That would hurt before too long. His back would be in agony. Good.
Buddy started for the back of the warehouse.
The cars were there, Laura Cardinal’s and Galaz’s. He made a circuit of the building, which was uniformly dark except for the one area near the corner, where a dim light leaked out through the holes in the painted-over windows.
That’s where they were.
Buddy leaned his back against the brick, which still retained heat from the day. He needed to call it in. The cell phone would have to do. But before that, he took the knife he always carried and stabbed the tires on the two vehicles.
He called 911, explained who he was, that he was a cop. Gave the exact location. The South Tucson police were on their way. He got through to DPS, to Jerry Grimes.
He’d give them five minutes.
Laura was aware of Galaz standing near her. He was smug, pleased with himself. But there was something else.
Something going on with him.
Working out a problem.
“Why don’t you check her shackles?” Galaz said to Harmon.
“They’re fine.”
“Humor me, Mick.”
Ponderously, Harmon walked over to Summer and bent down to check. He straightened, said, “I told you they were fi—“
The bullet took him in the chest, throwing him against the wall.
Galaz was holding Laura’s weapon, looking down at Harmon.
“Sorry, Mickey, there’s been a change of plans,” he said.
Mickey started crawling along the floor.
Galaz crossed over to Mickey, his latex-gloved hand swooping in to take the gun from Harmon’s shoulder holster. Harmon gasping, still crawling.
Galaz staring down at him. “You look like a snail, Mickey.”
He followed as Mickey Harmon crawled, his fancy shoes inches from his face. Laura saw the narrow planes of Galaz’s face—rapt attention.
She looked from him to the work table. Less than two feet away, but her muscles had gotten cold again from not moving, and when she tried to move in that direction, her body resisted like wood.
Had to do it.
Couldn’t.
She looked at Summer. The look on her face. Jesus.
Throat constricted, aching, clenching—she inched her way, one eye on Galaz, the pleasure he got from watching Mickey crawl.
“Almost to the door, Mickey,” Galaz said. “If you make it before dying, I’ll let you go." Pocketing her gun. Holding Mickey’s.
Laura was almost to the table.
Mickey, two feet from the doorway.
Galaz, in a world of his own. The look on his face orgasmic.
The knife was closest. She didn’t know if she could even wrap her crippled fingers around it. Even the idea was agony.
She heard a train horn.
Galaz still had his back to her, but he seemed to have lost interest in Mickey, who had fallen short of his mark and lay either dead or unconscious short of the doorway. Galaz oddly still. Thinking?
Laura’s fingertips touched the knife. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, tried to grasp it. How she’d be able to do anything when she couldn’t even wrap her fingers around the knife, she didn’t know.
Suddenly, Galaz turned.
Laura started and the knife scuttled out of her fingers.
Galaz looked from the knife to Laura. “Can’t do it, can you, Detective Cardinal? It must be frustrating, not being about to tell your body what to do when you’ve done it all your life.”
Unconcerned, he crossed to the place Laura had been. Like a choreographer, he eyed the distance between that spot and where Mickey Harmon was shot. “This can work,” he said, and nodded. “You shoot at Mickey and Mickey shoots at you. The problem is—maybe you can help me figure this out—what about all my hairs, fibers, fingerprints? Semen? What would you do?”
Laura needed to get the knife. But she’d pushed it even farther away, and her hands were cramping up even worse.
Galaz spun around and scanned the room. Frowning. “Have to burn the place down. That’s the only solution, don’t you think?” Talking more quickly now. “He shoots you, but you shoot him; he’s wounded. He’s got to cover this up though. So he pours the gas and lights a match and then tries to get out. Does that sound plausible?”
Not expecting her to answer.
“Or he’s about to pour the gas and lights it just as you shoot him—I don’t think it really matters. The important thing is the Point of Origin. It’s got to be right … here.”
He strode over to where Mickey was when he was shot. Only a couple of feet from Summer. He had been checking her shackles just before Galaz shot him.
Outside in the night, she heard a train coming, horn blaring to warn people away from the tracks. Laura looked at Summer. Fear shiny in her eyes. Watching Galaz, understanding what he was saying, that the Point of Origin would be at her feet.
Galaz looked at Summer.
“Something I’ve always wanted to do—the Joan of Arc thing. Too bad I won’t be here to see it all." He winked at Summer and walked to the gas can, hefted it up. Held it near her, watching her face. Completely absorbed in her fear.
He looked bemused. Oblivious to Laura.
Laura said, “What about Musicman?”
Startling him out of his reverie. “Musicman?”
The train was coming.
“Weren’t you going to bring him here? To see Summer?”
“What? No.” He shrugged. “You can’t do everything.”
“But he defied you.”
Wheels ticking on the tracks, louder and louder.
“Can’t do everything,” Galaz repeated, uncertain.
The train upon them now, the rumbling shaking the room. A sweeping wall of sound, so big that for a moment it obliterated all thought. They were in the maw of sound.
Concentrate! She had to try one more time for the knife. She straightened out her fingers as far as they could go and pressed down on the handle, edging it to her by pushing the handle down against the wood.
