Desert Kill Switch

by Mark S. Bacon

  “I’ve cleared my schedule for late this afternoon,” Mauser said. “Sounds like it’s going to take police a while to determine Stark’s guilt. Then we can go in and try to talk sense to them.”

  “Even if Rick confesses,” Kate said, “will they still want to charge me for evading arrest or something like that?”

  “Let ’em try it. That Polhouse shot at you for no good reason. Didn’t identify himself, did he?”

  “I couldn’t hear anything he said. All I heard were the shots. At first, I didn’t even know who it was.”

  “Precisely. Maybe you’ll sue them, sue Polhouse for his reckless action. If he hit a car in that lot, they may already have some civil actions against them. Now, let’s be sure we have all our ducks in a row before we go down there.”

  Kate reviewed the evidence she’d collected in Reno and Las Vegas, telling her attorney she had names and contact information for everyone.

  Now, she could only wait.

  ***

  A nondescript split-level, three-story concrete building on Second Street housed the Reno Police Department. Ben Waldman and two others were waiting for Lyle and Nina when they walked in about seven forty-five a.m.

  A fiftyish, slightly overweight sergeant, Waldman had a look that said he’d experienced the same heartbreak, disappointment, and evil that Lyle had during his years in Phoenix.

  He introduced them to Tom Polhouse and the supervising lieutenant. Lyle was surprised to see Polhouse.

  The tall, lean forty-something lieutenant took charge. Detectives led Lyle and Nina into tiny interrogation rooms. Waldman sat down with Lyle leaving Nina with the others.

  Lyle thought the Phoenix interview rooms were small. This room would qualify as a closet. It had space for only three secretary-type chairs. A TV camera in the corner on the ceiling recorded everything.

  Waldman asked Lyle the kind of questions he expected and gave him plenty of time to explain Nina and her relationship with Stark, the Alfa Romeo sale, and the Chechens. Lyle also recounted how Alex and Sergei had attacked and effectively kidnapped him on Saturday at the car dealership, then again in the desert. He had to dance around why he didn’t report the battery and kidnapping in Vegas right after it happened. Lyle also provided details about the antique car and its value, stressing the need to move quickly.

  After three quarters of an hour, Waldman got up to talk with the other officers. Before he left the room, Lyle asked him if he’d checked his references. Waldman nodded.

  When he returned, Waldman said they would stake out the auto museum parking lot and detain Stark and the Chechens for questioning, if they showed up. Lyle did everything he could to persuade Waldman to let him go along. They needed him, he said, to identify the Chechens.

  “You set one foot outside the car,” Waldman told him when he’d parked his unmarked Dodge on a narrow side street next to the museum parking lot, “and you know what happens.”

  “Look for bullet holes in one of the Suburbans,” Lyle said.

  The museum lot adjoined the building and fronted on Hill Street. A small, dead-end side street intersected Hill at a right angle, forming the only other entrance to the parking lot. Police cars stationed close by could easily be called in to block the only two exits when the parties arrived.

  Lyle recognized the truck hauling the Alfa when it pulled into the parking lot followed by one of the light-colored SUVs driven by Alex. An expensive black Mercedes-Benz sedan pulled in a few minutes later and two casually dressed men got out. Lyle looked around for Stark. Alex and Sergei had gotten out of the Suburban and it looked empty. Finally, Stark’s SUV rolled into sight. Instead of pulling into the lot, he parked along Hill Street. As Stark parked, Alex and the truck driver pulled out a ramp so they could roll or drive the Alfa out of the back of the semi. Sergei didn’t move far from the SUV. He stood mostly on one leg.

  Stark got out of his car and swaggered as he approached the semi. He wore a suit and a shiny tie. When he joined the group and started talking to the apparent buyers, three black and whites raced across Hill Street and blocked the exits.

  Stark didn’t notice the police at first. One of the buyers said something and Stark turned around. As soon as he spotted the police, Stark bolted for his car. Lyle wanted to jump out. Instead, Sergeant Waldman got out and pointed a warning finger at Lyle before he headed to Stark’s SUV. By the time he got there, two uniformed officers had pulled Stark out of his vehicle and were about to put him in cuffs.

