One Perfect Shot pc-18

by Steven F Havill

  “Dogs,” he said, and scanned the roster. “Just what Miracle needs.” I didn’t interrupt as he forwarded a radio call to village unit 327, requesting that part-time officer J.J. Murton respond to a barking dog complaint over on Llano del Sol.

  “We need a copy of Mo Arnett’s photo faxed up to Amtrak security in Albuquerque,” I said. “We want to know if he boarded either east or westbound, and if there’s a destination on his ticket.”

  Wheeler nodded, excited at having something worthwhile to do. “They have a seat manifest?”

  “I would think that they do.” Then again, I thought, who knows. I hadn’t ridden a train in a long time. I had picked up a passenger once in Albuquerque not too many years before, and it seemed to me that the platform had been a disorganized flood of people, a swarm. Any nimble person could have slipped on or off without much notice. And someone familiar with trains would know where to hide to avoid the conductors.

  Buses didn’t keep track of anything but the gross number of passengers, making them the absolute best public transportation for those wishing to stay under the radar. It was entirely possible that Mo Arnett might be handing us a fast one as he boarded a friendly Greyhound.

  “And mention to both rail and bus security that the subject might have a firearm…” The telephone hand buzzed again, and Ernie took the call. As he listened, he raised a hand toward me. I waited, and in a moment he covered the receiver.

  “No gun, nothing in the trunk.” He held the phone toward me. “You want to talk to the sergeant?”

  “Nope. That means Mo likely has the gun with him, unless he got smart and ditched it. Tell ’em to be careful.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned back to the phone.

  The only safeguard the transportation folks had was sharp-eyed conductors, agents or drivers who might recognize a nervous passenger when they saw one. Hopefully a pudgy kid, sweating with strungout nerves and trying to conceal a big.45, would trigger their radar.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Sorry for the hour,” I said when Mark Arnett answered the door, and I spoke before his blood pressure had a chance to spike. I held up a hand. “Some developments,” I said matter-of-factly, making sure that he heard me. “May we come in?”

  He nodded and held the door for us. “We’re in the living room.” Mindi was sitting in a padded rocker, her hands clasped in her lap. She rose as we entered, her hands remaining locked together. None of the office-boss spunk stiffened her shoulders now.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Arnett, Albuquerque police have found your vehicle in the Albuquerque airport parking lot. There’s no sign of your son yet. The handgun is not in the car.”

  Mark gestured toward a couple of chairs. “You mean he just left the car?”

  “It would appear so.” I settled on a stout, straight-backed chair, all leather straps and heavy wood. Estelle took the end of the sofa an arm’s length from Mark. “The car was locked when they found it in the long-term lot. Nothing in the trunk, but the gun was taken. We don’t know if Mo still has it, or if he chucked it somewhere. Maybe in a garbage can or something.”

  “Why the hell would he do a stunt like that?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want it taken from the car if someone broke in. Maybe he took it, then found it too hard to conceal. Maybe he just got scared with it. We don’t know.”

  “So where did he fly to, then?” Mark’s question was blunt, still carrying the tone of voice that promised “an even worse lickin’ when he gets home.”

  “APD is surveying the flight manifests right now, double-checking. Depending on when he actually got to Albuquerque, he could have had several choices, but right now, it looks as if he didn’t take a flight at all. I mean it doesn’t take long to check computer manifests.” Mark appeared ready to sputter something, but I held up a hand. “You saw him at breakfast, was I correct in hearing you say that?” Mark looked across at Mindi, a silence between them about a mile wide. I felt like saying,

  “Okay…who’s going to lie first?”

  “Did you see him at breakfast?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Mark snapped. “I had to leave early. I left before he was up.”

  I looked questioningly at Mindi. “You saw him at breakfast?”

  “I told you that I did,” she murmured.

  “Refresh my memory,” I said pleasantly.

  “I made sure that Mo was up…he loves to sleep in, you know. I told him that he needed to come down for breakfast. I had it all laid out for him.”

