Terror Stash (12 page)

Steve had been caught just as flat-footed. He’d been a little more braced for a possible breakout. He’d posted the guards, anyway. But suicide? Over a bar fight? Even he hadn’t considered it despite his gut telling him to be cautious.

So he returned to the one sustainable argument he had. “I still don’t get why Rawn would sneak back into the hospital to kill them. Why not get it over and done with at the Galah, when he could at least wave self-defense around as an excuse?”

“He was hurried,” Chris proposed. “He could hear the sirens and didn’t want to rush the job. So he came back later to do it properly.”

“Bullshit.” Steve could feel his anger rising again in the face of such outright bias. “He went out of his way to minimize the damage he doled out. Just enough to keep them on the floor and no more. Even the doc made that point.”

Borelli stirred. “Some people prefer to do their killing in private. Rawn beat Connie to a pulp three years ago. He made sure he had no witnesses then. He didn’t get to pick his turf at the Galah. So he chose his own time later.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist looking for a conspiracy, Steve. This is little old Margaret River. The case is as straightforward as it looks on the surface, I guarantee it. We find him, we arrest him, we lay the charges. That’s our job.”

Steve clamped his jaw together, fighting the need to scream a protest. Borelli had made up his mind. From long experience, Steve knew he would not change it now.

They were gunning for Caden Rawn.

* * * * *

“I’m waiting to speak to Ms. Montana Dela Vega,” the man said.

Montana nodded even though he was on the other end of the phone. “You’re speaking to her. Who is this?”

There was the slightest pause. “Ah...Ms. Dela Vega, this is Constable Scarborough, at the Margaret River police station. We spoke on Sunday morning, in Yallingup.”

“I remember you, Constable.”

“Steve will do. The ‘Constable Scarborough’ thing is a helluva mouthful. Can I call you Montana? Yours is a mouthful, too.”

Montana felt herself smiling. It had taken her a good year to get used to the informality of officials in Australia. Everyone used your first name here, regardless of rank or permission. A nickname was leapt upon. Often they’d bestow a colorful nickname whether you wanted it or not. Usually the nickname delivered an observant comment about your appearance or personality. Steve’s delicate request to use her first name was almost a shock to the system.

“Sure, Steve. No problems. How can I help?”

Again, the fractional pause. The tiny silence sent a shiver up her back and she gripped the phone harder.

“I’m just tying up loose ends,” he told her.

He’s lying
. The mental whisper made her cautious. She kept her jaws together and waited him out.

“We were called into the Pink Galah on Sunday night. I think you know why.”

There was no point denying she was there. “I had nothing to do with the fight, Steve. I just happened to be caught on the fringes of it, but not for very long.”

“I know. Caden Rawn made sure you were safely out of it.”

This time the shiver was more of a shudder, rippling across her back with icy fingers and prickling at her temples. “How did you know that?”

“I asked about. It’s called interviewing witnesses.”

“You work long days, Constable.”

“You have no idea.” She heard him sigh. “I’ve been at this for three solid days, and so has everyone else at the station. Which is the reason I’m calling. I know no one else has bothered to speak to you about it. Have they?”

“You’re the first.”

“And probably the last. This will sound odd, but I want you to tell me what you think happened at the Galah. Not the step-by-step actions—I already know that.”

“What I
think
happened?”

“The whys, not the whats. Why people did what they did.”

She frowned. “You’re asking me for my very subjective opinion about motives?”

“Motives, reasons, thought processes.” His tone made it sound like he was making a perfectly reasonable request.

“Steve, aren’t policemen supposed to concern themselves with just the facts?”

“Normally, uh, yeah.”

“Then...?”

“Tell me what you think happened, then I’ll explain why I’m asking.”

“You don’t want to tell me now because it might color my interpretation, do you?”

“Exactly.”

She let her mind flicker back over the fight, the moments that led up to it and Caden Rawn’s actions afterwards. She had been over this ground many times already. “It still doesn’t make sense to me,” she admitted. “I thought I had it figured out on the way home Sunday night. I could have sworn Rawn was not interested in doing any permanent damage to any of them. He went out of his way to avoid it. That’s what he told me, anyway, and that was despite very clearly being set up. There was a man there, Rabbit—”

“We know about Rabbit,” Steve said. “He and Rawn had a history.”

