The Nightmare Thief (22 page)

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Authors: Meg Gardiner

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Romance, #Thriller

BOOK: The Nightmare Thief
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It looked as though the rancher had tried to pat Dustin on the shoulder, to say,
Ain’t this a low blow.
Thunder warbled, hard and close. Behind it, above the wind, another sound twisted in the air. It was a keening, broken sobbing.
Jo blinked, her skin prickling, and tried to hold the horse still. The night had gone dark again, the bodies indistinguishable from the ground, even with the clouds blowing past, the moonlight cutting through the rain in piebald patches.
The horse threw its head up and down and whinnied.
The keening increased. And a swatch of moonlight passed over the bodies. Out of the trees, hands gripping her head, staggered Autumn.
31
T
he cop who showed up at Jo’s house was an Asian American detective with vivid eyes and a hard glare, dressed in black from head to toe. She greeted Tina and shook Evan’s hand.
“Amy Tang, Homicide Detail.”
Tang was the size of a mongoose and looked as likely to stand her ground against cobras and all other threats. She knew her way to Jo’s kitchen.
“Still no word,” Evan said. “Her number is out of service, she hasn’t checked in at the Lodge in Yosemite, and she never made it to the sheriff’s office in Sonora.”
“What time did you last hear from her?”
“Got the text message just before four P.M. She was on the trail returning from the abandoned mine.”
Evan rolled out her USGS topographical map on Jo’s kitchen table. “The mine is here. Jo’s message indicated she was approximately here”—she tapped a spot—“and even if Jo’s a slow hiker, she should have made it back to her truck in an hour, max.”
Tang stared at the map. “She’s absurdly fit. She’d think this hike was playtime. Was she by herself?”
“Gabe went with her,” Tina said. She balled her hands into fists. “You think something happened?”
“I do. But don’t panic. She could have gotten a flat tire. Quintana’s with her. That alone should reassure you.”
Tina nodded tightly, looking the opposite of reassured, as though thinking: If something had happened to Jo
even though she was with Gabriel Quintana
, things had to be bad.
Evan put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Think we could rustle up some coffee?”
She didn’t want to be presumptuous, but if Tina didn’t do something, she was going to pop like a jack-in-the-box.
Tina nodded briskly. “Good idea.” She rounded the kitchen counter and began preparing a pot.
Evan turned to Tang. “What do you know about Ruby Kyle Ratner?”
“What do
you
know? Run me through it.”
Evan explained how Jo had found Wylie’s cell phone, discovered he’d been carjacked, and heard the carjacker’s muffled threats. She described how she herself had pieced together partial phone numbers and uncovered Ragnarok Investments. And how she’d met Mrs. Ruby Ratner, the pistol-packing muumuu.
From her jacket she got the flyer Mrs. Ratner had given her. “I know Ruben Kyle Ratner’s an ex-con with a violent record. You could use his photo to terrorize inmates at Gitmo.”
On the flyer, Ratner looked lean and leathery. The white ring around his eye gave the appearance of crazed light leaking from within. His gaze was beyond intense. In it, Evan read both cunning and a challenge.
What you looking at?
Tang took the flyer. “This is off the record. Background only.”
“What can you tell me?”
Tang didn’t carry a purse. She wasn’t even wearing a badge. Clearly she’d been off duty. She took her phone from her jacket and pulled up the camera roll. On it she had uploaded a series of photos of Ruben Kyle Ratner.
“Here’s an early mug shot.”
He was softer physically. Much heavier. He was in his early twenties, and he weighed perhaps seventy-five pounds more than he did now.
“Prison takes the weight off and turns it into muscle, doesn’t it?” Evan said.
“And into poison,” Tang said.
The early-edition Ruby had smooth, round cheeks, like an egg, and a bushy Pancho Villa mustache. A long ponytail hung down his back.
Tang said, “When that lawyer disappeared, the department had its eyes on this guy. You’ve just brought him back onto our radar.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Caveat—Phelps Wylie’s disappearance was not my case. None of this stuff has officially crossed my desk.”
Tina looked up from the burbling coffeemaker. “Didn’t Jo get in touch with you?”
“Of course she did. She tried to sweet-talk me into giving her information about the case. But we had no leads strong enough to be considered probable cause.”
“What kind of leads did you have?” Evan said.
“Most of them turned out to be dead ends.”
“Whose ass are you hanging a big fat towel over? What information did the SFPD have?”
“It was deemed of interest but not dispositive. Until tonight.”
“You knew about Ratner?”
“I didn’t. But—”
“He’s dangerous?” Tina said, rounding the counter and approaching Tang. “And you knew it and didn’t tell Jo?”
Tang put her hands in her jacket pockets. She looked smooth and implacable. “The department had a lead on a possible—I emphasize,
possible
, as in tentative, speculative, uncertain—connection between Wylie’s car and Ratner.”
“The Mercedes?” Evan said. “What connection?”
When Wylie’s car turned up abandoned in a Calexico strip mall, everybody had gone wild, thinking he might have crossed the Mexican border and fled the country.
“It’s a five-hundred-mile drive from San Francisco to Calexico. Farther than a Mercedes can go on a single tank of gas,” Tang said.
