In a block I took the on-ramp to the Papago Freeway. The rush-hour mess was starting, but the big engine quickly had me up to seventy, sailing out onto six lanes of eastbound concrete. Overhead the wind became a gale rattling the ragtop. I crossed lane after lane, swerving past the thickening clots of cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickups. The Twelfth Street overpass swooped above me. Then we passed Sixteenth and bore into the Short Stack, where the Red Mountain Freeway hove off to the East Valley. Traffic was stopped, backing up. I slid over to the shoulder and ran around it, provoking a chorus of honking. Then I was past the jam-up, heading east. The speedometer said eighty-five, but the big car felt as if it were doing about forty. Behind me, I could see the Hummer trying to catch up. I fumbled for my cell phone.
Lindsey answered on the first ring.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, Dave. Are you?”
I told her what I knew. She promised to call the deputy down at the front desk. I promised her I’d alert the communications center and get some backup. I assured her I had the Python and some Speed-loaders holding extra ammo. It wouldn’t come to that. It was probably just a coincidence and a case of nerves. Still, I was glad that every second we moved farther away from the Central Corridor and the hideaway condo. I told her I loved her.
It was a beautiful day for a drive. One of the sad ironies of the urbanization of Phoenix was that the best place for average folks to see the mountains now was from the freeway. Camelback sat spectacularly off to the north, the afternoon sun making it glow in a rich red. The smog was light enough to see the gentle undulations of the McDowell range off to the northeast, and beyond them, Four Peaks soared through the haze. At the Fortieth Street exit, I raised the Sheriff’s Office communications center and, after a long wait on hold, explained things to the watch commander. It looked like a hundred thousand other SUVs on the streets of Phoenix. No, I didn’t have a license tag. By that time downtown Tempe was flying by on my right, and the black Hummer was a half dozen car lengths behind me.
Then it was gone. I swerved to avoid a slow-moving junk truck. Then I slowed to around sixty. I checked both mirrors and the Hummer had disappeared. As I updated the watch commander, I pulled off on McClintock and headed south into Tempe. She told me to keep the line open. So I set the phone on the seat and drove slowly across the Salt River, then turned west on University. My heart was still beating too hard. But the road behind me was devoid of anything that looked like my pursuer.
I cruised past the Arizona State campus, slow enough that cars sped around me angrily. Now I regretted not bagging the guy. He was gone and we didn’t know what the hell he wanted with me. Another voice in me said it was just as well. The street behind me remained safe. I made a loop and retraced my route. How did he just disappear? I could have sworn he was still with me past the exit to Priest and downtown Tempe…Could he have exited at Rural? I cursed myself for not finding a way to get behind him, get his license number.
Then I took a sharp, involuntary breath. I told the watch commander I’d call her back, and hung up even as she was protesting. I speed-dialed Lindsey’s cell.
The phone rang five times, and her voice mail picked up. I dialed again, irrationally checking the display to make sure it was, indeed, Lindsey’s number. Still nothing. I pulled over into a parking lot, forgetting to signal or check my mirrors. I dialed the landline into the condo. It rang fifteen times. Next I tried the line to the concierge desk. Again, no answer.
I cursed under my breath. I almost mumbled aloud something about how this couldn’t be happening. The car was already moving. I sped out of the parking lot and went north to the freeway. In a couple of minutes I was headed back toward the city, the sun in my eyes, my foot jamming the accelerator into the floor.
“There’s no answer,” I was yelling into the phone, trying to make the dispatcher understand me. I gave my badge number for the second time, gave the address. She put me on hold. I wanted to throw the damned phone out of the window.
The siren could be heard even above the wind coursing over the top of the car. Behind me, a DPS cruiser was closing fast. The highway patrol.
“Goddamnit!”
The speedometer read one hundred and twenty-five. The speedometer stopped at one hundred and twenty-five.
I flew low-altitude across the Short Stack and descended into the center city, staying in the HOV lane, heading to the Third Street exit. Now the trooper was right on me. I could see sunglasses and a grim expression. Another DPS cruiser was behind him. A buddy. Everybody ought to have a buddy. I held up my badge like a fool. I didn’t slow down.
The Olds surged off the freeway doing a responsible eighty miles per hour, as I tried to raise the communications center on the cell phone. Behind me, the trooper’s siren insisted I pull over. I gunned it through the yellow light at McDowell and heard screeching tires off to the left. I didn’t want to look. Somewhere in my mind the moving violations were adding up: speeding, reckless driving, refusing to stop. I was half a mile from Lindsey.
Then I was at Central, heading north. A couple of Phoenix PD cars had joined the chase now, and I led a festive little procession up the northbound fast lane, past the Phoenix Art Museum, the Viad Tower, and the church where we had been married. Sure, something inside told me I wasn’t thinking straight. I was thinking only of Lindsey right at that moment. And I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach when I could see emergency lights outside the condo tower.
Something wrong.
Something bad.
The palm trees hurtled past. Then I was slowing, stopping suddenly, slamming the gearshift into park, running toward the entrance to the building. Men were milling about. Men with guns. They noticed me and started out the door.
“Lindsey!” I yelled. “Where’s Lindsey?”
Behind me I heard voices, commands.
Then a great weight fell on me from behind. The ground came up fast. I felt sharp pain, sudden force. I was losing altitude. Then I wasn’t really there. It was only in a little closet of my consciousness that I noticed my arms being pulled in an unnatural direction, and I heard a sound that reminded me of handcuffs locking.
Chapter Sixteen
“You’re gonna be OK. You just got the air knocked out of you.”
“Do you know what day it is?”
“Don’t try to talk. Just breathe.”
“Do you want to go to the hospital to get checked out?”
“He’s fine. He doesn’t need to go.”
People were having a conversation in a language I didn’t quite understand.
“He’s a deputy. He’s on the job. Take those off.”
I inhabited a hidden control room just behind my eyes, working an air machine of some kind, vaguely aware of things going on around me. I was attached to something heavy. Then everything turned sideways and my stomach was headed up my throat…
“Don’t try to stand up. That’s right. Keep your head down. Just concentrate on breathing.”
“Lindsey!”
“She’s OK, she’s OK. Just sit there.”
I came around. “There” was the grass in front of the condo tower. I was surrounded by redwood-sized men, a couple of paramedics, three Phoenix cops, two sheriff’s detectives whose names I could remember if you gave me a few minutes without my passing out. A DPS trooper was glowering at me, putting away his cuffs. I squeezed my hands just to make sure they were still there. He must have weighed 280 pounds, and I suddenly felt every one of them on my back and ribs. My left arm was swelling painfully, in the grasp of a large man in a blue T-shirt.