  “And he did that?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You physically saw him enter the kitchen?”

  “I…” Mindi came to a embarrassed halt. She glared at me, some of the spirit coming back now that she had a convenient target. “Listen, I had things I needed to do. Mo is perfectly capable of getting up in time for school, fixing his breakfast, and…you know.”

  “So you didn’t sit down to breakfast with him.”

  “No. I told you I didn’t.”

  “When you left the house, it was your assumption that Mo was up and about.”

  After a grudging pause, Mindi said, “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since.”

  That brought tears from Mindi and a concrete set to Mark’s jaw. I sighed. “If Mo was going to fly somewhere, where do you think it would be?”

  “He wouldn’t fly,” Mark said instantly. “He gets airsick just looking at an airplane.”

  “Is that right.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’d take a train or bus?”

  “Train. He loves ’em. You know that already. He wouldn’t take a bus. He thinks only vagrants travel by bus.”

  “Who does he know that he’d visit? Let’s say up north, or off to the east. If he took Amtrak, he might be heading toward Kansas City, maybe Chicago. Or connections beyond. Or west to Flagstaff? Kingman? L.A.?”

  “Look, how can we know that?” Mark asked. How can we know that? The absurd question needled my blood pressure a couple of clicks upward. “He don’t have many friends anywhere. Neither the wife or me has any relatives out of state.”

  “I have an elderly aunt who lives in…it’s Cleveland, I think,” Mindi said.

  “We haven’t seen her in a dozen years or more,” Mark snapped. “Hell, Mo wouldn’t even know who she is.”

  “So in a nutshell, if Mo boarded Amtrak, either west or eastbound, you wouldn’t have any idea where he’s headed.”

  “Shit, I don’t see how we could,” Mark said. He glanced sideways at Estelle, who was regarding him thoughtfully. “You know how kids talk. ‘I’d like to do this, I’d like to do that.’ It don’t mean a whole hell of a lot.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance what?”

  “When Mo talks about what he’d like to do…”

  “Well, shit. He wants to go to Sea World, that place out in San Diego. He thinks that he wants to go out in a boat and do something or other with whales. That whale talk stuff.” Mark grimaced. “All talk. He’d probably get seasick. He says that he’d like to go to New York and be a stock broker, for God’s sakes. Hell, you got kids. You know how it goes.”

  “Where was he planning to go after graduation? Has he decided?”

  “Damned if I know. I’ve tried to talk him into working for a year or so with me. Get some of the kinks out. Get some fresh air and some muscle on his bones.” He shrugged. “Or see what the service has to offer. Do him good.” He glanced at Mindi, who had frowned and shifted position as if someone had poked her in the butt with a hot poker at the mention of military. “The wife don’t think much of that idea,” Mark added.

  “Well, either direction, east or west, if he’s on the train, there’s a good chance he’ll be found,” I said. “If. If he didn’t take the train, it’s still anybody’s guess. If he had a chance to visit the bank, how much money would he have with him?”

  “Couple hundred bucks, maybe, I don’t know.”

  I
sighed, liking Mark Arnett less and less. We were spinning our wheels with these people, and every moment we spent here was a moment farther away from Posadas for Mo.

  “You’ll let us know?” Arnett said as we made for the door.

  “Of course.”

  “What’ll happen now?” he asked, almost as an afterthought. “I mean, Mindi said that he didn’t even take many extra clothes.”

  He won’t need them when he’s wearing jailhouse orange, I thought, but I kept the unkindness to myself.

  I looked at Mark, wondering what made him tick. “If Mo took plane, train or bus, we’ll find him. Unfortunately, we have to assume now that now he’s armed, and that’s a complication. What was the weapon you left in the car?”

  “Just a beat up.45 ACP Springfield I’ve had for a while.”

  “Loaded, I assume?”

  “Full mag. We didn’t keep one in the chamber.”

  How goddamn thoughtful. “ If police are able to arrest him without incident, he’ll be returned here for questioning and in all likelihood, arraignment.”