She pulled up a new photo. “Nine P.M. the day Wylie disappeared. Truck stop on I-Five in Bakersfield.”
It was a still, grabbed from a CCTV surveillance video at a gas station. Center of the frame, license plate fully visible, was Wylie’s black Mercedes.
Nobody was in the car. But walking toward the minimart was a man in a hooded parka. He was white, wearing sunglasses. That was all Evan could discern.
“We think it’s Ratner,” Tang said.
“He paid with a credit card?”
“Cash.”
“Why do you think it’s him?” Evan said.
Tang flipped to another photo: inside the minimart, the man with the parka at the counter. Paying for gas and cigarettes and a package of Hostess Ho Hos.
“He withdrew money from the ATM in the minimart,” Tang said. “With an ATM card belonging to Mrs. Ruby Ratner.”
Tina brought the coffeepot. “You’ve positively ID’ed him?”
“No. These photos are not any kind of proof. But they raised our suspicions. Especially because Ratner is on parole and it’s a violation for him to leave San Francisco without informing his parole officer.”
“So why didn’t you arrest him?” Tina said.
“Mrs. Ratner reported her ATM card stolen that morning. And she alibied him. For what that’s worth.”
“But you knew this felon was the car thief and you did nothing, and now he’s done something to Jo?”
Tang raised a hand. “Tina, I knew none of this until forty-five minutes ago. After you phoned me, I checked it out. What I can say now, with much greater assurance, is that because of the evidence Jo and Evan have uncovered, it looks like Ruby Ratner was involved in Wylie’s disappearance.”
“Involved? He caused it,” Tina said. “And he’s out there. You have to find Jo.”
“We have no evidence that Ratner is within a hundred miles of Jo.”
Evan said, “But you’re worried, or you wouldn’t have brought up his name.”
Tang’s face was tense. “If he’s involved in Wylie’s disappearance, it’s very bad news. He is not somebody I want Jo to come in contact with, outside of custodial interrogation. In which Ratner is cuffed and shackled to the floor.”
Evan’s stomach tightened. “You’d better tell us.”
“You want me to start with the bank siege or with the mutilations?”
32
T
ina sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed her temples. Evan poured coffee for all of them.
“Ruben Kyle Ratner dropped out of high school and struck out for the rodeo circuit,” Tang said. “Tried to make it riding saddle broncs. Didn’t get far. Made ends meet by petty thievery. Eventually he switched to rodeo clowning, which proved frightening.”
“He didn’t draw the bulls away from riders who got thrown?” Evan said.
“He did, but somehow always managed to circle back toward the cowboy. And if anybody got trampled or gored, he found it amusing.”
“Fun guy.”
“He was fired from a number of rodeos. When he left, they’d find tires slashed, other vandalism. Eventually they found horses injured.”
“Oh no,” Tina said.
“Ratner is a first-class psychopath.”
Tina stood, one hand pressed to her lips, and walked to the French doors. The rising moon cast white stripes across her face through the shutters.
Evan said, “You mentioned mutilation. The horses?”
“He knew how to hobble them. Some had to be put down.”
Tina’s hand trembled. “Oh my God.”
“And the bank siege?” Evan said.
“When he was a juvenile. He was the driver, who got tired of hanging around on the street while his buddies grabbed the cash inside.”
“He left the getaway car and went into the bank?” Evan said. “Impulsivity is an issue, I’m guessing. And impatience.”
Some people said the same about her. She declined to consider the comparison.
Tang nodded. “He ambled in just before the police arrived. His buddies barricaded the front entrance. He ran out the back and ratted on them, like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“Not a team player, then.”
“He got leniency from the court, because of his age.”
“So he’s moved on, in terms of his criminal ambitions. Substantially.”
“Unfortunately.”
Tina turned from the doors. “And this guy now advertises his services as a handyman? So somebody’s grandma may hire him to paint her kitchen?”
“Not everybody runs a criminal background check on casual laborers.”
Evan said, “I’d venture that almost nobody does.”
“And you’d be correct.”
“Especially not when said handyman has his mother booking jobs for him.” She eyed Tang. “What finally sent him to prison?”
“He put a rattlesnake in a guy’s mailbox.”
Evan squirmed. “I’m guessing that’s the mayhem conviction.”
The lieutenant’s expression was taut. “The victim spent a month in the ICU and lost his hand.”
They were silent for a moment.
Evan said, “What’s Ratner’s connection with Phelps Wylie? Because he did not randomly target him. On the recording from Wylie’s cell phone, the abductor says, ‘You know the score here.’”
“I don’t know what the connection is. But I know what I’m going to do.”
Tang phoned the SFPD and asked for an address check and information on any vehicles Ruben Kyle Ratner owned.
Tina said, “Are you putting out a warrant on him?”
“I don’t have probable cause to arrest him yet. I need more evidence. But I want to bring him in so we can interview him as a material witness.”
“That’s not good enough, not if he’s out there with Jo,” Tina said.
“I know.” Almost delicately, Tang set a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “I’m calling the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office.” She nodded at the USGS map. “Show me again which road Jo would have driven to get to the abandoned mine.”
Tina looked at her watch. Evan could practically hear the second hand ticking, ticking around.
 
