Exit Wounds (37 page)

Fortunately, Terry and Kristin Gregovich’s rented house was on Black Knob, the last street on the southernmost part of town. The K-9 officer and Spike were at the scene in less than ten minutes.

“What’s up, Sheriff Brady?” Terry asked, after leaping out of an idling Blazer he had parked directly behind Joanna’s Crown Victoria.

Joanna pointed toward the wrecked pickup. “The driver’s missing,” Joanna said. “I want you to find her.”

Terry nodded. “Will do,” he said.

Taking Spike, he walked down the embankment and over to the wrecked vehicle. Joanna was relieved to see that Spike was wearing his new custom-fitted Kevlar bulletproof vest. Joanna watched while Deputy Gregovich reached inside and removed something from the tangled interior. Hurrying behind him, Joanna was astonished to see Terry was holding a single tennis shoe up to the dog’s nostrils.

“Where did that come from?” Joanna asked.

“It was wedged up under the dash. And that’s the good news,” Terry said. “If she took off with either one or both shoes missing, she’s not going to be that hard to track down.” Then, keeping a tight hold on Spike’s leash, he gave the order. “Find it!”

For the next few minutes the dog, with his nose to the ground, went round and round in ever-widening circles. Ernie Carpenter reappeared at Joanna’s side.

“Still no luck,” he said. “We’re looking on the ground, but if she was airborne, it’s possible she could have been tossed up into one of these clumps of mesquite.”

Suddenly Spike stopped circling. He stood stock-still, ears up, tail straight out behind him, sniffing the air. Then he dashed off to the west, with Terry Gregovich galloping along behind him.

“They need backup,” Joanna said.

Ernie nodded and headed for Terry’s Blazer. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

Joanna was barely in the passenger seat when Ernie flung the SUV into gear and they bounced away. Fifty feet from the wreck, Terry Gregovich and Spike paused briefly at a barbed-wire fence posted with an official-looking No Trespassing sign. They delayed for only a moment before Spike crouched and slid under it while Terry clambered up and over the top. Spike and Terry were well beyond the fence when Ernie stopped in front of it.

“What’s the word, boss?” he asked. “Do you want to go look for a gate?”

“Are you kidding? Go through the damned thing!” she ordered. “We can always fix the fence later.”

Ernie backed up a few feet. After putting the Blazer in four-wheel drive, he roared forward. For a time the wire seemed to stretch, then it broke, sending fence posts and coils of wire spiraling into the air as the Blazer rushed through.

“Cut the lights,” Joanna ordered when they once again had Terry and the dog in view. “Now that we’re away from the ballpark, there’s enough moonlight tonight that, once our eyes get accustomed to it, we should be able to see just fine. If we keep our lights on, we’re liable to blind them.”

And let Stella know they’re coming,
she thought.

Without a word, Ernie cut the lights. It took only a moment before their eyes adjusted to the dark. Soon, though, the silvery light cast by a wedge of moon was enough to allow them to make out the movements of both the officer and his dog as they traversed a ghostly landscape.

Off to the left lay what looked like a pale layer of white earth. That was a long-abandoned tailings dam—waste left over from the copper-milling process—that covered acres of desert with a relatively flat layer of debris. To the right was the mound of steep hills that formed a backdrop to the neighborhood of Warren. The tops of the hills, tipped with silver, gleamed against the sky with the reflected glow from the ballpark lights where the softball game was still in full swing.

And straight ahead of them, at the base of those hills, crouching in shadow, lay broken hulks of buildings that had once, long ago, been a state-of-the-art ore crusher. Joanna remembered that she and her father had once spent hours exploring the ruin. The machinery and equipment that had been used to grind copper ore to dust had disappeared right along with the men who had once operated it. But Joanna knew that the concrete shells of those long empty buildings would offer shelter for a fleeing Stella Adams—shelter and cover.

“She has to be headed for the old crusher,” Joanna said.

Concentrating on driving, Ernie could only nod in agreement. Joanna reached for the radio mike and barked into it.

“We think Stella Adams is headed for the old crusher on the southwest side of Warren,” she told Tica. “We need backup officers to come from the west side of town, out past the Juvenile Detention Center, to rendezvous there. The K-9 unit is on the suspect’s trail. Detective Carpenter and I are to the east of the old crusher. I don’t want anybody caught in a cross fire. No weapons are to be fired under any circumstances until we positively locate the suspect and our guys are in the clear. Got that?”

