The Death Of Blue Mountain Cat Part 34

"Now get out-"

Again, Caleb complied. Hale kept him covered as he stepped closer to the car. He glanced at the interior before getting in. "What the h.e.l.l-?" He pointed to the gears.h.i.+ft lever with the gun. "That a manual?"

"Yes."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

Very likely.

"You're gonna be my chauffeur," Hale continued. "I never drove one of these. Get in and unlock the other door." He kept the gun on Caleb while he walked around and got in the pa.s.senger's seat.

Caleb sat very still. If Thinnes was right, Hale was already a killer. Caleb was struck by how much the young man resembled the late singer at the rock star's zenith. What a total waste.

Hale kept the gun pointed at him, but below the level of the windows. Caleb could only hope they'd pa.s.s an observant truck driver, who'd notice and call the police. At Hale's urging, he started the engine. Then the phone rang.

Hale jumped. "What the h.e.l.l's that?"

"My phone."

"Don't answer it."

After several more rings it occurred to Caleb to say, "That's probably a friend I'm supposed to meet for dinner. If I don't answer and don't show up, he'll call the police."

"They won't find you, will they?"

"They might. I have one of those homing devices in the car-to locate it if it's stolen."

"Where?"

"How would I know?" When Hale looked as if he were getting angry, Caleb added, "Do I look like someone who works on his own car?"

Moot question. The ringing stopped. Hale stared at the phone thoughtfully. When it rang again he said, "Answer it."

Caleb picked it up and said, "h.e.l.lo."

"What's up?" Thinnes's voice.

"I can't make dinner tonight, after all. Something's come up."

"That so?" Thinnes said. There was caution in his voice as he played along. "Why's that?"

"An old friend just showed up. Remember the guy who gave Rob the dog?"

"You're kinda breaking up. You using a speakerphone?"

"No."

"Elvis Hale?"

"That's correct."

"You got one of those ant.i.theft locators in the car?"

"Yes."

"That's enough," Hale said. "Hang up."

Thinnes must have heard. "Say ciao when I get to the brand." He rattled off the major car-security suppliers. When he got to the right one, Caleb said, "Ciao."

"Okay," Hale said, "Let's get outta here."

"Where?"

"Just...head for the Drive."

It took some calling around to find someone who knew the unpublished number, but eventually Caleb got through to Wingate. Hale took the phone and told him, "We need to talk."

Wingate's anger must have caused him to elevate his voice; Caleb could hear him say, "What do you want?"

"Money. I need to get outta town. It'll cost me plenty to start someplace else."

Wingate lowered his voice, and Caleb could only hear Hale's side of the conversation. "How 'bout your job site? Call your watchdog and tell him to get lost. Bring lots. And don't call the cops, cause I'll cut a deal with 'em, if I have to. I'm lookin' at murder one here."

Wingate got there ahead of them. The gate was open and a car was there, though Wingate wasn't in sight. Caleb drove in. The site was lit only by the glow of the city's lights reflected from a sullen sky, the head- and taillights of the Jaguar, and the glow from a window of the construction trailer barely visible in the gloom. Other large, dark shapes were indistinguishable. In the rearview reflection, Caleb could just see the gate swing shut and make out a dark-clad form fiddling with the lock. The figure moved along the pa.s.senger side of the car and leaned over against the roof.

Hale jumped.

Harrison Wingate opened Hale's door and said, "Let's go inside where it's warmer." He indicated the trailer.

Hale pointed at Caleb with the gun. "What about him?"

"Bring your friend, by all means." Wingate seemed arrogant or amused, even bored, but not the least worried.

"Shut off the motor," Hale told Caleb, then, "Gimme the keys." He took them and said, "If you try anything funny, I'll kill you. What's one more?"

Caleb felt light-headed from a rush of adrenaline. Then he realized Hale was speaking to Wingate, who didn't seem to take the threat seriously.

"Who's your accomplice?" Wingate asked.

Hale laughed. "A dead man."

Wingate didn't respond. Caleb wondered if he were inured to murder, or if this was a demented game they played. And where were the police?

