Cowboy Alibi

Chapter Eight

Joe looked from the newcomer to Jane, taking in the look of horror on her face. The hair on the back of his neck rose. “Would someone like to tell me what the hell’s going on?”

“Mr. Holbrook, you were supposed to wait in the car,” Deputy Garland gave the man a stern look, but Holbrook didn’t even look at him. His gaze remained fixed on Jane’s pale face.

Joe stepped between Jane and Holbrook, blocking her from his view. “Who’s Sarah?” he asked.

Holbrook looked at him through narrowed eyes. “This woman. My wife. I’m Clint Holbrook, Sarah’s husband.” His voice softened. “She’s not a stable woman. You realize that, don’t you?”

“That’s enough, Mr. Holbrook.” Deputy Lowell moved in close, taking Joe’s arm. “Sir, we’re taking Mrs. Holbrook in for questioning. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to come in with us, as well.”

“On what charge?”

“Right now, it’s just for questioning,” Garland answered in a soothing tone Joe knew well. It only served to irritate him.

“I’m a policeman. I know how this works, and I want to know what this man told you to get you out here in the middle of the night instead of waiting until morning.” And how had he found them? Had Jane’s friend Doris spilled the beans?

“Sarah has already shown herself to be a flight risk,” Holbrook answered smoothly. “Haven’t you, darling?”

Joe felt the heat of Jane’s body as she moved up behind him. She curled her fingers in the back of his shirt, just above where his Colt nestled in the waistband of his jeans.

“He’s the one who killed Angie,” she said, her voice low and strangled.

Joe looked up at Holbrook, trying to square him with the description Jane had given to Hank Trent. Add a beard, mustache and a baseball cap, put him in all-black clothing-

“My wife is delusional, Mr.-?” Holbrook paused, waiting for Joe to supply his name.

Joe didn’t bite, pretty sure that Holbrook, whoever he was, already knew Joe’s name and probably a whole lot more about him. He turned to the two deputies. “Mr. Holbrook is wanted in Trinity, Idaho, for questioning in a murder.”

Garland and Lowell exchanged glances. “He told us you’d say that.”

“I’m afraid the man has been infected by my wife’s paranoia.” Holbrook’s voice was tinged with a hint of sadness. He met Joe’s gaze, a triumphant light burning in the blue depths of his eyes. “You see, she’s a very sick woman. Paranoid schizophrenia. She needs to be in a hospital, not in a cabin in the wilderness.”

Jane’s fingers tightened their grip on Joe’s shirt.

“I suppose you have proof of what you’re saying?” Joe asked, fairly sure the man would produce papers to support his statement. Clint Holbrook looked like the kind of man who tied up all his loose ends.

“Of course. I’ve shown them to the deputies.”

“We don’t want a mess here,” Lowell said, looking warily from Joe to Clint Holbrook.

“We can’t go with them.” Jane’s voice trembled. He felt her scoot closer to him.

The two deputies exchanged a look, and Joe realized how out of proportion Jane’s fear probably seemed to them. It made her seem irrational. They probably thought he was just as irrational for indulging her fears.

They were wrong. He had a gouge in his side to prove it. And he’d seen Angela Carlyle’s body. Jane couldn’t have slit her throat that way, but Clint Holbrook could’ve.

Proving it, however, was another matter altogether. And in the meantime, there were two suspicious sheriff’s deputies looking for a reason to truss him up like a turkey and run him in.

He turned to Jane. “We have to do this.” He tried to communicate calm through his gaze and in the tone of his voice, but the panic in her eyes remained. “The deputies will help us sort things out.”

Jane’s expression hardened to a cold mask. “Nobody can help me,” she murmured. Her voice sounded distant, as if she weren’t even here in the room with him anymore. It sent another shudder rippling down his spine.

Suddenly, she wheeled and ran for the back of the cabin, catching everyone by surprise. Joe started after her, but behind him, Holbrook shouted, “Gun!”

Someone hit Joe from behind, slamming him into the cabin wall. He gasped as pain rocketed through his injured side, robbing him of breath. He felt an arm press against his neck, pushing his face into the wall.

