High Country Nocturne

Chapter Forty-three

We placed Mann in the seat of one of the straight-back chairs. He had stopped talking. That “anything you say can be used against you” part can have that effect. Peralta called Eric Pham.

Maybe twenty minutes passed before the knock at the door.

I looked at Peralta. “What about your motion detectors?”

He didn’t answer. He already had his Glock out.

The house was still dark. I moved to the window to the right of the door and carefully pulled back the drape.

“It’s alright.” I moved to the door. “It’s Cartwright.”

He was somebody who could identify and bypass motion detectors.

I was at the door and turning the knob when Peralta said, “Don’t…”

But it was too late.

Ed Cartwright stood before me with a gun in my face.

Behind him it was snowing.

“Get that expression off your face, David,” he said. “You look like a six-year-old whose kitten just died.”

I hardened my eyes and made my dry mouth form words. “What are you doing, Ed? Put the gun down.”

“Step away from the door,” he said.

I didn’t move.

His sling was gone. His appearance was barely controlled fury.

I felt Peralta next to me.

Cartwright spoke through clenched teeth. “Put your gun down, Mike.”

Peralta calmly drawled, “You know that’s not going to happen, Ed. What the hell are you doing?”

Cartwright kept his weapon up, the barrel straight at my chest.

It finally fell together. Here was the “other” from Eric Pham’s white board. I said, “It was you who called Sharon to the hospital when Lindsey was shot. Did you send the woman who did it?”

“Of course not, David. I was doing you a favor, sending Sharon to help you.”

I didn’t feel grateful. “Then you called me when I was in Pennington’s office. It was you, wanting to set up a meet with him. You must have thought Pennington would know how to contact Peralta. I should have realized it later, the way you changed your voice when Peralta called me back, when we were standing in the parking lot. The ‘Apache Mortgage’ shit.”

“You’re a little slow, son.”

“You were in on this with Mann.”

“No. This was my play. All I had to do was watch the Bureau get tangled up with itself. Overthink and overplan. Try to blame this poor Grayson woman who pissed off her supervisors. But from the first time he talked to me, when I was in the hospital after the shooting at the mall, I knew he was the crook.”

My hands felt heavy and useless at my side. “What does that make you? You’re a lawman, Ed. You’ve served your entire life with honor.”

“You were misinformed,” he said. “The FBI made me into a renegade. The piece-of-shit disgraced Indian. They profited from making me into that man. Now it’s my turn.”

“It’s only fifteen million, before you fence it! That makes no sense.” I was arguing personal finance with an armed man, probably not in the best mood.

“It’s enough,” he said.

Peralta spoke in a calm cadence, “Step away, Mapstone. Ed, lower your weapon or I’ll kill you where you stand. You know I’ll do it.”

He said, “And I’ll kill your boy. If that’s the way you decide to play it.”

Peralta spoke with icy calm. “We go way back, Ed. Don’t make me do this.”

“Don’t make me shoot him,” Cartwright said, indicating me. His finger was inside the trigger guard, on the trigger. My insides were turbulent with dread. I forced it down.

Cartwright kept his eyes on me “You did a good job of disappearing, Mike. Pham doesn’t have a clue where you are. But David did a better job of finding you. Now I’ll take those stones.”

“He’s going to kill us all!” Mann’s voice came behind me.

“Nobody’s going to die,” Cartwright said. “Mann, you’re a disgrace. Me, I’ve got obligations that matter. The diamonds are a means to an end.”

My fear fell away and an icy calm descended. I can’t explain exactly why.

“The fucking diamonds,” I said. “There’s got to be another way.”

“No.” His eyes were black behind the heavy lids.

“They’re right here,” I said. I slowly stooped and picked up the socks, then stood and held one in each hand. “The rough is inside these.”

He briefly studied them. “Step away from the door, David!”

I stepped aside.

Suddenly somebody spat behind Cartwright. That was the sound, at least. His eyes registered surprise and then the pupils went wide as he fell forward, the front of his shirt filling with blood, and he crashed face-first into the floor.

Amy Russell stood at the bottom of the porch steps, another H &K semiautomatic in her hands. She was dressed in black, the only color being her pale face and the halo of strawberry blond hair in a tight bun.

“Down!” I yelled as I dropped the diamonds. I heard a crash as Mann forced his chair to tilt and fall. My holster snapped as I pulled out the Python and went prone on the floor beside Cartwright. Another spit and a bullet sped over my head, fracturing the wall behind me.

I fired. The big Colt made its explosive sound. Peralta shot at the same time, three quick concussions.

I looked into the snow and she was gone.