Night Eyes (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 2) (7 page)

Malin tried to look away, tried not to look at the charred remains of the officers. The mesa seemed alive with all that popping and sizzling and she could see the tremor of fuel in the air. It wasn’t until now when she caught a sweet and putrid stench that she realized it had really happened. Covering her face with her scarf, she walked with Temeke towards the car. He put an arm around her, told her there was nothing they could do.

The dog was sitting on the front seat. It was the howling that got to Malin, that baleful sound like the animal could smell death. Like he knew exactly whose remains were in that thick clinging undergrowth. He whined when he saw her, shook his big black head.

“Whatever you do, don’t let him out,” Temeke said.

“He’s on a leash,” Malin muttered. She didn’t need to be told something as basic as that.

“When you radioed Hackett, what did you tell him?” Temeke bunched up Adam’s tee shirt and pressed it under Murphy’s nose.

“He asked if we had detained the suspect. I said no.” Malin hated giving him the next piece of news. “He told us not to go after him. Told us to wait.”

She heard Temeke give a long drawn out sigh and she knew how he felt. Every minute was too precious to waste on top of those they’d already lost.

“I can’t stand around and watch this, Marl.” Temeke covered his nose. He didn’t want to smell it either.

He turned on his radio. All they could hear was friendly static and then a few snarls from the chief.

“Seen them yet… crazy-ass fools. I told Temeke not to go after him. But no… He only had to flash his headlights and now he’s dead. Do you know how much it costs to train a detective? Ninety-eight grand so they tell me. All gone up in smoke. It’s those damn Indians I’m telling you…”

The crackling cut out a string of cuss words and the radio terminated abruptly. There was nothing they could do but sit and wait, watch the flames and the sparks as they curled into the night sky.

Malin felt a surge of nausea, wanted to double over and puke right there and then. It was Temeke’s shaking head that kept her standing, trying to keep her from falling apart. At strange times such as these, she studied those long limbs, the broad-shoulders and the dark skin. The impressive aquiline features made her wonder if he had a dash of German blood in his veins. 

“He might even dedicate a park bench to me now that I’m gone.” Temeke said, pressing a stick of gum on his tongue and chewing vigorously. “In memory of Detective David Temeke who hated the police department and everyone in it. You can already hear Taps being played and my final dispatch.”

Malin knew he was trying to humor her, to keep her mind off the dead officers. But it wasn’t funny. The stench under her nose wouldn’t go away and her hands were black from the dirt on her face. It must have been the same for him.

All of a sudden Temeke’s striking face and prominent cheekbones were only inches from hers. He pressed a bottle of water in her hand, told her to drink up.

The barn was ablaze, flames licking the sky and leaning dangerously towards the house. The fuselage seemed no bigger than a school bus from where they stood, rotors and tail had broken away and there was nothing left but a blackened hull.

Murphy began to bark, ears pricked, toenails clacking on the consol. Then he jumped off the passenger seat and barreled between them towards the trees. The leash snapped between her fingers and plowed through the undergrowth after him. She wasn’t fast enough to grab it.

Temeke shouted at her to run. It was downhill all the way through the trees and soft springy earth. He was fast. Like a deer. It was hard to keep up, hard to take a breath. Harder still not to feel beaten before they’d even started.

She felt abandoned on a narrow path that led through a tunnel of trees, shimmering orange from the fire up there. After a few more yards downhill, a crisp wind struck her full in the face, bringing tears to her eyes. There was a ridge on the far side scattered with pale boulders and sparse scrub, and a stunted row of pine saplings in between.

Behind her, red sparks shuddered and died in the sky and in front were a cluster of spider thin shrubs with furry tops. She could hear things. An owl, a coyote, something burrowing under a pile of leaves. Adam was out there, lost, maybe injured in a fall. She sure hoped he was still alive. Hoped he was warm.

There was a clearing about ten feet to her right and a path that cut a way through it. Beyond that was utter darkness until a crisscross of beams lit up the forest floor about twenty feet to the north. It was probably the follow team, a contingent of rangers and county personnel armed with shotguns and semi-automatics, announcing their presence to every living creature in the forest. It was nearly five forty-five.

