Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2) (37 page)

     
Osuna cut in: "You're not going alone. Dispatch can get one of our officers over to the courthouse in ten minutes."

     
"You've got my number—I'll take my cell phone with me."

B
ENJI GOT HIS
second wind as he raced over the base of Moon Mountain. He was panting, and he could hear the tiny breath of his life—flowing in and out of his lungs—even above the rush of air.

     
To the north lightning shivered, and thunderheads rolled across the blue sea of sky like great black ships.

     
For half an instant, Benji glimpsed his ancestors who had covered this same terrain barefoot or in leather moccasins. They carried the news from pueblo to village. They ran in the sacred ceremonies. In an emergency, nothing but death had stopped the ancient runners.

     
He pictured Sylvia Strange—his vision of her as a body made of ash. Nothing would stop him from his mission.

     
He felt as if great storm winds were surging him forward, but almost at once they washed him back again. Like ocean breakers. He imagined that a swimmer trapped in a riptide must feel exactly as he felt. Lost Without bearing, without direction. Tempted to surrender to the current—or the wind. Benji was terrified that he would lose his way completely.

     
He squeezed his eyes shut to stay in touch with his inner compass. Instead of direction, he felt the presence of a great black void. Overhead he heard the roar of a jet plane. The roar increased, growing so loud, so painful, he believed it would rip open his skull and suck out his thoughts.

     
He clutched his head with both hands, and his body began to fall. Wind rushed up around his ears. When he was sure he should have hit the ground, he forced his eyes open. And he saw that the jet plane was a bird.

     
An owl with wings afire, and eyes that were as old and deep as the earth.

A
NOTHER
SHOT
RIPPED
over Matt's head and raised a puff of dirt behind him. The shooter had to be on high ground, and his—or her—aim was improving. Whatever the weapon, it was powerful. The rhythm of the shots indicated a revolver.

     
From the impact point of the bullets, Matt figured the shooter was firing from a spot between a pile of old tires and a big metal trash bin on the northeast corner of the parking lot. If so, he had a good shot at Chaney.

     
Matt aimed toward the trash bin, finger on the trigger. From the corner of his eye he could see that Dan Chaney was inching his way along the arroyo toward some scrap two-by-fours and a thicket of chamisa. The federal agent was down on his belly, probably gauging his chances to make a break for cover.

     
Kiki yelled out from the trailer, "What the hell's happening?"

     
Matt opened his mouth to warn her off when he saw Dan Chaney's body jerked back by sudden impact. At the same time he heard the crack of gunfire.

     
Chaney was hit.

     
Over the buzz of highway traffic, Matt heard the rumble of a motorcycle. He followed the noise and saw the shooter hotdogging his way from the parking lot onto dirt. The bike almost went down when it jammed into a pothole, but the rider stayed on. Kevin Chase!

     
Matt took aim as Kevin pulled his gun from between his thighs. He was roughly fifteen yards away; there was a faint flash as the gun exploded. Matt yelled a warning to Chaney but his words were lost under the sharp report of gunfire. One round whizzed past Matt's ear. He fired just before he threw himself behind the Chevy. His heart was hammering inside his chest.

     
The motorcycle accelerated and skidded out of the lot onto the frontage road. Matt vaulted to his feet and sprinted to Chaney. The F.B.I. agent was seated on the ground. He had the palm of one hand pressed against his bicep. Blood had seeped into his shirtsleeve. He was white-faced, breathing rapidly.

     
Chaney said, "Go get that asshole!"

     
Matt called to Kiki who had cautiously emerged from her trailer: "Get an ambulance."

     
Then he raced to the Caprice, spun the car around, and tore out to the frontage road. He switched on his siren. As he passed the Pojoaque Market and Liquor Store, he radioed a Code 30 emergency:
Shooting. Officer down
.

     
Matt was headed north, traveling parallel to the highway; he had a clear line to the motorcycle, a Honda, two hundred feet ahead. But just beyond the Honda, cars turning off to the Burger King threatened to slow the biker's escape.