Hale told Wingate and Caleb to precede him into trailer, then closed the door behind them. He looked around. Caleb looked, too. It was a former house trailer, perhaps eight by thirty feet, with a desk and metal folding chairs, tools of various sorts, hard hats, boots and gloves, gas cans, rope and chains, and numerous things he didn't recognize. There were papers, building plans, a computer, and a.s.sorted office supplies on the desk. The floor was gritty with tracked-in dirt.

Hale lifted a coil of rope from its hook on a wall and tossed it to Wingate. He pointed the gun at the developer, then jerked his head toward Caleb. "Tie him up. Tie his hands behind his back."

Wingate caught the rope. He didn't seem any more frightened, but he looked apologetically at Caleb as Hale asked him, "You got any Indian blood in you, Mr. Rich b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"'Not to my knowledge.' What're you, a politician?"

"A doctor."

"You look familiar," Wingate told Caleb. He stepped around behind him and began to tie his hands together "Where've we met?"

Caleb tried, un.o.btrusively, to tense all his muscles. Somewhere he'd read that was the way to escape from rope bonds. "At the museum-the reception for David Bisti." It occurred to him, that as unreal as the situation seemed, it wasn't a movie. He was truly in danger. He began to sweat.

"Someone's been prying into my affairs," Wingate said, "beside the police. You." He pushed Caleb down into one of the folding chairs. "Why?"

"f.u.c.k it, Wingate," Hale said. "He's not living long enough to tell anyone what he knows. Where's my money?"

Wingate turned on Hale and said, "He may already have told someone what he knows. And I won't be party to murder."

Hale laughed. "Quit stalling. The money."

"It's outside."

"Let's go." He made a circle with the gun barrel to take in both other men and signify movement outdoors.

Wingate hooked a thumb toward Caleb. "He doesn't need to come."

"Yeah. As soon as we're out the door, he's off and running."

Wingate grabbed another coil of rope and knelt to loop it around Caleb's feet and the base of the chair. When he looked up from the task, he winked at Caleb. Then he stood and preceded Hale out the door. It was a matter of seconds for Caleb to work the rope off his wrists. He waited a tense minute, to be sure they weren't coming back, and freed his feet. Then he slipped out of the trailer, closing the door behind him.

He hadn't time to adjust his eyes to the darkness before the action started. He heard what sounded like a fist striking flesh and an oath from Hale. Two human forms differentiated themselves from the dark background. A gun discharged. Something struck something else metal. Hale swore again. One of the figures broke and ran toward the incomplete building; the other appeared to be feeling around for something on the ground. Hale must have dropped the gun. There was a sound of machinery, and Caleb could see a human form silhouetted against one of the few, dim lights lit in the building. Wingate was in an open elevator, going up.

Then Hale must have recovered the gun, because he screamed, "WINGATE!" and fired at the moving platform, too late to do any damage. The elevator was high enough so that only its underside presented a target, and even that was just a dark form against even more obscure shapes. Hale fired nevertheless. Caleb decided to escape before the killer remembered him and came back to the trailer. He moved slowly toward the gate, keeping to the gravel walk and driveway so he wouldn't trip over equipment and supplies invisible in the dark. He tried to see something, as he went, that he could use for a tool to pry the gate open when he got to it. He pa.s.sed Wingate's car and his own Jaguar.

Suddenly lights went on above the fence on two sides. Caleb was blinded by them, then confused by the plethora of elements thrust into his visual field. He picked out the locked gate, and human forms standing or hunching above it, and to either side. He looked back and got a glimpse of Hale staring around. The unfinished building looked like David's installation/painting come to life. A figure and a tiny point of blue flame appeared high up in the building's skeleton. A shout made him drop to the ground behind his car; the fear in the voice boosted his adrenaline to an unbearable level.

"JACK, DUCK! INCOMING!"

Thinnes had spent the intervening time well. He'd put out a city-wide flash on Elvis and the blue Jaguar-carjacking, possible hostage. He'd called the security company and waited impatiently as they triangulated the car's location. Then he'd alerted the pertinent individuals and divisions, and set a land-speed record getting to Wingate's building site. When he arrived, the site was locked, dark, and quiet, surrounded by marked and unmarked vehicles-all with lights off to avoid alerting Hale. Without any obvious signs of a crime in progress, or any unequivocal complaint of auto theft, there was nothing they could do but wait. Thinnes had someone back a squad roll up to the fence so he could climb on top and have a look. He gave orders, via radio, for someone to set up scene lights around the perimeter, so they could see what they were doing when the search warrant arrived. They were nearly ready when the shot was fired. The fact was reported over the radio. Someone was struggling in the darkness. Machinery started up in the building. Someone yelled, "WINGATE!" Someone fired again.