  Lyle realized the Reno cops were acting in part on what he’d told them--in addition to what must have been their initial suspicions about Stark--so he stayed in the car, as requested, even though he wanted to get his hands on Rick Stark himself, not to mention Alex.

  When officers placed Stark in the back of a black and white, two detectives stood in the parking lot talking to the Chechens with other officers talking separately with the men Lyle presumed were there to buy the Alfa. After a few minutes, Waldman walked back to his car.

  “Those two guys over there must be the Chechens. Their names are Rudenko and Dukvakha.”

  “I’m assuming the other two guys are just here to buy that fancy car,” Lyle said. “I don’t have any reason to believe they’re involved in the crimes. Probably just collectors. I don’t know where the truck driver fits in.”

  Waldman stood outside his car, talking to Lyle through the window and glancing at his notepad.

  “Oh, one other thing,” Lyle said. “That Alfa might be--”

  Lyle stopped when he heard screaming in the parking lot. Sergei waved his hands and shouted a mixture of English obscenities and Russian. Waldman ran back across the street to help subdue Alex and Sergei. Lyle thought about telling Waldman the Alfa, or the Mercedes Stark had sold earlier, might be counterfeit or at least fraudulently represented. That would complicate matters further, so he saved that tidbit for later.

  He’d also forgotten to tell him that Sergei’s leg might be a little sensitive.

  More police arrived. The truck driver and officers pushed the ramp back into the van, and Waldman and Lyle followed the cars holding Stark and the Chechens on the short drive to the police station.

  Chapter 63

  “So when is Sorensen going to give herself up?” Waldman said when he and Lyle were settled into the interview room they’d been in earlier.

  “Give herself up?”

  “Well, get in here so we can talk to her.”

  “She’s meeting with her attorney this morning and they’re preparing to come in. I told you she would.”

  Waldman frowned, deepening the vertical crease between his eyes. “Okay,” he said with a sigh, “start at the beginning and tell me again what you know about Stark.”

  Lyle had been on the other side of the questioning so many times, Waldman’s routine alternately felt like “same ol’, same ol’,” and eerily disturbing. Regardless, Lyle launched into the story again in as much detail as he could remember, including his brush with Sergei. After a half hour, the lieutenant came in and asked Waldman to find another place to talk to Lyle. They needed the interview room.

  After another hour, Waldman repeated back to Lyle the essence of the charges Lyle had leveled at Stark: murder of Al Busick and complicity in Lyle’s short-lived kidnapping, complicity in the assault and battery and attempted murder of Nina Ortega and Kate Sorensen, and possibly fraud. Lyle agreed. They were seated in a conference room adjacent to the detectives’ offices. Reviewing the notes he took during their conversation, Waldman started glancing at his watch. It was well after twelve. He was probably getting hungry.

  “Tacos okay?” he said finally. “There’s a place down the street, walking distance.”

  Waldman’s giving me more latitude, Lyle thought, than I might in the same circumstances. So yes, let’s go eat.

  Over Mexican food and Cokes, Waldman and Lyle talked about PD work and sports, occasionally coming back to review one or another aspect of the Busick/Stark case. Did Waldman want Ly
le to relax and let his guard down? Lyle looked at the circumstances as if he were Waldman: Here was a veteran ex-cop, who he didn’t know, telling a long, complicated tale of kidnapping, assault, and murder in Vegas and Reno. The leading suspect during part of the investigation, a tall, blonde bombshell, was hiding out due to an incriminating video and the ex-cop was trying to pin the murder on someone else. Lyle had to admit, it sounded like a hell of a story.

  “I haven’t seen Polhouse since this morning,” Lyle said. “Is he--”

  “That’s kind of stuff I’d rather not talk about.”