     
The Honda speeded into the left lane, passing a Cadillac and a flatbed truck. Instead of cutting back into the right lane, Kevin Chase banked the Honda even farther to the left onto the shoulder. A southbound Range Rover blared its horn.

     
Three seconds later, the speedometer in the Caprice hovering at sixty-five, Matt saw the reason for Kevin's detour: traffic in the right lane had come to a standstill. Low-riders, high-riders, and family station wagons were treading asphalt bumper to bumper.

     
Paper signs announced the reason for the slowdown:
GRAND OPENING, BINGO AND SLOTS
!

     
Matt swore through his teeth as he slammed the wheel to the right.

     
Seconds later, he saw an opportunity to escape. He snaked the Caprice into the lot of Tio's Mexican Food Restaurant. He pressed down on the accelerator and raced through the adjacent lot—barely avoiding a collision with a propane tank—then bounced off the edge of asphalt, across an acequia, and onto dirt. The motorcycle had gained another eighth of a mile.

K
EVIN
C
HASE
KNEW
the cop wasn't far behind him. He guided the Honda along the shoulder over broken glass, trash, and rocks. He shifted his weight, pulled up, and jumped a drainage culvert.

     
He was sweating like a pig; the salt water stung his eyes and ran down his face. But he loved the warm electric wind, the flash of oncoming traffic, and the shrill scream of the cop's siren.

     
He'd been working up to this and whatnot; he only wished he hadn't missed his shot at Sylvia's cop. Too much adrenaline, and he'd jerked the trigger on the first three rounds—the rounds meant for Matt England.

     
He swerved to avoid a bag of garbage that had fallen from some asshole's truck. A stranded car just ahead seemed to come out of nowhere.

     
He had to jam the Honda to the right, cut across both lanes, and wind his way between cars turning into the parking lot of the Bingo Palace. He cut in front of a high-rider and clipped its chrome bumper with his helmet. He heard a horn, even over the scream of the siren.

     
"Fuck it!" Now, he had the high-rider on his ass. There was only one thing to do; he waved his middle finger at the driver and began a slalom race between parked cars.

     
When he was almost to the end of the row, a Toyota 4Runner pulled out in front of him:
I don't think I can make this—whoa!—shit!

M
ATT
NAVIGATED
THE
Chevy through a sawhorse barricade; he'd taken a shortcut into the Bingo Palace lot. He narrowly avoided a convertible jammed with kids; the girls in the backseat waved as he flew by doing forty-five. He only had time to catch a flash of pink and green and smiling faces. His eyes were on the Honda.

     
A high-rider mounted on gargantuan wheels was weaving between two lanes of parked cars behind the careening motorcycle.

     
Suddenly Matt saw the bike go down. It skidded under the belly of the high-rider and out of Matt's sight lines. Just then the Caprice plowed into a
NO PARKING
sign. The screech of metal made Matt cringe.

     
He reversed, worked free of the steel post, and covered the short distance to the spot where Kevin had gone down.

     
He saw the motorcycle. It was on its side, jammed between a Toyota 4Runner and the high-rider. The wiry truck driver stood, weight leveraged, pinning the stunned fugitive against the truck bed.

     
Matt skidded to a stop and slammed out of the car.

     
"I'm a police officer!"

     
The truck driver stared at Matt, not moving. "This asshole scratched my chrome."

     
Weapon drawn, Matt said, "Back off." He stepped up to Kevin Chase and twisted his arm behind his back. Then he snapped cuffs over the biker's hands and patted him down. No gun—they would find it somewhere on the road.

     
Kevin Chase stared at Matt with bulging, frightened eyes. He said, "Killer made me do it!"

     
"Who is Killer?" Matt jerked the cuffs and twisted them hard.

