Night Eyes (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 2) (8 page)

Temeke fought to clear his head and smothered another yawn. Reluctantly, he hauled himself up from the nice warm bed and had a nose around. Sleeping in the cells was the only option when you’re dead tired in the small hours and your house is cold and cheerless. And your sodding car won’t start.

At least he had someone to talk to during the morning shifts when one of the admins woke him up with a cup of fresh coffee. It was Tuesday, and he could still smell the stench of slag and cinders under his nose no matter how many times he washed his face.

He padded up the stairs to his second floor office, carrying his shoes in one hand. Malin was listening to a recording of the kidnapper’s voice and her eyebrows shot up when she saw him. “Do you ever answer your phone?”

“It’s on silence, love. A bloke’s got to get some sleep. Five hours I got this time. Bloody miracle.”

“Officer Running Hawk called Hackett this morning since he couldn’t get hold of you. Said they traced Adam’s phone near the cabin. Not a scratch on it. Sent it to Flossy at Fingerprinting.”

Temeke stood in front of the window, eyes following a droplet of rain on the glass. It was the view of the back parking lot that always fascinated him. Tattered gray trees dusted with snow and the distant hills of Santa Fe beyond―a view you couldn’t see in the summer. And thirty black and white units arranged in tidy rows all except Hackett’s. His was parked at an angle and taking up two spaces so it wouldn’t get dinged.

The tape recorder murmured on in the background and he hardly gave it another thought. The good news was Lieutenant Luis Alvarez was coming back to work in a week. Temeke couldn’t wait to see his brother-in-law, couldn’t wait to have a few pints at lunch. Might get a few nuggets of gossip out about his soon to be ex-wife. Serena was hiding again. And that’s what bothered him.

“That voice,” he began, turning his mind back to the tape, “doesn’t sound threatening.”

“Thick and gravelly,” Malin said, tapping the screen of her phone.

He noticed her words tail off, eyes flicking to one side. “What?”

“The voice… it sounds familiar. Like the one on the Evan Trader tape. It’s the same rhythm, the same pauses. I’ll have it checked.”

Malin was good with voices. About as good as he was with names. Temeke kept replaying the voice in his head, a voice that demanded three hundred grand in ransom. It was deep now she mentioned it.

Lost and found. He’s with me. Three hundred grand in ransom, half in hundreds, half in small denominations. Better not be sequenced or the boy’s dead.

It was Mrs. Oliver’s response before the call ended that puzzled Temeke.
I understand…
It sounded too calm, resigned, and not the desperate pleading he expected. He thought Captain Fowler had instructed her on how to talk to the kidnapper, to get proof Adam was still alive. 

There were photographs of Bill Oliver on Malin’s desk. Hard but happy features and a deeply lined brow. It reminded Temeke of a wooden plaque he had at home where you could tell the age of the tree by counting the growth rings.

Malin looked pale. Or perhaps it was the light. He asked her why she was so glum, whether she’d finished typing the report. She said something about working late into the night, hadn’t quite finished it yet. Said she was worried about Adam. Prayed for him to. But Temeke knew that wasn’t all she was worried about, judging by the phone in her hand.

“What’s up?” he said, turning to look at a face that was determined to remain passive.

“Hollister,” she said, blowing out another sigh and dropping the phone face-down on her desk. “He keeps messaging me. Won’t pick up the phone.”

Temeke often wondered why Malin took him into her confidence, why she felt the need to tell him all the gory details. And why did his face always go rigid with fury at the mention of Hollister’s name? She should have been writing that report instead of fawning over top brass. “On the computer?”

“Yes, on the computer.”

“It’s quiet when it’s on the computer,” he said. “No one can hear.”

“It’s not the first time.”

“How many times?”

“Six, seven. I don’t know. And he won’t text.”

“Maybe his old lady checks the phone. She wouldn’t know where to look on the computer.”

“He doesn’t have an old lady.” She gave him a tight-lipped look and crossed her arms. They didn’t stay crossed for long. Couldn’t drink that cappuccino with her arms crossed. “You think I could do better?” she said, slurping a mouthful of froth.

“There’s always Jarvis,” he generously offered. “He seems to spend a great deal of time loitering outside the women’s toilets and I don’t think he’s after a safety pin.”

“He’s a pig!”

He stole a glance at her and reveled in her discomfort. “Did you see the book?” he said, changing the subject and pouring a shot of coffee into a plastic cup. The lights flickered on and off as a bolt of lightning lit the skies and rain pounded on a darkened parking lot. He was glad he was inside. He hoped the villains were too. “The one on the kitchen counter in the cabin?”

