Kate knew what Teague wanted but couldn’t think of a way around it. He pushed the barrel of the Glock into her back. She put her hands behind her and crossed her wrists. Teague obviously had a hard time starting the duct tape with one hand, but once he did, Kate could feel the tape wrapping around and around. Then Teague spun her around and slapped tape over her mouth.
He walked her to the rear of the Buick and opened the trunk. “Get in.”
Chapter 70
Lyle often analyzed situations in terms of the worst case scenario. Was it because he used to be a cop, he wondered, or because of his lingering anxiety? Regardless, after he left the RSD office and read Kate’s text, his first thought prompted him to call the county offices. He needed to talk to Patrick Teague. After getting shuffled around, Lyle finally heard an administrative assistant tell him Teague had not come in yet.
Shit.
Impulse drove him to grab his phone and tap in Kate’s number. He stopped. If she was in serious trouble, she wouldn’t be able to answer. Teague could see to that and would take her phone. If she was in trouble, but could use the phone, she would have called. No trouble, she wouldn’t need to call. Lyle started to congratulate himself for his deductive thinking, when he thought of another reason why she might not have called.
He reached under his coat, slid his holstered nine millimeter around to his side, got into his car, and punched the Teagues’ address into his GPS.
Should he call the PD for backup? Would they believe him? Had they investigated Teague? And really, he didn’t know for sure Kate needed help. Maybe he’d call on the way.
Lyle looked at his watch. He’d be at the Sparks address in twenty minutes. He floored the Mustang as he got on the freeway.
***
Exhaust smoke, a rubber scent, and the faint gasoline smell choked Kate as she tried to breathe in the pitch-black trunk. She knew who killed Busick now, and she could prove it. Two weeks of dead ends, disappointments, and dodging bullets were over. This close to ending the nightmare, she would not let Teague get away. All right, so he had her bound up in the trunk. These circumstances posed only a temporary contradiction. Get busy.
She first wanted to scream. She worked her mouth under the tight tape, then rubbed her face against the trunk floor until the tape came loose. Then she let out the loudest scream she could manage.
Her muffled sounds traveled only inside the car. Teague stopped somewhere. He opened the trunk momentarily and struck her in the head with his fist. Then he slapped a longer piece of tape on Kate’s face, across her mouth from ear to ear, and slammed the trunk. “Next time I’ll use the gun barrel,” he said through the trunk lid.
She’d try something else.
Even in Teague’s full-sized sedan, the trunk gave Kate little room to move. She lay on her side, her knees pulled up toward her chest. Her cell phone rested in her coat pocket and her hands were bound behind her back. No problem. She’d shake the phone loose and twist around to grab it. Somehow.
Since he hit her, Teague had been driving for about ten minutes, Kate estimated. Noise and vibration indicated they were on a freeway, but that didn’t help. He could be heading in any direction. Her head hurt.
She braced her feet against the side of the car, twisted, and rolled, trying to get the phone to slip out of her pocket. As she moved, she realized the tape on her wrist was becoming ever so slightly loose. With her wrists crossed, she could move them back and forth in a scissor motion. The tape curled and rolled inward giving her more room to move. In a short time, she pulled one hand out of the tape--and was free.
In seconds she’d pulled the tape off her mouth and had the phone in her hands. She dialed Lyle’s number.
“Lyle, can you hear me? I’m trapped.”
“Where?” he said, “Where are you? I’m on the way. I’m almost at Teague’s house.”
“I’m in the trunk of his car, on the road.”
“Where? I can’t hear you.”
Kate desperately needed to be heard, but didn’t want to raise her voice much higher. She paused to think, then over the hum of the road, she heard music. Teague was listening to the radio. She tried talking louder and explained she was in Teague’s car but had no idea where she was.
“Call the police. Call nine-one-one. Tell them what’s happening,” Lyle said. “Ask them to trace your call. I don’t know what kind of equipment they have here. It might work.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“Try it, Kate. In the meantime, I’ll call Sergeant Waldman and tell him what’s going on. If they have Stingray phone tracing equipment, they should be able to find you. What kind of a car is it?”
“It’s a gold Buick.”
“Okay, call nine-one-one.”
As soon as Lyle hung up, Kate dialed. She heard an operator say, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
Before she could answer, Kate felt the car slowing down. Teague was getting off the freeway. Kate strained to listen. He’d turned off the radio. “Won’t be long now,” she heard him say.
