Ransom River (39 page)

“I have no proof, and maybe I’m losing my mind entirely. But yes, I’m convinced.”

Nussbaum paused and sounded pensive. “The sins of the father descending to his son and daughter.”

“How biblical.”

“Rory, this is dangerous. Your cousins—it sounds as though they have few limits.”

“If they ever did, the fence has been torn down.”

“If the courthouse attack was their grand plan to recover the money from the heist, it’s gone awry. And when a plan goes to hell, people can react desperately.”

“You’re saying they might try again. I already know. That’s why I didn’t stay at my place last night, and I was on my way to your office. You have security, right?”

His voice toughened. “Go someplace public but out of the way. Someplace your cousins would not expect you to go. Don’t speed; don’t let yourself be put in a position where the local police can stop you and bring you in.”

“On it,” she said, trying to sound tougher than she felt.

She ended the call and held tight to the wheel. It seemed to vibrate
beneath her grip. In the back, Chiba had settled low, his chin resting on the lip of the windowsill to watch cars and fields and clouds go by.

Inside dope.

Who was out there, what ghost, trying to get that cash? It must have been eating away at the insider’s soul. Money lost. Millions, a dream, an obsession. Worth sending people once more to grasp and grab and die over?

The sins of the father descending to his son and daughter.

Rory didn’t believe in guilt by association or genetics. But Lee’s sin had been taken up and nurtured by his daughter and stepson. The sin had been buried, with shame, by his brother. And that sin had now been poured out on her.

Everybody who was involved now was the child of somebody who was there at the start. What goes around had come around, hard.

Reason it out. Go back to square one. Somehow the robbers had been tipped off about the timing of the Geronimo Armored cash pickup. Who knew about that?

Because the cash being collected and transported was such a massive amount, local law enforcement might have been informed ahead of time. Maybe the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the California Highway Patrol. And the Ransom River Police Department.

The radio switched to the news. Rory reached to turn it down and stopped with her hand hanging in the air.

“Judge Arthur Wieland, who was shot by gunmen in the attack on the Ransom River courthouse two days ago, died this morning at West River Hospital.”

The rest was lost in her shock.

She pulled to the side of the freeway and stopped. She felt ill. Judge Wieland, a personable and dedicated man with a no-nonsense style and occasional flashes of wit—Jesus, left to bleed in pain, when he might have been helped, might have been saved, if he’d gotten to the hospital in time.

Her anger, at the uselessness of it, felt dry and thorny. In the back of the car, Chiba barked at her. Traffic blew past, rocking the Subaru.

“Motherfuckers,” she said.

The phone rang. She ignored it. It stopped and started again. Finally, with a feeling of dread, she answered.

“Ms. Mackenzie? Detective Zelinski.”

She leaned her head back against the headrest. “I just heard about Judge Wieland.”

“I suggest that you come into the station.”

“Why?”

“We have more questions for you. I suggest that you don’t wait for your attorney.”

“You know I’m going to wait for my attorney.”

“A failure to attend could be construed as flight.”

“That’s absurd.”

“In which case your description would go out to all law enforcement agencies, with orders to arrest you on sight. And then an apprehension would have to be considered hot pursuit.”

He was telling her they’d regard her as a fugitive, a dangerous one, and would take her down with force. Eagerly and without reservation. Ah, power—what fun to wield it, and so casually, with such enthusiasm.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said.

“I’m starting the timer,” Zelinski said.

With an acid feeling in her stomach, she called Nussbaum’s office again. He wouldn’t be back from court for hours, and his phone was turned off. She left an urgent message for him to call her.

“Tell him I don’t want to go to the police station alone, but if I don’t show up there, I’m going to find myself on a
WANTED
poster,” she said.

She called Seth. His phone went to voice mail. She tried again. Same thing.

She called information and got Lucky Colder’s number. Punched it in. Rested her forehead on the steering wheel as it rang.

“This is Lucky,” he said.

“It’s Rory, Mr. Colder. I’m looking for Seth.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“He’s on his way over to your place. When he gets there please have him call me.”

“Young lady, you don’t sound so hot.”

“Judge Wieland just died.”

His sigh was harsh enough that she could hear it through the phone. “What a waste. A damned outrage.”

“And the police are looking for a scapegoat. They say if I don’t turn myself in they’re coming after me.”

“Rory, then you need to turn yourself in. It’s the safest thing.”

“Tell Seth Nussbaum’s in court. And we need covering fire. Tell him to contact the FBI and the U.S. Attorney. If I don’t hear from him in the next ten minutes I’ll call the feds myself, but it’ll be better if he greases the wheels for me.”

“Of course I’ll tell him. Where are you now?”

“On the freeway out by the pass. Turning around. It’ll take me twenty minutes to get downtown.”

“I can meet you at police headquarters myself.”

It was a kind gesture. “You’re chivalrous. But it’s most important that you make contact with Seth.”

“Okay. But if you need me, you holler.”

“Thanks, Lucky.”

She put on her turn signal and pulled out, headed for the police station.
Your description would go out to all law enforcement agencies.

Great: a BOLO to the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the California Highway Patrol. And of course to the Ransom River Police Department. The same outfits that would have been informed about the Geronimo Armored delivery could now hunt her down instead, and make her the delivery, trussed and bound. She drove, her hair swirling in the wind.

