Downfall (26 page)

THE TAHOE CAME TO AN ABRUPT STOP, FARTHER UP THE ROAD
from where Joanna had parked three days earlier and close enough to the water hole for streamers of crime-scene tape to be briefly visible in the headlights. Jeremy switched off the engine. For a matter of moments—the better part of a minute—neither he nor Joanna spoke or moved.

“What happens now?” she asked at last, needing to break the silence.

“We go for a hike,” Jeremy answered.

He exited the vehicle, opened the back door, and then roughly manhandled Joanna out onto the ground. In the glow of the dome light, she saw that he held the Taser in his left hand. In that brief instant, she realized this was a near replay if not an exact one of what must have happened to Susan Nelson. Jeremy had escorted his victim away from her classroom, gripping her with
his right hand while holding the pocketed and hence invisible Taser in his left.

The Taser. Even though the darts had been deployed, Joanna knew the weapon could still function as a contact stun gun. After dragging her out of the vehicle, he shoved her face-forward up against the SUV's tailgate.

“We're going to climb up to the top,” he said. “I know you can't do that with your hands cuffed behind you, so I'm going to fasten them in front. If you try anything at all, I'll knock you senseless. Understand?”

Joanna nodded mutely at this answered prayer. Having the cuffs in front of her would be far better than having them fastened behind, but it wouldn't be a big help in terms of weaponry. These days, with her protruding belly in the way, leaning over far enough to tie her shoes was a challenge. Ditto for grabbing the Glock out of her ankle holster.

A moment later, one of the cuffs clicked open. Jeremy spun her around while clutching the arm with the cuff still on it, then he slammed the back of Joanna's head against the car hard enough to leave her seeing stars and wavering drunkenly on her feet.

“Give me your other hand!” he ordered. “Now!”

Still swaying dizzily, Joanna could do nothing but comply. As the second cuff clicked shut, she found herself staring into Jeremy Stock's throat. There was no moon, but enough starlight beamed down on this empty piece of desert to allow nearby bushes to cast pale shadows on the ground. And there was also enough illumination for her to get a full-on look at her opponent.

Since Jeremy was a good eight inches taller than her five-foot-four, that meant she was facing the base of his chin. He still wore
his uniform. A jagged cut of some kind trailed from the base of his chin and down to his collar, where a dark stain some two inches across marred the khaki fabric. Looking down as he struggled to refasten her cuff, she noticed that the backs of both hands were covered in a wild pattern of scratches.

Joanna was a cop. She had seen her share of those kinds of injuries and she knew what they meant—that the person wearing them had recently engaged in some kind of life-and-death struggle. Now, with sickening clarity, she understood what must have happened.

“What have you done?” she demanded. “Did you hurt Allison or Travis? Are they all right?”

“They're fine,” he said. “They're totally fine.”

But from the empty and coldly dispassionate way in which he delivered the words, she realized at once they weren't true—couldn't be true. Travis and Allison weren't “fine” at all. In fact, they were most likely dead. She remembered the hard-eyed stare with which Jeremy had regarded Travis during that earlier interview. Even then, his plan for what would happen next was most likely under consideration if not already in motion. What was it that had pushed him over the edge—the DNA sample, maybe? He had clearly been furious about that, but why?

Joanna had thought for a time that if she pleaded with Jeremy to spare her life for the sake of her baby's, maybe he would let them both live. Now she forced herself to let go of that tiny thread of hope. Pleading for mercy clearly wouldn't work. Granting mercy wasn't in Jeremy Stock's playbook. If he was so deranged at this point that he had sacrificed his own child, he certainly wouldn't hesitate to slaughter hers.

So rather than beg and plead, she went on the offensive, focusing
on the scratches on the backs of his hands—scratches that hadn't been there earlier in the afternoon. The fact that there had been no defensive wounds on Susan Nelson's body had made Dr. Baldwin theorize that she had participated in consensual sex before she died. Joanna doubted that was true.

“We know Susan had sex shortly before her death,” Joanna said. “Traces of DNA were found on her clothing, but how did that happen? Did she want to have sex with you or did you knock her senseless before you raped her?”

Joanna never saw the blow coming. Jeremy delivered a powerful slap that hit her full across her right cheek and sent her tumbling helplessly to the ground. The way the Taser darts pricked into her made her feel as though she had landed on a piece of cholla. Rolling over onto her side, she tried to cover her belly with her cuffed hands in case he kicked her, but he did not. Instead, grabbing her by the shoulders, he lifted her to her feet and shook her as if she were little more than a rag doll.

