Server Down Page 9

  “Have you managed to backtrack my client?”

  “No, sir. Not yet. He’s built a complex web of false identities. We’re weeding through them. This may take a few hours.”

  The professional knew this firm could not be hurried. They always performed at maximum efficiency. If the voice said it couldn’t be done yet, it couldn’t.

  “Signal me at all possible contact points as soon as you have an answer.”

  “Of course,” the voice said, and the professional realized that wasn’t an issue he’d needed to raise. They would get the word to him the moment they knew.

  “I need to find a trauma doctor.”

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “No,” the professional said, “but sooner is better.”

  “Privately and without record?”

  They did understand his needs. He agreed that an undocumented transaction would be preferred and the voice put him on hold for a moment as he cruised slowly north on Oracle. Matus should be coming around soon and the professional hadn’t even bothered to see if the Sewa policeman was armed. He hadn’t taken the time because the girl might have looked around and realized a second person was following her. That could have scared her enough to call for local police help. Now, it made no sense for him to stay in that neighborhood. If he went back, it would be when he could make full use of both hands, or near it. He would go after her again, but on his own terms.

  “The University of Arizona Medical Center,” the voice said, and gave him an address. “Do you need directions?”

  “No,” he said. “But isn’t that a rather public place?”

  “A nurse will be waiting for you just outside the emergency room entrance. He’ll be wearing blue scrubs and will have an unlit cigarette in his mouth. You’ll tell him you are the client referred by Fick Internet Technologies. He’ll see that your visit to one of the city’s finest trauma surgeons occurs with the degree of privacy you require.”

  “Good. Then I want a dossier on Heather English, Kansas University law student and Benteen County Deputy Sheriff. Go as deep as you can in order for me to have it in an hour.”

  “Emphasis?” the voice asked.

  “Strengths, weaknesses,” the professional said. “Motivation. The usual.”

  “It will be done.”

  He didn’t say anything else before disconnecting. He knew what he wanted would be ready in precisely sixty minutes. He turned right at the next stoplight and headed for the hospital, or its vicinity. To be on the safe side, he would park in a nearby neighborhood and walk to his meeting with the nurse. This rental car had already spent too long near crime scenes. If anyone should look for him at the hospital, there was no sense leaving them a trail. But he wouldn’t walk too far, he thought. With the imposed travel restriction he’d put on the girl by slashing her tires, and the information Fick would provide, he hoped to resume his relationship with Heather English soon after he left the hospital. It was something to look forward to.

  ***

  The psycho didn’t follow her so Heather made a wide, cautious circle. This guy was very dangerous. He hadn’t looked like a Native American, but somehow, she felt sure she’d just run into the man Uncle Mad Dog said had killed the Sewa policeman. What other stranger in Tucson would know who she was? If this had only been some local neighborhood nut, he couldn’t have named her and he probably wouldn’t have described the tortures he had in mind for her quite so lovingly. No, there was something personal about it for this guy. Something seriously sick.

  She set her cell to vibrate as she neared the spot where they’d fought. There was no sign of the psycho. Captain Matus still lay there, beside the street. And the coyote that had saved her life lay there too, a pool of congealing blood around its throat.

  It must have been the animal she’d frightened when she went around that house. Amazing, that it would hide in the very bush into which she’d fallen. And then she remembered the distant howl she’d heard only moments before the animal exploded from cover and saved her. Could Hailey somehow be involved?

  More important at the moment, was her attacker still nearby? He had seemed intent on doing her harm. But wouldn’t he have chased her if that were the case? Had he been hurt enough to leave? Or did he know her well enough to understand she’d circle back because of Matus? She thought about calling for help. TPD might have a unit in the neighborhood. Only once they got her back in custody, she wasn’t going to have a chance to help her uncle again before they caught or killed him

  She took her time, because the psycho had told her Matus wasn’t seriously injured and because he’d planned something much worse for her. But she went to the Sewa captain, all the same. And the psycho didn’t spring out of the bushes or dash from behind a nearby building. Maybe the coyote had hurt him. Or maybe he’d only meant to scare her. If so, he’d succeeded.

  Matus was still unconscious. His nose had stopped bleeding, though, and he was breathing normally. She tried shaking him a little and he moaned but didn’t open his eyes.

  “Captain,” she whispered in his ear, pivoting her head from side to side, half expecting the psycho to launch himself out of the darkness at any moment. She shook Matus again. “We’ve got to get away from here,” she told him.

  He mumbled some kind of protest and she tried to get him to sit. He managed, woozily. His eyes blinked and he said something in a language that clearly wasn’t English.

  Heather checked around them again. Still nothing. From behind him, she got her arms under his and lifted. He wasn’t a big man and she managed to get him to his feet.

  “What’s happening?” he said, then tried to fall down again.

  She got herself under one of his shoulders and began walking him toward her car. Something painful gouged her from just under his coat. She felt good when she discovered it was a gun. It made her a little more confident about her prospects if they encountered the psycho again. She racked a round into the chamber and stuffed it in the waistband of her jeans.