As the car rumbled over a rough surface, Kate tried to make herself heard to the nine-one-one operator. She explained her situation and described Teague and the car. Then the car stopped.
Kate dropped the phone and immediately rubbed her thighs to get the blood moving. She tensed and relaxed her leg muscles and then spun around in the trunk. She would have one chance.
When Teague opened the trunk, Kate kicked sharply with both legs, hitting him in the stomach.
He made a funny sound expelling his breath as he tumbled onto his back.
Kate leaped on him instantly. She pinned his gun hand to the ground while she pressed a forearm over his neck. She pried at his fingers holding the gun, but he thrashed his legs trying to throw her off.
Kate pressed harder on his throat with her forearm until he gaged, gasped, and released the gun. She pointed the Glock at him.
Chapter 71
Lyle counted seven cars from four law enforcement jurisdictions parked haphazardly along the rural road east of town. He expected to see the media at any moment.
Reno Sergeant Waldman stood on the dirt shoulder between Lyle and Kate, and the three of them watched the Reno Police cruiser carrying Teague drive off.
“So you recorded his full confession,” the sergeant said, sleeves rolled up, sweat dampening his collar. “He was on our suspect list, but--”
“Tell him what Teague told you,” Lyle said.
“He was going to shoot me out here,” Kate said. “He saw the news about our little fight with the Chechens, so he thought they would be blamed for shooting me. He told me he bought the pistol at a Reno gun show. Said it was completely untraceable. Guess you can be crazy and clever at the same time. So, with Al dead, he knew I was the one trying to ruin his career, his life, or something.”
“Luckily we got to his house in time,” Waldman said. “You were right. We found his wife upstairs--beaten, gaged, and tied up.”
“Is she going to be okay?” Kate asked.
Waldman nodded.
She sighed. “He told me everything in the garage, before he put me in the trunk. He talked about the clown face and said he hadn’t planned to kill Busick that night but things just got out of control.”
Waldman nodded again. “Looks like you’re probably in the clear now.”
“Probably?” Kate and Lyle said together.
“Lots to resolve and a shitload of paperwork to do. You can plan on talking to us for the next couple of days.”
“Fine with me,” Kate said. After I’ve talked with Henrietta and have her at my side, of course.
***
After two days of haggling, Lyle could see all the issues had not been resolved. Teague had been arrested for murder, kidnapping, assault and battery, and other charges. While prosecutors in some Nevada counties had notions of charging Rick Stark in connection with the Chechens’ desert rampage, authorities in Arizona, drafting a first degree murder charge for the
killing of Shaun Harris, held sway. Rey had called Lyle to say Dario would get off with a suspended sentence, at worst, in exchange for his testimony.
When Reno police--and other law enforcement agencies--started using terms such as “aiding and abetting” and “accessory after the fact” when referring to Lyle, he was glad Max Maxwell had come through again. He hired one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the west to represent Lyle, while Henrietta Mauser stood up to the challenge of dealing with Washoe County prosecutors and their assertions that Kate had resisted arrest and generally been a pain in the ass for two weeks. In all the questioning and negotiating, Lyle never saw Tom Polhouse.
“It will all be settled soon enough,” Lyle said as he and Kate reviewed the case in her hotel suite.
“The Arizona murder, too.”
“Yeah. For the longest time, I couldn’t get the blue Firebird out of my head.”
“Then Rick erased it, didn’t he?”
“You mean Ricky?”
“The case against him is pretty much decided.”
“Yes. Rick and Alex should have taken time to get Sergei better medical attention for his ankle,” Lyle said. “They told him to ‘suck it up,’ because they wanted to sell that Alfa and collect the two mil. When the DA made him an offer, Sergei decided to sell them out. He’ll be a witness against them, including Shaun’s murder.”
“Rick must have gone ballistic when he realized Shaun Harris was trying to con him. I saw him go crazy like that before.”
“According to Sergei, Alex went with Rick and Harris on the Firebird test drive. When they stopped to look at the papers and check under the hood, they knew immediately the car was a Nostalgia City retread. Rick went insane, pulled out his gun, and popped Harris right there.”
“You never saw them.”
“No. Somehow they got out of the way when they saw me and Sam coming up the hill. I never checked a gravel road and a small bluff across the street. I just wanted to get my daughter out of there. Then Alex--”
“The bastard,” Kate said.
“Yes, I know. But he had enough sense to call Sergei to come out and help them clean up the mess. I saw someone driving the other way when I left the scene. It must have been Sergei and Viktor.”