“Susan knew I was furious with her. She thought giving me a piece of tail would settle me down. It didn't work. When it was over, she got just what she deserved, and you will, too,” he growled. “Now get moving!”

Still woozy from the blow, Joanna fought to remain upright and put one foot in front of the other. She tasted blood in her mouth and knew that he had loosened at least one and maybe several of her teeth. Already she felt the side of her face swelling. She'd look like hell tomorrow. And then she remembered. Tomorrow was the day of the funeral—her mother's funeral. If she somehow made it through the night and lived long enough to make it to the mortuary, she knew exactly what a disapproving Eleanor would have said.

During Joanna's childhood, there had been very few school or church or Bible school events at which Joanna Lee Lathrop hadn't shown up with at least one scraped knee or torn elbow or maybe even two of each. Her mother's comment had never changed.

“Wouldn't you know,” she'd say, shaking her head in despair. “Here you are looking like something the cat dragged in. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?”

Joanna realized that if she and Sage somehow made it through this awful night and came out alive into the light of day, Eleanor would be totally justified in saying the same thing. Except since Eleanor wouldn't be there to deliver those words, Joanna would have to do so herself.

And suddenly, despite everything that was going on, she felt the beginning of a very inappropriate giggle bubble upward in her throat. She realized that if she could laugh in the face of all this, maybe she was as deranged as Jeremy. But the giggle came anyway. She couldn't stop it.

“What's so funny?” Jeremy demanded, shoving her from behind and making her struggle to retain her balance.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

But she knew one thing about that inappropriate attack of laughter. It was symbolic of something else—of a determination to overcome and live.

One way or the other, Joanna Brady intended to do exactly that.

“I'M GOING TO GO OUTSIDE AND SEE WHAT'S GOING ON,” ROBIN ANNOUNCED
.

“I'm with you,” Butch told her.

“No,” Robin said. “You should stay here in the lab, out of the way.”

“Like bloody hell!” he retorted. When he followed her out of the lab, Agent Watkins didn't object.

They never made it as far as the crime scene. The administrative end of the hallway was a beehive of activity as personnel from the cordoned-off crime scene outside hurried into the building and filed into the conference room. By the time Robin and Butch reached the doorway, the room was filled beyond capacity. With a standing-room-only crowd, Robin and Butch squeezed in barely far enough to allow Casey Ledford to tuck in behind them.

A grim-faced Chief Deputy Hadlock made his way to the
lectern. “All right, folks, quiet down, and listen up,” he ordered, “I want everyone on the same page. We have reason to believe that the person who took Sheriff Brady hostage is one of our own—Deputy Jeremy Stock. In the course of the last several hours, a number of facts have come to light.

“We have evidence that suggests that for a considerable period of time, one of our homicide victims—Susan Nelson—was a sexual predator preying on young male students attending SVSSE. One of her victims, namely Travis Stock, believed he was the father of Susan's unborn baby. Through DNA profiling, we've now established that a near relative of Travis's rather than Travis himself is the baby's actual father. Jeremy's father has been deceased for years. That leaves us to believe that Deputy Stock fathered Susan Nelson's child. The same DNA profile turned up on clothing found at Susan Nelson's homicide scene.

“Sheriff Brady was abducted earlier this evening, apparently when she left the building to go to her car. We've found evidence that suggests that a Taser was used in the attack. Agent Robin Watkins of the FBI and the Tucson special agent in charge, Bruce Ryder, are assisting us in attempting to identify the AFIDs found at the scene. That will take time, of course, but for now the assumption is that Jeremy used his department-issued Taser in order to overpower her.”

Hadlock paused momentarily to consult his notes while the room remained locked in hushed silence. Before he could continue, the jarring ring of a cell phone shattered the silence. The chief deputy looked on impatiently while Agent Watkins dug the offending device out of her pocket. She glanced at it. Then, rather than leaving the room, she took the call and listened for several long moments before nodding and hanging up.

“Well?” Tom Hadlock inquired. “Is it what we thought?”

Robin nodded. “They're dead,” she said quietly.

“Both of them?”

Robin nodded again.

Tom Hadlock closed his eyes and gritted his teeth before speaking again. “A short time ago, officers from Sierra Vista PD were dispatched to Jeremy Stock's home. Apparently both Allison and Travis Stock are deceased.”

Audible gasps shot through the crowded room.