Oh God.

“No,” she said, so loudly that Chiba raised his head and gave her an inquisitive look.

Who had tipped off the gang before the robbery? An inside man. Somebody from the Ransom River Police Department.

She tried to rid her mind of the thought that had just overcome her. She tried to think it through, telling herself she was imagining things. But as the miles unspooled, the road seemed to carry her along to an appalling conclusion.

“No,” she said again.

When her phone rang, she grabbed it hoping to hear Seth’s voice.

“Ms. Mackenzie, it’s Detective Xavier.”

Good cop, bad cop. Tag, you’re it.
It never ended.

She said, “I’m on my way to the station. If Detective Zelinski wants me there any faster, I’ll have to break the sound barrier.” She wrung her hands on the wheel. “And I’m bringing my dog.”

Xavier paused, maybe startled. “Forget Zelinski. Get to your place right away.”

“Why—”

“Don’t worry about Zelinski right now. There’s been a break-in at your house. Somebody tried to start a fire.”

“What?”

“We got a call that there’s a fire at your residence.” She rattled off the address. “And there’s a woman in distress on the front porch. It sounds like your mother.”

“Oh my God.”

“I’m on my way there now,” Xavier said.

She accelerated. “Fire department? Paramedics?”

“Backup will be coming. Get home ASAP.”

Twenty minutes later Rory rounded the bend toward the end of her street. It was a workday, a school day, and the street was empty. She hadn’t been able to reach her parents. She saw no hulking black SUVs, no police cruisers.

No fire.

No sign of her mother.

Detective Xavier’s unmarked Chrysler was parked at the curb outside the house. Rory pulled up behind it and cut the engine.

“Chiba, boy,” she said, “I’ll be right back.”

She got out and stood for a moment, listening. For what, she wasn’t sure. The street was eerily quiet.

“Detective Xavier?” she called.

From a distance, a woman called back: “Here. Coming.”

A second later Xavier rounded the corner of the house. She had a phone in her hand and was shaking her head.

“Everything’s quiet. No signs of a break-in or fire,” she said. “False alarm.”

Rory leaned against her car and rubbed her eyes, trying to calm down. Xavier’s lips were pursed.

“Call went through the department switchboard. Caller asked particularly for me. Gave the address. Hinted that it had something to do with you, like they knew you live here.”

Rory looked at the house. “You walked around?”

“All the way. No sign of anything wrong.”

“Somebody’s yanking both our chains.”

“You got any idea who?” Xavier said.

Chiba barked and looked at Xavier with delight.

Rory said, “The call came to the police department switchboard—the caller never identified themselves?”

“Woman. Said her name was Candy Graves. I just got off the line with the department. Nobody in the phone book by that name.” She put the phone in her jacket pocket. “Want to tell me what kind of game somebody’s playing? ’Cause I don’t like being made a pawn.”

An old game,
Rory thought.
With new rules.
She debated and decided in favor of disclosure.

“It could be my cousin Nerissa.”

“Cousin.” Xavier looked nonplussed. “This is a family feud?”

Rory nearly barked, louder than Chiba, with disgusted laughter. “I think she and her brother Boone also took my dog yesterday and let him out on the freeway off-ramp at Cloud Canyon Road.”

A veil fell over Xavier’s expression. She looked fatigued. Like a cop’s lot was full of this bullshit, winter, spring, and summer.

She nodded at the house. “When I did my walk-around, the phone kept ringing. Off the hook. I heard the answering machine pick up and a woman’s voice leave a message. She sounded distraught.”

“Who? Did you hear her name?” And was it for real, or another game?

“Didn’t hear a name. After the message ended, the phone started ringing again right away, like maybe you’d come home in the preceding seven seconds. Somebody wants to talk to you awfully bad.”

Rory glanced anxiously at the house. “Will you wait while I check it out?”

“I have work to do. Real crimes to investigate. Possibly involving you.” She turned. “And you need to get down to the station. But if you can listen to the message before I put my car in gear, I’ll still be here.”

Xavier turned and walked, albeit slowly, to her car. Rory jogged to the porch, keys jangling, and unlocked the door.

She walked in and found Boone waiting inside.

R
ory stopped, shocked still.

“Cuz,” Boone said. “You aren’t much of a hostess.”

From the hallway, three men in black suits stepped into view.

“We got no coffee, no nothing,” Boone said.

Three men, all wearing dark glasses, black suits with pressed white shirts, two with skinny black ties—the carnivorous worms. One wearing a broad and garish purple paisley tie, swarming with shapes, nearly leaping from his chest like crimped heartbeats.

It was Grigor Mirkovic.

She spun to flee back through the door. Outside at the curb, Detective Xavier climbed into her unmarked car. The first suit, the night crawler of a man who’d followed her the previous morning, blocked her path.

She lunged and cried, “Detective—”

He grabbed her around the waist as though she weighed no more than a sack of laundry and pulled her back.

“
Xavier,
” Rory shouted.

The detective hesitated.

“Help!” Rory yelled.

For a second Xavier didn’t move. She didn’t look toward the house. She sat with the door open, hand on the windowsill.

Rory screamed, “
Help me!
”