Malin held her coffee in a death grip and gave him one of those of-course-I-did looks. She was too smart to have missed it.

“Let me ask you something,” he said, knuckling one eye and yawning. “What type of man reads books on tactical warfare?”

“FBI, CIA, SAS, ATF… a hunter brushing up on his technique.”

Temeke took a few sips of his coffee. It always tasted bitter like the last few dregs from a well-stewed pot. No wonder Malin got hers from the Double Barrel coffee shop on Coors, only hers came with a designer price tag. “Why Adam?”

“Why any kid? Sometimes its random.”

“This kid wasn’t out walking in the woods, or jogging in a park. He was at home. Whoever took him knew his every move. He even bought a truck in a false name. Intent is what that is.”

Malin stared down at her coffee, forehead a frown. “A disgruntled staff member who didn’t get his bonus check. You want to hope he was wearing a mask.”

“So Adam wouldn’t be able to identify him? It’s not that kind of kidnap, Marl.”

“He’ll kill him then, won’t he?”

“He doesn’t care about bloody masks. No, this one was well planned, probably planned for years. It’s more than a truck bought in a false name, more than money.”

Temeke took a cigarette out of his pocket and let it dangle between his lips in flagrant defiance of the ‘no smoking’ sign. “Aristotle once said ‘We make war that we may live in peace.’ Words like that should be written here above the front door.”

“We’ve got enough graffiti on the front door,” Hackett interrupted, craning his head in from the corridor. “Northwest Area Command is beginning to look like an apocalyptic ruin!”

“Any news, sir?” Temeke asked, shoving the cigarette in his top pocket and hoping for a few hits at break time. Hackett looked worried. Good. He’d give him something to be worried about.

“News? Oh, yeah, there’s news. Two dead officers and helicopter peppered with shot made the front page in the Journal. Some idiot leaked it to the press before I did and now the public thinks it’s a bomb. Fowler called in half an hour ago. Still no sign of Adam. Said the Field Investigator’s report noted a big black dog lolloping about in the woods.”

“I’d just like to make an observation, sir. Half the dogs in the police department are big and black.”

Hackett sighed loudly and removed his jacket. His armpits were already dark with sweat. “Fowler said he found a set of tracks leading to a waterfall. That’s before his flashlight ran out of batteries.”

“A set, sir? It’s important see. A set defines one person.”

“He thinks they were human.”

“Course that would be difficult to see without a flashlight and we don’t him falling down a hole like Alice in bloody Wonderland.”

Hackett took off his glasses and began to polish them. “You might also be interested to know he found a human jawbone. Fresh it was.”

“Tell him to call me when he finds the rest.”

“Very droll, Temeke,” Hackett pressed on, readjusting his glasses and his smile. “Where Fowler’s concerned, might be time you buried the hatchet.”

“I’m not really sold on the idea, sir, not after he made a racist remark at the Christmas party. He wanted to shoot my brains out then. I expect you would have called that friendly fire.”

“If you’re referring to a certain disciplinary letter, I changed my mind. Fowler doesn’t deserve suspension. He deserves a medal. I’ve already received his preliminary report from last night. Where’s yours?”

“Why’s Captain Fowler leading this case? What’s he got that I haven’t?”

“Tact, seniority, contacts. Hasn’t rubbed up the District Attorney the wrong way or the Chief of Police.”

“You’ve got an unnaturally soft spot for him, sir. Better watch that soft spot. Might go raw in a day or two.”

The daft old bugger wasn’t going to let it go, kept on with a drone of morale-boosting words that Fowler was forensics favorite. Criminalistics too. Fowler was a snappy dresser, had far too many shiny things on that polyester shirt. And who wears gold cufflinks with a uniform?

“Isn’t he supposed to be studying crime reports in that nice plush office of his? You know, record-keeping, logs, budgets.”

“I’ve asked him to supervise the investigation with the help of those Navajo boys.”

“Shadow Wolf officers I think they’re called, sir.”

“I’m asking you to interview the witnesses. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Temeke’s cell phone gave a little cough in his pocket and he checked the screen. Serena.

He would have taken it if Hackett hadn’t been firing a salvo of insults from that overworked mouth of his. Something about the Impact Sargent being off sick twice this month and how lucky it was he’d finally managed to drag his sorry ass in to work this morning.

“He can’t keep dining out on the same excuse,” Hackett whispered. “It was his daughter who was kidnapped not him.”

“How would you feel if your daughter had been molested by a man ten years her senior and just before Christmas? Lucky we caught the disgusting sod. Lucky we found her an all. Oh, I forgot. You had a minor for a girlfriend once. Seventeen wasn’t she?”