  “Damn right he’ll be questioned.” He didn’t ask me what the other side of that if was, but he had to know. I gazed impassively at him. “He’ll be questioned by us, Mr. Arnett. Then we’ll see.”

  Outside, the air was fresh relief.

  “They’re glad that he’s out of the house,” Estelle said.

  “That’s my impression,” I grumbled. “Was it Robert Frost who said that home is the place, that when you have to return there, they have to take you in? Something like that? Mo’s going to have a hard time coming home.” I shook my head wearily. “Once the justice system is finished with him in twenty years or so.”

  “Do you suppose that he knows that? Mo, I mean?”

  “Probably not. My experience has been that kids aren’t fundamentally believers in reality. Whatever gremlins that might be lurking out there, teenagers believe that the bad luck doesn’t apply to them.”

  Estelle remained silent for a while, but I could see her dark eyebrows furrowed in thought. “How do we go about getting him back?” she asked finally.

  “I wish we had an easy answer for that. We can hope that he’s jumped on Amtrak. In a way, that would be a good thing. It doesn’t matter where the container goes. He’s inside, bottled up. If the rail security can locate him, they’ve got a captive audience. As long as he doesn’t do something stupid.”

  “His track record isn’t good in that regard,” she said soberly. “And if he has the gun with him?”

  “Then all bets are off. It depends, of course, what he does with it, but I’m optimistic that he’s not in a hurry to be found. Nothing will bring the wrath of the law down on his head faster than trying to use a weapon. I hope he knows that, and I hope that he took the gun in the stress of the moment, and ditched it the first chance he got. If he’s smart and just blends into the woodwork, we’re going to have a hell of a time finding him.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Maurice “Mo’’ Arnett tried his best to blend, but at 1:19 a.m., night dispatcher Ernie Wheeler reached out with the radio.

  “Three ten, PCS. Ten twenty.”

  I was standing in the middle of the street, and for about the third time that day, planning to walk across to the Zipoli home. Estelle Reyes, who was well on her way toward earning her night-owl wings, had accompanied me. Three cars were parked on the curb and every light in the house appeared to be ablaze…Marilyn was not being left alone with her thoughts. I had planned to chat with her again, specifically to find out if she’d heard her husband mention Mo Arnett by name, or if she’d heard her husband and the boy talk about hopes, dreams, plans-anything to give us an edge.

  Ernie’s clipped voice on the radio stopped me in my tracks. I returned to the car and leaned in to grab the mike.

  “Three ten is on Fourth Street. Ten eight.”

  “Three ten, Amtrak says they have your boy. Ten-twenty-one ASAP.”

  My pulse shot up through the roof. “On my way,” I said, and whistled sharply at the young lady, who had continued moseying toward the Zipoli address. She jogged back, and I threw 310 into gear even as her butt touched the seat.

  “They’ve got him,” I said as I pushed the sedan through the first corner way too fast, accelerating hard toward Pershing. “And you were one hundred percent right.”

  “East or west, sir?” She didn’t sound triumphant, just interested in what might come next.

  “We’ll know in a few minutes.”

  And sure enough, Lieutenant Leo Burkhalter answered on the second ring. His voice was a little scratchier than it had been five years before when I met him during a Joint Task Force waste of time…a JTF exercise.

  “About goddamn time,” Burkhalter rasped when I introduced myself. “How’s life in the fast lane?” he chuckled. His county in northeastern Arizona, so huge that dinky Posadas would be forever lost in one remote arroyo, presented a whole catalog of challenges that we never faced-massive forest fires, for one, along with distances that made me tired just looking at the map.

  “I’ll be perfect if you tell me that you have one of our errant teenagers in custody, Lieutenant.”

  “Maw-reese Arnett. Ever heard of him?”

  “Indeed I have. What’s the deal?”

