Night Eyes (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 2) (24 page)

It was seven minutes to eight on a cloudy, dark Tuesday morning when Temeke switched on his computer. He could hear Hackett smacking his desk next door, accompanied by a snort or two. Fowler’s coarse, hearty laughter was at the expense of ridiculing Brits and a vulgar joke he was sharing, and that made Temeke’s heart rate gallop.

These were the corridors of command, where the mighty rule. And God help the people of Albuquerque if they knew how quickly things could change, how many good cops had been destroyed in a matter of seconds.

His cell phone gave a piercing ring. It was the debonair doc. Old Ginger’s teeth and blood samples had finally found a match, Red Shearer, a former ranger at Gila National Forest. He hadn’t visited a dentist in years and the unusual occurrence of an engraved silver amalgam was traced back to a doctor in Ohio. The engraving was an eternity symbol, like the one on his right wrist.

Shearer was fired in June 2000 for assaulting a young boy and never showed up for his court date. Spatters of his blood were found on the tree Evan Trader was tied to and ballistics verified the helicopter was brought down by bullets from Ginger’s Enfield. By all accounts, he had quite an armory in that tent of his and he clearly didn’t want police sniffing around his turf.

Temeke wanted peace, only it had been too damn quiet in his house last night. Too damn cold too. He’d turned down the thermostat when he started sleeping in the cells and forgot to turn it back up again. All he did was pace from room to room, smoke a packet of cigarettes and carve a path in the living room carpet. His mind was wired from midnight to two o’clock, thinking of a woman’s belly blotched in blue and yellow from an old man’s fist. What had Adam seen? What had he heard in those last days?

Temeke saw his father hit his mother all those years ago. Heard him shout at her, wrench the rent money right out of her hands and come home drunk from the pub. What had he left her with before dying at the end of a rope? Misery and broken bones, and a generous helping of insecurity.

The door clicked open and in rushed Malin with a half-eaten donut in one hand and a file in the other. Apart from a thin film of sugar on her upper lip, there was something different about her. “I’ve got it,” she said, handing him the file.

“Got what?”

“The name.”

She put the donut on the desk and patted her chest as if that would stop the panting. “Ramsey. Christopher Ramsey.”

Temeke’s mouth dropped, saw the tilt of her head and the raised eyebrows.

“They’re headed for Glenwood. I’m not kidding. There’s a trout hatchery there. That’s where they are.”

“Fish? Blimey, Marl.” Temeke watched that face, the sucked in bottom lip and the hint of a frown. “Did you get a phone call from the Almighty and forget to tell me about it?”

He was exhausted. Had to sleep soon, find his rhythm, take a sodding long vacation. “You carry on eating that big-ass breakfast and don’t get an ulcer. So who told you about the fish farm?”

“Listen, I called Andrew Blaine. We talked. He thought I was Berkeley Police.” She grinned then, gave a small chuckle. “Said he was working for Mayor Oliver to find a Christopher Ramsey. Ramsey was the SEAL Jennifer was talking about, the one who had the accident in the storm drain. Blaine followed Ramsey to Albuquerque to the Motel 6 on Alameda. He was there for three nights, rented a black truck, made several calls to Raine Oliver. Threatened to come to the house.”

“What did he want?”

“Ramsey failed BUDS because of the accident, couldn’t see too well after that. Mayor Oliver… instructor Oliver, whatever he was then, took away Ramsey’s chance of getting his Trident. Raine Oliver was Ramsey’s girlfriend. It’s all there,” she said, pointing to the file.

It still wasn’t enough. Temeke wasn’t buying it. “And he told you they were headed for Glenwood?”

It was the raised chin and the staring eyes which quickly dissolved into a nodding head. She was keeping something from him.

“Remember the sweet old lady in the cells at Christmas?” he said. “The one with the whitest buttocks you ever saw. She held those goods in tight and proper until we bent her over. Must have been such a relief when we took them out.”

“Nice try, sir.”