“Don’t you move!” Deputy Lowell growled in his ear. He reached under Joe’s shirt and pulled the Colt from his waistband, laying it on the side table next to them.

“I told you I’m a cop!” Joe protested.

“Just hold still-”

Joe heard Jane cry out from the back of the cabin. “Jane!” he called, his own panic starting to rise. Where was Holbrook? Was he back there with her?

Joe tried to turn his head to locate the man, but Lowell pushed his face back into the wall. “I said hold still!”

“She tried to bite me!” Garland’s indignant voice rang out in the hallway, followed by the sounds of a struggle.

“Jane!” Joe called out, needing to hear her answer.

“Touching, your concern for my wife,” Holbrook murmured, his voice close.

Joe stopped resisting Lowell as cold anger swamped him, driving out the worst of the panic. “Deputy, it’s bad procedure to try to make an arrest with civilians in the line of fire.”

“He’s right, Mr. Holbrook,” Lowell said. “You should’ve stayed in the car.”

“If it will make things easier…” Holbrook’s footsteps retreated.

Joe heard the cabin door open and close. He waited a moment, then asked the deputy, “Is he gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, I realize you have every reason to believe that guy. But he’s lying to you. He is a suspect in a brutal murder in Trinity, Idaho-”

“I’ve seen the BOLO on that murder,” Lowell said, referring to the Be On The Lookout message Sheriff Trent had issued to surrounding law-enforcement agencies. “It was for a guy with a beard.”

“It was a disguise!” Joe pressed his forehead against the wall. “I helped write the damned thing, so I know it said the guy might be wearing a false beard. Look, just let me go and I can explain exactly what’s going on-”

Lowell eased his forearm away from the back of Joe’s neck but held on to his arms. He slapped a cuff over one of Joe’s wrists.

“What are you-” Joe ended the question on a breathless profanity as the deputy started pulling his other arm into place to fasten the cuffs, stretching the ravaged skin over his gunshot wound.

“He’s hurt!” Jane cried out from across the room. “That bastard out there shot him. Don’t do that!”

Lowell stopped pulling on his arms and lifted the left side of his shirt. Cool air washed over Joe’s side, making the skin pucker.

“Holbrook shot you? Did you see him do it?”

“We didn’t see the shooter,” Joe admitted.

“It was him,” Jane insisted.

Joe turned his head to look at her. Garland had her hands cuffed behind her, and the struggle had mussed her hair and clothes, but otherwise she looked okay. She met his gaze, her eyes wide and scared but her chin high with determination.

“You saw him, then?” Lowell asked her as he pulled Joe around and clamped the cuff over his wrists in the front.

“She didn’t see him, either,” Joe answered before she could speak the lie he saw forming in her eyes. “But she did see him in the apartment where her friend was murdered.”

“So she says.” Garland nudged her forward.

“I believe her,” Joe insisted.

“Well, maybe you’re being straight with us, and maybe you’re not, but we can sort that out when we get back to the station.” Lowell gave Joe a little push. “Let’s go.”

The night air was bitterly cold, sliding under the collar of Joe’s shirt and racing down his spine. Lowell thrust Joe’s suede jacket into his cuffed hands when they reached the sheriff’s cruiser. “Hold on to that for me.”

He turned to unlock the backseat of the car. Joe saw the deputy’s service weapon snapped tightly into his hip holster, in easy reach. Slipshod. He’d have ripped his own underlings a new one if he’d seen them being so lax.

A moment later, he realized his own weapon was nowhere in sight. “What did you do with my Colt?” he asked.

Lowell turned to look at him. “What?”

A bark of gunfire shattered the quiet woods, and Lowell’s whole body jerked and spun, going down.

Something small and solid rammed into Joe from behind, pitching him against the car door as he tried to see what direction the fire was coming from. He heard a soft whimper-Jane-and then Deputy Garland shoved them both aside, unlocking the front door of the cruiser with one hand while trying to draw his weapon with the other.

A second gunshot cracked in the middle of the commotion. Garland grunted, his fingers clutching the car door. It swung open as he tumbled away and hit the ground with a thud.

