“Naw.” He smiled. “It’s an old chamois I used to polish my car. I stuck it in my compost barrel for a few days and then put it in a plastic bag to preserve the gamey smell. Figured it might come in handy someday. Remember what I said about playing to stereotypes giving you an advantage?”
I wondered what mine was now, my wife shot, my partner missing, me carrying a star issued by Chris Melton. Stereotypical fool, sounded accurate.
“What are you going to do with him?”
He pulled the cap down, shading his eyes. “Drive him out to some Walmart lot, take off the handcuffs, and tell him to slowly walk a hundred paces before he removes the blindfold. By that time, I’ll be gone.”
“They can find you.”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you believe what Bogdan told us?”
“No reason not to.” His shaded eyes scanned the lot. “This confirms the diamonds are the ones we were looking for, stolen FBI evidence. It doesn’t tell us where they came from in the first place, how the Russians knew the diamonds were coming here, or who was the intended recipient.”
“It also doesn’t explain why Peralta left me the note to find Matt Pennington. According to Bogdan, Pennington wasn’t part of the heist…”
Cartwright saw the expression on my face. “What?”
I suddenly remembered the matchbook in Pennington’s pack of cigarettes and the telephone number written inside it. I called up the note on my iPhone and read the number to him.
“Doesn’t sound familiar,” he said. “Call it.”
I hesitated. Then I pressed the number and held the phone to my ear.
On the second ring, a man’s voice answered.
Peralta.
Several dozen exclamations fought for attention in my brain, relief, joy, anger, anticipation. I pushed them away and said, “It’s Matt Pennington.”
“You have the wrong number,” he said and hung up. It sounded like the same old blunt Peralta. I didn’t detect fear or coercion in his tone.
I had finished telling Cartwright about the brief exchange when my phone rang. Not Abba. An old-fashioned phone ring. It was the number I had just dialed.
“Wait,” Cartwright held out a hand. “Give it to me.”
“Apache Mortgage,” he said in a happy sales voice. It was a radical change from his normal tone. “May I have your account number, please?”
He handed it to me.
“Whoever called back hung up.”
“He’s alive!”
He nodded slowly. “But he’s with somebody. Not the Russians. Not Pamela Grayson. And whoever it was, he couldn’t talk around them. The woman who shot Lindsey?”
I shook my head. “She confronted me demanding the diamonds. She said she had made Peralta a promise, whatever that means. But it didn’t seem like a pleasant one. I don’t think he’d be alive if he was with her.”
He kicked the asphalt again.
“Then there’s another player. The man who called Pennington’s office. Maybe the original owner of the diamonds who somehow tracked them here.”
I was eager to get moving, out of the sun, back to the hospital, and, as soon as I could, send the badge back to Chris Melton with my resignation letter.
Cartwright stopped me after I had taken two steps.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, David. If your wife hadn’t gone for that walk, you might both be dead. This woman might have come in while you were sleeping. End of story.” He slid his left arm back in the sling, wincing. “Oh, I’m getting too old for this.”
The pain-creases in his face relaxed and he spoke again. “Don’t cut your ties with Sheriff Meltdown yet. They might be useful to us.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
He stared at me for a long minute.
“You know, David, it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure but just ain’t so.” He winked. “Mark Twain.”
I reluctantly nodded and walked away. By the time I was across Third Avenue, the RV was gone. All that remained was a blue cloud of carbon monoxide.
Chapter Twenty-six
When I reached the ICU, Sharon was back with her daughters. Lindsey’s condition hadn’t changed; none of her physicians were there; and the closest I could get was watching her through the window. So I took Sharon down to the Starbucks in the lobby and told her what I could.
“At least he’s still alive,” she said
She seemed distracted. I studied her face but could only see her struggling to keep up the strong front. I had expected her to be happier, but she looked gaunt with worry.
I said, “No calls on that landline?”
She looked at me curiously, then shook her head.
I asked if the FBI was still tailing her.
“Like white on rice,” she said. “We’ve started taking coffee and sandwiches out to the unit watching the house. I’m not worried about us. I am worried about Mike. And you, David. When was the last time you slept?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been taking catnaps.”
“You look awful. Go home and let us keep watch. I promise to call when something changes.”
“Sharon, you only left a little while ago.” I was about to protest more but the exhaustion hit me deep in the bone. I was struggling to keep my head up.
So I left and the farther away I drove, I became strangely happy to be momentarily freed from the hospital.
Back on Cypress, I had to fend off concerned neighbors. How is Lindsey? How are you holding up? We saved your mail and newspapers. What can we do to help? Willo was that kind of place.
Then I scoped out the property, finding nothing amiss. The landscaping service had come and gone and the winter lawn looked glorious.
Inside the bedroom, I locked the door and slid a chair against it, set an alarm for two hours, and collapsed into the bed. For a few seconds, I looked at the stack of unread books on the bedside table. Then I was gone.
By three thirty, I was out the door in a light gray suit and navy blue rep tie. I drove over to our office on Grand Avenue and went into the Danger Room. There, I ran through the surveillance tapes on fast-forward. At two a.m. today, a dark four-door Chevy pulled sideways beside the gate and a woman emerged.
Strawberry Death.
Looking for her stones.
She was dressed entirely in black and put a dark watch cap over her distinctive fair hair. Then she stepped onto the hood, mounted the roof of the car, and draped what looked like a comforter over the spikey top of the security fence. One smooth move and she was over, pulling off the comforter and moving toward the office door. The entire maneuver took less than a minute. She had been trained.
Any passing patrol car would merely see a parked vehicle. The angle kept me from getting a tag number.
I switched to an outside camera that showed her disappear around the northwest corner of the building. The back door was secured with a heavy gate meant to defeat the most skillful burglar. Nor would that burglar find the concealed alarm box. Sure enough, she emerged on the other side in a few minutes and went to the front door.
She suddenly looked toward Grand Avenue and fell to the ground. That passing police car might have appeared. She stayed there for seven minutes, not moving.
Finally, she stood and again approached the door. I tried another camera, one mounted to the edge of the roof. She was working with small lock-picking tools. Her head swung around, then went back to her attempted break-in.
“Good luck with that,” I said out loud.
I grew more concerned when I saw a small crowbar in her hand. But she backed away and moved lithely to the edge of the building. The parking lot was already illuminated cadmium orange by two sodium lamps. A bright white spotlight joined in, sweeping the front of the building. I switched to the camera that showed Grand. Sure enough, a PPD unit had pulled in behind the Chevy.
Calling up the rear-facing camera, I watched her sprint to the back fence. It was ten feet high, but she shimmied up the steel, stood with her feet between the spikes, and launched herself into the darkness. She was in amazing shape.