Dartmouth was his and his alone to deal with.
He looked at the big man again and found him up on one knee now, groggy as hell, but improving rapidly. He couldn’t yet put much behind the glare he was showing Gunner, but its message was clear, nonetheless:
Wait right where you are, motherfucker. I’ll be there shortly …
Gunner sighed heavily and took a full step forward to let Dartmouth have a closer look at the Ruger he was pointing directly at the big man’s chest.
“Well, Russell,” he said. “I guess now’s our chance to find out how crazy you really are.”
The world was round and not flat, that had been proven conclusively a long, long time ago, but had the opposite been true—if the earth really had four edges to tumble over, as Christopher Columbus had been warned many times it did—Fontana would almost certainly have been in close proximity to one. Or so it often seemed to anyone who had to drive there from Los Angeles proper, as Gunner did tonight. The San Bernardino County city was that far out of the way.
All told, the trip covered approximately fifty-five miles over three separate freeways, and it was every bit as unscenic as it was interminable. Shopping malls and car dealerships, and one suburban sprawl after another—that was all there was to see. And in the end, desert. Level earth baked to a dry and dusty crisp, sparsely dotted with the feeble attempts of civilization to reach this far into the badlands. You wanted to buy or build a new home anywhere near Los Angeles, this was where you ended up: out beyond the municipal stratosphere by more miles and minutes behind the wheel than any rational person would care to count.
This was the last frontier.
Gunner had to smile, wondering if Angelo Dobbs hadn’t been thinking when he’d come here, even if the cops learned where he was, who the hell was going to drive all the way out to fucking Fontana to pick him up?
That amusing thought, along with Russell Dartmouth, was on Gunner’s mind as he spurred the Cobra on through the night. Had he been forced to guess, the investigator would have thought a head-case like Dartmouth was nuts enough to try him, Ruger or no Ruger, but the big man had proven himself to have more sense than that. As far gone as he was, he knew he wasn’t Superman, and that he’d have to be nothing less, he took another step in Gunner’s direction. Rage was no match for bullets, even under the best of circumstances, and Dartmouth was just barely sane enough to realize it.
Gunner had handcuffed his arms around the nearest utility pole and left him for the police to pick up later, whenever or
if
ever he came to their attention.
Then he’d started out for Fontana.
The investigator had studied a street map of San Bernardino County before leaving Los Angeles, so he pretty much knew where he was going. The address Alred had given him brought him just a mile off Interstate 15, only four exits north of Interstate 10. It was part of a huge tract of split-level homes its developer had aptly named Sunset Ranch, according to the overhead sign that welcomed visitors onto its main access road. The tract was the only fully developed parcel of land for miles in either direction, though another, similar complex was going up across the street, its hacienda-style homes sitting in total darkness, silently awaiting completion.
Entering Sunset Ranch, Gunner quickly found the street he was looking for and slowed the red Cobra to a crawl.
These homes had been inhabited for some time, but the black-and-white address markers on the curbs before them were still fairly new and perfectly legible, enabling Gunner to make a reasonable determination as to where the house Dobbs was supposed to be hiding in was situated on the block, without first having to cruise the noisy Cobra past its front door. He could see less than a half-dozen lighted windows on the entire street, making it unlikely his passing would actually attract anyone’s attention, but he didn’t want to take the chance. He waited until he was nine, maybe ten houses away, then pulled the Cobra over and parked, at the heart of a dark void between streetlights where he hoped he’d be difficult to spot from a distance. From there, he used a pair of binoculars to make a positive ID of the house he was interested in, and found it to be just as dark and relatively lifeless as its neighbors. That was good.
Now there was nothing to do but get comfortable in the Cobra’s driver’s seat and wait for Bunche to show.
It was 1:22
A.M.
A little more than an hour later, the Compton police detective appeared out of nowhere beside him, standing in the street, and said, “Just what the fuck are you doin’ here?” Managing to keep his voice low, when what he really wanted to do was scream.
Without batting an eye, Gunner said, “Waiting for you. What else?” He turned to nod at Bunche’s partner, Bertelsen, as the other cop stepped into view, over on the passenger side of the convertible.