Joe crouched behind the car door and looked over at the fallen deputies. Head shots, he realized with a sinking heart as he took in the damage. They were both dead.

With his hands cuffed, he couldn’t reach behind him to touch Jane, but he felt her huddled close. At least his body was shielding hers.

“Get into the cruiser,” he growled at her, moving to give her an opening while he scanned the darkness in front of them. “And stay low.”

While she scrambled into the front seat and curled into a knot in the passenger side floorboard, he threw the jacket in the car, then retrieved the deputy’s car keys from the ground and tucked them into his shirt pocket. He finally spotted movement as Clint Holbrook stepped into the opening, aiming Joe’s own Colt M1911 pistol at the door providing Joe with his only cover.

Adrenaline pumping like fire in his veins, Joe dropped and scrambled for the nearest deputy’s body, tugging the service pistol from the deputy’s hip holster. He whipped it up and didn’t take time to aim through the narrow space between the door and the cruiser’s chassis. He just snapped off a couple of rounds and threw himself into the cruiser’s driver’s seat, pulling the cruiser’s keys from his pocket.

Ignoring the howl of pain racing up and down his injured side, he twisted his body to turn the ignition key. The cruiser roared to life, the headlights slicing through the dark night. They lit up Clint Holbrook like a spotlight, making the man squint.

It wasn’t much of an advantage, but Joe did what he could to make the most of it, gritting his teeth against the agony as he twisted his body twice more, first to pull the car door shut and then to put the car into gear.

He hit the gas and went straight at Holbrook, forcing the man to dive toward Joe’s truck to avoid being rammed. Holbrook jerked the truck door open and took cover behind it, lifting his gun toward the cruiser.

The deputy’s vehicle probably had a bulletproof windshield, but Joe didn’t want to risk finding out. Growling through the pain, he turned his body to reach the gearshift again and slammed the cruiser in Reverse.

There was limited space to get between the deputies’ bodies and the dark sedan parked behind and to one side of where the cruiser had originally been, but Joe gripped the wheel and gave it a shot. The passenger side of the cruiser caught the sedan’s side mirror, bending it a bit and making a loud scraping noise as they passed, but they made it through the gap and onto the gravel drive.

Joe didn’t have time to do more than glance out the window to see what Holbrook was doing. He saw the man make a run for the sedan, firing the Colt as he ran. A thud hit the side of the cruiser. Jane made a soft mewling noise that made Joe’s heart drop like a rock.

“Jane, are you hit?”

“No. Just go!”

He spun the steering wheel, reversing the direction of the cruiser, and shifted to Drive. He gunned the engine, making the cruiser shimmy across the loose gravel a few seconds before he righted it and headed down the mountain road with the pedal to the floor.

He knew he had a good jump on Holbrook, but he didn’t let up until they reached the main highway. He kept an eye on the rearview mirror for signs that Holbrook had caught up with them, but he saw nothing.

Still, he remembered the GPS tracker from before. Holbrook had been outside with the cars for a while. He couldn’t assume the man hadn’t put a tracker on the cruiser as well, in case one or both of the deputies had managed to escape his assault.

“Jane, you can get up in the seat now.”

She pushed herself up to the passenger seat, meeting his quick gaze with wide, frightened eyes. “The deputies?”

He shook his head.

She uttered a soft curse. “Are you hurt?”

He felt blood oozing down his injured side, but he didn’t think it was serious. “I’m okay. You?”

“A little bruised up, I think, but not bad.” She wriggled a little in the seat. “Damn it, why didn’t they cuff me in front, too?”

“How limber are you?” he asked.

She gave him a look. “I’ve never had to find out.”

“If you can manage to get your hands in front of you, there might be an extra handcuff key in the glove compartment.”

He forced himself to keep his eye on the darkened highway ahead, though the soft grunts and noises Jane was making tempted his gaze in her direction more than once. After a couple of minutes he heard her release a deep sigh and a soft, triumphant “Yeah!”

He glanced at her and saw she now had her hands in front of her. “Good girl,” he said quietly.

She rooted through the glove compartment, spilling some papers and a flashlight into the floorboard before she emerged with a paper clip. “No key, but maybe we can make this work.”

