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I slammed the stick shift into park, and it bit back hard against my hand. Then the car gave out an awful metal-shearing-off-metal groan. Lindsey pulled the emergency brake. The car jerked sideways and we slammed hard into a concrete pillar.
I could hear the Ford snap into reverse, prepare to back off for another try at us. I didn’t wait.
“Go!” I pushed Lindsey out of the passenger door, then I climbed over and followed her, running madly toward a row of cars. I heard the Ford’s driver drop it back into drive, then tires screeching under acceleration, a bull from Motown hell running at my wounded matador. There was a second’s silence, then a sharp struck note, a cascade of rubber, metal, and composites protesting, a ghastly crash against the far wall. I had just enough time to let out a breath before my ex-wife’s BMW landed on Adams Street with a distant explosion of compressing metal and glass.
“Fuck this!” Lindsey said, pulling the H amp;K submachine gun from her backpack. She made a quick move above the hood of a Saab and squeezed a burst into the Ford. The shots came so fast they merged into a single, high-pitched thunderclap. Then the Saab’s windshield shattered behind a deeper explosion. “They’re out of the car,” Lindsey said, dropping back under cover. Another deep boom, and the metal door of the car seemed to implode by my shoulder.
“Shit,” I said. “They’ve got some real firepower.” I rolled onto the oily floor, searching for their feet. I saw a pair of boots and lined up the sights of the Python, fighting a panic that was about to swallow me up. Hold breath. Exhale. Pull trigger.
The big revolver jumped in my hand, and I heard a high-pitched screeching from the other side of the car. I didn’t take the time to check on the guy or his partner. I knew I had bought us only a few seconds. Grabbing Lindsey’s wrist, I sprang up and ran hard for the exit stairs. As we ran, she turned and unleashed another round from the submachine gun. The bullets ricocheted against the walls and cars like the devil’s calliope, and then my hands hit the blessed metal of the exit door, which opened.
Chapter Twenty-one
We left the scene of a crime. It didn’t speak well of the acting sheriff of Maricopa County. But right then I didn’t give a damn. Maybe I half-amputated the foot of one of the gorillas who tried to kill us, but I was no closer to understanding who they were, or why they were after us. We went to the hotel because of a call from Captain E.J. Kimbrough, commander of the major crimes unit of the Sheriff’s Office. I couldn’t believe other cops had set us up for an ambush. But I didn’t dare disbelieve it.
We ran, half fell, down the stairs and burst out onto the street like fugitives. We didn’t stop running. Survival intuition had kicked in. Lindsey could outrun me any day, she was lighter, more agile, long-legged. But she gripped my hand and we sprinted together. It seemed important to be connected. The dirty concrete of the exit stairs pounded its way into the muscles of my calves. Then we were outside on asphalt and sidewalks. Across Adams, past the sprawled wreck of a BMW 325i, around the back of the old Hanny’s building, which had somehow been saved from the demolition crew that made a parking lot of the old central business district. My lungs burned in the cool night air. The streets were empty, but our insides assumed the other goon was right behind us. Sound carries strangely in the Valley, and every distant car engine and closing door echoed with a threatening closeness. Only when we had crossed Jefferson and moved past the halogen glare of the parking garage for Bank One Ballpark did we feel safe enough to walk. A derelict saw us and went the other way. Our guns were concealed but we must have looked wild. At last, we heard sirens and a chopper going the other direction, to the hotel.
We found sanctuary at Alice Cooperstown, the baseball bar in one of the old produce warehouses on Jackson Street. If the Diamondbacks, Suns, or Coyotes had been playing downtown, the crowd would have been packed out on the sidewalk. Tonight, lucky for us, it was only busy enough for a couple to sit anonymously in the back. He was tall, broad-shouldered, thoughtful-looking. She was dark-haired, fair-skinned, complicated-looking-there was the tiny gold stud in her nostril and the recently fired submachine-gun concealed in her backpack.
“Those guys looked like cops,” Lindsey said, finally speaking after the waitress brought us beers, a Negra Modelo for me, a Sol for Lindsey.
I nodded. “You’re OK, right?”
“I’m OK,” she said. She had a streak of dirt on her fine cheekbone. I reached over and gently rubbed it off. She leaned into my hand, luxuriating in my touch. “Dave, what’s going on?” she said. “People are trying to kill us.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But whoever came after Nixon and Peralta is now after us.”
“Dirty cops,” she said bitterly.
“Somebody is giving us credit for knowing more than we do,” I said. “We know there was some kind of scheme involving Dean Nixon and some deputies, twenty years ago. Presumably it was illegal. We know it was related to the shooting in Guadalupe, and the wild life at Camelback Falls. Somehow that ties into Nixon being murdered and Peralta being shot.”
“How?”
“Whoever is trying to kill us thinks we have that figured out, and so we’re a threat to them.” I sounded like I was giving a lecture on the presidency of Grover Cleveland. I took a deep swig of Negra Modelo.
Lindsey said, “Do you think Kimbrough set us up?”
“No,” I said. Then, “I don’t think so.”
“Think about it, Dave. He was the only person I called Wednesday night when you went to meet O’Keefe. Then somebody tried to take a shot at you. He was the only other person who knew about the logbook, and suddenly Jack Abernathy knew.” Concentration bunched up the skin above her brow like pulled linen. “You have to consider it.”
I let out a long breath. She was right. But
it made no sense. Kimbrough had no connection to the department of twenty years ago.
“That may not mean anything,” she said. “He’s former DEA, for God’s sake. And Bobby Hamid talked about the River Hogs being involved in the drug trade…” She paused, dropped her shoulders. “Am I being nuts, here?”
I took her hand, held it tightly, grateful for skin-on-skin contact with her. “You’re not nuts,” I said. “What about Abernathy? He worked in the East County. He knew about the River Hogs.”
“His badge number isn’t in Nixon’s book,” she said. “No senior officer is there but Peralta.”
“I guess. But Abernathy was in Peralta’s office the day he was shot. That phone call I got came from an extension in Abernathy’s custody bureau. He’s been acting strange as hell.”
“We can’t rule anybody out.”
“We’ve got to find a way to go on the offensive,” I said. “I’m tired of being a target. I want to find out what these people are so afraid of.”
“We don’t even know who to trust.”