Bunche couldn’t figure it, why they hadn’t scared the investigator shitless sneaking up on him like they had, but all the cop said was, “I don’t remember invitin’ you to the party, Gunner.” He had no mints in his mouth tonight, no doubt a concession to the stealth this mission would soon require of him.
“Like my message said, I didn’t think you’d mind, I came out to watch the house until you got here,” Gunner said, “considering it was my tip that brought you out here in the first place.”
“Yeah, well, you thought wrong, buddy,” Bertelsen said, having almost as much trouble keeping his voice down as his partner.
Explaining, Bunche said, “I had that talk with Matt Poole you suggested I have, an’ guess what? I found out what your interest in all this is. Revenge. This Nina Pearson you think Dobbs whacked, she was an ex-old lady of yours.”
“Forget about it, Bunche. I’d wanted Dobbs dead, I’d have gone in there and put a clip in his ass an hour ago,” Gunner said.
Bunche shook his head, said, “Sorry, brother, but you’re goin’ home. Right now.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Look, asshole—” Bertelsen started to say.
“No,
you
look. I’ve been playing ball with you guys right down the fucking line so far. Right? So what the hell’s wrong with letting me help you? If Dobbs has any company in there—”
“We don’t need your help, Gunner.”
“I won’t lay a hand on the sonofabitch! All I want is to see you take him, you have my word on it.”
“Not a chance. Say adios, amigo,” Bertelsen said.
Gunner turned to Bunche, knowing he would have the last word.
“You just want to see us take him,” the black cop said. “That’s all.”
“That’s all. Or if you need me to back you up—”
“You’re gonna stay right here, Gunner. Right here in the fuckin’ car. You can’t see what you wanna see from here, you’re outta luck.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Bertelsen cried, regarding his partner with open disbelief.
“You don’t think—” Gunner said, still talking to Bunche alone.
“I think you say another word, I’m gonna rescind the offer I just made you,” Bunche said, ignoring Bertelsen just as completely as Gunner had. “Okay? You either stay right here till we tell you to move, or you take your ass home right now. What’s it gonna be? Me an’ Al, we got work to do here.”
“Richie—” Bertelsen said, trying once more to be heard.
“Shut up, Al. He’s makin’ up his mind,” Bunche said. He was looking straight at Gunner.
With the gaze of both cops bearing down on him, Gunner shrugged and said, “I’ll stay in the car.”
Bunche eyed him warily, well short of being thoroughly convinced. “You must’ve seen us go by, huh? In the car, I mean. That’s how come you weren’t scared, we came up to you like this.”
Gunner had to grin, amused to see Bunche couldn’t let even as little a mystery as this go unsolved. “Those pack mules you boys drive are kind of hard to miss.”
Bunche made a little face and started backing away from the car, toward the house he and Bertelsen were about to drop in on. “Don’t move,” he told Gunner simply. “You move, I’m gonna shoot you. I swear to God.”
“You and me both,” Bertelsen said, drawing the slide back on his service automatic for Gunner’s benefit before moving to follow his partner.
Gunner watched them close quickly upon the house, squirming around in his seat like a house pet that needed to be let outside.
Bunche took the front door, while Bertelsen eased around to the back, disappearing from the investigator’s view down the driveway. Gunner grabbed his binoculars again. He saw Bunche step up on the dark porch and press himself to the wall beside the doorjamb, gathering the nerve to knock on the door and let the show begin.
But he never got the chance.
Gunfire erupted from the back of the house, first the lone report of a handgun, then two loud, extended shotgun blasts after that. Bunche stiffened, energized by fear, and came down off the porch to follow the sound to the back, taking the same route Bertelsen had along the left side of the house, albeit slower and with greater care. He never even looked Gunner’s way.
The investigator threw his binoculars down and jumped out of the car, hitting the ground running. The Ruger was in his hand before he covered three feet.
Bunche reached the back of the house, slipping from Gunner’s sight just as Bertelsen had earlier, and two more shots rang out: a handgun and a shotgun again, this time firing almost simultaneously. Gunner was four doors away now, going on three. A black man sprinted into view, emerging from the same yard Bunche had just entered, and saw Gunner coming. He looked like the wild man in the circus, eyes glowing like drops of molten metal, hair all over his ebony face and head. He was holding a pump-action shotgun in both of his hands.
“Dobbs!” Gunner called after him, stopping in the middle of someone’s damp lawn to aim the Ruger at the wild man’s chest.
