“I wonder how long before we drop dead in here of heat exhaustion,” I said.
“Dave, people pay good money for hot weather,” she said. “Check it out, History Shamus.”
She illuminated a cylindrical container, about the size of an oil drum. It was once maybe olive green, and had the markings of civil defense from the 1960s. But I doubted that it held drinking water as its lettering said.
“Wait back here.” I took the flashlight and approached it. The “it” that was hidden, that should be moved, or might not be found for years. My stomach was tight and jumpy.
“What do you think, Dave?”
I knelt down and used the butt of the Maglite to push against the lip of the barrel. The walls of the barrel were surprisingly cool. Then I rested the flashlight against the metallic edge and tapped the other end with the heel of my hand. Again. Again. Then the top came ajar. The odor was instant and recognizable, primal and indescribable. Put it in a perfume bottle and call it Mortality. I coughed and fought my gag reflex and pried the lid all the way off.
“Dave?”
“Stay over there,” I said, my throat constricted.
She protested but didn’t come closer. “I’m not a baby…Oh, God, is that smell what I think it is?”
38
I got to my feet and walked back to Lindsey. She took my hand. “All right?” she asked. I nodded my head. I said, “Let’s go outside and call the sheriff.” My tongue tasted vile. My thirst was consuming—I was thirsty enough to kill for water. We crossed the huge room walking in our safe small cone of light, for otherwise everything else was black. It was impossible to sense space, whether the ceiling was three stories above us, or three miles, and the far wall was only a destination we held as a belief in the undiscovered country. For just a few moments I had lost the composure that had always been my gift in tight situations. If Lindsey had not been beside me, I think I might have gone mad with fear and rage. The world was dark. My thoughts were dark. “Death solves all problems,” Joseph Stalin said. “No man, no problem.” Somebody had been doing a hell of a lot of problem-solving for a piece of desert real estate in Arizona, even if it did have an aquifer under it. The hundred or so steps we took before we could make out the wall were not enough time to provide answers, or even the right questions.
And we weren’t alone.
“That’s far enough.” The voice was Jared Malkin’s and suddenly an intense light was in our face. I directed the small Maglite at him but it was no competition.
“Get your hands where I can see them!” he barked. I kept my right hand at my side, holding the Maglite with my left. There was no way to see if he was armed. Where the hell did he come from? Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Lindsey had retrieved her baby Glock and was holding it at her side, partly concealing it inside her fingers and palm.
“Don’t fuck with me, Mapstone!” Malkin shouted. “I’ve got a gun and I will use it!” To make his point, he pulled the beam of his light off us and put it on the semiautomatic pistol in his other hand. Thank God for stupid criminals. By the time he returned the beam to me, I had the Python in my right hand and he was on its business end.
“Shit,” he whispered. I couldn’t see his face, only a flashlight beam. I went through the usual commands, so the suspect has no doubt what you’re saying, and my nerve returned. I decided I would fire first directly at the light, then a pattern around it, just in case he were smart enough to hold it away from his body. So far, smart was not his MO. I decided I would give him five seconds to comply and then squeeze the trigger.
Something buzzed in the ceiling and a bank of overhead fluorescent lights came on. I nearly shot right then, but I hesitated. Then everything was clear. Malkin was standing ten feet away, his flashlight suddenly impotent. Lindsey was still beside me, now in a combat stance. Dana was here, too. She was standing nearer to us, beside an electric panel and some boxes. Now her hands were holding a shotgun. This was no hunting gun, either. It lacked a stock, and was made for close-quarters use by the police, or the bad guys.
“David,” she said, “you are such a disappointment.”
“Put your weapons down slowly, now,” Lindsey said, shifting her stance toward Dana.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch,” Dana said, and rather expertly worked the shotgun’s slide action to chamber a round.
“Dana.” This from Malkin. “Dana, we can’t do this. It’s gone too far already.”
“Don’t you get weak now, you son of a bitch,” she hissed. “It’s way too late for that. We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t been afraid that the body had been found. Your fear made that happen, Jerry. But we can fix it. They don’t know anything.”
“They knew enough to come here!”
“They don’t know anything, baby.” Dana’s voice became reassuring, motherly. “So I was wrong about Mapstone being too stupid to catch on. But I also had the gut feeling we’d better come back in through the side door and make sure we hadn’t been followed. It’s going to be fine, baby. Nobody will figure this out. It’s too complicated. We made it that way. So when they’re dead, it’s all tied up.”
“You said that the last time,” Malkin said.
We were in a mess, inside an isolated warehouse, in a Mexican standoff. Part of my mind wondered whether that was a politically incorrect term now. I tried to weigh the chances we had against the shotgun if all hell broke loose, and they didn’t look good. I could fight fear and panic. Worry about Lindsey was harder. That’s why married cops aren’t partners. I tried to keep them talking.
I said, “It won’t work, Dana. You’ll have to kill a lot more people. We know from Jack Fife that it was you who wanted to hire serious muscle to intimidate Louie Bell into selling. That’s how you got Adam Perez. And then you sent him to my office to kill
your husband and me, and make it look like I murdered your husband and then turned the gun on myself.”
Dana’s mouth came open.
“That’s right,” I said. “Perez isn’t dead. We withheld that from the media. And he’s talking. He wants to avoid the death penalty. It won’t be easy.”