One Perfect Shot

by Steven F Havill

  “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?”

  “Ind
eed 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 Attorney, 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.”

  On the still night air, the howl of Bergin’s late model pickup truck carried to us, and he had to brake hard for the airport gate. His GMC slid to a stop behind 310, the dome light came on, and I could see him shuffling papers, cigarette between his lips, eyes squinting against the smoke. He found what he wanted and climbed out, crushing the butt under foot.

  “What’s wrong with a sunny morning for this sort of thing?” the airport manager grumped. A short, lithe man with an old-fashioned buzz cut left over from his military days, Bergin had taken over the manager’s job two years before, and we’d become good friends from the get-go. I admired his ambition…he seemed to be able to make a living at an airport where on a busy day, air traffic could be counted without resorting to double digits. He nodded at Estelle as I introduced them, then beckoned us to the enormous hangar door.

  “As long as you’re here, give me a hand with this son of a bitch,” he said, and we all leaned against the door and pushed it to one side against the drag of cranky, squeaky rollers. “One of these days, I fix it,” he muttered, and found the light switch. Racks of florescent fixtures blossomed in the cave-like hangar. I’d ridden in Jim’s Cessna 182 RG a few times, enough to know that flying held no thrill for me, and considerable gastric anguish for my stomach. It was parked square to the door, with two other aircraft crammed in the hanger behind it.

  “Go ahead and board,” he said. “Damsel in back.”

  “You want help pulling it out of the hangar?”

  “Hell, no.”

  By the time Estelle and I had squeezed inside and found all the seatbelt connections, Jim had finished a cursory walk around. “Not even cooled off from the last flight,” he said as he slipped inside with considerably more grace than I had managed. A twist, a pull, and a few other gyrations, and the big engine fired, settling into a ragged idle. Lights, camera, action. About that fast, Jim finished up with the switches, dials, and controls, released the brakes and eased the Cessna out of the hangar under its own power, wing tips clearing the door frame with a foot on each side.

  “Winslow?” he shouted, and I nodded. “Whoever would want to go there?”

  “Us,” I shouted in response.

  “I hear ya,” he said, and then ignored his passengers. The run-up thing that pilots do was accomplished on the way out to the taxiway and then a final prop cycle and check at the donut at the runway end. Even as he steered out onto the asphalt runway, he radioed his plane’s I.D. and intentions out into the disinterested night, and then we were gone—blasting down the pavement for about a thousand feet before heading for the heavens, wheels tucking up into the plane’s belly, prop settling into fast cruise once we were safely clear of the ground, the cacti, and the mesa.

  We tracked northwest, and even though two hundred miles isn’t far in a speedster like the Cessna, it was altogether too long for me. The air had quieted down to nighttime velvet, and it was like sitting in a noisy, vibrating arm chair for an hour and a half. There wasn’t much point in trying to carry on a conversation, so I sat there and tried to think of a hundred ways out of the scenario waiting for us in Winslow.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Ariz
ona is a wonderfully picturesque state, but at two in the morning, all I could see were swatches of lights here and there. Leaving New Mexico, we could see Silver City tucked behind us at the foot of the Gila Wilderness with a scattering of tiny communities around it, and then ahead Springerville, Arizona in the middle of the great black void with Show Low off to the west. Snowflake finally showed itself after too long wondering where the hell Jim would land 592 Foxtrot Gulf should the engine quit. He wasn’t sparing the horses. About the time Holbrook and the daisy chain of lights on I-40 hailed into view, I could also see what had to be Winslow in the distance to the west.

  I had no idea where Winslow-Lindberg was, but that didn’t matter. Jim Bergin did, and a genteel approach wasn’t in the books. He peeled off from altitude and did a steep approach, flaps hanging down from the wing’s trailing edges like great shaking doors. All the while he talked on the radio, and part of the conversation included the terse instructions, “And make sure the deputy is parked where we can see him.”

  Even as our tires kissed the pavement, I could see the cop car well off to the side, red lights flashing. We fast taxied in and Jim cut the engine, the prop windmilling to a halt as we coasted the last few feet.

  “You probably want a ride back,” he said laconically.

  “Yep. But I don’t know when. Do you have something to shackle to? We may have a prisoner with us.”

  Bergin looked skeptical.

  “Just a kid,” I added, but Bergin could read my expression. As far as I was concerned, Mo had taken himself out of the “kid” category about the time that he squeezed the trigger of his father’s Winchester. Kids’ advocate Ruth Wayand might disagree, but she, the D.A., and the judge could fight it out. I hoped only that Mo would survive to take part in the negotiations.

  “Ah. Seat frame works for that. Done it before. Look, I’ll grab a ride to the railroad hotel and finish the sleeping that you so rudely interrupted. Give a holler when you’re ready to go back. How’s that work?”

  “Outstanding.” I held out my hand. “Thanks.”