Leaning against a tree she doubled over to catch her breath, heard a flutter of wings and froze. There was something hovering over the tree tops. An eagle perhaps. And then it was gone. She had no idea what she was dealing with. A psycho run-away grimy like a street addict, or a smooth-talking con man in a freshly laundered shirt. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

The rain stopped. Just a light pattering on the leaves and the howling of wind in her ears. She stood still and cocked her head this way and that. She could smell smoke and tree sap, and she heard the crackling of twigs behind her and the sound of a radio.  

“Darker than the crypts of hell down here,” Temeke said, holding up a leash with a sagging collar. “And there’s not a pervert or a stiff in sight. Imagine what that’s going to do to this month’s crime figures.”

“Where’s Murphy?”

“Ran after a bleeding bird.” There was a moment of silence before Temeke said anything else. “I’ll be buggered if I’m going after him.”

“Which way did he go?”

“North.” Temeke let out a vapor of hot air as he climbed back up the slope. “He must have picked up a scent.”

“Dogs aren’t like homing pigeons, sir. It’s not like he’s going to come back and tell us where Adam is.”

“No, but a man, a boy and a dog isn’t a sight you’d easily forget.” Temeke looked north along that path and gave a deep sigh. “Hackett wants us back at the house, remember? So not a word about the dog.”

“But―”

“Not a word!”

That’s when she heard that infernal squeal rising and falling in the distance, light bars flashing blue and red over a clump of sagebrush and the plaint of an ambulance siren. A drift of sand seemed to follow the cars like someone had blown dust off a pile of old books and she watched a large black SUV nose its way up the dirt track and park a few feet in front of them.

Hackett was out first followed by Captain Fowler and officer Jarvis. Fowler nodded briefly to Temeke and then peered at Malin. He sniggered behind a hand, muttered something about seeing better markings on a raccoon. She’d get him back later.

A few more heavies thudded across the plain, weaving in and out of the flaming brush and keeping to the perimeter. Some wore helmets and flak vests, and some were marksmen and dog handlers headed towards the trees.

Hackett pressed a scarf to his nose, eyes blinking furiously behind the half-moon glasses as they focused on Malin first and then Temeke.

“I was worried about you,” Hackett said and he looked it. “Nasty business. Two good damn good pilots. See anything, hear anything?”

“Four shots coming from those trees,” Temeke said. “Sounded like a bolt action, sir. Should be some spent cartridges around here somewhere.”

Hackett glanced at the trees and narrowed his eyes. “Where’s the bag?”

“At a guess, I would say it’s with our kidnapper, sir.” Temeke kept chewing on that gum. “Impossible to be precise about the circumstances. It was there one minute and gone the next.”

“Where was it exactly?”

“Over there,” said Malin, pointing at a position about fifteen feet from the trees. She was still grasping her chest. “In front of that sapling.”

“Can we have some light over here,” shouted Hackett, marching towards a broken twig which had turned black with ash. Five torch beams homed in on the area, exploring every blade of grass and then slithering up the trees, through the trees, beyond the trees.

“Is that wise, sir, signaling our intentions?” Temeke muttered, crossing his arms.

Hackett took no notice and answered a shout from the house. EMTs had arrived on the scene, picking their way through the glowing debris, and five Shadow Wolf officers, Navajo by the look of them, tough, persistent trackers who could go well into a week without failing. The tallest of the five ran towards Hackett and nodded. Introduced himself as Running Hawk.

“The missing subject is a twelve-year-old male.” Hackett said, describing weight and height. “You’re looking for a size nine track, Vans canvas lace-ups with a waffle outsole. His mom said he’s heavier on the left side. Scout uniform, so he’ll blend nicely with the trees...”

Temeke ushered Malin into the house and they were in the kitchen in less than a minute. A young field investigator sealed up a pile of evidence bags next to what appeared to be a urine sample. His badge revealed his name to be Matt Black. “Found that in the toilet,” he said with a slight stutter, pointing a blue latex finger at the jar.

“Very good,” said Hackett, hurrying in through the front door and stamping the snow off his feet. “Anything else?”

“There was this.” Black pointed at what looked like a few taped off blood spatters on the carpet.