Dobbs took off running.
Gunner fired at him twice, but the man was both fast and lucky; even weighed down with the shotgun, he was able to get away unharmed. Gunner started to go after him, then remembered Bunche and Bertelsen. Both men were probably down and in need of his help, if they were still alive. If he left them to pursue Dobbs now, he could be leaving them to die.
Deciding what to do was a no-brainer.
He found Bunche first, laid out on the driveway where Dobbs had left him, bleeding all over the concrete. His right shoulder looked like something a lion had been chewing on, but he was alive and conscious. Bertelsen was neither. He was joined in death by a young black man who was stretched out on the brick patio beside him, several feet away from a sliding glass door that stood wide open, flooding a lighted kitchen with cold night air. Several giant glass bottles of Magnum malt liquor stood on a patio table nearby, all but one of them empty.
It was an odd scene, but Gunner thought he understood it.
“I thought I told you to keep your ass in the car,” Bunche said as the investigator tended to him—in obvious pain but seemingly intent on surviving.
“Save it,” Gunner said.
“Is Al …”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
Bunche tried to nod. “Motherfucker must’ve been waitin’ for us, or somethin’. He was tipped off.”
Gunner shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s another dead man back there besides Al.”
“So? What’s that supposed to prove?”
“It doesn’t prove anything. But the way it looks to me, this guy was out on the patio when Al showed up, and Dobbs was in the house, getting another brew out of the ’box, or something, I don’t know. Al popped the other guy, I assume because he made a move, and then Dobbs came out of the house and popped him.”
“And me,” Bunche said, grimacing like he was about to pass out.
“Yeah.”
“Did you get ’im? Tell me you got the sonofabitch.”
“No. But he won’t get far. How many friends can he have in Fontana?”
“Go get the fucker! He’s hurt!”
“You hit him?”
“I think so, yeah.” Bunche grimaced again and said, “Hurry up, goddamnit! Before the asshole gets away!”
Hearing voices behind him, Gunner looked over his shoulder to see that neighbors were starting to gather around out on the sidewalk nearby, watching him and Bunche converse.
“You going to be all right?” he asked the detective.
Bunche nodded and tried to elaborate, but he couldn’t get the words out through his pain.
“I’ll have somebody put a call in, they haven’t already, then ask a sister or two to come hold your hand till the troops arrive. Okay?” Gunner stood up.
“Watch your ass, man,” Bunche found the strength to tell him.
Gunner nodded at him and said thanks, then was gone.
He hadn’t looked like it when he’d fled the scene, but Dobbs was indeed doing a good job of bleeding, himself.
The spotty crimson trail he left behind wasn’t as easy to follow along the streets and sidewalks of Sunset Ranch as a painted yellow stripe might have been, but it led Gunner to him, all the same, only eleven minutes after the investigator had started tracking him.
He was hiding in the ghost town-like tract of unfinished homes Gunner had seen earlier, over on the opposite side of the street from Sunset Ranch.
He had taken a long, circuitous route to get here, but get here the killer had. Gunner was certain of it. The blood spilling out of him in greater and greater quantities seemed to leave little doubt. Using a strong penlight, Gunner had traced it across the street, before and beyond the chain-link fence surrounding the property, and down a still-unpaved street to a two-story house that was little more than a wood-frame shell. Its exterior walls were all in place, but the interior they surrounded was in its infancy, consisting of nothing but naked wood and fiberboard, exposed copper plumbing and sawdust. Gunner followed Dobbs’s bloody trail right up to the open front door and stopped, considering his options.
As he had only one, he moved forward and slid inside, his pulse racing like a Japanese bullet train.
The house was as silent as a crypt, and every bit as dark. The only sounds he could hear, he was making himself, the floorboards beneath his feet mildly protesting his every step. His penlight was off now, a target beacon he preferred Dobbs didn’t see, so the signs that had brought him this far were much more difficult to read; he could try to read them regardless, but he didn’t want to. He kept his eyes on the floor looking for blood, instead of on his surroundings, Dobbs was likely to blow his head off. The only way to find Bertelsen’s killer now, if he didn’t want to risk getting ambushed, was the old-fashioned way: make a slow, methodical search of the premises until Dobbs turned up.