Authors: Thomas Perry
Miguel kept looking at Jerry, and finally picked up the remote control and turned on the television set. Jerry felt a second of irritation, but then it went away. He wasn’t going to be able to afford his cable bill next time, so he might as well watch while he could.
Miguel clicked through a few channels. There were old kids’ shows that he and Miguel and the other kids in the family had watched years ago. They all looked faded and cheesy now. There were a couple of old movies—one a western, with guys shooting at each other in the middle of a desert as they’d shot at him; and another, a black-and-white detective thing where everybody was wearing a hat and a suit that didn’t fit him. There were bad new bands, a couple of good old ones, a couple of women on the shopping channel selling lotion that looked enough like sperm to make him feel creepy to watch them rubbing it on. There was a commercial for a body shop.
Then the man came on. He was tall, kind of lanky, with hands that seemed all knuckle. His hair was light brown, almost blond. His eyes seemed sinister to Jerry because they were a flat gray, and the pupils were tiny black dots in the center because of the bright lights. “My name is Jack Till, head of Till Investigations. Please look closely at the pictures of this young woman. Her name is Sharon Long. She was abducted from Springfield, Illinois, on July twelfth.” The screen showed slides of the girl, who was very blond and friendly-looking—smiling, laughing in practically every picture. “She was last seen in the company of her abductor, a man in his twenties. He has dark wavy hair, and is unusually good-looking. If you have seen Sharon Long, please call the number on your screen immediately. Do not speak to either of them or try to approach them. The man is an armed and extremely dangerous homicide suspect. Call the number on your screen. There is a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information leading to his apprehension and her safe return to her family.”
Jerry sprang to his feet, pointed at the television screen, and shouted, “That’s her!”
“Homicide, Detective Anthony.”
“It’s Jack Till,” he said. He moved his chair closer to his desk and sat up straighten “Remember me? I’m the private investigator working on the Catherine Hamilton murder. I called because I got the tip I’ve been waiting for.”
“Are you sure it’s
the
tip?” she asked. “What is it?” “A copper thief on a crew stripping foreclosed houses in the desert northeast of LA stumbled on them two nights ago in one of the houses. His name’s Jerry Escobar. He says Sharon Long was there alive, but the boyfriend killed his four friends and drove the bodies off somewhere to dump them, and ditched the two trucks they were going to use to haul off the pipes and wires and things.” “You’re planning to take the word of a copper thief?” “He’s positive about the girl. And his four friends really seem to be missing. I called their houses.”
“Suddenly a scavenger, who probably has never seen five hundred dollars all in one place, sees you’re offering fifty thousand for information leading to the arrest of a kidnapper from Illinois. The thief is stuck here in Southern California. But that doesn’t stop him from making a bid for the reward. He sees this Midwestern kidnapper right here, with his living victim.”
“This is the same man who killed Catherine Hamilton here, and a few others in other places. I believe that Jerry Escobar is telling the truth.”
He heard her sigh. “All right. Bring Jerry in, and we’ll talk to him. Can you get him here tomorrow afternoon at, say, two o’clock?” “Tomorrow?”
“If you can’t round him up by then, the next day is fine.”
Till said, “Look, Detective Anthony. I was a homicide detective for twenty-three years. I broke a lot of cases, got a lot of convictions. I’m not a naive person or somebody who doesn’t know what it sounds like to be lied to. This suspect is a heavily armed, experienced killer who has a twenty-year-old girl as a hostage. You don’t think it’s worth going out there right now?”
“I understand your impatience. But please let’s not insult each other. Even if this man exists, and is out in the Southern California desert, and is actually the kidnapper from Illinois, we still have lots of groundwork to do. Is the abandoned house in Los Angeles County? Or is it in Kern County? Or some other county? We’d need the cooperation of the local police, probably the state police, or even the FBI. We’ll need to make a plan and execute it so that if he is there, no law enforcement officers get shot. All this takes time and effort.”
