Cool in Tucson (35 page)

Sarah lowered her weapon and pussy-footed around the house for a quick survey.  The front room and Janine’s bedroom were only slightly messier than usual, but Denny’s room, usually the neat one, had been thoroughly trashed.  Papers, books and clothing lay in random heaps, and the desk drawers had been emptied onto the bed.  Whoever did the trashing was gone, though, Janine was right about that.

“Okay, kid,” Sarah said, back at Janine’s chair, “hold still, now, I’ll have you out of this in a minute.  Man, these are killer knots, have you got a knife?  This drawer?”  Janine was nodding frantically.  “Okay, here we go.” 

Janine began to retch when the wad of cloth came out of her mouth.  “Hang on a couple more seconds,” Sarah begged, pulling rags off her sister’s arms as fast as she could, “try not to barf on me, Baby.”

Janine bolted for the bathroom as soon as she was free.  Sarah went back to the cluttered counter by the sink, found the phone lying in a stack of dirty dishes, and put it back on its charging stand.  She called home on her own phone and Aggie answered in the middle of the first ring, soft and short, “Hello?”

“Anything wrong?”

“No.  Denny’s taking a nap.”

“Oh, good.  Janine’s okay, but—somebody invaded her house and tied her up.”

“Oh, my God.  Is she hurt?”

“Just scared, I think.  I’m going to take her to the emergency room, though, I think she ought to get checked out.”

“Good.  Her life is all messed up again, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it, but—we’ll see.”

“I’m afraid we will.  You’ll stay with her, though, will you?”

“As long as I can.  I’ll see she’s in good hands, Mother, don’t worry.”

“That’s good.  See you tonight.”

“Sarah?”  Janine stood in the bathroom door, so pale she was almost green.  “Was that Mama?”

“Yes.”

“Has she got Denny?”

“Yes.  They’re both at my house.”  Janine seemed to be sliding down against the doorjamb; Sarah grabbed her and helped her wobble to a chair.  “The man who tied you up, was he the one you were afraid might still be here last night?”

“What?”  Confusion showed through all the other terrible emotions on Janine’s face and then it came back to her. “Oh, no, Sarah, no!  This—I can hardly believe it myself but this was the same lunatic who stole my car.”

“What?  Why did he come to your house?”

 “Looking for the money, he said.”

“The money?”

“That’s how he said it, ‘The money.’  Not
some
money but
the
money, as if I’d know all about it. I said, ‘I don’t have any money, what are you talking about?’  And he said ‘The money your kid stole from me.’ ”

“Your kid?  Is he talking about Denny?”

“What other kid do I have?  Oh, Sarah, listen to me, Sarah!”  She clutched her sister’s arm and shook it.  “You need to send somebody to your house right away!  Because I think he’s going there!”

“What?  Why would he go there?”  Janine’s face somehow made room for still another emotion: shame.  “Janine, you didn’t tell him where Denny is, did you?”

“I didn’t
tell
him, I didn’t even know where she was!  But…he figured it out!  He saw that card you had framed for her desk and he—apparently she said something about her Aunt Sarah when they were together in the car.  So when he found that thing saying ‘Aunt Sarah’s Numbers,’ he came out here carrying the damn thing and yelling, ‘Is this where she is?’  He had that
knife
, Sarah, a long terrible thing and he said he’d cut my throat!  You can’t imagine what it feels like to be tied up and have somebody threaten you with a—all I said was ‘Maybe,’ ” she wailed after her sister’s retreating back.  “You’re not going to just leave me here alone, are you?”

“I’ll send somebody to help you,” Sarah yelled back over her shoulder.  She took the fastest way to midtown and used the siren for all but the last six blocks, working the phone while she drove.  Dispatch first, where she described the knife-wielding car thief she suspected was headed for her house, gave his ETA as eight to nine minutes, and asked for backup. 

“Do my best,” dispatch said. 

“Hey, come on, this is an emergency!  A known felon is almost certainly heading for two very vulnerable people.”  

“I’m way behind on emergencies that have already happened,” Dispatch said. “We’ll get to you as quick as we can.” 

She thought of calling Delaney then, but felt overwhelmed by the prospect of trying to explain her family’s predicament while she sped through traffic with the siren wailing.  She pushed the rules about slowing down for intersections as far as she dared, and had a little luck on Alvernon, where several lights turned green as she approached and a few alert citizens actually got out of her way.  Even so it felt like swimming in glue.   

The tacky old red Brat was parked at the curb in front of her house.  Sarah memorized the license as she drove by it but didn’t take the time to call it in.  She pulled past it, turned the corner onto Olsen Avenue and parked by the easement that ran through the middle of the block.  All the backyards in her block had five-foot cement-block walls, heavily weeded on the outside and overgrown with vines.  Trotting along past the garbage cans, she knew she couldn’t be seen from her house till she opened the gate. From there, she took her chances and sprinted for the back door. 

Nobody shot at her.  With her hand on the knob she paused two seconds, took a deep breath and drew her Glock.  Inside, she heard a man say something and her mother  answer.      

Kitchen cabinets lined the wall opposite the back door; the opening into the living room was offset five feet to the right.  Sarah took back every hard word she’d ever said  about this barely-adequate duplex, in that taut instant when she realized she could get in without being seen.  Fussy about keeping her hinges oiled, she knew they wouldn’t squeak.  When the door was ajar three inches she heard her mother say, “Don’t you understand English?  There is no child in this house.”