  Matus was getting a little steadier, though no less confused. She guided him down the center of the street, far enough from hiding places that she thought she could get to the gun before anyone got to them. It went well until she found her car and the two flat tires. He’d been there. And he’d probably be back. But Matus had followed her, too. She went through his pockets and found keys to a Toyota. Probably his own car, instead of a tribal vehicle. She punched the lock button and something chirped around the corner. She wasn’t stuck here after all.

  “Come on Captain. I’m thinking you should visit an emergency room.” There had been a hospital just a few blocks north of Ms. Jardine’s neighborhood. A good one, she thought, because it was the University of Arizona’s Medical Center.

  ***

  The sheriff lay sprawled on the floor. His ears rang and he couldn’t see anything except the afterimage of the flash that had shattered the windows. Something dripped down his face—blood. He’d been nicked by flying glass. Not seriously, if his exploring hands were to be believed.

  “Mrs. Kraus?” he shouted.

  “I’m all right,” she answered, “but what the hell was that?”

  The sheriff explored the darkness with his hands, found a corner of his desk. He could pull himself up that way, but he was likely to be right back on the floor if he didn’t find his walker. He picked up a fresh cut from the glass littering the floor. That convinced him to raise his arms as he searched and, fortunately, the walker was right where he remembered leaving it—on the other side of his chair.

  “Grenade, maybe, like at Mad Dog’s.” He used the desk and the walker to get to his feet, oriented himself with the desk, and started toward the nearest window. The blast hadn’t blinded him. It had just knocked the lights out. Moonlight glowed on the other side of those windows. And something else flickered and burned out there.

  “Lord God!” Mrs. Kraus was at the window ahead of him. “Would you look at that?”

  And, finally, he could. Fla
mes danced on the courthouse lawn. Some of them moved, scurrying this way and that in a manner that reminded him of the very different rules of the universe inside War of Worldcraft. This wasn’t possible, was it? Fire didn’t run around in circles. And then he understood. Fire didn’t, but burning people did.

  “That’s a human being.” He turned to Mrs. Kraus and told her to get the fire extinguisher. It was on the wall near the door to his office, an old-fashioned thing that would be heavy and unwieldy for her. But her spine wasn’t still recovering from the bullet fragment that might cripple him for life.

  “Lord God!” she said again, but he dimly saw her scramble across the room, grab the thing off the wall and disappear into the courthouse foyer. He followed as fast as he could. By the time he reached the front doors, the fire had stopped moving. It lay on the ground in the middle of the lawn while Mrs. Kraus directed a stream from the nozzle of the fire extinguisher and gradually dimmed its glow.

  The smell was overpowering—burned meat. The sheriff knelt beside the smoldering figure and tried to find a pulse. Scorched flesh pasted itself to his hand and blistered his fingers. There was no pulse to be found.

  “I may turn vegetarian,” Mrs. Kraus gagged. “Who is it?”

  The sheriff shook his head. There would be no way to identify this corpse in the traditional fashion. It was burnt and blasted beyond recognition.

  “Ed Miller, maybe,” he said. “At least that’s his pickup, across the street at the edge of the park.

  “You want me to call Doc Jones?”

  Doc was the coroner, and the only MD who currently lived in Buffalo Springs. But the sheriff thought it wouldn’t be necessary. Lights were coming on in nearly every house the sheriff could see. And people streamed out of those houses, pointing flashlights toward the courthouse.

  “I’m guessing you won’t have to. Looks like the blast woke everyone in Benteen County.”

  His cell chirped and he pulled it out of a pocket and told it who he was.

  “I haven’t found Mad Dog,” Heather said, “but I may have met that killer of his.”

  Jesus! The blast and this body had driven Fig Zit’s threat right out of his head. It was way too late to ask, but he did anyway.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was what the crowd arriving at the courthouse wanted to know of him and Mrs. Kraus. And in both Buffalo Springs and Tucson, “yes” was far too simple an answer.

  ***

  Emergency room personnel separated Mad Dog from the girl in short order. That didn’t surprise him, really, since she was the one having the baby. But the way they did it made him think they suspected he’d abused her. She did have that bump on her head. And her nails had drawn blood when she squeezed his hand. To say nothing of the smudges of black paint on his skin here and there. They resembled bruising. His solid black left hand, the one she hadn’t gotten to yet, just looked weird until they let him use a restroom and wash it and the rest of the paint off at last.

  Mad Dog thought it might be time to leave. There were a couple of cops there with a shooting victim and he had the feeling the hospital people had asked them to talk to him when they got a moment. But he didn’t quite make it to the exit before someone in scrubs intercepted him.

  “Mr. Maddox,” the man said, “your wife wants you with her for the delivery.”

  Mad Dog had had enough trouble with people accepting his IDs, checks and credit cards, that he’d kept one card in his original name, Harvey Edward Maddox. That was what he’d given them when they asked what insurance the young lady had. The young lady didn’t have insurance. Mad Dog knew that. And when he’d said they should charge his card, they’d suddenly begun to treat him less like vermin.

