Set the Dark on Fire (26 page)

Betty reappeared from the kitchen, greeting Fernando with a nervous smile. She handed him some bills from the register.

Their exchange was none of her business, so Shay turned back to Dylan, shoving a few more french fries in her mouth.

“I have to talk to Fernando,” Dylan said in a low voice.

“Why?”

A flush crept up his neck. “I was with Angel earlier, and she … she left town. She ran away to Vegas. I watched her get on the bus.”

“Why would she go there?”

His mouth turned grim. “I think she’s planning on doing something stupid. Like getting a job at a strip club.”

Uh-oh
. With her face and body, Angel wouldn’t have any trouble finding work in Vegas. “When did the bus leave?”

He glanced at the clock. “Over an hour ago.”

Shay didn’t need to hear any more. “Go tell him now,” she said, urging him to his feet. “Maybe he can catch up with her.”

25

As soon as Luke got in his truck, his radio crackled with distortion. “Domestic disturbance. Reported by a female resident at 420 Larkspur Lane.”

A chill raced down Luke’s spine. That was Garrett’s address.

“Please be advised that the suspect is an off-duty police officer. He should be considered armed and dangerous.”

Luke responded to the call, driving as fast as he dared down Tenaja Falls’s main drag. He knew from experience that this type of situation had to be handled carefully. Violent acts against women were usually perpetrated by a husband or boyfriend, and a man at home could be extremely defensive.

Being on his own turf, he also had a hell of an advantage.

When Luke pulled up to the driveway, he saw that Garrett wasn’t holed up inside his house, pointing a rifle through the mini-blinds. He was sitting in his police car in the front drive, holding his service revolver to his right temple.

Staving off a rush of panic, Luke picked up his radio and called in the details. Talking down a suicidal officer was way out of his area of expertise, but he might not have time to wait for backup.

Had Garrett done something to Lori? Men who committed suicide often did so after harming someone else.

Another feeling came over him, one of almost uncontrollable fury. Garrett had a connection to Yesenia Montes and a well-known gambling problem. According to Dylan, he’d also been on the reservation the day of the fire. It wouldn’t surprise Luke if he’d borrowed money from Bull Ryan to pay off Moses Rivers.

Garrett had been quick to point his finger at the rez, after all. He’d probably planted the arrowhead with the snake at Dark Canyon. In addition to his other crimes, if he was indeed guilty, Garrett had tried to kill Shay.

At that moment, Luke didn’t give a damn about duty, and he wasn’t the least bit concerned about his deputy’s future.

Garrett only had to live long enough to suffer.

Luke got out of his truck, surveying the scene. Lori Snell was pacing the front lawn, tears streaming down her face, a cordless phone in her hand. Although she appeared unhurt, she was about a hundred feet from the driveway, well within Garrett’s range.

Keeping a visual on Garrett, his hand on his holster, he approached Lori. Her eyes were dark with misery and her cheeks ashen. He’d never seen her before, but despite her frantic state she was pretty, and his disdain for Garrett deepened.

“Where’s the baby?” he asked, remembering she had a young child.

She hugged her arms around herself. “With my m-m-mother.”

“Good. Why’s he doing this?”

Shaking her head, she said, “W-we had a fight, but—I don’t think that’s it. Something else is bothering him.”

Keeping his hand on his gun, he surveyed the neighborhood. Two doors down, there was an older woman looking through the window. “You know the lady in the blue house?”

Her head bobbed up and down. “Yes.”

“Go over there and let her make you a cup of tea.” He knew it sounded condescending, but he needed to know she was safe. “I can’t do my job if I’m worried about you running out here and getting in the way.”

She moistened her lips. “Okay. But just—don’t shoot him. Please?”

Luke snuck another glance at Garrett. Even from this distance, he could see that the deputy’s entire body was trembling, and his gun hand was none too steady.

Damn
.

“I won’t,” he promised, and hoped he could keep it. Garrett would have to pay for what he’d done, and although shooting him sounded tempting, he wouldn’t do it unless he had to. He’d never killed a man before. He’d never wanted to.

After one last pleading look, Lori hurried across the lawns and into her neighbor’s house. As soon as she was out of sight, Luke turned and walked back toward the driveway, making a wide circle around Garrett’s cruiser. The black-and-white squad car looked shiny and sleek in the twilight, a lurking shark in troubled waters.