“Got it,” Tica Romero repeated.

“The suspect may be injured, and we believe she may have lost one or more shoes. But she’s still to be considered armed and dangerous.”

Something cold and wet trickled down Joanna’s neck and into the cleavage of her bra. The afternoon rainstorm had left the desert surprisingly cool, but the sweat dribbling under Joanna’s clothing had nothing to do with heat and everything to do with fear.

Another fence appeared out of nowhere. Stella Adams wasn’t following a road; neither were Deputy Gregovich and Spike. Again, there was no time to go looking for a gate. Once again, Ernie backed off a few feet before gunning the Blazer forward. Around them breaking wires sprang apart with a screeching twang.

“Sounds like God just broke his guitar string,” Joanna said to Ernie. A moment later, although it wasn’t that funny, they were both laughing—laughing and driving and sitting in their own rank, fear-spawned sweat.

That’s when they heard the shot. The single roar of gunfire crackled through the air and echoed off the surrounding hillsides and buildings. Ahead of them, Joanna saw both Terry and Spike dive for cover. At least she hoped they were diving for cover. Hoped that they had fallen of their own volition rather than because Stella Adam’s single, well-aimed shot had found its mark. A moment later Joanna and Ernie, too, were on the ground, scrambling forward.

It probably took them less than a minute to reach the low rise where Terry Gregovich and his dog huddled behind a thick mound of creosote. “Looks like we found her,” Terry muttered.

“Are you both all right?” Joanna demanded.

“Yes. We’re fine, but this woman is a damned good shot. Watch yourselves.”

“We didn’t see where it came from.” Ernie Carpenter was out of shape and out of breath. “Did you?”

Terry pointed. “Over there,” he said. “Behind the wall of that first building. What the hell is this place?”

Remembering that the manufacturer called her Kevlar vest “bullet-resistant” rather than “bulletproof,” Joanna managed to utter a one-word answer: “Crusher.” Then she pulled herself together. “Okay, guys,” she added. “Spread out. We’ll be better off behind the wall than we are out here in the open. We move forward at the same speed. No one gets too far ahead, and no one drops behind.”

“By the way,” Terry said, “she’s bleeding pretty good.”

Joanna looked at the ground in front of her and saw the faint reflection of moonlight off droplets of moisture leading them forward. And Deputy Gregovich was right. It was more than mere droplets.

Weapons drawn, the three officers and the accompanying German shepherd inched forward, crawling on their bellies. They reached the relative shelter of the wall with no additional shots being fired.

“Stella,” Joanna called. “We know you’re in there. We also know you’re hurt. Give yourself up. Throw out your weapon. Let us help you.”

“I don’t want help,” Stella called back.

“Good work, boss,” Ernie muttered. “You’ve made contact and got her talking.”

“Think of your son,” Joanna said. “Think of Nathan. He loves you and needs you.”

“He doesn’t. I’ve wrecked his life. It’s spoiled. Everything I tried to do is gone. And it’s all Carol’s fault. And Andrea’s. How could they do that—to me and to Nathan? Why couldn’t they leave well enough alone? And why did Carol have to decide to go and open her big mouth?”

Stella’s voice came from only a few feet away, from the other side of the roofless wall. Joanna thanked God for the thick concrete that separated them.

“Maybe she was tired of keeping secrets, Stella,” Joanna said. “Secrets like that get to be too heavy over the years. They drag you down.”

“I was doing fine. So was Nathan, but now…”

“Pam Davis and Carmen Ortega thought you were Carol, didn’t they?” Joanna called softly. “They came to Carol’s place for their appointment that morning, but Carol was already dead, wasn’t she? You pretended to be her.”

For a few moments, Stella Adams was silent. During the silence Joanna was struck by the peculiar intimacy of their conversation. They might have been girls off on a double date, sharing secrets between locked stalls in a ladies’ rest room. “How did you know that?” Stella asked finally.

Because you all breed true,
Joanna felt like saying.
Because all of Eddie Mossman’s daughters look like twins. And his son looks just like him.