  “I understand,” Lyle said. “Sounds like he was a little obsessed with the case, spending his own time in Vegas. ‘Reassigned pending something.’ That’s how we used to do it.” Lyle was quite familiar with detectives being taken off the front lines for inappropriate actions either real, or in Lyle’s case, perceived. “Did I tell you about the authenticity of the cars?” he said, changing the subject between swallows of refried beans.

  “You said they might be fakes.”

  Lyle explained his overheard conversations at the auto auction and the story NC auto expert Mitch Kohler had told him about Chechens.

  Waldman shook his head. “This couldn’t just be a simple case of murder, could it? Okay, we’ll check that out, too. There must be lots of classic car experts in town.”

  After he listened to Waldman explain the superiority of his favored San Francisco Giants over the unpredictable Arizona Diamondbacks, Lyle slipped the Reno detective a casual question. “Did you ever find out about Stark’s storage area?”

  “We didn’t stake it out, but I checked with the facility. Stark hasn’t used his code to get into the lot in almost two weeks.”

  “Since about the time of Busick’s murder. You going to get a warrant to search it?”

  “Let’s get back the station and see what’s happening.”

  Waldman left Lyle sitting in a conference room while he went to talk with the other detectives. Lyle realized he hadn’t seen Nina since that morning. She must have been questioned over and over. He hoped she held to her story and didn’t start to feel sorry for Stark again.

  Waldman was gone more than a half hour. Lyle sat in a swivel chair reading an online newspaper on his phone when the sergeant walked in and closed the conference room door. Lyle didn’t like the expression on Waldman’s face.

  “We’re going to have to let Rick Stark go.”

  “What?” Lyle stood up.

  “Look, Lyle, he lawyered up.”

  “So?”

  “He’s got an alibi. Stark was flying from Vegas to Reno when Busick was killed.”

  “But he said--“

  “We know what he said before. But we found a witness who saw him get on the plane. He couldn’t have stabbed Busick. His plane landed here about two hours after Busick was found dead.”

  Lyle walked from one end of the room to the other. “This person have an Eastern European accent?”

  “No. It’s no friend of Stark’s. Just somebody who recognized him on the plane, a car collector who lives here. They had met before at car events.”

  “What about Nina Ortega’s testimony?”

  “She says Stark never said he killed Busick. He just said he was afraid of getting arrested, afraid of the death penalty. He told us he just worried about getting blamed. He said Kate Sorensen wanted him to go down for the murder. Ortega confirms that.”

  Lyle thought for a moment. He leaned against the wall. “But if he had a sure alibi for the time of the murder, why would he worry about getting blamed? And why in hell would he say he was at home at the time when he was really on an airplane?”

  Waldman shrugged. “Covering for someone? Stark made it sound like he wanted to protect his mother. We know Busick had...ah...differences with his wife, Stark’s mother. Basically, Busick was banging someone at work.”

  “That’s bullshit. Mrs. Busick was in the hospital. Cancer treatment. She couldn’t have killed him with that knife.” Lyle paced. “You’re letting him go? What about his guys attacking me at the car dealership?”

  “He says he wasn’t there at the time and didn’t know it happened.”

  “Yeah, he walked out just before they clobbered me. You gotta have something on him. What about leaving Nina in the desert? Hundred and five degrees, with no water.”

  “We asked him about that, too. He said you were right behind him, so he just let her go with you.”

  Lyle gritted his teeth and stared at the blank wall. He wanted to pound his fist into it. “Technically that’s right. But then the Chechens used the kill switch on my car. They stranded us in the desert. They were going to leave us there.”

  “Again, Stark says he didn’t have anything to do with that. Wasn’t there at the time. Alex Rudenko and Sergei Dukvakha, back him up.”

  “And you believe them? Did you find guns in their car? They tried to kill Ortega and Sorensen.” Lyle put his hand to the back of his head. He felt dizzy. “This is just some crazy lawyer crap. How can he get out of this?”

  “A detective talked to the witness on the plane.”

  “But Stark tried to run today. He changed his story.”

  Waldman adopted a conciliatory tone. “We’re not done with him. It’s just, well you know.”

  “What about the Chechens? You’re not going to let them go.”