The phone gave a shriek on his desk, followed by Sarge shouting from downstairs. “Forensics!”

Temeke snatched the phone. It had to be something, anything…

“Detective Temeke? This is Matt Black. We found a match for the blood samples on the Buck 110. Christopher A. Ramsey. Last known address, 4565 Lakewood Road, San Diego, California. Adam Oliver’s blood was found on a length of twine Officer Running Hawk found at the site. But here’s the clincher. Ramsey shares fifty percent of genetic markers with Adam.”

It was the loud knock on the door that threw Temeke out of his trance. Jarvis with a worried frown. “Mrs. Oliver… she wants to see you right away.”

They drove to the Mayor’s mansion in silence, with the ring of Matt Black’s words in the air. Temeke sat in the passenger seat and read the short report in the file.

Malin bit her lip more times than he could count, stiff as a ramrod behind that wheel. She turned to look at him briefly after braking for a red light. Turning left by a small branch of the Norcross bank, she took a deep breath and held it for a moment.

“The Ancient Mariner was a sailor… a tortured sailor. I should have made the connection,” she murmured. “Couldn’t sleep last night. So I went for a drive. Parked outside your house. Saw you walking from room to room. Head up one minute, down the next. Memories, isn’t it? That’s what happens when you’re on your own. Start thinking things. Taking a few steps backwards. I didn’t realize you were so lonely. But I’m glad you know how it feels because a third of the population in New Mexico live alone. Elderly, singles. You could spare them a prayer or two.”

Temeke swallowed a dried lump of spit in his mouth, tasted the sour upsurge from his belly. Should have drawn the sodding blinds. It was lucky he couldn’t speak because his voice was about to disintegrate into a blubber of tears. He thought of his mother then. How she died. Alone. In that redbrick apartment with the pale green door.   

They stood in front of another door now, doorbell chiming in the innards of the house. No sign of cracks between the frame and the flashing, just smooth and glossy like the day it was built.

Raine Oliver stood on the threshold, gave a sharp nod and led them into the library. There were three newspapers on the couch showing pictures of the crime scene and the Chief of Police, and an article on the Mayor who was determined to spend more time with his son when they found him. Megan left a tray of tea in front of them and scuttled off to the kitchen.

Raine poured three cups without speaking and then sat with her hands in her lap, fingers smoothing a red painted nail.

“Bill was watching me for years. Had me followed,” she said. “I didn’t believe it at first, not until I saw the invoices from Blaine Investigative Services. He didn’t want me to leave him. Not because he loved me, because I was the only one who knew about the accident.”

“The accident?” Temeke said, downing a cup of surprisingly unpleasant tea while looking at the bookshelves. The gap between Huckleberry Finn and The Last of the Mohicans had been filled with a plump Bible.

“When he found out I had once been involved with Christopher Ramsey he wanted to kill him.” She looked around then. Seemed like good old fashioned paranoia. “He was one of Bill’s students. Training to be a SEAL.”

“Christopher Ramsey was your ex?”

“My first love. Talking intimately has never been my strong suit. Even my parents never discussed how they fell in love. Ever loved anyone, Detective?”

She must have seen the slight indentation on the fourth finger of his left hand. The ring was no longer there. “Was it your father who never liked him? Or your mother?”

“Dad. He wanted me to marry an ambassador and Bill’s father was the closest to a diplomat they had ever met. They figured Bill would go the same way.”

The Oliver’s were a well-known New Mexican family, but Temeke had never heard the name Leveque. He asked her, of course. She said they were Belgium socialites who emigrated to California in the seventies.

“If Christopher Ramsey was training to be a SEAL that takes some bad-ass courage and determination,” he said. “What’s not to like?”

“Dad met him once, said that was enough. He found out Christopher smoked weed now and then. Sold it too. He told me to promise I wouldn’t see him again. But I couldn’t.” She waved a hand as if her mind played back girlhood memories in an arbitrary manner. “I never met anyone so kind, so wild. I don’t think he cared if he lived or died.”