That brought on a lip tremor and a flapping hand. “You dare tell a soul, Temeke. And you,” he said, jutting his chin at Malin. “I promise you―”

“You’ll melt my badge and pour liquid metal down my jocks. Got it, sir.”

It was always the same warning, always the same secret, and the only sensational thing Temeke had on Hackett worth a promotion or two. Lucky Hackett’s wife never found out about that little indiscretion.

The droning of Hackett’s voice came on like a Japanese torture,
drip, drip, drip
in his ear. Hot, cheesy breath slithering its way into his eustachian tube, coiling into the back of his brain and out the other side. 

Temeke’s mind wandered to Luis Alvarez, who had been in hospital from a gunshot wound to his head. Lucky for him, the damage was a torn up ear and now he looked like a scrawny dog from the pound. Temeke had gone to bring him home and ended up having a screaming row with Serena in the lobby, told her he wouldn’t sign those damn divorce papers unless she killed him first. Even gave her his gun. It was all bollocks of course. He couldn’t sign anything if he was dead. 

Serena didn’t know how badly things had been going; officers’ complaints about his treatment of  suspects, even a transgender male had sued for police brutality claiming Temeke had lifted his skirt. All right, maybe he had been a little overenthusiastic, but he had found a big pouch of crack underneath that skirt.

Hackett’s snapping fingers brought him back to the present. “You’ll be interviewing all staff members this week starting with the Mayor’s wife. Sargent Moran spoke to her on the phone, said she was all freaked out, wouldn’t speak to Fowler. Said he was a jerk.”

“Nice to see someone has taste.”

“I would have agreed until I found out she wanted to talk to you.” Hackett squeezed out a smile and lowered his voice. “Why do they always want to talk to you. And without an attorney? For crying out loud, you were practically fired from District 2.”

Temeke didn’t want to discuss his short tenure with the LVPD. There had been an unfortunate incident at Immaculate Conception College for girls, an exclusive private school for the filthy rich. One eleventh grader insisted she’d seen him naked outside the chapel one cold winter night. She later refuted her statement saying that it was dark and it could have been the ebony statue of Apollo in the water fountain.   

“Let’s make a start so I can get some sleep,” Hackett said. “I’ve left a pack on your desk.”

“Marlborough was it?”

“Obliged if you’d show her the contents.” Hackett turned his head and narrowed his eyes through the gallery railings at the lobby below. “I’d get a move on if I were you.”

The canvas was dry the next day, same as the tall brown pillars under which they lay. Disoriented at waking mid-morning and too much of a hurry to get moving, they ate nothing for breakfast and nothing for lunch, following the river downhill through the greater part of the afternoon.

Adam reckoned it was Tuesday. Had to keep count. Had to keep going.

Ramsey stopped for a moment, staring out over a grass plain where few trees grew. “Wind’s in the east,” he said, changing direction and stooping under a fringe of low hanging branches.

Beside a twist of piñon they found water trapped in two basins of age-old rock, bubbles rising as if from an underground spring. For a moment Adam thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, water trailing from a smaller basin into the larger and then out into a narrow stream.

Ramsey put the duffel bag against a tree and leaned the backpack over it. He pulled out three empty canteens and a bottle of iodine tablets from the back pack. “Fill these in the upper pool,” he said.

Adam dipped a bottle into the cold water, watched it funnel towards the neck with a hoary glimmer. One tablet for each and it was half an hour before they could drink it.

“Take a swim if you like,” Ramsey said behind him. He had the gun in his hand, had a fistful of bullets.

Adam shook his head. He wasn’t going to get undressed in front of a stranger. Wasn’t going to let the man see his—

“I won’t look, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried,” Adam muttered.

The water in the larger pool was clear. Not a flash of trout and there were pebbles in the bottom, blue and gray and black. His mother found a rock pool at a beach once. She removed her sundress and lay face-down in the water naked because she wanted to tan her back. She was funny like that.

Ramsey stripped off his clothes, draped his jeans over a boulder. He walked waist deep into the pool and lay back in it. “I can still see you,” he said.

Adam knew he was lying. He was staring up at the trees now. There on his back. He wasn’t even shivering, wasn’t even blue, and that water must have been freezing. The gun was under those jeans, only a stone’s throw a way. He could make a dash for it, grab it in one hand and point it. Only, it probably wasn’t loaded and he’d look like a fool if he did.

