I had retreated to the big chamber, with its garbage and old citrus cases. I hobbled backward painfully, crashing into some wooden boxes, falling flat on my ass. There was no cover. No way out. I reached to my belt and brought out a Speedloader. Opened the cylinder. Steadied my shaking hand. Emptied the spent rounds. They fell like little bells onto the filthy floor. Steadied my hand. I dropped the Speedloader into the cylinder, turned the metal shaft and dropped six fresh rounds into the Colt. I swung the cylinder heavily into place just as the goon stormed into the room and leveled his machine gun at my head.
“Give me your fucking gun!” he huffed.
I was splayed out on the floor, surrounded by the debris of a half-century ago, a steady ooze of blood coming out of the top of my foot. I just stared at the Python and knew I was at the end. “You’re not getting my gun,” I forced out in a hoarse whisper.
James Yarnell stepped in behind him and shone a flashlight in my eyes. I could see a little chrome semi-automatic pistol in his other hand.
“The dentist’s grandson.” He shook his head, playing the light over my bloody left foot. “How much bad luck have you had this month, young man? You find things that were never intended to be found. And now you’re dead.” His expression was something between contempt and pity. “I never did like history classes. What’s the point in looking back?”
I spoke to the barrel of the gun. “Sometimes you find unfinished business.” They were lousy last words.
In the next ten seconds, the silence became just complete enough that we were all startled by a man clearing his throat.
Then the goon’s right knee buckled in a way nature never intended. In the same instant, the room was overtaken by a huge explosion. The goon collapsed, screaming, holding a bloody mass where his knee used to be. James Yarnell retreated, weakly holding out his pistol. Out of the gunsmoke stepped Bobby Hamid.
He walked to the goon, kicked away his machine gun, and shot him again in the other knee.
“There, now you have a match,” Bobby said hospitably.
“Bobby!” I winced.
“Dr. Mapstone, I am saving your life,” he said evenly, then he faced James Yarnell, who by now was on the other side of the room, his back against the wall.
“This is fun,” Bobby said, raising a gigantic, blue-steel automatic in Yarnell’s direction.
“Don’t kill me!” Yarnell pleaded.
“And why not?” Bobby asked, as if a party discussion had gotten heated and it was time for a new bottle of wine. “It sounds as if you have much to atone for, Mr. Yarnell.”
“My family built this state!” he shouted.
Bobby shot him in the left foot, releasing a jet of bright red blood. The pistol and flashlight clattered off to the side, and we were in half-dark again.
“Don’t speak, David,” Bobby cut me off coldly. He walked over, retrieved the flashlight and set it on a carton overlooking Yarnell.
Bobby rubbed his fine chin and aimed at Yarnell’s left knee.
“No!” Yarnell sobbed, clutching his mangled foot. “What do you want?”
Bobby chuckled. “You cannot possibly give me what I want. Dr. Mapstone, however, is more easily pleased. He would also tell you that you have the right to remain silent, that anything you say can be used against you.” He focused his aim. “I suggest you start talking about this kidnapping. And please don’t bore me, Mr. Yarnell.”
Yarnell’s eyes were wider than seemed possible for human eyes.
“It was Dad and Win together!” Yarnell blubbered. “They had to get Grandpa away from that little whore, Frances. She was pregnant again with his child. They were going to lose everything.”
“Slow down,” Bobby commanded.
“We brought the twins here. Then we went home. Talbott was told what to do, make the call demanding the ransom and pick up the money. After he gave the money to Uncle Win, he took Frances to the border.”
I spoke through my pain. “Why would she go with him? He must have kidnapped her, too.”
“No, no. She went willingly. She wasn’t that bright. She didn’t know anything about the kidnapping. Nobody did for days. Jack told her she would get to meet Grandpa in Nogales and they could be together. You’ve got to get me some help! I’m going to bleed to death.”
Bobby raised an eyebrow. “So?”
Yarnell moaned.
I went on, “But the real plan was to have Jack Talbott kill her?”
“If it came to that,” he said, his face contorted in pain. “Jack was supposed to drug her and get her an abortion. Then pay her to go away. He was given the money for that.”
I asked, “So why was Jack Talbott executed and Frances Richie forced to spend her life in prison?”
“Jack tried to blackmail us,” James said, forcing up some bravado. “The Yarnells don’t blackmail.”
Bobby stifled an exaggerated yawn.
“There was a time when we would have crushed you, towel head!” Yarnell yelled. Bobby mockingly put his hand over his mouth in shock, keeping the big automatic leveled. Yarnell said, “We couldn’t have either one of them talking. Dad put the pajamas in a sack in the trunk of Talbott’s car, just as a little insurance. Dad was smart that way. So if anything went wrong, and the cops searched Talbott, he’d look guilty and nobody would believe him if he blamed the family.”
“And Frances?”
“Grandpa died thinking the little bitch had betrayed him. We made sure she kept her mouth shut once she was in prison.”
“Really, how was that?”
“I’m dying here, Mapstone!”
“Put your hand over your wound. Apply direct pressure. I don’t think you silenced Frances. I think she chose not to talk.”
“You’re full of shit, Mapstone. You’re gonna tell me a broken heart over my grandfather shut her up? I’m finished talking. You’re a deputy sheriff, even if you’re a dirty one. So you have to arrest me, or arrest him!” He nodded toward Bobby without having the courage to look at him.
I said, “Frances didn’t have the abortion.”
“What are you talking about?” Yarnell started to gesture but stopped himself. Bobby kept the gun trained on him.
“She had the baby in jail,” I said.
“That’s…That’s impossible. We paid…”
“Not enough, I guess. She had that baby and it was adopted,” I said. “So the only thing this woman has left in the world is taken from her, but at least the baby has a chance to be safe and free. She knew if she said anything it might make the Yarnell family go after that baby. Mother love is powerful. Maybe it was the only thing left inside her after you and your family were through. Makes me wonder if there’s another heir to Hayden Yarnell out there, maybe more than one.”
“That’s not…”
“They might have an interest in the Yarnell Trust after you lose every dime.”
Yarnell stared past me and spoke in a monotone. “When she was just his mistress, it was one thing. She got pregnant but Grandpa made Dad adopt the twin boys. Max was a little kid. He never knew. But Grandpa and that little bitch couldn’t leave it at that. They loved each other.” He made it sound like an unprecedented phenomenon. “After Grandma died, he was going to marry Frances…”
“When was this?” Bobby asked.
“Nineteen forty-one. My dad and Uncle Win couldn’t talk Grandpa out of it. He was going to remarry and start a new family. He said he was sick of his sons and their gambling and failures.”
“You were part of it,” I said. “You also forgot to come back and get the two loose ends you left down here inside the wall. It must have been a hell of a way for little boys to die. Suffocating. In the dark.”
Yarnell momentarily shook his head, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Dad had to do what he did. There was no other way. We were going to lose everything. Those boys weren’t even his children.”