in that truck. He tried to drive up the track all the way to the gorge, but obviously couldn’t. He’s come back, looking for another way to get there.”

  The headlights swept across the trees, strobing like an old-time movie reel. They caught Jo and Autumn, and stopped. Spotlight.

  “Hang on,” Jo said.

  She kicked the horse, whipped it with the end of the reins, and held her breath. They took off east toward the forest.

  33

  The horse clattered over the rough ground, gaining speed, working hard with two riders on its back. Jo urged it forward with her hands. Behind her Autumn bumped around, squeezing tight to her waist. From behind them, the headlights illuminated their path. That was incredibly helpful and very bad. Through the wind Jo heard the round growl of an old, big internal-combustion engine.

  “He’s coming,” Autumn shouted.

  Jo squeezed the horse’s flanks and fought to keep the toes of her hiking boots in the stirrups. “Hang on.”

  She bent against the horse’s neck, flicked the reins, and shouted at it—“Hah. Go, boy. Go.”

  The horse accelerated. They galloped across the pasture toward the trees. The rain was cold and stinging in the wind. She kept low, bending to the horse’s neck, keeping her weight over its shoulders. She might make it. She started to believe. She could get up the hill, get to the ridge and down the other side, all the way on horseback if she had to. In the truck, Kyle would not be able to do that.

  It was four hundred yards farther on, in the near dark, that she saw what she had forgotten. The barbed-wire fence.

  In the garish light from the pickup’s headlamps, the wire was a dull glint. Jo wouldn’t have seen it if not for the rain. They were headed straight for it.

  “Oh God.”

  She pulled on the reins, turned the horse right, and spurred it parallel to the fence. Ahead the cows were bunched, heads in, growing unsettled by the noise of the approaching hooves and the truck.

  “I’m slipping,” Autumn said.

  Jo felt the girl jerk up and down behind her. “Hang on.”

  “I can’t.”

  Behind them the truck broke from the trees and jounced across the field toward them, lights jinking crazily over the rough ground. The engin
e gunned. Lightning flashed, and the horse spooked.

  It bucked and took off across the field, kicking its hind legs. Autumn cried out, lost her grip on Jo’s waist, and thwacked to the ground.

  Jo hauled back on the reins. “Whoa. Whoa.”

  “Help,” Autumn shouted.

  Jo tugged and groaned and got the horse to slow down and turn. It was frightened, and she knew her own fear was transmitting to it. She kicked its ribs and nudged it forward. The truck was coming.

  “I’m caught,” Autumn shouted.

  Jo saw her in the zigzagging lights of the pickup. She had been thrown into the barbed-wire fence. She had flown through the gap between two strings of wire—and caught her shoulders on the upper wire, her legs on the bottom. She was tangled like Raggedy Ann, her butt on the ground on the far side of the fence, her clothes and hair snagged on the barbs, pinned.

  Jo swung down from the horse’s back. Holding on to the reins, she ran to Autumn’s side.

  “Hurry,” Autumn said.

  The lights of the pickup grew brighter. The cattle lowed and milled behind them. Jo picked at Autumn’s sleeves. The barbs had gone through and twisted inside the fabric of her sweatshirt.

  “I have to pull the sweatshirt off,” she said. “Wriggle your arms out.”

  Autumn panted and twisted and her hands disappeared up the sleeves of the sweatshirt. Jo pulled the sweatshirt over the girl’s head. Blood streaked the girl’s arms, but Autumn didn’t react. Jo picked her jeans free of the barbs. Autumn’s gleaming leather riding boots didn’t catch on the fence.

  “Clear,” Jo shouted.

  Autumn rolled away, breathing hard, and clambered to her feet on the far side of the fence.

  “Run,” Jo said.

  She took off across the barren ground, aiming for the hills and the tree line two hundred yards away.

  The truck was nearly upon Jo. For a second, she thought about crawling through the fence and making a dash for it behind Autumn. But she didn’t have the time or the speed. Only the horse did.

  She grabbed the saddle horn, jammed her left foot in the stirrup, and shouted crazily at the animal. The cattle scattered in all directions behind her as the truck pounded through the pasture.