Temeke raised one hand. “I think you’ll find that’s a dab of Ketchup, son, on account of the chicken sandwich over there.”

Fowler snorted. Jarvis cackled. Black cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. He placed the urine sample a few inches to the right of the evidence bags and then changed his mind and put it on the left. He spoke to Hackett but didn’t look at him. “There was something else,” he murmured.

Hackett’s chin rolled forward straining to hear and he shushed Fowler to be quiet. “What is it?”

“We found a receipt in a trash can.”

Hackett took the evidence bag and raised it above his nose as if examining a suspect dollar bill. The paper inside was yellowish and ragged at the edges. He read off the item number, the date and the location. “Looks like a steel camping axe with a fourteen inch handle.”

“The Shadow Wolves will have plenty to track him with,” Temeke chimed in, seeing a sea of frowns. “Whoever took Adam will be cutting a few branches down to make a campfire.”

Hackett pointed at the rising sun through the kitchen window and said, “Just for your information, Governor Bendish called at the crack of dawn. Wanted to know how the search was going. Had to tell him there are two dead men under a pile of twisted metal and no sign of the Mayor’s son. He’s going to expect a report on the investigation later this morning.”

“And the local rag?” Temeke asked.

“Another Press conference tomorrow.”

Adam’s feet hardly touched the old footpath that descended down into the valley, shoes thumping against loose rock. They plunged deeper into the forest where fir saplings seemed to spring up from dense mounds of last year’s leaves.

North it seemed. Away from the lake and deeper in where branches arched above them like the ribs of a cathedral ceiling. Within those natural aisles and pillars, he could almost imagine high towers and pit houses with the words
Tarahuma
engraved on the spandrel. If only he could summon the dreadful Chief with his long black hair and crown of goose feathers. They said he could kill with those sharp black eyes.

They stopped for a while and Adam felt Ramsey loosen the bandana behind his head and ease it out of his mouth. The water jug was only half full and Adam paused before a gruff voice told him it wasn’t moonshine. Just good old water.

“Where are we going?” Adam whimpered.

“Stay close,” Ramsey said, pulling a windbreaker out of his backpack to keep the rain off, “because he’s following us.”

“Who?”

Ramsey pulled the bandana back in Adam’s mouth, raised a finger and gave him a look. “Rogue ranger.”

It seemed like hours before a thin shaft of sunlight pierced a distant cloud and the rain became little more than a rhythmic patter. They stopped to pee among a cluster of saplings and it was brown and stung real bad. Adam was dehydrated all right. And hungry.

He fumbled in his pocket as they set off again, took the compass out. The housing had shattered and the bearing needles were nowhere to be found. It must have happened when he jumped off the roof. He began to drop bits on the path until there was nothing left of it.

He had no idea in which direction they were headed, how many hours they had walked through springy beds of pine needles and rust colored dirt. Down one minute, up the next, and now walking along a ridge with a seventy foot drop on one side. It stopped raining then, barely a patter against the padded jacket he wore, and his hands were warm in the sleeves.

He heard the rush of water as they came round the bend, felt the cold spray against his face, saw the head of a great waterfall in the last rays of a sinking sun.

“Just a little further,” Ramsey said. And then, “There it is.”

They camped that night on Devil’s Elbow, a sharp bend on the crest of a ridge. Ramsey said there was no such place on the map, just a name the prospector’s once called it.

“There’s a hole someone blasted down there,” Ramsey said, hauling out a green canvas tube from his backpack. He took out a few sachets of hot chocolate and marshmallows, and he had a bag of vegetables too. “There’s pyrite and goethite in the tailings. We can take a look later if you like.”

Ramsey would kill him down there against the shingle where roots grew from the ground like long spiny fingers. He’d shoot him between the eyes or ram his head against a boulder. One would be painful. The other quick.

Ramsey removed the bandana from Adam’s mouth. “Make a sound and it goes back on,” he whispered.

Adam wiped the spittle from his chin. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

Ramsey cocked his head and gave a bitter smile. “This isn’t about killing—”

“What then?”

Ramsey opened and closed his mouth as if struggling to find the right words. “It’s about a journey I took. About what I left behind.”

“I want to go home.”

“You will.”

“When?”