“But he cared about you.”

“He said not seeing me was like being under fire. You never really knew if you’d come out of it alive. We used to meet at the end of the road when mom and dad were asleep. It was exciting and dangerous because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it would all end. But I wanted to soak up every minute with him, to experience the ache, the fever of it all. And then there was good old dependable Bill.”

“You never loved him?”

“Not like that. Dad said Bill was good for marrying and Christopher was good for nothing. Said I’d thank him one day. I know what he means… in here,” she said, patting her chest. “Dad wasn’t all words. He was heart too. I think he felt sorry for me. Thought I’d be in the right place if I married Bill. Never have to want for anything, you know.”

“And you and Christopher Ramsey wrote letters?”

“Yes.” Raine looked out of the window. Temeke followed her gaze and saw fluttering birds scattering seed on a small bird table. “We’d leave letters under a tree in the park. That’s how we knew when to meet. It was one of those letters… a stupid letter. It tore Bill up.”

“A love letter?”

“Christopher always carried them between his body armor and his uniform. Only he must have dropped one on the beach during an exercise. Bill found it… showed it to me one night. Said he’d forgiven me. But I knew he’d never forgive Christopher.”

“And Bill Oliver was Christopher Ramsey’s UDT/SEAL instructor?” A man, Temeke thought, with a couple of deployments under his belt, a man who ran PT, a man who had access to the men, got close to them.

Raine ran a finger under one eye, caught a large tear before it ran down her cheek. “A few of them decided to go to the beach after dark. It was Bill’s idea. He wanted to see who’d man up to the challenge. They were told to swim out… I don’t know how far, but it was far. And then they were told to ride the waves all the way back. They lost sight of Christopher. It was too dark to see. They found him three hours later in a storm drain. Unconscious. The medical report said he had a heart murmur. There was no proof Bill did anything. But I think he knew Christopher had a weak heart.”

Raine’s body just flinched as if hit by an ice cold blast of wind. She rolled up her sweater to reveal a vicious map of blues and yellows on her stomach. “He did this,” she said.

Temeke had sat in that room for less than thirty minutes and already felt the desperate urge to run. He heard Malin say how sorry she was as he skimmed through his notes, brain slowly slipping into autopilot.

“Tell me,” he said, suddenly aware of the monotonous ticking of the library clock. “The letter we found in the fireplace was thought to be an eighteen page report. The last few words would have said
respectfully submitted,
and
signature of the petitioner
. A petition for what, Mrs. Oliver?”

Raine looked out at the birds, eyes glossy as she disappeared into the past. “Paternity.”

“Christopher A. Ramsey… what’s his full name?”

Tears ran down Raine’s face. No sobbing or any movement. “Christopher Adam Ramsey. He’s Adam’s biological father.”

Above them the sky was dark blue and the mountain ridges were wreathed in a snake-like mist. It was early in the twilight before they came to stream and a log cabin.

“They’re not far behind us,” Ramsey kept whispering, eyes wide so you could see the whites in them. He was breathless too. Like he’d been running for miles. “Don’t drop anything. Don’t even spit.”

He staggered for the nearest tree, bent and vomited. Bang went the don’t drop anything and the spit. His skin was slick with sweat and there was a deathly pallor to him, a gray rubbery look as if his smile no longer worked. Adam rubbed Ramsey’s back, offered him water, told him to lie down in the cabin.

“We’re not going in,” Ramsey said, covering what he’d done with a thick layer of pine needles. He washed his beard with a few squirts of water and drank the rest. “We’ll find a place and watch.”

“It’s getting cold.”

“We’ve got the blankets, the dog. Put your hood up.”

“I need to pee.”

“You always need to pee.”

Ramsey found a tree, moved the top soil with the toe of his boot. The dog did the rest, digging with those claws until it was about a foot deep. They both relieved themselves, teeth chattering as they filled in the hole.

