“Ahhh! OK, shit, I’m a bounty hunter. I’m licensed. It’s a job, OK? We’re after a bail-jumper.”
The “we” stuck in my head like a sudden jolt of electricity. I stood quickly and kicked the guy in the stomach, hard. I pulled the Python and jammed it into his nose until blood came out.
“Listen asshole,” I said, “You come inside and I’ll just kill you. I won’t ask a question or give a warning. I’ll just blow your ass into eternity. Got it?” He nodded intensely and wheezed, but I knew I had only bought a few seconds.
I jerked open the door; the bell tinkled merrily. I crossed the hardwood floor quickly, heading to the back room. I could hear a woman whimpering, and then the sharp sound of a hand against flesh.
“You’d better give it up, bitch!” a man’s voice commanded. Then there was another slap. But that infernal bell had given me away, and before I could reach the archway to the back room, it was filled with bad guy.
“Stop or I’ll kill you,” I commanded, leveling the Python at his chest. I added the nicety: “Maricopa County Sheriff.”
He paused long enough to glower at me with hate. It was the driver from the parking garage. But outside the car, he was huge. Linebacker huge.
“Get on your knees,” I said. “Do it!”
He started down slowly. I didn’t see a gun on him, but I swear I would have shot him and taken my chances with a review board. He was big enough to kill me with his bare hands. I would have done him. But I caught his eyes sneaking a look over my shoulder, and then I heard the festive tinkle of the bell. I tried to use my peripheral vision and step sideways to counter whatever was coming in the door behind me. That was just the millisecond of distraction he needed to rush me.
In an instant, this human tank was coming for me, yelling like a banshee. It scrambled the circuits in an out- of-shape brain that had spent too many years in comfortable classrooms and bedrooms and drinking establishments, in the luxurious embrace of books and fine dinners and Lindsey Faith Adams. It was not even a second, but it was enough.
A horrific force slammed against my chest-I swear I could hear my ribs crack-and then I was airborne. The tasteful black cylinders of the display lights flew past my eyes, and then I was cruising sideways headed toward a trifold portable wall. Several brightly framed canvases came up to meet my face. I hit hard, pain shooting out of the top of my head. When I hit the floor, it felt like carpenter’s nails had been driven into my spine. Then the heavy man-shape in the air above me crashed down.
There was a time fugue where a round black fog started closing down my field of vision and I wasn’t there. But one word slammed through my traumatized brain and woke me: gun.
The goon had both his huge hands on the Python, trying to rip it out of my hands. I pulled it toward me, my arms screaming from the strain. The barrel swung toward my nose and I nearly broke my wrist pointing it back out. That fine, ribbed Colt 4?-inch barrel I had paid a premium price for. The steel glinted in the lights. His hands were gigantic and powerful, slowly overwhelming me, but his fingers seemed like delicate little ghouls invading to dislodge my hold on the trigger.
I wiggled like a madman and kneed him in the groin. He didn’t even grunt. He just kept up this rhythmic, weightlifter’s breathing. His breath smelled like a trash can in July. Suddenly other black arts of the street cop came back to me, and I pulled the gun hard toward me, then quickly pushed it back to him. The force of his grip snapped the heavy revolver back into his face. It crashed across the bridge of his nose, opening a wide, fleshy cut. He let up enough that I could crawl out from under him. He jerked up on his knees, looking like a rattler about to strike. Then I pistol-whipped him again across the jaw. He grunted and fell backwards.
The guy from the doorway sprang at me, but he was slow. I stepped aside and he crashed into a black metal table. The two men crawled around on the floor like large, dangerous roaches. One shook his head violently and tried to stand. I backed away and stepped through into the back room. Beth looked at me with wild eyes.
“Is there a way out the back?” I rasped. She nodded, and led us down a dark passage to the alley. Outside, I grabbed her wrist and we ran like hysterical refugees through the dirty, day-old snow.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Beth didn’t want to call the Denver cops. So we ended up back in the hotel room, where Lindsey procured ice. The right side of my face was swollen and felt like an overused pin cushion. My left hand had a nasty cut from some point in the fight. My left shoulder hurt like hell unless I kept it raised as if I were in a perpetual half-shrug. But I felt like I got off easy.
Beth sat in a green upholstered chair, holding an ice pack to her eye. Her shirt had been ripped, and she had a small, deep strawberry-colored cut on one cheek. A crescent bruise was working its way down her perfect jawline. She was wearing black leather pants, and sat with her legs drawn up to her chest. She sobbed quietly.
“We’ve got to talk, Beth,” I coaxed.
“They showed me badges, just like you guys,” she whispered. “They said they were going to kill me.”
“Did they say why?”
She shook her head and hunkered deeper in the chair. Speaking slowly, she told us how the two men had come in a half hour before I arrived, then waited for her last patrons to leave. When they were alone, the big one shoved her into the back room and started slapping her.
“What did they say they wanted?”
“I don’t want to talk now,” she said. “I want to go home.”
“OK,” I said, nursing my own pain. “They may be waiting for you at home.”
She looked at me as if I had slapped her. I suggested, “It’s time to call the police.”
“No,” she said, too loud. Lindsey glanced at me. Beth stared at the floor and said, “They wanted Leo. They wanted me to tell them where he was.”
“I thought you hadn’t talked to Leo,” I said.
“You know I did.” She smiled unhappily. “We corresponded by e-mail. It was censored by the prison, of course. He was coming up for parole, finally. He was actually hopeful that this time he might make it.”
“When did you last hear from him?” I asked.
There was a commotion in the hall and my stomach knotted up, sending a sharp pain into my ribs. Lindsey sprang up, drew her Glock, and moved lightly to the door, which was already bolted. She just shook her head. The noise died down. I asked Beth the question again.
“I got the last message from him just before Christmas.”
“Did you have any sense he was planning an escape?”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently, tossing her fair hair, pushing it back with an agitated hand.
“Why would he escape if he thought he might get parole?” Lindsey asked, returning to sit on the bed.
“I don’t know,” Beth said.
“Really?” Lindsey asked.
“Yes, really.” Beth stared daggers at Lindsey.
“So what did you tell these tough guys when they wanted to know where Leo was?” I asked.
“I told them I didn’t know,” she said, lightly touching a finger to the cut on her cheek. The motion made my face throb.
“So Leo hasn’t contacted you since he escaped?”
“No, damn it. He hasn’t. Why would he come to Denver if he was in Phoenix last week?”
Lindsey and I kept poker faces. But Beth was quick, if dulled a bit by being beaten up. She realized instantly we hadn’t told her that Leo was seen in Phoenix. She muttered an obscenity and stared into her lap.
“What do you want from me?” she demanded in a raw voice.
“The truth would be a good starting point,” I said.
She stared out into the room for a long time. Then, quietly, she said, “Tell me about you guys. I’m usually very intuitive about people, and you two definitely don’t look like cops.”
I’d seen Peralta break down hard guys in the interrogation room. He could browbeat, threaten, manipulate, and sometimes be the most compassionate man in the city. But his interview skills always had a beginning, a