Ramsey’s face was blank under those muddy streaks, eyes glistening like he had pieces of grit in them. It made him look like a zebra, made him blend with the shadows.

“Things bad at home?” he said, “cause they can be, you know. Parents fighting over who knows what. A slap here, a tear there.”

Adam almost nodded. He knew exactly how that felt. Like he’d wake up one day and find the house empty because of all that shrilling. But he caught himself before it was too late. Killers sometimes lured you into their confidence before they hacked you up and threw your bones into a shallow grave.

“How long are we going to stay here?”

“A few days. I’ll teach you stuff. Teach you how to read the wind, how to track.”

There was something in Ramsey’s eyes that told him what he needed to know, oval with a few laugh lines in the corner. Reading people was something he was good at, especially when he had to choose a study partner at school. Sometimes he was wrong. But not often.

Ramsey gave a deep sigh, gripped his chest with one hand. “My heart. Skips a beat now and then. Got a tear in it because it was broken once. I hope you never end up like me. A drifter, you know. I’ll teach you to survive out here and we’ll give ourselves names. They’ve got to be good names.”

“What names?”

“Operation Gray Fox, that’s who we are. I’ll be Gray Fox. You’ll be Night Eyes.”

Adam liked the sound of two guys out in the woods with code names nobody had ever heard of. It was dangerous, he told himself. Only the big guys did this type of thing and he was hanging with one of them.

“How do you know my nickname?” he asked.

“Ah… let’s say, you’re very well known. Famous.”

Adam liked the sound of that too. His scout group had been on the news twice that year for service projects. One was making bird feeders for a care home in Rio Rancho. Maybe they had singled him out. His bird feeder was at least two stories, a fieldstone design with a red front door.

Ramsey told Adam to stop daydreaming and pour water in a metal pot, told him to collect a pile of dry stickseed and bark, showed him how to use that axe, how to clean it too. Adam thought he seemed almost normal then, like Wendover at scouts.

He stared at the brown earthy clearing under the tallest trees he had ever seen. It was dry and out of the wind, and they could look down at the frothing waterfall and hear the rumble it made. There were pine needles and twigs and stripped bark to burn, and he collected a handful for the fire.

“You said there was an old man following us?” he asked, burdened by the thick jacket he was wearing. “Won’t he see the flames?”

Ramsey slipped the knife from his thigh and crouched. He cleared away the pine needles with his hands and a section of topsoil. “Won’t see flames. Won’t see much smoke either. Not if we dig a hole.”

“Does he really eat men? I mean, I thought cannibals lived in New Guinea.”

“Some say the Anasazi were cannibals. Could be their descendants in these very woods.”

Adam knew that wasn’t true. The
ancient ones
were a desert culture, fishing and hunting small game and birds. They built sunken structures with rock and mansions in the cliffs. If he was lucky, he might even see the chief he made up in his head. Tarahuma… hunter, gatherer, warrior.

“I think I saw him near the house,” Adam said. “He was all thin and white. Had a rifle too.”

“Skin gets like that when it’s not washed. I already told you. He’s a rogue ranger.”

Ramsey was busy carving a hole about twelve inches in diameter going in deeper, going in wider. His face was stern, not a flicker of amusement on that tight-lipped mouth. He didn’t mention the rifle either. Just made a vent about six inches to the left and connected it the main hole.

“Tomorrow,” Ramsey said, “we’ll fill it in, leave a layer of pine needles on the top. Can’t track us then. Tactical clean-up. Didn’t they teach you that in scouts?”

Adam lifted his chin and stuck his chest out a bit. “They teach us how a compass works, how to orient a map.”

“And you’re trustworthy, loyal‒”

“Helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent,” Adam chimed.

“Very good. You’ll be doing the clean-up tomorrow.”

A tarp went down and a tent went up in less than a minute, a pop-up with enough room for two. Ramsey threw the duffel bag in with a couple of blankets and a blue leather-bound book. After hacking a few small logs, he made a fire and burned it all down to a pile of red hot embers, balanced the pot on a wooden bridge, and left it to boil.

Adam looked up through the trees, too tall to catch fire and too tall to climb. He could hear the chatter of birds and the rustle of leaves. There was no way out now. Not unless he had a compass.  