 
Jo held tight to the horse’s reins and peered up the braided trail at the clearing where the bodies lay. In the moon-shattered light, Autumn stood over Dustin’s body. The girl threw her arms wide, dropped to her knees, and wailed.
Grabbing the saddle horn, Jo awkwardly dismounted and led the horse toward her. The horse danced in a circle. Gripping the reins, Jo knelt at Autumn’s side. “I’m sorry.”
Autumn’s shoulders heaved. Her breathing came in choked bursts. Her hands, outstretched above Dustin’s body, trembled in the moonlight. She let out another garbled cry, an aching, scathing shout.
“Autumn.” Jo put a hand on her shoulder. “Hush.”
Autumn grabbed Dustin’s sweatshirt. She dug her fingers into the fabric. The wail spiraled into the wind and up into the night. Jo pulled Autumn against her shoulder to muffle her cries.
“No
.
”
Autumn pulled away. She grabbed Dustin’s body and shook him. A long string of drool slid from her lips and stretched and fell on Dustin’s back.
Jo held on to her. “You have to be quiet. The shooter is out there.”
Autumn jerked and caught herself mid-cry. Lightning flashed again. Her face was streaked with something beyond fear, beyond nightmare. It was the phosphor shock of death’s finality.
Jo’s heart went out to her.
Autumn gritted her teeth and tried to suffocate her cries. Her hands gripped Dustin’s sweatshirt like she could shake him awake. Jo’s eyes welled.
She’d been there. She’d been in the exact same position as the girl, holding on with both hands, looking into the face of the man she’d loved, seeing him gone. And she’d had to be dragged away, screaming and fighting.
“We have to go,” Jo whispered. “Now.”
Autumn was as tense as electrical wire. “I can’t leave him.”
“We’ll come back. We’ll take care of him. But we have to stay alive.”
Autumn touched Dustin’s hair. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
In the distance, beyond the meadow in the trees, white lights spiked the night. Headlights. They swept across the landscape as the rancher’s pickup turned in a radius around a curve.
Kyle was coming back.
“Come on.” Jo pulled Autumn to her feet. “Get on the horse.”
She threw the reins over the horse’s head, grabbed the saddle horn, and mounted. The headlights swept across them and kept turning, like a lighthouse beam.

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