“I understand plenty,” the man said. “You gonna get outa my way, Aunt Sarah, or do I gotta blow your head off?”

Sarah sidled through the half-open door, crossed her tiny kitchen in one long stride and eased back along the counter toward the opening.  She heard Aggie give one  small, startled squeak, and the man say, “Believe me now?” 

Sarah was one step from the opening when she heard Denny’s voice say, “Leave her alone!”

Shit.

Ready to step out and shoot, Sarah risked one quick peek and saw that the three of them were hopelessly bunched.  The young man, not tall but strong, with beefy shoulders, was clutching Aggie to his side with his left arm.  His right hand held a serious handgun.
Ruger, I think
.  They were both watching Denny, who stood beyond them in the opening to the hall.

“So,” the man said, “here she is after all.”

Denny looked small and frail, barefooted in Andy’s shabby old T-shirt.  “Let her go,” she said, with a small quaver in her voice, “and I’ll show you where the money is.”

“Deal,” the man said.  He walked Aggie to an armchair, said, “Stay here and be good, Auntie, so I don’t have to shoot you,” and gave her chest a shove.  She flopped onto the old Morris chair with a yelp.  The chair back collapsed and she was trapped on her back with the high armrests in the way of her escape.    

Denny turned her back on them and walked across the hall into the den.  Sarah watched her walk around the end of the futon, which was still made up as a bed with the covers turned back.  The man kept his big gun trained on her as he followed her to the doorway.  From the kitchen, Sarah had no shot that wasn’t likely to hit Denny. 

Aggie was still sprawled in the chair, struggling to sit up, when Sarah passed her, moving silently and fast.

Just inside the door of the den, the intruder’s whole attention was fixed on Denny, who was on the far side of the futon, her small face set like an ivory mask.  She slid one hand between the mattress and frame of the cheap little bed, and pulled out a fat white letter-size envelope.  As she straightened she saw Sarah, standing behind her tormentor in the hall.  Holding her breath, Sarah shook her head a bare inch each way and Denny, with no change of expression, moved her eyes back to the man with the gun.  She held the envelope up, just out of his reach.       

“All
right
,” the man’s voice turned boyish with pleasure.  “More
like
it.”  He stepped forward with his gun lowered a little, his left hand outstretched across the bed toward the money.  Keeping her eyes on his face, Denny turned the envelope over.  The man yelled, “Hey!” as twenties and hundreds cascaded across the bed, and in that moment Sarah sprang. 

She hit his gun hand hard with her Glock and yelled “Police!  Drop the gun!”  His weapon fell from his deadened hand.  Sarah kicked it under the bed, pulled his right arm up high behind him as she pushed her Glock into his ear and yelled, “On your knees right now!” 

As his knees buckled, Hector tried his last play.  Watching him sink, Sarah saw his left hand move toward his pants leg.  When he tugged, light glinted on the handle of a knife.  She put her weight on her right foot and kicked hard with her left.  Her shoe sole hit his wrist with a sickening crack.  The second pain disabled him, temporarily; he sank to his knees, whimpering, with his wrist against his mouth. 

Needing a solution to the problem of having only two hands, Sarah knelt on the backs of his legs, yelling, “You put that hand behind your back right now or I’m going to shoot you!”  Weeping, protesting that she was killing him, he put left arm behind him and she holstered her gun long enough to pull his two useless hands together and clamp the cuffs on. 

“Ow, ow, ow, that hurts, you’re killing me!” he roared. 

“You hold still so I can get this knife off your leg, maybe I can help you with that,” Sarah said.  When the scabbard was off she tossed it on the bed in front of Denny’s round, astonished eyes and asked her, “What did you say his name was?”

“Hector,” Denny squeaked. 

“The more you wiggle around, Hector,” Sarah said, “the more this is going to hurt.” 

He got his voice back then, called her a bitch from hell and promised a slow death at the hands of his buddies while she fished a plastic cuff out of her back pocket and tied his ankles together.  When she was done she strood up, leaned toward the back of his head and said, “One more word out of you and I tape your mouth shut.”  In the gratifying silence that followed, she asked Denny, “Is this the man who bought you the cheeseburger?”

Denny nodded and swallowed. 

“And took you to the movie?”

Again, the quick nod.  Her hands were clamped into her armpits to stop them trembling but some color was coming back in her face. 

“How’d you get his money?” 

Denny wiggled her butt nervously.  “He left it by me in a grocery sack.”

“Rotten little shit,” Hector ground out.  His jaws were locked against the pain in his wrist.  “You grabbed it when the phone rang, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”  Denny gave him a look that split the difference between guilt and triumph.

“And
you
got it,” Sarah said, “by killing Ace Perkins, right?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hector said.

“You will, soon enough.  And you’re not going to be so pleased with yourself after the feds explain how you killed an undercover narc.”  His head snapped around and she smiled and nodded into his horrified eyes.

There was noise in the living room, somebody coming through the front door.  Sarah heard her mother say, “In there.”  A young patrolman she didn’t recognize edged in through the door with his gun braced, looking handsome and strong in a fresh uniform.