Far ahead, Joanna caught sight of the winking flash of approaching lights. The additional officers she had summoned were coming toward them from the opposite direction. “Tell Tica we’re talking to the suspect. Tell our backup to stay back until I give the word,” Joanna ordered. Moments later Deputy Gregovich was relaying the information through the radio attached to the shoulder of his uniform.

Meanwhile Joanna turned her attention back to the suspect. Nathan was Stella Adams’s Achilles heel, and that was where Joanna focused her efforts.

“Think about Nathan,” she said. “Turn yourself in.”

“That’s what my father said, too,” Stella returned. “ ‘Think about Nathan.’ But I
am
thinking about him. Everything I did, I did for him. To protect him.”

“Your father wanted you to turn yourself in?”

Stella erupted in a mirthless chuckle. “Right. That’s what he wanted, but I told him, ‘No way!’ I told him he owed me—he owed us all—but he owed Nathan more than anybody. So, at first, when I asked him, he was willing to help. He agreed to send the e-mail to try to get Pam and Carmen to back off.”

“You knew they were coming?”

“Sure, I did. Because they wanted to talk to me. After they finished talking to Carol, they were going to interview me, too. But the threat didn’t work. They didn’t back off. Pam and Carmen showed up anyway, so I got rid of them, and Carol, too. Dad was headed back to Mexico from Kingman. When I told him what had happened, he offered to move the bodies for me. He said he’d try to make it look like some pervert had done it.”

That should have been easy for Ed Mossman,
Joanna thought.

“So he moved them and stripped them and tied them up,” Stella continued.

“You shot them?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In their car. What a mess! I didn’t think I’d ever get all that blood washed off. It was everywhere.”

“Where’s the car, Stella?” Joanna asked. “The car you shot them in. Where is it?”

“I ran it off the road, somewhere the other side of Animas. Then I hitchhiked back. I told the guy who gave me a ride that my husband had beaten me up and that I was going back home to my parents. He believed me, too. Nice guy.”

Her voice was softer now, with a funny dreamlike quality that made it sound as though she was struggling to concentrate and stay connected.

“Sounds like she’s fading some,” Ernie whispered. “I think she really is hurt.”

“Are you all right, Stella?” Joanna asked. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

“We can’t leave you,” Joanna returned. “Throw down your weapon and come out. Let us help you.”

“No. If anyone comes near me, I’ll shoot.”

“Mom?”

The sound of Nathan Adams’s voice coming from twenty-five or thirty yards away sent a surge of fear coursing through Joanna’s body. Hair stood up on the back of her neck. Her hands tingled.

“Where’d he come from?” Joanna demanded. “What’s he doing here, and where the hell is he?”

“Off to our right,” Terry Gregovich returned, pointing. “I saw him a second ago. Now he’s dropped behind some bushes. He must have followed the railroad bed out of town.”

Joanna couldn’t see Nathan Adams, but she could hear him as he dashed forward once more. He must have run the better part of the mile and a half to two miles from his house to the scene. As he drew closer, Joanna heard him panting with exertion.

“Nathan!” Joanna shouted. “Stop. Go back. It isn’t safe!”

But Nathan Adams paid no attention. “Mom,” he gasped. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

Stella, who must not have heard him the first time he spoke, did this time. “Nathan!” she exclaimed forcefully. “Get out of here! Go back to the house! This is none of your business.”

“But it
is
my business,” Nathan argued.

“Terry,” Joanna ordered. “Ernie will cover you while I try to keep her talking. You and Spike go get that kid and do whatever it takes to get him out of here!”

Crouching low to the ground, Terry set off with Spike at his heels.

“I’m sure you don’t want Nathan to get hurt,” Joanna said. “Throw down your weapon, Stella. Let’s finish this.”

“It is finished,” Stella returned. “It’s over. There isn’t anything more to do.”

“Mom, let me be with you,” Nathan pleaded. “Let me help. Please.”

In the pale moonlight Joanna caught a glimpse of Nathan Adams as he tripped over some obstacle and fell to the ground. He started to rise, then crumpled again as Terry Gregovich and Spike tackled the boy and sent him sprawling. After a fierce but brief scuffle, the clump of milling figures lay still.

“No,” Stella said, oblivious to the fact that her son had just been physically prevented from coming any nearer to her. “I don’t want you here, Nathan. Go away.”

“Mom, please.”

“You’re better off without me. Go!”