Magic Line

Further Mysteries by Elizabeth Gunn

The Jake Hines Series

TRIPLE PLAY

PAR FOUR

FIVE CARD STUD

SIX POUND WALLEYE

SEVENTH INNING STRETCH

CRAZY EIGHTS

McCAFFERTY'S NINE *

THE TEN MILE TRIALS *

The Sarah Burke Series

COOL IN TUCSON *

NEW RIVER BLUES *

KISSING ARIZONA *

THE MAGIC LINE *

* available from Severn House

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Gunn.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Gunn, Elizabeth, 1927-

The magic line. – (The Sarah Burke series)

1. Burke, Sarah (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Women

detectives–Arizona–Tucson–Fiction. 3. Thieves–

Fiction. 4. Serial murder investigation–Fiction.

5. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

813.6-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-200-9 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8116-8 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-407-3 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being

described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could never have been written without the help of Sergeant Kerry Fuller, ‘first shirt' at the Westside station of the Tucson Police Department, and these members of her loyal crew: Sergeant Bob Callan, Officer Mark ‘Sponge' Zbojniewicz, and Officer Russ Pope, all of whom gave me great ride-alongs and advice about procedures, firearms and scene-setting. I constantly marvel at the compassion of Tucson patrol officers for the less fortunate, and for ink-stained scribblers trying to get it right.

Because I am not a shooter, and this story includes a lot about guns, I am deeply indebted to Bongi Bishop, Forensic Firearms and Toolmark Examiner, Tucson Police Department Crime Laboratory, and to Chuck and the rest of the remarkably knowledgeable staff at Murphy's Gun Shop on Country Club Road.

For adventurous jaunts in search of just-right scenes for this book, I want to thank my patient husband, Phil Gunn, who greatly augments the pleasure of exploring Tucson's diversity.

ONE

‘
Y
eah, but it'd be a lot safer after dark,' Zeb said.

‘Ah, there goes Mr Yeah-but again.' Robin kept his eyes on the house on Spring Brook Drive. ‘Put a sock in it, will you? We settled this.'

‘But it's broad daylight, anybody can see—'

‘What anybody? It's four o'clock, everybody on this block's at work.'

‘That woman on the corner with the babies—'

‘She's back in the kitchen fixing supper. We spent two weeks casing this fucker, now you can't remember anything we learned?' They argued in stifled bursts, keeping their voices low, barely audible above the A/C. Zeb was worried about keeping that running, too – conspicuous on the quiet street, he thought – but in Tucson in late May, with no shade, they'd die without air. And they had to sit here in the sun to wait – it was the best spot: close enough to watch the house, far enough not to be noticed.

‘Yeah, but all along you said we'd pick the safest time—'

‘Which will be fifteen seconds after these clowns are all the way into their garage, with the door rolling down. Just back from deliveries, before they get the money put away.' Robin whipped around on the seat and froze his partner in a pale, bright stare. ‘You saying you want to back out now, Zeb-you-lon?'

‘
No
, I don't want to back
out,
come on.' Robin always drawled his name out like that, taunting, when he wanted to put him down. It worked, too, because Zeb knew people always got major yucks out of his name. ‘Zebulon Montgomery Butts, for Chrissake,' he had asked his mother on his last birthday, ‘what were you thinking?' Twenty-one at last, time to get a few things straightened out.

His mother said she named him after a great man to inspire him to do great deeds, and she still had high hopes for that. But then last month, as she piled his belongings outside her casita, she'd said, ‘If you're ever going to do any of those great deeds it's sure as hell time you got started.' She put a list on top of the pile – things he had to do before she let him back in.

Number One on her Tough Love list was ‘Get a job.'

Doing what? Yard care gave him back pain. Construction was in the toilet. He always got fired from resort work – high-paying customers were just too demanding to tolerate. He'd been thinking about applying for a UPS job till three months ago when that stupid DUI charge got his license suspended. Nobody seemed to understand that he was going through a rough patch.

His last girlfriend said she was ‘with somebody now.' The second to last let him spend one night on her couch but said her mother was coming the next day, sorry. So Zeb begged his sister till she let him put down his sleeping bag in her utility room, as long as he used his own towel in the shower and didn't take anything out of the refrigerator.

Finally he'd looked up Robin and asked him was he up to any
mischief
these days; did he need a
boost
with anything? They used to talk like that when he teamed with Robin before – back when everything was a
caper
, a little out on the edge maybe but nothing serious. Robin had done a short stretch in juvie and hooked up with a weird kid named Hermie who could boost almost any car super fast, and was willing to teach Robin all he knew.