Flexing his fingers, Luke approached slowly, his heart in his throat, sweat stinging his eyes. Forty feet. Thirty.

“Don’t come any closer,” Garrett warned.

Luke stopped twenty feet away from the driver’s side, staying in Garrett’s line of sight but keeping his body at an angle. If Garrett decided to turn his gun on Luke, it would be awkward for him to shoot over his left shoulder. “I just want to talk.”

“Stay away!”

Luke came closer. Ten feet. Close enough to see the sheen of perspiration on Garrett’s brow. “Tell me what happened.”

Garrett let out a strangled sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

“I just want to talk,” Luke repeated, hearing the strain in his own voice.

Garrett’s gun hand wobbled precariously. “Get away from me!”

“I’ll take off my gun belt. Watch.” With steady movements, he unfastened his belt and laid it down on the concrete, straightening and holding his arms high.

“Stay back!”

Luke took a deep breath and stepped forward. “I’m unarmed, Garrett. I couldn’t grab your gun from here even if I wanted to. If you’re going to pull the trigger, I can’t stop you. But first tell me why. Tell me what happened.”

Garrett’s eyes darted back toward the front of the house, looking for Lori.

“You owe it to your wife,” he said, struck by a flash of inspiration. “You want her to think you’ve done this because of her?”

Garrett’s face crumpled. “N-no.”

Luke wasn’t sure he understood the belated concern for Lori. Garrett certainly hadn’t been thinking about his wife while he was fooling around with Yesenia Montes.

“There is one thing I’d like you to tell her.”

“Name it.”

“I lied about having sex with Yesenia. I used that as an excuse because I knew people had seen us together.”

Luke hadn’t expected this particular confession. “What were you doing with her?”

Garrett made a sniffling noise. “I set her up on dates sometimes. Introduced her to people. Drove her around.”

Luke was baffled. “Why?”

“She gave me a cut.”

Realization dawned. His sheriff’s deputy was
a pimp
. And here Luke thought Tenaja Falls would be less tawdry than Las Vegas.

“I have a gambling problem, in case you didn’t know,” Garrett continued in a self-deprecating tone. “I needed the extra income.”

“You’ve overextended yourself?”

“And then some. We’re going to lose the house. Lori will be better off without me.”

“She won’t get a dime of insurance money if you pull the trigger,” Luke said, relaxing his stance a little. He was pretty sure Garrett wasn’t going to shoot him, or anyone else. “You know, I’ve never really liked guns,” he added, offhand.

Garrett blinked a few times. “You—you haven’t?”

“Nah. That was one of the reasons I accepted this position in Tenaja Falls. I didn’t think I’d have to wear my gun all the time.”

“That’s … stupid,” Garrett decided. “You can’t make a routine traffic stop these days without worrying you’ll catch some psycho behind the wheel.”

Luke found that statement pretty ironic, considering the current situation. “Yeah, I guess. I think I’ll quit wearing it anyway. I don’t like shooting them. I certainly didn’t like getting shot. And the mess they make!” Grimacing, he surveyed the Vic’s interior. “You ever seen a man take a hit to the head at close range?”

Garrett swallowed a few times, looking queasy.

“What am I saying? Of course you have. Must’ve been brains all over in Iraq.”

Garrett’s lips curled back in distaste, but he couldn’t deny it.

“You don’t want your wife to see that, man. Lori will be upset about the house. But she’d be more upset about losing her house and the father of her baby.” Luke put his hand near the open window. “Give me the gun.”

“No.”

“Give me the gun, Garrett. Don’t wait until the whole neighborhood comes out. This place will be swarming with squad cars from the Palomar substation in a few minutes.”

After another moment of indecision, Garrett capitulated, placing his revolver in the palm of Luke’s hand.

As Luke wrapped his fingers around the sweaty, skin-warmed steel, he experienced a powerful surge of rage. The temptation to shove the barrel against Garrett’s skull and demand some answers was overwhelming. Now he knew why cops sometimes lost control with suspects. “Get out,” he said, engaging the safety and tucking the gun into the back of his pants.

“Wh—what? Why?”

“You know procedure as well as I do, Garrett. I’ll be sure to mention that I had your full cooperation when I file my report. Now get the fuck out of the car.”

