Nightlife (24 page)

32

C
atherine Hobbes sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair at the side of the interrogation room while Lieutenant Hartnell sat down at the table to question Calvin Dunn. As she looked at Calvin Dunn, she understood why Joe Pitt had warned her. The face below his graying hair was smooth and almost unlined, devoid of emotion. The pale eyes revealed no concern, or even much indication of an interior life. They were merely watchful.

As soon as she had heard the name of the man who had killed the sniper, she had asked to be in the room while he was interrogated. Lieutenant Hartnell had said, “You’re welcome to watch the video monitor, or even have a copy of the tape afterward.” But she had said, “I want him to see me.” Then she had told Hartnell what Joe Pitt had told her about Calvin Dunn.

While Hartnell prepared to begin, Catherine watched Calvin Dunn. He took note of each of the people in the room and looked up at the video camera suspended from the ceiling, but nothing he saw surprised him. He turned his attention to Hartnell, and Catherine could see that it made Hartnell uncomfortable.

Hartnell said, “Your name, please.”

“Calvin Dunn.”

“I’m Lieutenant Hartnell, Flagstaff Police Department. I would like to ask you a few questions about what happened tonight. I want you to know that you have the right to refuse to answer them. What you say could be used against you in court. You also have the right to have an attorney present while we talk to you. If you cannot afford an attorney, we will get you one before we proceed. Do you understand your rights?”

Calvin Dunn never took his eyes from Hartnell as he listened to the recitation. “Yes,” said Calvin Dunn. “I think that for the moment I won’t need an attorney, thank you.”

Hartnell did not like the exaggerated politeness. “I assume that you’re saying that because you think that you won’t be charged with anything?”

“I can’t control what somebody might accuse me of. But I won’t be convicted of anything. That’s not a possibility.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Because there was only one gun up on that fire escape, and the dead man brought it with him. I climbed up there carrying no weapons. While I was struggling to take his rifle away from him to prevent him from using it on me and others, it went off.”

“Mr. Dunn, your identification says you live in Los Angeles. What are you doing in Flagstaff?”

“I’m a licensed private investigator. I’m searching for Tanya Starling.”

“Why were you at the Sky Inn tonight? Are you registered at the hotel?”

“No. I was watching for Tanya Starling.”

“Why? She hasn’t been seen at the hotel for several days.”

“Hasn’t been seen. Right,” Calvin Dunn said. “That doesn’t mean she hasn’t been there, or wasn’t nearby, just out of sight, doing the seeing.”

“All right. You know she hasn’t been seen at the hotel, but you were waiting for her to show up anyway. Why would she do that?”

“Because of that lady right there.” His right forefinger pointed directly at Catherine’s heart. It made her want to flinch, but she controlled the impulse. “I went there at first because that was where Tanya Starling had been spotted last, but then I developed a hunch, and verified that Miss Hobbes was staying there. And that made it a good place for me to be.”

“Explain.”

Calvin Dunn looked directly at Catherine. His pale eyes made her uncomfortable, but she met his gaze. “You can’t just follow a killer around and hope you’ll catch up with them. You have to think about what makes them want to do it.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

“Sure. There are some people who kill once because they lose their temper or they’re drunk and don’t think it through. Others do it because they get a charge out of it, like sex. Tanya Starling isn’t either kind. She solves problems that way.”

“Solves problems? What kind of problems?”

“Whatever comes her way. She goes along doing what she wants until somebody becomes a problem. She solves it by killing them.”

“And how in the world did that theory lead you to sit in the parking lot of the Sky Inn tonight?”

“The place you want to be isn’t where the last victim was. It’s where the next one is going to be.”

“You thought that Tanya Starling was going to the hotel to harm Detective Hobbes?”

“It seemed likely.”

“How long would you have stayed?”

Calvin Dunn turned to Catherine Hobbes. “How long would we have stayed?”

The others sat in silence, and Catherine realized she had to answer. “I can’t say.”

Calvin Dunn turned to Hartnell. “We can’t say.”

“Why would she think killing Detective Hobbes would solve her problems?”

“Miss Hobbes was the one who investigated Tanya’s first killing and has been after her ever since. If it wasn’t for her, nobody would care about Tanya Starling. Cops don’t get much appreciation from the general public. But you can bet there’s one person who knows exactly who you are and exactly what you did in each case. I figured Tanya has to know who’s after her.”

Hartnell sat still with his lips pursed. “It must have been kind of a disappointment to you that the shooter turned out not to be Tanya after all.”

“It
was
her,” said Dunn. “That kid up on the fire escape was doing it for her.”