Zeb thought of it now as their crazy-teens period, when he was doing
capers
with Robin and Hermie. He didn't learn any new skills except how to blow a quick blast on Hermie's weird whistle. Luckily he never had to blow it while he was their lookout, but they paid him a little for standing by with it, anyway. Later, after they trusted him a little, he ferried a few of Hermie's boosted cars to chop shops. No big scores but it sure beat bagging groceries at Fry's.

Luckily, Zeb was working for his mother the night Robin and Hermie finally got caught trying to burgle a house in the Sam Hughes Neighborhood. A patrolman spotted the open window they had jimmied, looked in and shined his light on them. He kept them standing there with their hands full of high-end electronics and an antique set of dueling pistols waiting for his backup to arrive. ‘Don't move,' he told them several times, but Hermie, who hated taking orders, dropped the guns at the last minute and ran out the front door into heavy traffic on Country Club Road. He got a long sentence after he got out of the hospital. Robin stayed where he was and did twenty-two months at the State Prison on Wilmot Road.

He was different when he came out – his eyes were like polished steel, and constantly scanned any room he was in. He mostly hung with guys who did martial arts and had weird facial hair – they broke into empty stores and abandoned houses and stayed till somebody chased them out, using the empty spaces to plan heists and divvy up what they stole.

Robin wasn't any fun at all to be around for quite a while after Wilmot. He never let you finish a sentence that had more than eight words in it, and some days he just seemed to be trying to start a fight for any reason. Finally Zeb decided he didn't need the grief and made a point of being where Robin wasn't.

But last month, when his mother got all crazy about jobs and put him out, Zeb thought back to the good old days and decided to look up his old pal. He tried for a light note, asking was he doing any
capers
these days? Robin gave him one of his new ice-blue looks and said capers were yesterday's news. Said he had some
jobs
from time to time but he needed somebody who was ready to
get serious.

‘Robin, come on, it's me. How long we known each other?'

‘Years and years. And in all that time, you have never shown me one brilliant move.' Robin kicked his metal-clad toe against a curb while Zeb waited. ‘I could try you out,' he said finally. ‘Kind of on probation.'

Zeb understood probation now – the Department of Motor Vehicles had seen to that. After he'd flunked his sobriety test last winter he got lucky with a judge, who cited and released him with the stern proviso that if she saw him in her courtroom again on a similar charge he was going to spend a long time in County mending his ways. At first he'd congratulated himself on getting a judge who was such a muffin. It took him a couple of months to realize that having no driver's license didn't just keep him from driving a car, it ensured he wouldn't be considered for any job he might conceivably want.

So he put on his humble face and did every
job
Robin asked him to do. For peanuts. On time and without complaint. Nothing big; he made a few dope deliveries, lifted a set of hex wrenches from a target store.

Stealing tools off a rack didn't feel like starting to do great deeds, but he did it because he could see it was some kind of gate he had to pass through to please Robin. Hard to see what Robin wanted them for – they were still in the bubble wrap on the floor of the empty warehouse where they'd met this month. But Robin seemed pleased when he came back with them and made a weird joke about hexes. He kind of warmed up to Zeb after that, and asked if Zeb was ready for something a little bigger. When Zeb said sure, Robin said he needed help planning a home invasion.

Home invasion was kind of a scary leap into the unknown, but hell, if he wasn't going to flip burgers he had to get started at something else. They were in Robin's car – this week's car, he seemed to go through them like popcorn – headed for the neighborhood to take a look at the house, when Robin explained that the home he was planning to invade was a stash house. Right then, when Zeb's stomach cramped up, was when he should have bailed, he thought later. But he needed the money. And more than that, he wanted the connection to Robin and the feeling he was ready to step up his game a little, be a player. He hadn't slept through one whole night since, and the nightmares that woke him up kept coming back in the daytime, wrecking his digestion. But he was hanging in, determined to go through with this job
.

So now he was sitting next to a peeling wooden fence on Chardonnay Drive with a good view of the house on Spring Brook Drive. Waiting in this beat-up carpet cleaner's van, with two guys named Earl and Homer. He'd only met his new team-mates and fellow home invaders yesterday, and the van he'd never seen before – Robin just showed up in it with no explanation. Zeb was sweating, feeling his heart beat. For the first time ever, Zeb was armed and, he hoped, dangerous.

‘We ain't gonna unload any of this rug-cleaning shit, are we?' Earl asked Robin from back in the shady cargo space where he and his brother Homer crouched among the tools. ‘You got some fuckin' heavy shit back here.'

‘No,' Robin said. ‘I told you. Just start the cordless vacuum for the noise, and walk up to the front door with the clipboard. Keep those pens in your pocket, like you're all ready to write up the job. Ring the bell and look polite while Homer steps out from behind you with the elephant gun and blows 'em away.' He took his eyes off the door long enough to turn and smile at Earl. ‘You can look polite for just a minute, can't you?'