“I heard about it. Steve, Caden Rawn barely broke a sweat over the whole thing. It was a minor hiccup that he waved away like a bush fly. I was totally floored when I heard that he’d caught up with Rabbit afterwards and murdered him. That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t match up with his attitude in the bar.”

This time the silence was a bit longer. “Right,” Steve said at last. “You’re at the consulate. That’s how you know about it.”

“I’m not that high up on the totem pole. The only reason I know is my boss wanted to bring me down a peg or two by showing me how wrong I was about something else.” She sat up straighter. “Ohmigod....”

“What?”

“Steve, did anyone you interviewed at the pub talk about the Arabic man in the corner?”

“What?”

She gripped her temples with her free hand. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”

“You’re going to have to start at the beginning,” Steve said patiently.

She quickly went over the few facts she had about Ghenghis Bob and his lack of reaction during the fight despite a direct appeal.

“You speak Arabic?” Steve asked.

She said in Arabic, “I have always been able to speak Arabic.” She switched back to English. “Ever since I can remember I’ve been able to speak and read Arabic.” She didn’t add that she could only remember back to when she was twelve.

This time, Steve’s silence was profound.

“It’s alright,” she said gently. “You don’t have to believe me. No one here does, either. The idea that there’s some sort of international terrorist running around the Margaret River area is hard to swallow.”

“But
you
believe it,” Steve said flatly.

“Yes.” The word emerged as a whisper.

“What are you doing about it?”

She could feel her cheeks flaming hot and red. “It’s not that simple. I don’t think you really understand my position here. I have supervisors and managers and....” She pursed her lips together, making herself stop. She was whining, making excuses for the fact that she had been sitting on her ass for the last two days, twiddling her thumbs because she was afraid to do anything. “No, that’s not it at all,” she admitted into the phone. “It’s the fact that the people here who don’t believe me have been working in the world political theater all their lives and they are actually laughing at the sheer idiocy of my idea.”

“Doesn’t make you wrong,” Steve said softly.

“I don’t like the odds.”

Another silence. “What if I were to tell you that we think the three men who died in the hospital Monday night didn’t die of natural causes, or from the nicks that Rawn handed out?”

“You think they were murdered?”

Steve’s voice dropped in volume. “Everyone else here thinks Rawn sneaked back into the hospital and finished them off. They’re turning the area upside down looking for him.”

Her heart thudded hard. “But you don’t think he did it.”

“Not even before you told me about the Palestinian. Ghenghis Bob pushes the whole theory into the realm of the possible. The understandable.”

“You believe me....” Her heart was racing now.

“I think I’m the only one who does,” he said softly.

This time the silence was mutual, growing between them, throbbing with possibilities.

Steve was the first to speak again. In the same low voice, he said; “I’m on duty, Montana, and desk-bound for today.”

She understood what he wasn’t saying as clearly as if he had shouted it at her.

It was all up to her.

When Montana reached Yallingup after a wild three-hour drive down from the city, she found it buzzing with alarm.

She stopped to buy gas at her usual garage. Roo, the young guy who worked casual hours there, was bursting with the news. While he pumped gas, he brought Montana up to date on the latest breaking headlines, including the fact that the outlaw the police were looking for had actually threatened Roo himself.

“At my other job,” he said, nodding across the street toward the café. “He sat at the table, cool as a cucumber and made me tell him everything they were saying about him. But when the cops showed up he was off like a shot.”

“My goodness!” Montana exclaimed, to encourage him to give up more information.

Roo did give more, all about how the outlaw had run amok in the center of town. The police had thrown up cordons and barriers and were combing the bush for him. They’d called in volunteers.

And dogs.

Roo winked at her. “Not to worry, though. Gerry, back there, has his old thirty-two rifle under the counter. Just in case.”

“Aren’t thirty-twos illegal here?”