“So they saw you and Sam.”
“Alex and Rick did, I’m sure, when I stopped to look at Shaun Harris’s body by the Firebird. That’s probably how they recognized me when I showed up at Busick Pony Cars pretending to be the car buyer. You created a perfect background for me, but they’d seen me before, and my silver Mustang convertible with Arizona plates confirmed it.”
“So that’s why they wanted to kill you, because you witnessed the desert crime scene.”
“Yeah, they grabbed me when I was looking at the Alfa because they thought I connected them to the desert killing. They were going to get nasty to find out exactly what I knew, when you showed up--just in time.”
“And so the Chechens were going to kill Nina and me as just a couple of extra bodies to be found with you in the desert,” Kate said.
“Not really. Rick wanted you dead too, because you were convinced he killed Busick. If you were dead, you couldn’t prove your innocence. Then he’d be off the hook for the Busick killing without having to blow his cover about the flight from Phoenix. Of course Rick thought Nina was betraying him--thanks to you--so she became target number three.”
“He was a crazy man. Maybe not certifiable like Teague, but crazy nonetheless. He hated Busick, feared getting arrested, had no alibi. Seemed obvious he did it. More so than Teague or Easley. Our mistake.”
“Oh,” Lyle said, “did I tell you that Chris Easley thought Bruce was your hired muscle?”
“What?” Kate laughed, then sighed. “I don’t know why Bruce acted so...”
“Irrational?”
“No, just didn’t think. Obviously the cops would follow him. I don’t understand. Vegas is his hometown. He’s comfortable there. He’s lived there his whole life, except when he played pro football. Anywhere else, he’s out of his element.”
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t jump at the chance to move to Arizona when you got the job.”
“I told him--never mind for now what I told him.”
Lyle was happy to change the subject. “Turns out, the Mercedes that Rick and Alex sold before the Alfa was phony. Or at least not a bona fide antique. Reno experts are looking at the Alfa Romeo.”
“They ever find Viktor?”
“No. He’s probably a long way from here. But the cops know about Alex’s company. They’ll find him.”
“What about the blackmailers?”
“Waldman has the photos and phone recordings. They’re his problem now.”
“I’ll be glad to get back to Arizona and back to work at the park,” Kate said. “Max sure backed us up. Expenses for this little adventure will be sizable.”
“Nothing Max can’t handle.”
“And our Rockin’ Summer Days booth generated lots of customers. The well-heeled demographics Max loves.”
“I’ll be glad to get back too,” Lyle said.
“To escape back into the ’seventies?”
“Maybe, but mainly to return to a comfortable routine in my cab.”
“Forget your cab for a while,” Kate said. She reached over and turned off the bedroom lamp.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark S. Bacon began his career as a southern California newspaper police reporter, one of his crime stories becoming key evidence in a murder case that spanned decades.
After working for two newspapers, he moved to advertising and marketing when he became a copywriter for Knott’s Berry Farm, the large theme park down the road from Disneyland. Experience working at Knott’s formed part of the inspiration for his creation of Nostalgia City theme park.
Before turning to fiction, Bacon wrote business books including Do-It-Yourself Direct Marketing, printed in four languages and three editions, named best business book of the year by the Library Journal, and selected by the Book of the Month Club and two other book clubs. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, San Antonio Express News, and many other publications. Most recently he was a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Desert Kill Switch is the second book in the Nostalgia City mystery series that began with Death in Nostalgia City. The first book introduced ex-cop turned cab driver Lyle Deming and PR executive Kate Sorensen, a former college basketball star. Death in Nostalgia City was an award winner at the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival. The third book in the series will be published in soon.
Bacon is the author of flash fiction mystery books including, Cops, Crooks and Other Stories in 100 Words. He taught journalism as a member of the adjunct faculty at Cal Poly University, Pomona; University of Redlands; and the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned an MA in mass media from UNLV and a BA in journalism from Fresno State. He and his wife, Anne, live in Reno with their golden retriever, Willow.
GENRE: MYSTERY/THRILLER
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only. The publisher does not have any control over or assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.
DESERT KILL SWITCH
Copyright © 2017 by Mark S. Bacon
Cover Design by Jacci Larsen
All cover art copyright © 2017
All Rights Reserved
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626947-18-4
FIRST PUBLICATIN: SEPTEMBER 30, 2017
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduce
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