Behind a stand of aspens was a broad skirted fir tree thick enough to hide under and far enough from the cabin to risk being seen. Ramsey pushed Adam to the leeward side and they sat on their packs and stared through the leaves. Adam wondered if they were the only ones who had ever sat under that tree, whether other children had once played in the same forest, listened to the same sounds. Murphy scooted close to Adam’s side like he sensed something.

“You’re getting sicker, aren’t you?” Adam said.

“I’m fine.”

“You just threw up.”

“Everyone throws up now and then. Can you see anything?”

“No.”

“Can you hear anything?”

“No.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re mad.”

“Not.”

“Are.”

Adam peered into the darkness allowing his eyes to sweep one way and then the other, and he saw the path curving away to the north. As far as he could see, there were paths everywhere if you zigzagged around the trees, only this one was wider as if it was manmade.

Adam followed the line of that path, saw the bone-white branches of a dying tree in the distance. Just as his eyes began to tire and wander back to the ground, something moved. He thought he could see a man in the shadows about thirty feet away, gun aimed in a gloved hand. But he knew he was seeing things. Too many ghosts in one day.

“Better start praying to the big guy those rangers don’t find us,” Adam whispered.

“He doesn’t know who I am.”

“Of course he does. He made you. He made me.”

“What with?

“Dirt and breath.”

The moon was overhead now, shedding its nightly beam into that small clearing and turning the leaves a bluish-gray. There was light enough to see. Adam heard the distant trickle of a stream, heard Ramsey crunching something in his mouth. It was those painkillers again. He must have eaten eight since noon and he was looking stranger by the minute. “You OK?”

“We’re out of food.”

“We are?”

Ramsey rubbed that leg again, face all winced up like a twisted rag. “It’s not that far now. If it comes to it I’ll give you the gun and the money. You’ll go on ahead. Get help.”

Adam didn’t want the gun. Never had occasion to shoot it. Wasn’t trained like a real man. There was something deep down in his gut that bothered him, a whisper of sadness that wouldn’t go away. His chest hurt and so did his throat and he wanted to sob. “They’ll catch me.”

“Nah, you’re too quick for that.” Ramsey must have heard the hitch in his voice because he pulled Adam closer. “You know a thing or two. Got the dog and all.”

Adam began to sob. Couldn’t help himself. Laid his head on Ramsey’s shoulder, heard him say
shhh
like a dad. When the sob was all run out, he wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and said, “You won’t die will you?”

“Of course I won’t die. What do you take me for?”

It was one thing to be with someone else. It was quite another to be in a cold, dark world all alone. They hadn’t been able to have a campfire, watch the flames twist and curl and then die to a pile of ash. Hadn’t smelled a good roasted meal that stubbornly played hide-and-go-seek with his senses. And they hadn’t laughed much or told any jokes in these last few hours. Something had changed.

The heat from Ramsey’s body would need a fire hydrant to put out and the smell of him was woody and stale. Those pills weren’t helping. Maybe they were making him sick.

In less than a minute they heard the snapping of a twig, a droning sound like a dragonfly and a dull thud. Another low hum about ten feet to the right of them, nasal like a druid’s chant.

“Slings,” Ramsey whispered. “Over there.”

Face covered in a mask and one hand resting on the log siding, a man swung around the front deck. Each leg crossing in front of the other as he moved sideways, gun leveled at the cabin door. Adam couldn’t hear much over the shrieking wind and that infernal hissing the grasses made. All he wanted to do was run. 

“Riflescope,” Ramsey murmured, looking out at the man. “Probably see a hundred yards or more.”

Adam felt the back of his throat go dry. He had no idea what Ramsey meant but he knew it was bad. If that scope could see that far, it could probably find them under the trees and then they’d be dragged out, stripped naked and tied to the front of the house. Left for the animals. Chewed right down to the bone.

Two other rangers broke out of the trees behind the first, one dangling a sling from his hand and a dead rabbit he’d shot. The other had a wooden frame on his back, the type hunters carry to transport game. They wore masks with slits for eyes, drifting like ghosts through the brush.