The thundering in her ears. Fear pushing its way up into her throat. “Musicman wins, then” she said.
“He won’t win. He won’t get Summer now.” Galaz unscrewed the cap and sloshed some of the liquid on the floor. The smell hit Laura, the rank high smell of pure gasoline.
The thing she feared most was dying in a fire.
Summer, whimpering with fear.
Get your fingers around—
Galaz produced a silver lighter from his pocket. Paused. Laura could see he was still working it out in his mind, seeing the evidence the way the fire marshal would see it, the detectives, the ME.
Get your fingers around the knife—
The sound of the train abating now, the wheels the noisiest part.
Laura curled her fingers. It hurt like hell, but fire would hurt worse. She closed her eyes and with an act of will, squeezed. The knife was in her hand. She’d have to rush him, but she could barely move.
She’d just have to aim herself at him, keeping the point of the knife to the front.
Five feet away.
She clenched her muscles even more, the pain excruciating.
Galaz’s back toward her. Splashing more gasoline on the walls, the windows.
Harnessing her adrenaline. Clamping down on muscles already stressed beyond the breaking point. Take a deep breath.
Now.
When Buddy heard the shot, he reacted immediately. Drawing his weapon, he tried the metal door, but it was locked. He stared at the windows, looking for the weakest point. The panes were fashioned of glass and wood, and in some places the wood strips were broken.
There would be no element of surprise. They’d see him coming.
Then he heard the train. He realized the tracks went right behind the warehouse. All he had to do was time it right. He doubted anyone would hear the breaking glass.
He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his gun. Picked the pl
ace where the wood had splintered, where there were stress fractures.
Waited.
The train coming, coming, the rumbling getting louder and louder until it enveloped him in an ungodly roar—
Now.
Laura pushed off from her feet and launched herself toward Galaz, flat end of the knife handle jammed into her side to keep it steady, using her body as a projectile. Trying not to think that it could poke her own guts out.
Landing far short, crashing on her hands, her knees, her chin, her hand cut, the knife skittering harmlessly across the concrete.
Galaz spinning around, his face a mask of surprise.
The stink of gasoline everywhere.
“You actually think—“
Shock in his eyes as a gunshot exploded through the small space, the momentum spinning him around and flipping him backwards into the wall.
Head cracking—an awful sound. Holding his side, his mouth open and working.
In his hands, the lighter.
Manicured fingers flicking.
A rough male voice yelling, “Drop it! Do it now!”
Laura recognizing the voice, but not sure—
An incandescent moment when metal struck flint, ignition. Spark—a runnel of flame swirling up Galaz’s arm to his waxy face and up the walls.
The delight on his face turning to terror.
A blur beside her: Buddy Holland going to his daughter.
Laura thinking: Shackles.
Buddy from cop to father, his face twisted in terror as he ran to his daughter, pulled at her shackles, saying, “Keys keys keys!”
Frank Entwistle, peering down at her. “You okay?”
What do you think? But she didn’t say it.
“What about Mickey?” Entwistle asked.
“Mickey?” What about him?
Entwistle nodded toward the man lying in the doorway. “He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?”
Then she remembered: Mickey bending down to check Summer’s shackles.
Suddenly, a loud whoosh! Galaz lit up like a burning straw man, sheets of flame spreading to the roof, the whole place getting darker, almost black. Boiling black smoke on a river of flame—
Concentrate! He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?
“Mickey!” Laura shouted.
Buddy looking up, perspiration running down his face, glowing in the flickering light; his eyes like a wild horse’s.
Summer screaming.
Laura nodding at the man lying in the doorway.
Buddy, an acknowledging nod, then on the man like a jackal, coming up with a key ring, including three small ones—cuff keys. Buddy fumbling, Laura unable to move, Summer screaming screaming screaming—
Get out now, her brain told her,but she had no answer for that. The air buzzing at her mouth and nostrils like a swarm of bees, sparks lighting on her, in her hair, panic scrabbling like rats in the walls, the fear pure and hard and all-consuming.
I don’t want to die like this.
Even with the incredible noise of the flames, she heard the click of the lock to Summer’s shackles. Buddy cursing, praying, his breath hitching. Summer whimpering.
Laura, trying to remember where the doorway was because the air was now black except for the oily flames. Crawling, pushing her body to move.
Buddy running past her. She didn’t see him, but heard his boots on the glass, felt the wind of his passing, something soft passing across her face—the dress?
Fire feeding on oxygen. Blowing toward her—she could feel it on her feet, her back. Going toward the air? Or was that wrong? She couldn’t think. Maybe she was going in the wrong direction. Where was the doorway? I should have reached Mickey by now. Her throat clogging up, her chest seizing with the need to breathe—
Banging, loud voices.
“Police!”
People in the room. Noise, men, legs, guns, SWAT.
Eyes stinging. Harder to breathe. Gasping for air. She could be dead any moment. Grateful that she lay on her face away from the smoke, that they were here. They were here, they would get her out now.
Legs milling, but no one coming to her.