“Quiet,” Tom ordered. “Bearing that in mind, I believe it's reasonable to assume that the perpetrator behind all these atrocities, including the attack on Sheriff Brady earlier this evening, can be none other than Deputy Stock. I'm hereby issuing an APB. I cannot stress this enough. If you encounter him, Jeremy must be regarded as armed and dangerous. You may still consider him a fellow officer and friend, but he is to be approached with extreme caution.

“On the off chance that Jeremy might have been driving his patrol vehicle, I asked Tica Romero to use our fleet management system to locate his Tahoe. Just before I came into the conference room, she told me that the vehicle is currently parked at the base of Geronimo, the scene of both the Susan Nelson and Desirée Wilburton homicides. Tica has also been able to activate the system's theft deterrent. As of right now, Jeremy's vehicle has been rendered nonfunctional. If he attempts to leave the area, he'll be doing so on foot.”

Hadlock paused and looked around the room. “I'm operating under the assumption that most of you are familiar with Geronimo.”

There were knowing nods all around the room. “In case
you're not, here's a visual.” He fiddled with a laptop, and a few moments later, a satellite view of Geronimo showed on a screen behind him. From his spot at the back of the room, it was difficult for Butch to make out the details as the chief deputy moved a cursor arrow around on the screen.

“This shows the west side of Geronimo, which sits east and a little to the north of the eastern edge of Warren. According to the GPS, the Tahoe is parked right here on the near side of this dark spot, which is actually a clump of trees surrounding the water hole at the base of the peak. This is the area where Desirée Wilburton was camped before she was killed. The spot where the two victims' bodies came to rest is right here, halfway down from the top.” Again the cursor moved on the screen.

“As you can see,” Hadlock continued, “this is an extremely isolated location. Any effort to approach it in vehicles is entirely out of the question. Jeremy would see us as soon as we left town and moved in that direction. We have a horse-mounted search and rescue team, but that's made up of volunteers rather than sworn officers. In addition, it would take too much time to assemble and deploy them—time we don't have.

“At the moment we have no idea of Jeremy's intentions, but given that he's most likely responsible for what happened to the two earlier homicide victims as well as the slaughter of his own family, we have to assume the worst—that he intends to murder Sheriff Brady, too. If we're going to effect Sheriff Brady's rescue, it will have to be done the old-fashioned way—on foot—and in a hell of a hurry.”

Listening to the briefing, Butch was impressed. All the while Joanna had patiently been helping Tom Hadlock grow into the job of chief deputy, Butch had been one of the man's most unrelenting
critics. In this roomful of people, all of them listening to the chief deputy's every word with rapt attention, he could understand, for the first time, what Joanna had seen in the man. Tom Hadlock had a commanding presence about him, and Butch had no doubt that the officers involved in this dicey operation would follow his every order to the letter.

“This is a potentially dangerous situation, but time is of the essence,” Hadlock continued. “Do I have any volunteers?”

Hands shot up all around the room—twenty people in all, among them jail personnel who had been pulled away from their usual duties. Hadlock looked around the room, pointing as he went, focusing first on the younger and fitter officers, including the guys from the jail. “You, you, you, and you—you're to go with Detective Carbajal. I want you to approach Geronimo from the backside by way of the rifle range and take up defensive positions around the base. Do not attempt to climb the mountain. If Jeremy has the high ground and a rifle, he'll be able to pick you off with the greatest of ease. It's imperative that you wait for him to come to you.

“When you see him, avoid using weapons if at all possible. There will be too many friendlies on the ground out there to risk a shooting war. Jeremy has been operating in the dark long enough for his eyes to have adjusted to the lack of light. Once he's in range, shine your Maglites straight in his eyes. With any kind of luck, that should momentarily blind him.

“Everybody else? You're with me. Because Jeremy has his own radio capability, this entire operation is to be conducted with zero radio communication. I'll lead the group approaching from the front and take up a position near his parked vehicle. When we come up over the top of Yuma Trail, I'll leave my
headlights on. Everyone else should douse theirs. I don't want Jeremy looking off over the valley and seeing a whole parade of arriving vehicles. That'll be a dead giveaway.

“We'll park at the end of Black Knob on the near side of the cattle guard and walk in from there. If we all rumble across the cattle guard, one vehicle after another, noise from that might travel far enough for Jeremy to hear us coming.