“It’s four in the afternoon. We’ve got nearly five hours before dark.”
“I repeat my offer. Bring Jerry in to see us tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see. Nothing is going to happen tonight.” She paused. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way into a meeting.”
She hung up.
Till sat at his desk for a full minute before he moved. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, but he had an instinctive urge to do something that made sense. He dialed the number of the flower shop where Holly worked. The phone rang a couple of times, and then, “Flower Basket, good afternoon.”
“Hi, Jeanne,” he said. “This is Jack Till.”
“I recognized your voice, Jack. I’ll get Holly.”
“Wait. If you have a second I’d like to talk to you first.”
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
“I wondered if you had an evening free this week. I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“Well… okay. I’m free tomorrow night. Or Thursday. Does either of them work for you?”
“Tomorrow night sounds best,” he said. “I was thinking of Banque in West Hollywood.”
“Wonderful. I read about the place all the time, but I’ve never been there.”
“Great. Can I pick you up at seven-thirty?”
“That’s fine. It gives me time to get the shop closed up.” She hesitated and then said, “Jack, I just wondered. Is this about Holly?”
“Only to the extent that she keeps telling me that you and I should go out.”
“Good,” she said. “Oh, I didn’t mean I don’t want to talk about her. It’s just that—”
“I know,” he said. “I’m glad you asked. It’s not about Holly; it’s about you.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night. You know where I live, right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you want to talk to Holly too?”
“I’d better,” he said.
There were some unidentifiable sounds, and then Holly’s voice. “Hi, Dad. I hear you finally got around to asking for a date.”
“She already told you?”
“Well, we had discussed it before. You know, how if it doesn’t work out, we’ll still be just as close friends. Or if it works out too well.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Was that all you wanted?”
“Not exactly. I wanted to call because I’m going out on a case tonight. You won’t be able to reach me for a few hours. I’ll be back in the morning sometime, probably. If I’m gone longer, you have a key to my apartment.”
“Dad, are you worried about getting your plants watered, or afraid you’ll get killed?”
“Why would I make a date for tomorrow night if I thought that?”
“You’re right. That would be pretty stupid.”
“But if that did happen sometime, you would know that I love you very much. And I’m proud of what a nice person you grew up to be. And you have a key, and know where the important papers are, and where the emergency cash is hidden. Right?”
“Right. And I love you too.”
“Then I’ll talk to you tomorrow, after I’m back.”
“I’ll look forward to it. Love you. Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, honey.”
Till walked from his desk into the second room, which was his private office. He had a pair of locked gun safes along the windowless outer wall. He worked the combinations and opened them. He placed on his desk two .45 ACP pistols and a short M-4 rifle with a sling. He took from another cabinet a heavy body armor vest.
Till was aware that if the Boyfriend brought out the Barrett .50-caliber rifle, the vest would do no good.
He picked up the rifle and shouldered it. The rifle was just like the old M-16 A2 that he had used in Vietnam, except that the M-4 had a four-position stock and an eleven-and-a-half-inch barrel, and the “Auto” position of the selector lever didn’t restore it to full auto. It weighed a bit over five pounds, and a thirty-round magazine added a pound. Till took out four full magazines and set them on the desk too.
Till brought out camouflage pants, shirt, and baseball cap; a “cam-elback” water carrier; and a small backpack. He took an infrared night scope out of the last safe, and attached it to the rifle. He loaded the gear into two duffels, carried them downstairs and out the rear entrance, and put them into the trunk of his car.
He went back upstairs, went to the desk, and picked up the road map. He had brought it with him when he’d gone to visit Jerry Escobar. He had listened carefully to Escobar’s description of the housing development, and then put a mark on the map. He had shown it to Escobar, who had said the mark was in the right place. Till had planned to use it to direct Detective Anthony and Detective Sellers and a SWAT team to the place. On the back was a pencil drawing of the development, with the house marked. He folded the map and took it with him.
