Raveneau checked his rear view mirror again. He saw Frank’s face, the mirrored sunglasses. Frank’s jaw was set. Frank closed to within ten yards and Raveneau was gradually speeding up.
‘What’s in the water over here?’ la Rosa asked. ‘What happened between when we met him this morning and now?’
‘Uncle Casey talked to him and Frank hasn’t been straight with us, though we haven’t exactly been straight with him either. Either way, I’m starting to get the picture. Hang on, it’s about to get a little rough.’
Raveneau didn’t want Frank to think they were running from him or had any fear, and in truth, Raveneau wouldn’t run either way. But he didn’t doubt Frank was armed. Behind them, Frank swept over the line into the opposite lane and sliced the curve. He was right on their bumper now. Raveneau listened as la Rosa got through to somebody, and then lowered the phone abruptly, saying, ‘He’s got a gun out.’
They squealed through the next curve and when he didn’t see any oncoming traffic Raveneau straddled the middle of the road blocking Frank from passing. And that’s what Frank wanted to do. The passenger window was down. Frank was right-handed. Unless he could pass in the opposite lane he was going to be shooting with his left hand, but that’s what he did now. It took him several rounds before he put two through their rear window and now a bullet slapped into the dash to the right of Raveneau and la Rosa started firing.
La Rosa started at Homicide with something to prove and made more of the required range days shooting practice than any other inspector. She was also the best shot with or without the practice regardless of the claims of Deming and a couple of the other inspectors once they had a couple of drinks in them. No one could shoot with her.
‘Hold a straight line,’ she yelled and as he did, she got off four quick shots. Frank backed off. He backed off and then he slowed and his truck started to drift left. It straightened and then veered left again, though now he wasn’t traveling more than twenty miles an hour. He went off the embankment even slower than that as if he didn’t have quite enough strength to hold the brake pedal down.
The truck hung in the air before tipping forward, landing with a metal wrenching tear then tumbling end over end down the steep lava-strewn slope. They heard more than they saw, but Raveneau saw the end. He saw the truck come to rest on its side, the passenger door gone, roof crushed. There was a silence and then a whoosh as the gas tank ignited. Raveneau skidded and slid as he ran down. Heat washed up the slope as the cab interior burned. Ammunition started cooking off and Raveneau backed away. There was nothing he could do. So much ammo was popping it sounded like popcorn.
From above he watched the truck burn. He couldn’t think of a way to have gotten Frank out, yet felt as if he should have. He turned to look at la Rosa sitting in the car, passenger door open with her shoes on the pavement, stunned as she stared down the slope. He knew he needed to get her out of the car and talk to her before the locals arrived. But he pulled out his phone instead and called Coe.
‘He came after you?’
‘Elizabeth returned fire and must have hit him. He went off a steep embankment. His truck is down the slope burning with him inside. You better check on Casey. Is an agent still on the road in front of his house?’
‘I’ll call you back.’
‘We’re headed to his house when we leave here, but we’re going to be here awhile.’
Two cars pulled over and people spilled out to check out where the column of black smoke was coming from. A man hustled over.
‘What happened? Did you call for help?’
Raveneau nodded and far in the distance were sirens. He stepped away. He got Elizabeth out of the car and walked with her fifty yards down the road away from the smoke into the sunlight and warm breeze blowing upslope. He talked with her. He called Becker before the locals showed and a detective about an hour later. The detective wanted la Rosa’s statement without Raveneau listening in. He asked for her gun. As Raveneau waited he took a call from Coe.
‘We’re having trouble reaching our agent out of the Kona office.’
‘I thought he was getting backup hours ago.’
‘They got delayed.’
‘Casey will have an escape hatch. He’s not going to wait. I think he sent Frank after us. It’s why he gave us Ito’s name. He knew we’d come back on the Saddle Road.’
‘Our agents are going to go ahead and search the house.’
‘I figured you would. We’ll see you there.’
FIFTY-SIX
Casey’s ranch house was fully lit when Raveneau and la Rosa arrived and there was nowhere to park near the house or in the clearing in front of the barn. Raveneau backed up to the fork leading to Jim Frank’s house. He parked their car between the trees and they walked the broken asphalt road back down to the ranch house.
The FBI special agent in charge of the search was out of Oahu and had flown over in the late afternoon. His name was Carl Norris. He sat out on the porch with them and directed his questions at Raveneau as la Rosa listened. Special Agent Han and his vehicle were missing. So was Casey. Raveneau listened then said, ‘We got rough directions today from a woman we interviewed to a large former sugar plantation that Casey owns. It may be under a corporate name and he may be there.’
‘We’re pretty sure he’s off the island.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘It’s an ongoing investigation.’
‘How long has that been going on?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘All right, well, the plantation still needs to be checked.’ Raveneau glanced at la Rosa, adding, ‘We’ll go there.’
‘I want agents to go with you.’
‘We want to see what you’ve found first. What’s in the boxes your agents are carrying out?’
‘Desktop computers, other documents, we’ll go through in the field office. We appreciate everything you’ve done, but we’ve got enough agents inside. If you want to drive roads and look for his vehicle we’d appreciate any effort you make.’
Raveneau walked down the steps and moved away from the floodlights into darkness to call Coe.
‘I know what I’m looking for, they don’t.’
‘Put Norris on.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Not really, but I know what he’s working on.’
‘OK, hold on.’
Raveneau walked back and handed Norris his phone. After listening to Coe for a few moments Norris walked out of earshot. When he returned he handed the phone to Raveneau and said, ‘You can go in and you can watch, but we don’t need help with the search. It makes more sense for you to lead our agents to this sugar plantation you talked about.’
‘Show us what you’ve found.’
‘Most of it’s packed up. We’re almost done.’
Raveneau went inside anyway. They were in the lanai when agents opened a locked waterproof cabinet in an out building near the barn. In it he’d found two laptops and four handguns.
‘What do you think?’ la Rosa asked quietly.
‘Let’s go see what they found in the cabinet and then try to find the sugar plantation.’
He talked to Coe again as they waited outside the building where the laptops were found.
‘We’re going to move on,’ he told Coe. ‘We’ll help look for the missing special agent, but there are a couple more things we should talk about first. We interviewed a woman today who ID’ed Krueger’s killer from photos Matt Frank sent his half brother via Facebook. This woman lived with Jim Frank from 1987 to 1991. She saw this man a half dozen times. He was young. His connection was Alan Krueger. She gave me a name for him, but also said she’s bad with names. The name she gave me was Colin Gray. She’s sure of the first name but hazy about the Gray. She thought he was working with Krueger and that he worked for the government. Can you do anything with that?’