“Amy!”
Silence.
“Amy Russell!”
“Come get me!” Her voice sounded maybe twenty yards away and all the Southern was gone from her accent.
I looked toward her and saw nothing but empty night. I could make out six feet ahead, no more. It was the blackest darkness I had ever seen. If it weren’t for the sound of the river and the snow hitting me like icy leaves, I might as well have been in the bottom of a well.
For all I knew, she was trying to circle back to the cabin. That would have been the smart move. But I stood and descended a rocky slope. Then my feet gave way and I slid ten feet, too loud, and landed at the edge of running water.
No shots came.
The river was about ten feet across here, maybe a little wider. I couldn’t see that far. From memory, I knew a person could walk easily across. Unless it was flooding, this branch of the upper Verde was little more than a creek here.
“How’s wifey, Doctor Mapstone?”
She was to my right, probably across the river. I called, “She’s going to be fine.”
“That’s too bad.”
I called, “Nobody else has to get hurt.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Was she closer, or was I imagining it? Must keep moving. It was my only chance against someone with her training. So I made my legs rise and I surged forward, splashing across the Verde bent low, both hands on the Python. I nearly lost my balance on the small, smooth rocks in the streambed. Across and up a modest slope, a big ponderosa awaited me. I fell behind it and swept my perimeter with the gun barrel.
“I know all about you, Amy…”
“You don’t know anything!” She was angry now. And closer.
The snow wasn’t sticking to the ground yet, but it swirled in front of my face. I stared into the night, trying to detect texture and folds and movement in the blackness.
“How can all this bring back your husband and your daughter? I know what happened to them in Calgary. I know what you did to Chaos for revenge. Did cutting the throats of his children bring back your daughter?”
After a long pause, “I didn’t expect it to.”
“Your family wouldn’t want this, Amy.” I ratcheted my voice down to a conversational tone, tried to keep it steady. “When does it stop?”
“When I get my stones.” Conversational tone. I heard undergrowth snapping to my left.
I said, “That’s not going to happen.”
I smelled Chanel Number Five. A pinecone crunched six feet away. Out of the gloom, I could see she was crouched, aiming at me with a combat grip.
Her face was flushed and her breathing came hard from the run, fog shooting out into the night. She nearly whispered, “You can’t save me. You can’t redeem what happened. You can’t even save yourself.”
I had the Python dead on her, both sights lined up.
“No,” I said. “It ends right now.”
“The world is evil, Mapstone,” she said. “You can’t stop it. You can’t even make a stand against it. I played by your rules and I couldn’t stop it. So either kill me or put your gun on the ground and walk back to the cabin with me behind you. Simple choice. No time.”
The Python was steady. So was my breathing.
In the next nanosecond, as she opened her mouth, I took a breath, let it out slowly, and pulled, letting the smooth action of the Colt do the rest.
A boom, a long flash of red and yellow, and the echo of the explosion ruptured the night.
Chapter Forty-five
“You don’t get out that easy.”
I spoke the words as I searched her thoroughly. Her knife and backup gun went in my waistband. She stared at me, half disoriented, half furious, but she was in no condition to argue.
I carried her back across the river, across the road to the A-frame, looking like the bride and groom from hell. She was too traumatized to do a saddleback carry. Fortunately, she was light.
Peralta was crouched behind a tree with the carbine.
“You son of a bitch.” He saw what I had done. “Now every civilian and reporter is going to think we can shoot the gun out of a bad guy’s hand and never employ lethal force.”
“Shut up and wrap what’s left of her hand,” I commanded. “She’s lost a lot of blood already.”
Surprisingly, he complied.
She was barely conscious. Her black clothing was white with snowflakes. Her right hand looked like a piece of meatloaf. I pushed her to him and ran into the cabin.
It was as I had left it. Mann was on the floor with the tipped-over chair, still securely handcuffed, staring with hate. Cartwright was lying face down in an expanding pool of red.
I carefully rolled him to his side, then onto his back.
“Tried to warn you,” he gasped. His breathing was coming short and shallow.
“Don’t talk.”
He squinted at me as he always did and licked his lips.
“I served…”
“Don’t talk,” I said. “Save your strength. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”
He gave a quick shake of the head. “Too late.”
I undid his coat and shirt. Both were wet with blood. The exit wound looked eight inches in diameter and had shattered his breastbone.
“My grandbaby…I did this for her. I was sending almost all my paycheck but it wasn’t enough. You tell her I served…”
“You can tell her yourself,” I said. “Help’s on the way.”
“No,” he said. “Not this time. I was shot bad in ’Nam. They evac’d me. Hot zone. Medic got shot through the head. It’s a fucked up world.”
“Ed, stop talking. Focus on your breathing.”
I took his hand and he tried to pull it back. Then he clasped mine, hard. His grip was painful. He stared at me and struggled to get the words out.
“I served…with honor.”
Then his eyes were staring at nothing.
I pounded the floor with my fist and cursed. My eyes were wet but it was only the melted snowflakes. I whispered, “Yes, you did.”
Chapter Forty-six
A week later, Peralta and I walked into the Sandra Day O’Connor United States Courthouse. It was safe for him to be on the sidewalks of downtown again. The day after the events in Payson, the U.S. Attorney had called a press conference to announce that forty people had been arrested in six states, an elaborate conspiracy to exchange diamonds for drugs, and a cast of bad guys in the Russian mafia and Mexican cartels.
Critical details about the FBI evidence were lacking but the television cameras were there to show Mike Peralta as a hero. His robbery had been staged. He was one of the good guys. As if any of you bastards had ever doubted it. They put me on the dais, too. And somehow Chris Melton joined the crowd.
The federal courthouse was a big glass box downtown, designed by a New York starchitect and totally unsuited for Phoenix. The jagged ornamental roof provided no shade and from the inside it looked like the ceiling of a hangar at a third-rate airport. The sun easily penetrated. In the summer, the immense atrium was almost unbearable because of the heat. The starchitect somehow thought it would be a good idea not to air-condition the space.
The result was bugs under a magnifying glass aimed at the sun.
To complete the blunder, the building was entirely surrounded by concrete surfaces, no shade trees, no grass. A special uniform had to be designed for the U.S. Marshals working here so they didn’t faint from heat exhaustion.
Fortunately today it was January and raining outside. We were here to testify before the federal grand jury.
After we passed through security, I saw Eric Pham coming down the staircase and quickly walking toward us.
“Hi, guys.” He sounded odd and positioned himself to block us rather than escort us upstairs.
“There’s been a change.” He held up a hand. “Now don’t go ballistic, Mike.”