Ramsey went under for a second, body a rippling shadow that moved so fast it reminded Adam of a torpedo pushing up to the surface, water dripping from its warhead. He tried not to look at a body speckled with gooseflesh and dark hair as Ramsey got out. Muscle on muscle, tightening with every movement. It took him a while to get dressed, to peel on those socks and jeans. And then he blew into his hands and rubbed them together. Adam could see he was cold, only a man like that would never admit it.

How many bullets had there been in Ramsey’s hand? Four. Five. He remembered his dad saying his gun held six rounds. He had no idea how many this one had.

There was only one thing for it. Adam would do everything he was asked, do it with a smile on his face. Heck, they might even get along for a while. And then he’d run when Ramsey least expected it, when Ramsey had finished chewing that tobacco he had in his pocket. Because after a while it made him mellow.

Adam chewed on a few strips of jerky in silence, studied the man beside him out of the corner of his eye. Face aslant, ear catching every echo of birdsong. There were dark hairs on his chin and his eyes were slits beneath dark eyebrows. He reminded Adam of someone. He just couldn’t think who.

There were no other sounds other than the shift of the wind and the groan of an ancient tree limb. Pale shafts of sunlight filtered through the leaves lighting up the forest slopes.

Ramsey stood and sniffed the cool mountain air. There was something out there, grunting and huffing and he raised his chin, eyes flicking to the right and working the wind. Adam saw what looked like a gray shape standing upright about ten yards away. It could have been a bear. It could have been a tree stump.

Ramsey barely moved his hand over the gun in his belt before something jerked to one side rattling through the trees and was lost. “Elk,” he said, and then, “we were downwind and all.”

Adam shook his head and whispered, “It’s not elk. It’s Tanoan and Keresan. They’re the worst.”

Ramsey gave a hard stare, forehead creasing into a frown. “Those are languages not tribes.”

“They’re braves.”

Ramsey began chewing on something and then he grinned. “How about this. If we see a kiva or a pit-house you can have my compass. Replace the one you dropped back there.”

Adam saw the twitch in Ramsey’s eye, face clean now and free of grime. Since the kidnap over fourteen hours ago he assumed Ramsey had coal black eyes but they were green. One was slower than the other, made him look dreamy and out of sorts. But he was none of those things if he knew where that broken compass was.

“Better hope the rogue ranger doesn’t see it. We’ll be easy to track if he does.”

Adam swallowed and stared at the duffel bag Ramsey kept using as a pillow. “What’s in there?”

“Money.”

“Did you steal it?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“Sometimes the police give handouts… they’re fair like that.”

“Like a bank?”

Ramsey half smiled and nodded at the same time. He sat on a boulder, shaving the end of a stick with his knife.

“What are you making?”

“A spear.”

“What for?”

“Trout. There’s wire in that side pocket,” Ramsey said, pointing at the backpack. “You could make a noose if you like. Leave it in a rabbit run.”

“How?”

Ramsey took two short stakes of wood and notched them. The longer stake he gave to Adam. “Make a loop with that wire about as big a man’s fist. Then tie it to that stick.”

Ramsey found a tree, one that had an old bird’s nest lodged in one of the upper branches and bark peeling from the trunk like an old tattered coat. He drove the two shorter stakes vertically into the ground and tied the horizontal stake with the snare to an overhanging branch. Pulling it down he got the tension he needed, hooked it into the notches of the standing stakes and left it there.

“If you twist one of the notched stakes about 180 degrees the trap will work whichever way the rabbit goes through. And when he does, he’ll be lifted off the ground and ready to skin.”

Adam found himself grinning. “Cool,” he said.

“You’re going to like the taste of that rabbit.” Ramsey rubbed his hands and strode off back to camp. “You’re going to like the taste of squirrel too.”

Adam followed him at a distance, hoping that rabbit would be snared in an hour or two. It was unlikely with all the rain and howling that was coming from the west.

“Just wolves,” Ramsey murmured, seeing the look on his face.

“Are they big?”

“Big as dogs.”

“They’ll frighten the rabbits.”

Ramsey shrugged. “With any luck they’ll frighten one into that noose. Ever had rabbit stew?”

Adam made a face. His dad roasted one in the back yard when his mom was away. Made some mashed potatoes to go with it and then smeared the meat with cranberry jelly. It was disgusting.

“It’s the difference between fresh rabbit and two-day-old rabbit,” Ramsey said, reaching for his spear. “Same with squirrels. You can make a rich brown gravy with the drippings. If you can catch one that is.”

“So one’ll just happen along in a minute?”

“Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. Worrying never caught a rabbit.”

Adam nodded. He wouldn’t worry. He would just peek over there now and then. “Will you read that book again tonight?”

“If you like.”

Then they went off to fish.