He went back to the desk, opened his bottom drawer, and removed two sets of handcuffs. Not to bring handcuffs would have given his actions a different meaning.
Till knew it was a long drive out into the rough, craggy badlands to the desert housing development, but even as he covered mile after mile, everything was happening fast for him. There should have been more time to think about what he was doing, more time to make mental good-byes. But he knew that was just the mind speaking for the body, wanting any excuse to delay or avoid the risk of death. He saw the sign for the exit.
He went past the exit on the long straight interstate, because he wanted to see what it looked like first. There was a road leading away from the interstate toward some distant jagged hills. In the flatland between the interstate and the hills, the road led to an unlit stone sign with metal letters on it. Just beyond the sign there were maybe seventy-five or a hundred lots along a network of streets paved and with curbs, all of them occupied by practically new homes.
Jerry the copper thief had said the Boyfriend and Sharon were staying three streets from the near edge of the development in a two-story house with a circular window above the door, and a three-car garage.
He took the next exit a minute later, then took the overpass to the entrance going back, and got on and then off again at the proper exit. Just past the straight road into the development, there was a winding road that led up into the hills, probably put there by crews erecting utility poles. Till took it. As he climbed the road he would stop every time he could look down and see the development.
There were no lights on in any of the buildings, even though it was only around eleven at night. The street lamps were dark—they must have been paid for by monthly assessments on the vanished home owners.
After a half mile up the road there was a flat place at a turn where Till could park his car. He got out; walked to the trunk; took out the duffel bags; sorted out the rifle, pistols, ammunition, and gear. Then he put on the camouflage clothes, the armor vest, and the boots. He closed the trunk, locked the car, and then loaded the weapons. Each time he finished loading one, he set it on the car roof. He put on his camelback water carrier, then the small backpack that held only ammunition and a spare pistol, put the sling on his shoulder to hold the rifle, and began to walk toward the house.
He made his way along the hill road in the dark, stopping again whenever he had a view of the rows of houses below. There were still no signs of life. Once he stopped, took a drink of water through the tube that ran from the water carrier, and looked up at the sky. He wished that he had taken Holly out to remote places like this more often during her childhood. There seemed to be many more stars out here, shining more brightly than they ever shone in Los Angeles. There were so many things he should have shown her but somehow forgot, and she would have enjoyed them so much.
When he was near the lowest part of the road, he sat on the ground and used his night scope to try to find any human being he could. The scope images showed bare walls, empty streets.
It occurred to him that the Boyfriend and Sharon were probably living like desert animals, moving around at night when it was cooler and sleeping during the day when the sun was fiercest.
He went over the whole development again. There wasn’t any electric light that he could see. He counted three streets up from the highway, two houses in from the corner. That was where Jerry Escobar had seen them.
He studied the house. He could see the back window by the porch, where Jerry the copper thief had said he and his friend had climbed in. The window was covered now, with a sheet of plywood over it. Till decided to give himself more time to find the occupants. He turned on the infrared night scope and searched for body heat.
Till stayed in place on the stony hillside a hundred feet above the development, hidden by rocks and brush. The thermal scope showed hot spots from the heat of the sun all over the outside of the houses, as they slowly cooled from the edges inward, but he saw no human presence.
He stood, kept low, and began to walk. At first he was high enough on the hill to keep his eye on the house where the Boyfriend had been living with Sharon Long, but soon he could see only the house behind it.
Till walked steadily and quietly through dry chaparral and gravel that would have been the next phase of the housing development if there had been one.
Every few minutes he would stop, kneel, and use the night scope to try to read the neighborhood. He would find nothing, and advance. As he came closer to the house he consciously resisted the temptation to hurry to get out of the open.
Till reached the house, then stood with his back to the rear wall of the building, waited, and listened. After a few minutes, he stepped to the side of the door and quietly tried the knob, but found it locked. Till took out a knife, knelt beside the door, and pushed the blade in between the knob and the door. He carefully inched it up and into the crack where it could depress the latch, then pushed the door inward.