The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

“What about Dowd?”

“Him, neither.”

I used my hand to stop him at the door, no easy task given his bulk and momentum.

“What are you saying?”

His eyes shone black. “Dowd got away.”

“I knew it…” All the cops, all the jurisdictions and expensive toys and command vans and they couldn’t make a simple collar. I started a cursing jag notable for its creativity.

He pinched my shoulder until I thought it would fall off and leaned in to whisper. “Play well with others.”

I did my best.

Evidence technicians were photographing the living room. The floor had traces of blood and was covered with yellow numbered markers. One marker was on the Halliburton briefcase. A laptop sat on a sofa, drawing another yellow tag. They had probably had plenty of time to realize the flash drive was phony, otherwise Dowd would have taken it with him.

My answer was next to evidence marker forty-two: the flash drive we planted in the expensive briefcase was shattered, as if by an angry boot. My feet felt as if they were sinking into the floor. The remains of the tear gas stung my lungs.

Another tech was taking inventory in the kitchen. The cabinets were fully stocked with canned goods, meals ready to eat, and bottles of water. A bedroom closet held body armor, helmets, and night-vision goggles.

“Dowd told them to make a stand here,” Peralta said. “Kill as many police as possible.”

“How did he get away?”

“Let me show you.”

He led me down a hallway and opened a door that revealed a staircase down. I led the way as he talked.

“The house was built in nineteen sixty-two by a doctor. He put a fallout shelter in the basement. It was the height of the Cold War.”

It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I kept my mouth shut.

We came into a finished basement with wood paneling and an ancient pool table. He pointed to another, heavier door at the far end of the room. I stepped through that portal into a concrete-encased hallway that slanted down. Bare light bulbs protected by steel frames burned overhead. I started to sweat.

It reminded me of

one of my maze dreams as I stepped more slowly, made a turn and went another twenty feet on a slanting concrete floor. Two doors were open. One led through thick walls into a shelter, maybe ten feet by ten feet, looking as if it hadn’t been touched since Kennedy was president. A dusty yellow Geiger counter sat on a table. Ed Cartwright would look down his apocalyptic nose at such a primitive set-up.

The other door led outside, where a Phoenix cop stood guard. He greeted Peralta by name, as if the election had never happened.

We were at the bottom of the stubby hill. The house loomed above us.

“This is where Dowd probably got out while we were still staging,” Peralta said. “We didn’t realize there was this escape route out.”

“What’s this ‘we,’ Lone Ranger?” I said sourly. “I said we should go in and do it ourselves instead of setting up the paramilitary show that everybody could see.”

“Mapstone, we would have been shot dead.”

He was right, of course. But I was still angry. The only benefit was the hot west wind, replacing the tear gas in my lungs with good old Phoenix smog and dust. The sheen of sweat across my chest and belly remained.

“We think Dowd came out here and went into that neighborhood.” He pointed to lights two-hundred yards away. “He kidnapped a woman and made her drive him through a checkpoint. Let her go down at Forty-Fourth Street and Camelback. He’s probably already ditched her car.”

Dowd’s black Dodge Ram truck sat ten feet to my right, with its tracker no doubt uselessly attached to the back.

He faced me. “Where are the girls?”

“Shopping in Scottsdale.”