The first man crouched, eyes level with the bottom of the first window. He laid the rifle down on the deck, unsheathed a knife and played it between his fingers. He must have stayed there for over a minute and all the while the men behind stood like statues, breath misting through their lips.

The leader made a gesture to move forward. He made his way into the house, two others following close behind.

Adam began to shiver as Ramsey crawled out from under the tree, clutching the backpack and urging Adam on with a flapping hand.

It was twenty minutes of stalking on the balls of their feet, twenty long calf-aching minutes before they stopped beneath a stand of pines to catch their breath. Branches groaned overhead and leaves scampered along the path in front of them, drowning out any sound they could have made. Ramsey said there was a mood in the air like they were two souls adrift under a cold moon.

“What do you mean?” Adam said.

“Feels like we’re the only ones out here, running like prisoners of war.” He blew on his hands, trembled a little and coughed. “Feels all empty and dark.”

Adam knew when Ramsey got all sad he was missing his special smokes and the black stuff. He’d get all moody, start quoting poetry before he fell asleep. Or he’d get plain mean.

Sometimes he’d tell stories of a girl he once loved. The one with the nut brown hair. Then he’d pause every now and then beside a tree trunk, push the hood off his head and wait one full minute like he always did. He was sweating and he could hardly breath. Ramsey was losing it and that’s what made Adam scared.

And then he started singing something about spades and swords of a soldier and clubs are weapons of war. It was a sad song that made your heart feel all twisty and sore and Adam half wished Ramsey would stop it. 

Murphy padded out in front like a scout, sniffing scents in the wind. Every so often he stopped and waited  for them to catch up, mouth open one minute and closed the next.

Ramsey stopped and looked around. He cupped his ear to a rumble in the distance and pointed at a gray procession of boulders. You could see them between the trees. “Nearly there,” he said.

“Nearly where?”

“Where we need to be.”

Where the trees ended, there was a rocky ledge with nothing beyond it but a dark gray sky and a mountain range in the distance. They sat on a boulder with their backs to the forest staring into the valley below. It was a town all right; a haze of car lights like a string of red and white beads. Adam wiped the wet hair from his brow and smiled. It was beautiful to see.

A few spits of rain, a boom of thunder and light shuddered on the horizon. They watched that too for a time until Adam twisted his head to the trees, ear bent to the wind. “Can you hear that?”

Ramsey was too far gone to notice, leaning against Adam, eyes twisted and wet. “Take this,” he said, laying the gun on Adam’s knee. “Keep it for me.”

Adam took the gun and put it in the backpack. He didn’t want to hold it, didn’t want it going off in his hand.

He turned his back to the lights and looked into the forest where a white mist hovered above the ground as if there were hot springs deep in the earth. Six black flames trembled behind it, getting bigger and bigger as their guns ripped through the hoary shroud.

“Get down!” It was Ramsey’s voice, deep and rasping.

Adam felt a tug on his sleeve as he was pushed behind the boulder, heard the shouts, heard the command to come out and raise his hands.

“Ramsey…” Adam tugged at Ramsey’s jacket.

Ramsey wiped the sweat from his face and shook his head. “They won’t hurt you, son. But they’ll hurt me.”

“Why?”

“Because I killed a man.”

Adam felt the finger against his lips, felt that tight warm hug. Ramsey’s eyes were wet and he was trying to smile. He was trying to stand too, bracing himself against that boulder.

He turned his head towards the men, put his shaking hands inside his jacket like he was cold or embarrassed or something. “You’re a great kid, son. I couldn’t have done it without you… without your eyes. I’ll always carry a piece of you in me. And a piece of the big guy.”

Ramsey stood there shaking like he’d fall over. He stumbled forward three steps towards the men and then he stood still. Lifted his head, straightened his back and slowly took his hands out of his pockets.

It was the loud bangs that made Adam scream and the smell of firecrackers in the air. He covered his ears, closed his eyes and swore he’d never open them again.