“Once you reach the mountain itself, deploy yourselves around the base of it with several people remaining in the vicinity of the disabled vehicle. We all know the Tahoe isn't drivable at the moment, but Jeremy doesn't. In other words, since that's his most likely means of escape, that's where he'll go. Let me repeat what I said earlier: no one is to go up the mountain looking for him. We wait below and let him come to us—with one exception.”

As if needing to collect his thoughts, Chief Deputy Hadlock paused long enough to take a drink of water before turning his attention on the K9 unit. Terry Gregovich was seated on the last seat in the front row with Spike blocking the aisle beside him. The dog lay on the carpeted floor with his ears pricked forward and his grizzled gray and white muzzle resting on his front paws, as if taking it all in.

“Up to now, everything I've mentioned is all about catching Jeremy and successfully taking him into custody while he's trying to get away, but the real point of this exercise is to nail the suspect before he has a chance to carry out whatever it is he intends to do to Sheriff Brady. And that, Deputy Gregovich is where you and Spike come in.

“I know that the two of you were all over Geronimo the other day helping Dave Hollicker gather evidence. Tonight we
need you to go up there again. Once we reach the Tahoe, I want you to give Spike a whiff of Jeremy's scent and send him off on the hunt. Does the dog have a silent mode?”

“Yes, sir,” Terry answered.

“In this case, silence is golden.”

“The problem is, sir,” Terry objected, “Spike can get up the mountain a lot faster than I can.”

“Is he capable of taking down a suspect on his own without your actually being present?”

“Yes, sir,” Terry said. “Totally, but it's likely that the suspect will suffer worse injuries if I'm not there to call Spike off.”

“What do you know!” Chief Hadlock said. “Now, wouldn't that just be too damned bad! Happy hunting, Spike. Go get him. As for everybody else? Hit it, people. Wear your vests and take along plenty of water. Be safe out there, but let's go get our old girl back,” he added. “We need her.”

Because they were nearest the door, Butch and Robin were the first ones out of the room and into the corridor. Without any discussion, they headed for the front lobby and set out across the parking lot.

“Do they call Joanna ‘old girl' to her face? I wonder,” Butch asked. “After all, Joanna's a hell of a lot younger than Chief Deputy Hadlock.”

“Believe me,” Agent Watkins assured him, “in cop-shop parlance, ‘old girl' is a term of endearment.”

When they reached the end of the Justice Center parking lot, the front entrance remained blocked by the idling patrol car. Marliss Shackleford was still very much in evidence, as were two additional people Butch immediately suspected of being reporters.

“Great,” he muttered. “What's going to happen to this supposedly silent operation if a band of reporters gets in line behind the patrol cars?”

Just then, the first of a string of several vehicles approached the entrance and stopped facing the barrier patrol car. A moment later, the SUV's door opened and the hulking figure of Chief Deputy Hadlock stepped out into the otherworldly glow cast by the collection of flashing emergency lights. Once on the ground, Hadlock marched directly toward the deputy and the trio of reporters.

“Here's the deal,” he said, loudly enough so everyone on the ground heard him. “At the moment we've got a serious hostage situation on our hands. In order to resolve it, we need to move quickly and under the cover of darkness. I'll be holding a press briefing once the operation is concluded and the crisis successfully averted. In the meantime, if any one of you makes any effort to follow my people or to interfere with this operation in any way, I'm warning you, there will be serious consequences.”

“What are you going to do,” Marliss chirped, “put us in jail? You can't do that. What about freedom of the press?”

“What about it?” Hadlock returned. “Lives are at stake here, Ms. Shackleford. So let me say this one more time—there will be consequences. Anyone who interferes with this operation in any fashion will be automatically barred from attending all future departmental press briefings. Is that clear?”

With that, Tom Hadlock returned to his vehicle. Once the barricade patrol car was removed, the others drove away unimpeded. Marliss was still fuming in outrage as Butch and Robin walked past. When they reached her government-issue Taurus, Robin clicked open the trunk, reached for her vest, and began putting it on.

“You're going there?” Butch asked.

“Damned straight.”

“Me, too,” Butch said.

“No,” Robin replied. “Absolutely not. Your son and Jenny already have one parent at risk. Don't give Jeremy Stock a chance to make it double or nothing.”

Butch was going to object, but then he didn't. Agent Watkins had a point. If everything went south, someone needed to be there for the kids.

“You're right,” he conceded. “I'll head home, but please keep me posted, one way or the other. Don't make me sit around waiting for someone to come knock on the door and give me the bad news.”

“I'll need your phone number for that,” Robin said. “And I promise, once this is over, you'll be the first to know.”