She pulled the coils of the paper clip open, twisting the flexible wire into a modified L shape with a small downward bend at the tip.

Joe pulled the cruiser over onto the shoulder of the highway and put it in Park, looking at the bent paper clip in her hand. He released a soft laugh.

She looked up at him, her eyebrows quirked. “What?”

“I should’ve known you’d know how to shape a handcuff lock pick.”

She looked down at the clip, her expression crestfallen. “I didn’t even realize-”

“It’s okay. Can you see if you can unlock me?” He held out his cuffed wrists.

She made quick work of the lock, tears sparkling on her eyelashes as the lock sprung and he pulled off the cuffs. He took the lock pick from her and released her hands, as well. She rubbed her wrists and lowered her head. “Now what?”

“Stay here while I check something.” He got out of the cruiser, shrugged on his jacket and circled the cruiser until he was certain there was no GPS tracking device attached to the underside of the chassis. The cruiser itself would probably have an internal device the sheriff’s department could track through its own system, but Clint Holbrook would have to go through channels to get access to that.

As he got into the cruiser, he heard the radio on the dashboard squawk. A male voice-dispatch, he guessed-asked for a ten-twenty from unit four.

Jane cleared her throat. “I think that’s us. You better answer.”

He started to reach for the radio, then stopped. “If I don’t answer, they’ll come looking for us.”

“I know, so answer it.”

He looked at her. “Those deputies deserve to be found before the wolves you saw get to their bodies. I’m not going to answer and pretend I’m them.”

“It’ll buy us time.”

“I said no.”

She pressed her lips to a thin line, but he saw understanding in her eyes, battling with her need to get away from the danger. She gave a quick nod. “But now we’re going to have to ditch the cruiser. And soon.”

“I know,” he said. But it would take a while for the sheriff’s department to figure out what was going on. That bought them a little time to get rid of the cruiser and find another way out of the area.

THEY LEFT the highway after a few more miles, weaving their way south down county roads and back roads so lightly traveled they ran into no other traffic for a solid hour.

Jane buckled her seat belt and settled back against the passenger seat, turning her head so she could watch Joe’s profile as he drove. His brow was creased, probably with pain. She saw him drop his left hand to his side more than once.

“Are you bleeding again?”

“A little. Not much.”

Jane fell silent, trying to clear from her mind the image of the fallen deputies. She made herself picture Clint Holbrook instead, studying the lines of his face, the color of his hair and eyes, trying to place him in the dark chasm that hid her lost memories.

He’d told the deputies and Joe that she was a paranoid schizophrenic. But that couldn’t be true, could it? She’d lived for five months in Trinity without anyone thinking her insane, hadn’t she? And she’d known Joe and his brother before that, and Joe didn’t act like she was crazy, either.

“Did you believe him?” she blurted aloud.

Joe slanted a look at her. “Holbrook?”

“Yeah. Did you believe what he said about me?”

Joe’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. You were keeping secrets when I knew you. I guess maybe you’re his wife. I don’t know.”

“No, I mean about the other thing.”

He frowned, as if uncertain what she was asking. Then his brow straightened, and his lips curved in a half smile. “That you’re a paranoid schizophrenic?” He released a huff of laughter. “No. You’re as sane as I am.”

Surprised by how relieved his reassurances made her feel, she cleared her throat. “But what if he tells his story to Chief Trent? What if he explains away his presence at Angie’s apartment and turns it all back on me?”

“Trent knows what the evidence says. The person who killed Angela had to be a lot bigger and stronger than you. I don’t think Holbrook will try to sell that to the Trinity cops,” Joe assured her.

She hoped he was right.

“Listen, we need to ditch this cruiser, and soon. That means risking the highway again so we can find a truck stop or something. Maybe a no-tell motel that won’t ask too many questions if we show up on foot without luggage.”

“Any idea where we are right now?”

“We just passed into Boise County, heading west.”

“We can take Highway 21 into Boise, but that’s probably a good three hours from here. I think there are truck stops along that highway, and probably a few cheap places to stay where people won’t ask a lot of questions. I can’t tell you exactly where, though.”

“Then we’ll just drive until we find one,” he said.