“I’m sorry to cast doubt on your theories, but we have people killed around here that have nothing to do with Tanya Starling.”

“Did he fire at anybody besides Miss Hobbes? Are there any bullet holes in any of the hundred other cars in the hotel parking lot or the two hundred that went up the street past him while he was waiting for her?”

Hartnell’s eyes shot to Catherine, and she could tell he wanted to throw her out of the room. But Hartnell’s voice remained calm and deliberate. “Mr. Dunn, I think you need to remember that it’s my job to ask the questions.”

“I’m just pointing out that the kid was doing it for Tanya.”

“I caught that,” said Hartnell. “Let’s concentrate on you. Had you ever seen the sniper before you saw him on the fire escape?”

“I think I probably did. It’s probable he was one of the people who drove by the hotel parking lot a bit earlier tonight. I was mostly looking for women, but I did take a look at everybody I saw.”

“What do you suppose he was doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Mr. Dunn. You have a theory on everything. Was he looking for Detective Hobbes?”

“More likely, her car.”

“How did he know what her car looked like? How could he possibly know?”

“I would guess he might have seen that press conference in front of the police station on television, then driven by the station parking lot and looked for a rental car. I don’t imagine there were a lot of them out there.”

Hartnell knew Dunn was right, and that made him more frustrated. “All right. You were in the parking lot of the Sky Inn at around eleven-thirty, when the first shots were fired. Is that right?”

“Almost. I think it was around eleven-forty.”

“Take us through the rest of this. What did you do then?”

“Well, I saw the car with Miss Hobbes in it come up the road and signal for the lot entrance, so I started looking at the cars behind it to see if Tanya was following her. The first shot looked like it drilled the rear strut, just in front of the rear window. Miss Hobbes jammed the gas pedal, hit the brakes, and spun around. Then a second shot hit the side window and went through the car, so she drove off across the lot as fast as she could. But because the bullet had hit both windows I could tell which direction the shot came from.”

“Did you try to help her?”

“Help her do what?”

“Get to safety.”

“She was already doing what I would have done, which was to drive like hell to get behind something to block the shooter’s view. She was weaving around a bit to give him a harder shot.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. I knew she would do that.”

“So what did you do?”

“I drove around the hotel building to get out on a side street, then drove toward the place where I thought the shooter was.”

“And you thought the shooter was Tanya Starling.”

“I didn’t have any other candidates in mind at the time, but I didn’t know who it was.”

“But your theory that told you to be there suggested that that was who it was. So you didn’t call the police or try to help the potential victim to safety or warn the innocent bystanders who might drive into the lot. What did you do?”

“I went after the shooter.”

“And where did you find him?”

“Perched on the fire escape of one of the taller buildings, about two blocks west of the hotel.”

“What was he doing when you found him?”

“Shooting.”

“He wasn’t trying to get away?”

“No. From up there he had a pretty good view. He probably figured he would see any police cars in plenty of time to get away.”

“What do you think? Was he right?”

“If he was wrong, he would still have been up on that balcony with a thirty-ought-six and a couple of boxes of ammo when the first cop cars came up that alley. Then you would have had a couple of those bagpipe funerals.”

Hartnell was clenching and unclenching his teeth. Catherine could see his jaw muscles tightening and relaxing. “So when you got there, he was still shooting.”

“Yes. Otherwise, he probably would have noticed me, but he had his eye in the scope.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him? We found your gun in your coat.”

“I’ve been deputized by the sheriff of Delacruz County, California, as an auxiliary officer, and if you found the gun you found the concealed-carry permit with it. Arizona and California have a reciprocal agreement.”

“Answer my question. Why didn’t you shoot him?”

“Because I wanted to try to get him alive.”

“Why?”

“So he would tell me where she was.”

“So we’re back to Tanya Starling again?”

“We’ve never been anywhere else.”

“Who hired you to find her?”

“A victim’s family.”

“What’s the client’s name?”

“It’s the Poole family.”

“Hugo Poole hired you to kill her, didn’t he?”

“He hired me to find her.”

“You thought the boy on the fire escape was Tanya Starling, so you climbed up there intending to kill her. It must have been an incredible disappointment when you saw it wasn’t even a woman. It was a boy.”

Dunn said, “I can see the friendly part of our talk is over. Now you can get me a lawyer at your expense, and I’ll be ready to continue.”

Hartnell turned to the uniformed officer beside Catherine and said, “Put him in a holding cell for now.”

Calvin Dunn stood up and faced Catherine while the police officer handcuffed his wrists behind his back. “Be careful for the next couple of days, darling. It looks like I won’t be around to watch your back.”

