High Country Nocturne - [55]

“Did she sound Russian?”

“Southern accent.”

“There was nothing in the intel about her.”

“Well, your intel sucks. Somehow she’s connected with Peralta. She knew his name. She knew he had the diamonds. What is this promise?”

I told him about first meeting her when she impersonated a DPS officer. And about Kate Vare finding a kit on the lawn that the woman had left behind, with handcuffs and tranquilizers. About her preference to “suicide” her targets.

“She’s a professional,” I said. “She’s done this before.”

Cartwright took it in without speaking.

I said, “Who is Matt Pennington?”

Although his eyes didn’t change, I saw the tension knotting up the small muscles in his neck. “Where’d you get that name, David?”

I told him about the message Peralta had left for me in Flagstaff, my walk to the zombie skyscraper, and what I had found.

We paused in the shade and he put his hands on his hips.

“You’re full of surprises, David. For years, we had heard that the biggest diamond fence in the Southwest was operating here. Mostly selling gem-quality diamonds to retailers. There was a list of potential suspects Pham’s people was working on. Pennington was not one of them.”

“But you suspected him?”

“I heard his name from some of the circles I run in. I did a little checking and never found a thing. He worked at a call center. Led a boring life. His back story interested me.”

Cartwright told me how Pennington had served as a liaison officer with a Mexican Navy drug interdiction unit. The Sinaloa Cartel penetrated it, a major intelligence breach, and Mexican marines ended up getting killed on a raid where the cartel had advanced notice. Although nothing was ever proved, Pennington was sidelined and left the U.S. Navy. That’s when he moved to Phoenix.

I said, “Now the man who called me in his office thinks I’m Pennington and he’s expecting me to call him back.”

“And you will.”

“No.” I stopped and forced down the volcanic anger inside. My voice was dishonestly steady. “I won’t. Lindsey was nearly killed and I’m only now learning this is all because of an internal FBI fuckup? And you don’t even know who shot her? This is where I get off.”

I started to turn back when he grabbed me hard by the shoulder with his good hand. His grip was strong enough to push me down if he’d been inclined.

“Look, boy,” he shouted like a drill sergeant, “Mike Peralta loves you like a son!”

His words stunned me. That word again, love, coming from the most improbable source.

His grip tightened until my shoulder, arm, and hand were immobilized with pain. I would have hated to be on the receiving end of his strength if he hadn’t been shot three days before.

The onyx glare fixed on me. “We’re not going to leave him out there. You are not going to leave him out there.”

He let go and walked ahead. “He’d do the same for us.”

By this time, we were fifty yards into the parking lot and approaching an ancient RV. A bumper sticker said, “Ask Me About My Grandkids.”

I followed and caught up with him.

He put his hand on my back and in a gentler voice said, “Come sit with me for a few. Then you can get back to the hospital.”

Unlocking the side door, he beckoned me in with a tilt of his head.

I reluctantly stepped up and inside. A poster directly ahead showed a nineteenth-century photograph of four warriors with rifles. It was bordered by the words, “Homeland Security. Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” It wasn’t easy to read because the shades were drawn, including flaps to keep anyone from seeing in through the windshield. The air was stale.

A sound-was it a sniff?-caused me to turn my head left and through the gloom see the figure sitting on a bench. A black hood was over his head.

Something in the primal brain reacts to a hooded man whether he is the reaper or the reaped.

I started to turn back and speak, or flee, but Cartwright gave me a decisive shove and slammed the door behind us.

Chapter Twenty-three

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, Cartwright’s prisoner jerked at his restraints knowing we were in the RV. It sounded like a show from a horror house but he wasn’t going anywhere. The shackles allowed his legs to move an inch at the most. His hands cuffed behind him were useless. A seat belt completed his imprisonment.

Ed motioned for me to sit on the opposite bench, then he approached the man and slipped off the hood, revealing a black blindfold tight around his head. Next, he ripped open the man’s shirt, sending a little hailstorm of buttons onto the yellowing linoleum floor.

He was muscled up and his sunburned skin was about seventy percent tattoos. Prominent among them was a scroll with Cyrillic letters, two skulls with crowns and, running down his abdomen, an enormous onion-domed cathedral.

This was not the kind of thing you found on the average ASU student.

Or perhaps it was-I was out of it on the contemporary culture front.

In any event, the abundance of tats had overpowered a wider assessment of the man. He was in his thirties with short blond hair, a rawboned face, and thin lips. An X of duct tape covered his mouth.