“How long will the water take?” Adam said, hands raised to the heat.

“Depends on the weather, the altitude.”

It wasn’t long before the water bubbled and Ramsey wadded up some dried leaves to grip the rim.

“My dad uses pliers when he doesn’t have a pot holder,” Adam said.

Ramsey lifted one eyebrow, looked like he was going to smile only he didn’t. “Your dad’s a smartass then.”

Adam felt the tightness in his jaw. “He’s a badass.”

Ramsey bobbed his head, gave a half smile. Poured hot water in a couple of tin cups, filled them with a sachet each of hot chocolate and a marshmallow.

“There’s tea bags in the pack. Coffee if you prefer. And if you think of running, I will find you.” Then he stalked back into the shadows for more wood.

Adam wasn’t going anywhere, not with that rogue ranger hiding in the woods. He kept looking behind him through the trees, kept wondering how fast an old man could run. If he had a limp like his grandpa once had it wouldn’t be fast because old people had arthritis to slow them down. 

It was only a few minutes and Ramsey was back again, stomping this time like he was fresh out of patience. He took a bag out of his pocket, poured something in his hand and began to chew it.

Adam lit a hurricane lamp and hung inside the tent. It creaked a bit in the wind casting an eerie glow over the guttering embers. He coaxed what was left of the fire with a stick and wondered if the light would attract the rogue ranger.

“He won’t come here,” Ramsey said, spitting a brown ball of mucus from his mouth. “Fortunately, we lost him a few miles back.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

And then Adam saw it again. A shimmer of a smile on those sallow cheeks, the dimple on his chin. He watched those fingers as they rolled a smoke. Watched the lips as they took a hit.

“It’s for the pain,” Ramsey said, tapping his chest with two fingers.

“Are you sick?”

“The pills take away the worst of it. Wouldn’t want to be in hospital. Rather be free, rather be in the fresh air when I die.”

Adam wondered how old he was if he was talking about dying. Asked him if he believed in God because the world was coming to an end. Ramsey just shook his head, made a growling sound with his throat.

“There’s going to be a battle,” Adam said. “A big one. Bad people get trampled like grapes and there’s lots of blood. Horses will be swimming in it all the way up to their bridles.”

“Bunch of fairy tales.”

“It’s true. Mom says we need to watch for that prowling lion… not the mountain kind.” Adam sipped that hot chocolate and wiped a coating of marshmallow from his lips.

“Better learn how to shoot and use a knife then,” Ramsey muttered. “Better turn in before it rains.”

That night they watched a sheer of lightning on the horizon and a sheet of rain that hung under a cloud blowing across the valley. They huddled in their blankets to keep warm, eating dried crackers and beef jerky and a good cup of tea.

It was cozy in the tent with that hurricane lamp. Warm too. Adam lay on his back with his eyes half open, listening to the rattle of rain against the leaves. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t scared any more.

“Hit the rack,” Ramsey said, tilting that blue leather book towards the lamp.

“What are you reading?”

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Well it is nothing. You wouldn’t like it. Probably wouldn’t understand it.”

“I read The Hobbit.”

“And that makes you smart?” Ramsey rolled on his side and put the book between them. He looked up occasionally with those oval eyes and then he’d look back down, finger underlining each word. “Want me to read some?”

Adam didn’t really care. But it was polite to nod.

Ramsey cleared his throat. It was a deep whispering voice when it came, kinder than before.

“She always liked it when I brushed her hair. It was thick and dark, and in the sunshine there was red in it. I remember a song once about a girl with nut brown hair. Can’t remember who sang it. But she liked it. Sometimes hummed it when she thought I wasn’t listening. We’d pick muscles off the sea bed when the tide was low, poke at the lobster pots and watch the sunset. We’d watch the boats and try to guess what type of sails they had. I don’t know what part of her I loved the best. Her voice, her skin, her smile. Probably everything. I liked the way she looked at me. Made me feel special. Made me feel.”

Adam liked the words, liked the soft resonance of Ramsey’s voice. He could see a girl and a boy staring out to sea and he could see a fat-bellied ship with sails tightly trimmed and close to the wind. It put him to sleep.