33

A
nne Forster heard the news on the radio at seven in the morning, when she had already driven halfway into New Mexico. She had the radio tuned to the strongest signal she could find, the Albuquerque morning drive-time program.

The woman who served as sidekick to the funny morning man read the story. “There’s a bizarre twist to the hunt for Tanya Starling, the woman wanted for questioning in multiple murders in several states. Last night in Flagstaff, Arizona, a sniper opened fire on a police detective from Portland, Oregon, who has been pursuing the case. Police say the sniper shot at Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes in the parking lot of her hotel. The sniper, in turn, was killed in an attempt to apprehend him, and remains unidentified. There is no word on the whereabouts of Tanya Starling.”

“I’m sorry, Ty,” she said quietly. The words sounded really good to her, with just a small break in her voice. She said it again, and it was even better. That bad-little-girl voice would have made Tyler’s knees buckle. The thought made her miss him for a moment.

She was irritated that the woman on the radio was trying to make everything sound like her fault. Was she supposed to feel guilty now that this Catherine Hobbes had killed a sixteen-year-old? Anne’s eyes passed across the items that Ty had left in the car when he had gone off with the rifle. He had left his baseball cap, some pocket change he’d been afraid would jingle, his jacket. She reached into the jacket with her right hand and found his cell phone.

She set it down and reached into her purse. She found the little notebook where she had written the phone numbers of Catherine Hobbes in Portland, Oregon. She dialed the home number and listened to the recorded invitation to leave a message.

“Hello, Catherine,” she said. “It’s me again. I’m thinking about you.” She was pleased with that. She had not practiced or even planned it, but it had sounded scary. “I just heard on the radio that you killed the boy. He saw the press conference where you and the fat cop said nothing would happen to him. I told him to trust you. But you killed him. That was a disgusting thing to do. Good-bye, Catherine. I’ll be thinking about you.”

She turned off the telephone and smiled: pretty good. If she had made the call any spookier, it would have seemed intentional. She left the telephone open and dropped it out the window, onto the pavement. This route—Interstate 40—was one of the busiest east-west roads in the country. In a few seconds one of the big fourteen-wheelers she had been passing for hours would come along and crush Ty’s phone to powder.

She put on Tyler’s baseball cap so the brim would help shade her eyes as she drove east, toward the rising sun. She glanced in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. She looked cute. Maybe she should wear hats more often.

When she reached Albuquerque, she watched the signs and took the turn at one that said I-25 North. She wasn’t sure where she was heading, but soon she began to see signs that listed cities, as though they were items on a menu: Santa Fe, Colorado Springs, Denver, Cheyenne. She would have to start avoiding little places, where people remembered everyone they had seen in their whole boring lives.

She called me again.” Catherine Hobbes stood in Lieutenant Hartnell’s office, still holding her cell phone in her hand.

Hartnell lifted his eyes from the file on his desk. “Tanya?”

“Yes. She called my house in Portland and left a message about a half hour ago.”

“Can I hear it?”

She lifted her cell phone, tapped the keys to replay her message, and handed it to him. He listened to it, then took a small tape recorder out of his desk drawer, turned it on, and hit the 1 key on Catherine’s phone to replay the message beside the microphone. Then he pressed the 2 to save it, and handed it back to her. “She seems to think that you ambushed him.”

“She seems to,” said Catherine. “The phone company says the call came from a cell phone, and the origin was Albuquerque. Here’s the number.” She handed it to him on a sheet from a desk message pad. “They say it belongs to Tyler Gilman, of Darling, Arizona.”

“That’s just down the road, outside of town,” he said. He stood up and went to the door, then beckoned to someone. When one of the detectives came in, he said, “I need you to find out what you can about a Tyler Gilman. The address is in Darling. I think he’s either another victim or he’s our sniper.” Hartnell turned and came back to his desk.

“Well,” said Catherine, “Thanks for letting me in on the investigation. I’d better be going now.”

“Going?”

“The call came from Albuquerque. I’ve got to see if I can get on a plane.”

“You know she definitely talked that boy into trying to kill you?”

“Think of it. She can talk somebody into that, and I can barely get my dates to open a door for me.”

He didn’t laugh. “If you know, then you ought to take some precautions.”

“I spend all my time with other cops.”

“Think about tomorrow or the next day,” said Hartnell. “She could do it again. Some man you never saw before could walk up and put a bullet in your head, just to win points with her.”

“Absolutely true,” said Catherine Hobbes. “It’s always been a crummy job.” She stepped to his desk, leaned across it to hold out her right hand. “Thanks for everything.”