  “My wife?”

  “Or whatever your relationship may be. And we’d like your help filling out some forms. The lady made it very clear she’d like you to be with her. Other than that, we can’t seem to get much out of her.”

  The man opened a door that led back to the treatment rooms. Mad Dog glanced over his shoulder and saw that one of the cops had moved near the exit. Mad Dog followed the nurse, doctor, or whatever he was, and felt much better when the door swung shut behind them.

  “Can you tell me Esperanza’s date of birth?” the man said, ushering Mad Dog past a couple of gurneys, one occupied by someone quietly moaning an old Bob Dylan song instead of the prayer Mad Dog had expected.

  “Esperanza?” Was that the girl’s name? Mad Dog realized they hadn’t gotten around to introductions.

  “The woman you brought in, Mr. Maddox.” The man gave him a funny look.

  “Esperanza means Hope,” Mad Dog said, improvising. He didn’t want the hospital people to start thinking about involving the police again. “I usually call her Hope.” This was the first time he’d associated any name with her, so he supposed “usually” qualified. “And, you know, some people don’t think it’s polite to ask a woman’s age.”

  The guy in the scrubs continued to give Mad Dog a peculiar look, but it was a different kind of peculiar now.

  “I see. How about blood type, allergies, medical conditions, anything that could help us with the treatment we provide?”

  “We Cheyenne mostly stick to traditional medicine.”

  The man stopped in the middle of a hallway. “You don’t really know this woman at all, do you? What are you, the coyote who smuggled her in?”

  Two men passed a cross-hall, well down the corridor. Another figure in scrubs led a small, trim man cradling his left hand with his right. The guy with the injury didn’t have braids or a beaded head band, nor was he wearing silver and turquoise jewelry. Nothing about him looked faintly Native American, but Mad Dog recognized him instantly—Fig Zit. Or, if not the character from the game, then the man who’d started the night’s insanity when he knifed a Sewa Tribal Policeman a few hours ago.

  “Answer me. Are you her coyote?”

  “No coyote. Right now I’m Madwulf, and you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got a demon to exorcise.”

  ***

  Heather pulled Matus’ 4Runner into a lot across from the emergency room entrance. The captain had done a lot of recovering on the drive to the hospital. She opened a door and he reached over and put a hand on her arm before she could get out.

  “I’m not going in there,” he said.

  “Why not? You’re here, already. You don’t know exactly what he did to you.”

  “I don’t even know who did something to me. I was running beside the street and then you were helping me back to my car. Everything in between is a blank.”

  “That sounds like a good reason to see a doctor,” she said, but she didn’t pull away from him or climb out of the SUV.

  “It could have been you that knocked me out,” he said, “except you were ahead of me, not behind. I do remember that.”

  “So…?”

  “So close the door and tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you and turn you back over to TPD.”

  She pulled it shut. “Well, I went back for you and brought you here.”

  “There’s that,” he admitted. “But your uncle still killed my officer. I’ve got to bring him in, but it doesn’t have to be dead. Take me to him, persuade him to give himself up. I promise you he’ll get his day in court.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said. “Besides, who do you think knocked you out back there? That wasn’t Uncle Mad Dog. If it had been, and I was trying to help him get away with murder, he and I would be a long way from here right now.”

  He nodded, thinking about it.

  “I think the man who took you out and attacked me was the guy who killed your officer. He looked a lot different than the way he was described at the ceremony, but I’ll bet it was the same guy. This one knew my name and he had another switchblade he told me he’d use to do some elaborate carving. That fits with him knowing Mad Dog would be at Pascua. It fits with him setting up a murder and then framing my uncle.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Ma
ybe. But it’s a hell of a stretch. Your uncle’s a thousand miles from home and hardly anybody knew you invited him to come here. What you’re proposing requires someone not only know that, but go to the trouble of setting up a kill, and then not even killing his target, just framing him for the job. It’s going to take one fine lawyer to sell that to a jury.”

  “Normally,” Heather said. “But someone blew up Mad Dog’s house in Kansas. And just now, someone tried to do the same to my father and his office. Your jury isn’t going to buy all that as coincidence. There’s your reasonable doubt.”

  Matus shook his head. “It’s just so bizarre.”

  “But even you, you’re starting to have doubts, aren’t you?”

  A siren had been getting louder and louder as they talked. Suddenly, it was deafening as the emergency vehicle appeared on the street behind them. Its lights strobed, turning cars and buildings and bushes alternating shades of red and white and blue. Heather watched the vehicle swing around to the side of the building.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “That’s him.”

  Matus didn’t understand. “That’s who? You talking about the ambulance?”

  “No. Along the side of the hospital. I just saw him in their headlights.”

  “I can’t see anyone,” Matus said.

  “There,” Heather pointed. “The little guy holding his arm. That’s the man who knocked you out and tried to hurt me. That’s your killer.”

  Matus still couldn’t see him. “Where?”