  I heard papers shuffle. “Well, this is a mess. And on the day that my daughter is about to give birth to my first grandchild, you drop this in my lap, Undersheriff. Look, rail dispatch called us with word that they’ve got this Arnett kid on the manifest…or at least a kid who fits the BOLO you sent out. They’re just a few minutes out of Winslow, and without security on board, they played it pretty smooth. He’s contained in the observation car, along with one of the attendants. The engineer is takin’ it slow, headed for the first siding that comes along.”

  “Why didn’t they take him off the train at Winslow? The city PD would have done that.”

  “That would be Amtrak’s call. I suppose because they didn’t want an incident at the station. That’s right in the middle of that old hotel in the middle of lots of people. If this kid is armed, if he’s a fruitcake, we could have a real incident. It’s a whole lot easier to just isolate him out in the middle of the goddamn desert, and take him out at our leisure.”

  “So he’s still on the train, still unsuspecting?”

  “As far as we know. The rail folks know who he is, and he’s contained with an attendant who apparently is really skilled at making up stories about why the train is going so slowly. But I’m not there, so I can’t say for sure. All I know is that they say the situation is secure for the moment. What’s your call, Undersheriff?”

  “I need to be there.”

  “Damn right. So get your old carcass out here. We’ll get rail dispatch to stop the train where we can reach it by vehicle. The rail freight traffic is hellacious on that line, so Amtrak isn’t about to let their passenger train just sit in the middle of things. They’ll want off the mainline. Who’d this kid kill, anyway?”

  “A county employee.”

  “No shit.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. Look, I’ll be coming into Winslow airport. You can have a deputy there for two of us?”

  “You got it.”

  “And get me two hours. Patch through to Amtrak and tell them status quo is just fine until we show up. It isn’t like the passengers aren’t used to it.”

  “Doing nothing is my specialty, Bill. Like I said, Amtrak doesn’t have armed security on the unit, so they’re more than happy to have us take care of it. They’ll wait.”

  When I hung up, Ernie Wheeler leaned forward expectantly, his hand reaching for the phone. He’d heard Winslow airport mentioned, and knew that Southwest Airlines didn’t have a direct flight from Posadas planned any time soon.

  “Call Jim?”

  “Tell him he’s got two for Winslow. And then wake up Schroeder and have him start on the extradition paperwork with his Arizona counterpart.” Our District At
torney, Dan Schroeder, might occasionally serve as president of the Procrastinator’s Club, but he was capable when conditions warranted.

  “Burkhalter will work his end. And you might as well wake up Ruth Wayand and give her a heads up.” I took a deep breath to slow down. “The kid hasn’t broken any Arizona laws yet, beyond being underage while carrying a firearm on a train. I’d think that the Arizona cops will be happy to get rid of him. Just hope to hell that he doesn’t pull the trigger and change all the rules.”

  We dashed out to the car and blasted out of the village, taking the state highway toward the airport.

  “This is where it gets sticky,” I said to Estelle. “Ruth Wayand is with the state department of Children, Youth, and Families. See, the catch is that Mo isn’t eighteen yet. So technically, we have a juvenile on the run.” I took both hands off the steering wheel and held them up toward heaven, then shrugged and paid attention to my driving for a moment. “And that just adds all kinds of shit to the mix, sweetheart.”

  The Posadas Municipal Airport was seven miles beyond the village on State 76, and other than the security light over the apron, was dark as a closet. I parked beside the hangar where I knew Jim Bergin’s plane to be, and tried to be patient. But in two minutes I gave that up.

  “PCS, three ten.” I drummed fingers on the steering wheel while Wheeler found a moment to respond.

  “Go ahead, three-ten.”

  “Is Bergin on the way?”

  “Affirmative. He said you should go into the FBO and start the coffee.”

  I laughed. I glanced at my passenger. Estelle Reyes was as composed as usual, as if flying off into the desert in the middle of the night was a usual activity. I realized that I hadn’t given her even a moment’s notice to gather personal items-I hadn’t bothered, and it hadn’t occurred to me until now that she might like a scant travel bag at least.

  “You all set?”

  “Yes, sir.”