     
The words finally stuttered from Kevin's lips. "Erin. . . Erin Tulley."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

S
YLVIA
PARKED
THE
Volvo next to Judge Howzer's Mercedes in front of his home. She had been here before, most recently for a fiesta party almost a year ago—the night Zozobra, Old Man Gloom, had been burned in a traditional pagan ritual. She remembered that evening in detail; it was the night her friend and associate Malcolm Treisman had been admitted into the intensive-care unit at St. Vincent Hospital. Nathaniel Howzer had been kind to Sylvia; he'd taken her under his wing. They had talked for a while on the veranda while flames lit the sky over Santa Fe, and the fifty-foot Zozobra went up in smoke.

     
Sylvia stepped out of her car, slammed the door, and froze. What was she doing? The judge might not have a clue where to find Erin Tulley. He could refuse to talk. Or maybe it was too late to matter. . . .

     
Refusing to acknowledge her last thought, she glanced worriedly at her watch; someone from state police should be meeting her any minute. She'd left a message with dispatch:
Change of plan
.

     
But no vehicles turned onto the long driveway leading up to the house. And there had been no phone calls from Terry Osuna.

     
Sylvia walked up the flagstone path and climbed the steps to the front door of the house. No one answered her knock. When she rang the bell, she heard dogs bark inside the house; she recognized Adobe's deep bass. It was punctuated by the high-pitched whine of a smaller dog.

     
When Sylvia had called the courthouse fifteen minutes earlier, Howzer's secretary, Ellie, had told her that the judge wasn't scheduled in court today: "He said he was going home. I'm worried because he hasn't been feeling well."

     
Ellie obviously cared about the judge. That was understandable; although Nathaniel Howzer was reserved, he was known as a fair man—on the bench and off.

     
Sylvia began to walk around to the side of the house and the veranda.

     
"Sylvia?"

     
She pivoted, and she saw the judge standing on his front stoop. He looked groggy and disoriented. She wondered if he was ill or drunk.

     
She said, "Are you all right, Nathan?"

     
It took him a moment to answer: "I was resting. Won't you come inside?"

     
She followed him into the house. The floors were dirt—the expensive kind: pounded to the consistency of rock, polished to a bloodred sheen, and finished with acrylic. Four doors opened off the foyer. Beyond an arched doorway, Sylvia stepped into the large living room with its massive vigas and smooth plaster walls. She heard Adobe's frantic bark from the rear of the house.

     
Sun streaked into the room through partially drawn curtains. The air smelled of cedar. She sat in a high-backed chair opposite the judge. He seemed to have forgotten she was in the room. His gaze was intent on some distant point.

     
Where to begin? Softly, she queried, "Nathan?"

     
His eyes pounced on her, blurred, refocused. He said, "I don't have much time, and you want to know about Erin."

     
"Yes." The words Sylvia had rehearsed on the drive up—about Matt, the Polaroid, and Erin—died on her lips.

     
He nodded, his eyelids lifting with effort. "She was such a good child. All children are lovely—but she was exceptional. A golden child. And she and Dupont were inseparable . . . like sister and brother."

     
Howzer frowned as his mind drifted back to the past. He sighed dreamily. "I thought bringing her here would help . . . erase the past."

     
As if it were possible to erase anyone's past. She said, "You brought Jayne Gladstone here?"

     
The judge barely nodded. "I had the connections. . . . After she left the hospital, I gave her a new life, a new start as Erin Tulley. For a while, it seemed to work."

     
Sylvia shook her head. "She's killed two men." She leaned forward in the chair and said, "I need your help." She handed Howzer the Polaroid of Matt. He barely glanced at it.

     
Sylvia said, "Matt's in danger, Nathan. I think you're the only person who knows where to find Erin."

     
The judge looked up, his ruddy cheeks wet with tears. He whispered, "I'm so sorry."

     
Directly behind the judge the tall hand-carved door swung open, and Erin Tulley walked into the room. Her dark hair was loose, and her eyes were empty, as if she had stepped outside herself. She gripped a .38 caliber revolver in her hand.