Then the lights went on.

Thinnes saw the gunman first. Elvis Hale. Then Caleb, staring, confused, at the suddenly lighted scene. Then someone high up in the unfinished building. Lighting an acetylene torch. It flashed orange as the spark caught, then turned blue and shrank as he added oxygen. Thinnes knew, suddenly, what he was planning. He made himself speak slowly into the radio. "Head for cover! He's gonna blow the place up!" He remembered Caleb and screamed, "JACK, DUCK! INCOMING!"

Trapped inside the fence by the closed gate, Caleb dived behind his Jaguar. Alerted by Thinnes's warning, Hale ran for the trailer.

Thinnes didn't take his own advice. He stood on top of the squad roll and watched the tiny, high-up figure push the acetylene rig off. Thinnes only dived for cover as the tandem tanks twisted down through the air, hoses and torch handle whipping behind like the tail of an angry cat.

The explosion shook the fence. Then there were giant thuds and metal screaming as-they reconstructed later-the oxygen tank, transformed to a rocket run amok, punched through the trailer. Fuel cans inside ruptured and ignited. The trailer walls blew outward around the openings. The ball of flame and burning gases raced the flying tank outward. The tank punched through the Jaguar. Tank and shock wave flattened fence against squad roll. And Thinnes had the wind knocked out of him as he was slammed beneath the flying gate. Then the oxygen rocket punched through the brick wall of the building across the street. As the shrapnel and dust settled to the ground an awed voice whispered over the radio, "Jesus X. Christ!"

At the sound of "incoming," Caleb hit the dirt. It was a reflex from the war. And he was instantly transported back by what followed: an explosion and a chaos of fire and shrapnel. A missile tore through his car, the fence, the wall of the next building.

Reflex made him check the aftermath, drove him from cover. Training as a medic got him up and running toward the flames, into the fiery debris of the trailer, at the human torch staggering away from it.

Elvis Hale's eyes held Thinnes's. "I'm not gonna make it, am I?"

Thinnes looked at the EMT, who shook his head. "No."

"I want to confess."

"Why?"

"I got nothin' to lose. Somma b.i.t.c.h's gonna get away with it."

Thinnes felt his heart rate rise, but he made himself take a deep breath. What were the rules for dying declarations? You had to know. Check. You had to say you knew. "Hale, you want to make a formal statement? A dying declaration?"

"Yeah. What've I got to lose? I can't feel anything..."

"Hale?"

"I'm here." He tried to turn his head to look at Thinnes but couldn't.

Thinnes moved so Elvis could see him. "You have to say that you know you're dying." He looked at Caleb and the EMT to see if they were paying attention. Both of them seemed to be holding their breaths.

"I'm dying," Elvis said. "I'm telling you I killed three people. Wingate ordered the hits." He had to stop to get his breath, and it came out in ragged, steamy clouds.

Thinnes held his. What to ask first, in case there wasn't time for second? "The hits-who were they?"

"Two red n.i.g.g.e.rs. The trucker. And some lush named Albert something or Something Albert. I don't know..."

"Why?"

There was a long pause. Thinnes wasn't sure he was going to answer. Could answer. Finally he said, "Afraid they'd spill their guts."

"About what?" Thinnes forced himself to speak slowly and keep his voice level. "What did they know that would've hurt Wingate?"

"Selling stuff. Old Indian stuff..."

"Who was the third person you killed?"

Elvis seemed momentarily confused. "Third?...Uncle West." He seemed to be fading. His breathing seemed harder.

Thinnes remembered the liquor-store receipt. "Why?"

"Saw me shoot the trucker."

"How?"

"Wasn't s'posed to drink...Said his doc told him...It'd kill him...Bought a jug. Old fart never could hold his tongue or liquor."

"Detective," the paramedic said, "we've got to get going."