Garrett opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out, groaning as he considered the ramifications of his actions. Luke had him sprawled over the hood, his hands cuffed behind his back, before he could change his mind.

“Tell me what you did with Yesenia,” he demanded, kicking his feet apart.

“Nothing,” Garrett said. “Nothing, I swear.”

Luke patted him down roughly, every muscle in his body poised to fight. Following instinct instead of procedure, he jerked the cuffs up and shoved Garrett’s head down on the hood, applying what he knew to be a painful amount of pressure. “If you don’t start talking I’ll smear your face all over this driveway.”

“I didn’t touch her. I swear to God I didn’t.”

“Did you plant the snake at Dark Canyon?”

He hesitated. “Confessions made under duress are inadmissible.”

“I’ll show you some duress,” Luke muttered, lifting Garrett from the hood of the car and slamming him facedown again. “Did you plant the snake?”

Garrett made a gurgling noise. Luke lifted him up again.

“Yes,” Garrett cried. “I owe Moses Rivers a lot of money. I thought if I implicated him I could use it as a bargaining chip. Reduce my debt, in exchange for taking the heat off.”

Desperate times called for desperate measures, Luke supposed.

“I never meant to hurt Shay,” Garrett insisted. “I’ve seen her handle snakes before. She’s a pro.”

“Did you set the fire?”

Garrett didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“Goddamn you, Garrett! Don’t tell me you didn’t mean to hurt anyone then, either.”

“The wind was stronger than I thought—”

Luke drove his elbow into the middle of Garrett’s back, shutting him up. “Is that why you killed Bull Ryan, you lying sack of shit? To cast suspicion on Rivers? Or were you just trying to implicate me?”

“I didn’t kill him,” he rasped, struggling for breath. “We … scuffled, over some money I owed him, and he … clutched at his chest. He was dead before he hit the floor. I swear.”

“So instead of calling 911, or performing CPR, you cut the top of his head off? You are a sick motherfucker, Snell. They’re going to lock you up and throw away the key. And you know how law enforcement officers get treated in prison.” He twisted the cuffs. “I hope your cellmate is some big guy named Bubba.”

“Please,” Garrett gasped.

“Why did you move Yesenia?”

“I didn’t,” he insisted.

“The fuck you didn’t!” Jerking the gun from the waistband of his pants, Luke shoved the barrel against the back of Garrett’s thick neck. He still didn’t like guns, but he had to admit he liked making his deputy sorry.

“Okay!” Garrett screamed. “Okay, I’ll talk. Point that thing somewhere else. Please.”

Luke ignored his request. “What did you do to her?”

“She was cheating me out of my cut, keeping all of her earnings. And telling the other girls to do the same.”

Other
girls? Jesus. It got worse every second. “So you fed her to the lions?”

“I only meant to scare her,” he panted. “I didn’t think the lion would really attack.”

“What lion?” He jammed the barrel into the back of Garrett’s neck. “Where?”

“At Betty Louis’s ranch,” he said, his big body shuddering with stress. “Betty was in on it. She sees girls at the café sometimes, and she does some … recruiting for me. It was all her fault, I swear! She’s the one with the crazy-ass lion.”

“Fernando,” Dylan called out, running across the parking lot to catch up with him.

Angel’s dad stopped and turned, his face showing surprise.

“I mean, uh, Mr. Martinez,” Dylan corrected, faltering. It was a sticky situation, talking to the father of the girl he’d just slept with. “I need to tell you something,” he said in a rush. “Angel went to Vegas.”

“My daughter went to Las Vegas?”

“Yessir.”

“Oh. Well, I hope she has fun.” With an uncertain smile, he reached for his door handle.

“No, wait,” Dylan said. “I don’t mean she went there for a few days. I mean she left town for good.”

The smile slid off his face. “How do you know this?”

“I saw her get on the bus.” Realizing this wasn’t proof enough, he dug into his pocket for the note she left. “She wrote me this,” he said, handing it over. “I tried to stop her from leaving but she wouldn’t listen.”

Fernando inspected the note, his brows raised. He didn’t say anything about Angel’s odd style of writing, or the content, but Dylan’s face burned with embarrassment.

“Angelita is a grown woman,
mijo,”
he said sadly, handing the paper back to him. “She makes her own decisions. I’m sorry if you feel let down.”