What about me?
Entwistle looking down at her, his expression sorrowful.
Someone else—SWAT?—crouching down. Then she was borne up and carried like a bird in the grip of a hawk, up and out into the air, rushing headlong through the hurtling dark, the clean bright stars overhead.
57
Five days, twelve interviews, three interrogations, and reams of paperwork later, Laura decided she’d had enough. She had to go home and not just for a few hours of sleep. They were at the point in the investigation where it was all mopping up and putting it in one place for the County attorney. Down the line, she would have to make another trip back to Florida to testify in a related case, the death of Andrew Descartes, but not now.
That was good. Laura could barely wrap her mind around Andy Descartes’s death. She had erred seriously in not asking assistance from SWAT. She could rationalize all she wanted about giving the Apalachicola PD the benefit of the doubt, and that was true to a certain extent. But the real reason she had gone in that day with Chief Redbone and his two officers was hubris; she did not want to give up control of her case.
All the pieces of her case were falling into place. Mickey Harmon had survived the shooting, and he was talking—about his friendship with Galaz and Ramsey that had spanned twenty years, his lucrative position as Galaz’s bodyguard, their blackmailing scheme. He catalogued a string of killings going back eighteen years, giving Victor the address of a warehouse in Phoenix where Galaz had plied his brand of sexual sadism while he worked his way up through DPS and planned a political career.
Dale Lundy—Musicman—confessed to killing four girls. He came off as beleaguered and confused. Laura thought his lawyer would argue for not guilty by mental defect, but after seeing what he’d done, she doubted any jury would go for it.
Victor was the lead on both the Harmon and Lundy interrogations. Laura sat in the room, watching Musicman, trying to figure the man out, but she couldn’t. He gave them nothing—nothing except his “poor me” act. Unfailingly polite, small, insignificant, hands folded prissily on the table, he reminded her of a decent, church-going lady mortified at being placed in such an untenable situation.
Laura asked him why he booby-trapped the tunnel.
He turned moist, frightened eyes on her. “Can I have a glass of water?”
After he had his water, she asked him again: “Why did you booby-trap the tunnel in your kitchen, but not the other house? What made you do that?”
He looked at her, uncomprehending.
She asked it another way. “You didn’t booby trap the front door, the back door, anything in the other house, so what was your reasoning? Why was that entrance so important to you when the others weren’t?”
He gave a small shrug.
“I just felt like it.”
I just felt like it. Laura had tried staring into his eyes, but there were no answers there. If she’d hoped for an explanation for Andrew Descartes’s death, something real she could hold on to that gave this tragedy some kind of design, she wouldn’t get it from Dale Lundy.
Buddy Holland was placed on administrative leave by the Bisbee Police Department. An Officer Involved Shooting investigation was the least of his troubles. Luring Dale Lundy to Bisbee would likely cost him his job. Fortunately, he had his pension from TPD. He was a young enough man he could find a good job somewhere in law enforcement.
“I hear Dynever Security is hiring,” he’d joked.
He told Laura he was moving back to Tucson so he could be close to his daughter.
Laura had seen a lot of him lately. Summer had to give her statement, and Buddy was there with her. They went back and forth to DPS, to the courthouse—Buddy, Summer, and Beth.
Laura found herself envying Buddy Holland his family. Watching the bond between them. She remembered what it was like t
o have that kind of love, the love of her parents.
It wasn’t over yet for them, though. Summer would need a lot of help to overcome what she had seen, what she had experienced, first at the hands of Musicman, and then Galaz. Unharmed physically, but emotionally devastated. Left alone in that room with the photos of the tortured women—knowing she would be next. Laura thought with time Summer would heal. She would need counseling and her family every step of the way, but she could heal.
Laura went to Jay Ramsey’s funeral. It was sparsely attended. She recognized the younger brother, whom she had met only once close to twenty years ago. She noticed no one was with him—not a wife, not a child. He looked lost. Laura felt an odd kinship with him. He had no family left. She could tell from the shock on his face that he had never expected to be alone in this way.
He gave her a Post-it note that Jay had apparently intended for her. It had been pasted to his computer, Laura’s name scribbled at the top. Below that it said: “Barbara Stanley” followed by a phone number. And the words: “Calliope’s Music, 9 yr. old TB mare”.
Laura thanked him and took the note, putting it in a special compartment in her wallet. She didn’t know what to do with the information right now, so she would leave it there until she did.
After attending the funeral that morning, the fifth day after the Chiricahua Paint Company fire, Laura gathered up some of the paperwork that had yet to be done and told Victor she was going home.
“See you tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so.”
She headed home to the Bosque Escondido, after stopping at a little store squeezed into the middle of a strip mall on the south side.
58
“Where should I put the dishes?” asked Tom, carrying the box up onto the front porch.
Laura knew which dishes he meant. Cheap china, a brown and yellow design of bees and flowers. Tom had gotten them from a grocery store give-away—buy so many groceries and pay a dollar for each dish. They went well with his two jelly glasses. “Couldn’t we store those?”
The Laura Cardinal Novels Page 31