  “They claim that Kate Sorensen attacked them. That they were defending themselves.”

  “That’s a pile of crap, too. What about Ortega? She was there. She knows what happened. I saw them shoot at her, too.”

  “They say you and Sorensen shot at them and they want to press charges.”

  “Oh fuck. This is insane.” Lyle pressed the sore spot on his head and grimaced. His mouth open, he stared at the ceiling.

  “Hey,” Waldman said, “I’m not saying we believe their story or that we’re going to release them. Likely, they’ll get sent away. But we have to organize our evidence for the DA. This case is a goddamn mess and you know it. A bunch of witnesses, conflicting stories, a chase through who knows how many jurisdictions, plus a $2-million piece of evidence.”

  Lyle crossed his arms on his chest and stared blankly for a moment.

  “Now we need to talk to Sorensen,” Waldman said. “She’s the missing witness in all this. Ortega says she can back up her story about the Chechens.”

  “And now you think she’s good for the Busick murder,” Lyle said.

  Waldman said nothing.

  Chapter 64

  Kate wore a smart light gray midi dress and jacket, ready to talk to the police. Henrietta Mauser was on the way to pick her up. Kate’s phone rang.

  “Lyle?”

  “I’m in a hallway in the police department.” Lyle whispered. “They’re going to release Stark. Don’t come down here.”

  “But--what did you say?”

  “They’re releasing him.”

  “I don’t understand.” Kate started to feel the flight or fight response deep in her abdomen. Innocent people did get convicted of crimes. You read about it all the time.

  “The detectives say Stark was on a plane from Las Vegas to Reno when you found Busick’s body.”

  “But I know he told police he was home alone. Why would he lie if he had an airtight alibi?”

  “That’s driving me crazy.”

  “Maybe he was coming from Phoenix. Busick Pony Cars had three classics at the NC car show. I remember Rick told me he goes to all the shows.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But what about the shooting?” Kate said, “They tried to kill us.”

  “They’re holding Alex and Sergei, but technically Stark wasn’t around for any of the shooting.”

  Kate walked on unsteady feet to an overstuffed chair in her hotel room. “Wait, didn’t Nina tell them?”

  “Did she ever say Stark admitted to killing Busick?”

  Kate couldn’t speak. Her mind raced and floated at the same time.

  “Kate?”


  “No, maybe not. He was afraid of the death penalty. Said he didn’t want to get arrested. But he hated his stepfather’s guts. Threatened him over and over.”

  “We’ve got to go over this thing again. I need to go. Stark’s going to walk out of here. I want to follow him. Sit tight. You’ll be safe. We’ll look at the suspects again.”

  Kate didn’t feel safe. When Lyle hung up, she sat and stared across the room. How could Rick be innocent? A crazy person with a violent temper? It didn’t make sense at all. But Lyle said he was on an airplane. Kate flashed back to the hospital corridor and she again heard Rick Stark tell his mother he had been home alone.

  Her phone rang again. Henrietta had arrived to take her to the police department.

  “The police are releasing Rick Stark,” Kate said. “He has an alibi. He was on an airplane from Vegas at the time of the murder.”

  “What about your witnesses?”

  Kate took a deep breath. “We made a mistake. Rick didn’t admit to killing Busick, just to hating his guts and being afraid of getting arrested. I guess we jumped to conclusions.”

  “It would be best to talk to the police anyway. They don’t have a strong case. Maybe we could--”

  “That’s good legal advice, but I can’t take it now. I need to think.”

  “We had an agreement with them.”

  “Yes, when we thought our evidence would get me off the hook. I need to think.”

  “Okay, but--”

  “Will the police make you tell them where I am?”

  “Don’t worry about that, but we have to talk. Tonight, tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll call you. I promise. And Henrietta, thanks.”

  Did her attorney also have doubts about Kate’s innocence now? Regardless, she was duty bound to mount the best defense. So was Kate. But Kate had always been better at offense than defense. Drive to the basket.

  Stunned into near immobility, Kate fought inertia and got to her feet. She had to move.