Roo snorted. “Who gives a shit about that?” His eyes were shining, his face glowing. Clearly, this was the most exciting day of his year.

Montana drove slowly down the coast after that, stopping at all the usual surfers’ beaches, looking for anyone she knew. The problem was twofold. It was a weekday and she had no idea what the people she knew in Yallingup and Margaret’s did during the week. Some of them worked. Some of them were seasonal surfers and lived elsewhere. Others commuted from the city on weekends, like her.

The beaches were mostly empty—not even swimmers were out. It was the middle of a blazing hot afternoon and the heat pulsing at her from the overhead sun was like standing in front of the open door of a furnace.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
, she thought, quoting Noel Coward to herself.
And let’s not forget Caden Rawn is out there somewhere, too
.

At Smiths Beach, she found Jacko sitting on the sand staring at the waves, his long Malibu board beside him. Perched on the board was a battery-powered boom box, with the radio tuned into the local FM station.

She dropped her pumps onto the sand and sat down beside him. “I hear there’s trouble here and in Marg’s.”

Jacko lifted his brow at her appearance. It was a mild reaction considering that no one here had ever seen her in anything but cotton skirts and tops, bathers or a wetsuit. She was wearing a three-piece Armani, her hair was up and she wore makeup.

“It’s that guy, Caden Rawn, that they’re chasing,” Montana said.

“They’re not giving names over the radio.”

“But it’s him,” she assured him.

Jacko’s lips thinned. Then he nodded. “And you let him go.”

That stung because it held a core of truth. She
had
encouraged him to run away. But she didn’t have the time to explain why and she didn’t know Jacko well enough to give him the full story. “He just laid out five guys coming after him with knives. I was supposed to stop him by myself? It’s not like you stuck around.”

Jacko looked away.

“Listen, that’s not why I’m here. I’m looking for someone else. Do you remember the guys in the corner of the room, closest to the washroom doors?”

“Someone besides Rabbit?” Jacko’s eyes narrowed. “You know Rabbit’s dead, don’t you?”

“Was he a good friend of yours?”

Jacko shrugged. “I’d have a hard time calling him any sort of friend at all. It’s not like he was into surfing. He just always seemed to be...around. You know?”

“Don’t feel too sorry for him, Jacko. He was dealing.”

Jacko shrugged. “So?”

“Not just the fun stuff. Smack, crack, meth. All of it and more.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I think he was into some very heavy stuff. The heaviest. Worse than the smack, even.”

“What could be worse?”

“I’m not sure and you’ll have to trust me for a bit until I am sure. That’s why I need your help now. Do you remember those guys in the corner, during the fight?”

“Is this what you do? For a living?”

She hesitated. Then; “No, Jacko. I’m being truthful with you because I like you. I’m way out on a limb here. Professionally and personally. My day job gives me access to unique information and that is why I’m in a position to follow this through, but this is not my job. I’m not a spy or anything. I’m just a clerk at the consulate. I process passports and visas and bail Americans out when they get in trouble with the local laws. This is something totally different.”

“And you can’t or won’t tell me what it is?”

“Bit of both,” she freely admitted. “If I’m wrong, I’m going to feel like the world’s biggest idiot. I’d prefer that you keep thinking well of me, because if I do have this wrong, then getting busted back to the States will just be the beginning of what I’ll have to face.”

His eyes narrowed again. “But you don’t think it is nothing, do you?”

“No, I don’t think it’s nothing at all. I’m scared, Jacko. If I’m right, then this is so big I’m not sure I can do it by myself.”

“
You?
You’re scared?”

She could feel herself blushing and looked away. “You were in South Africa when all those terrible things were happening. Apartheid. Right?”

He took a deep breath. Let it out. “Right.”

“Were you scared, when it was all happening? Were you afraid to do anything about it?”

He kept his eyes on the waves. “I was just a kid.”

“So you were scared, then.”

Slowly, he shook his head. “Nope. Truth is, I didn’t really know it was going on. It all seemed to happen behind the scenes. You could walk down the street, see people going about their lives...perfectly normal, right?”