BEFORE HEADING OUT, TOM HADLOCK HAD GONE TO THE SUPPLY room, grabbed a collection of walkie-talkies off their chargers, and then distributed them to all the members of the team. They came with a simple on/off volume control, a squelch knob, a channel selector, and a push-to-talk switch. Once they were all set to the correct channels, he could talk to his separate tactical teams or to the entire group as much as he wanted and the Marliss Shacklefords of the world wouldn’t be able to hear a word of it, unless she or they somehow magically managed to get within a mile of Calhoun.
Starvation Canyon Road dead-ended in the canyon itself, a few miles beyond Calhoun. The plan was to lay down spike strips just east of the fence line. If Ardmore tried to flee the scene in a vehicle, four flattened tires would slow him down to a crawl. Because they expected to approach the ghost town itself on foot and with weapons drawn, Tom directed his officers to block the entrances with parked patrol cars in case the spike strips didn’t do the job.
They’d all donned vests and Windbreakers and were gathered in a huddle for a final briefing when Tom’s satphone rang. Knowing the caller was Deb, he switched over to speaker when he answered.
“I’ve got news,” Deb announced. “We now have two suspects instead of one, and they are brothers. According to their dates of birth, James Edward Ardmore, age sixty-six, is five years younger than Arthur. Both were born in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m looking at the photos on their driver’s licenses. I wish you had an Internet connection so I could send you the photos. These guys look like twins.”
“Good work,” Tom said. “Anything else?”
“James owns a 2017 Peterbilt, an eighteen-wheeler.”
Tom felt as though he’d been sucker-punched. “He’s a trucker?” Tom asked despairingly. “If they took off with Arthur’s Subaru loaded into the back of a Peterbilt, they could be anywhere by now.”
“Not literally anywhere,” Deb corrected. “Yes, they have a head start, but even a rig like that can go only so fast, and the distance it can cover is limited. I’ve already put out an APB. Somebody somewhere will spot them—an on-the-ball highway-patrol officer out on the interstate maybe, or else a sharp-eyed inspector at a weigh station.”
Tom felt better. Maybe this wasn’t such a lost cause after all.
“Okay, Deb,” he said. “Thanks for the update. We’ll still proceed with caution on this end, but you’re probably right. I’m guessing the brothers Ardmore are long gone.”
Then, breaking into four separate squads, the Emergency Response Team moved in formation with weapons drawn. Bill Creighton, the department’s champion weight lifter, was the only one not pointing a loaded weapon. He was in charge of the battering ram they’d brought along in case they had occasion to bust down a door or two.
For the approach, Tom Hadlock, accompanied by the K-9 team, stayed in the middle and stuck to the road while the others spread out on either side. It was Mojo’s first official operation with the department. He tracked along on his leash, alert and on the job.
“Looks like a good dog,” Tom told Terry. “Acts like he knows what he’s about.”
As the town of Calhoun came into view, there were only a dozen buildings total. A hundred yards from the first one, Tom called for radio silence. The first one appeared to be an adobe structure minus a roof. When they reached it, they discovered that not only was the roof gone, so was most everything else. Two of the walls had melted away into nothing. Since only a single corner was left, clearing that building was no problem at all.
Next up came a tottering wooden shack that might have been part of a stable. It leaned drunkenly to one side, looking for all the world as though it would topple over at the slightest touch. Jaime Carbajal peeled away a loose plank and peered inside before giving the thumbs-up signal that meant it was clear.
The next building was not old at all. It was one of those prefab Tuff Shed one-car garages that came complete with an automatic door. If someone was inside, the only way out would be to activate the door. Hopefully the team would hear the door opening in time to react.
On his way past, Tom saw that something—a moving vehicle, most likely—had slammed into the structure with enough force to shift it so it was no longer square with the concrete pad beneath it. There was no way to tell if the damage was recent, but a confusing tangle of nearby tire tracks suggested it might be. Wanting to preserve the tracks left in the dirt, Tom waved everyone away from the garage. They’d have to come back and look at that one later on, after Dave Hollicker had a chance to process the tracks.
The two most substantial structures in town came next, facing each other across the narrow dirt track. The larger of the two was constructed of faded red brick and looked like a fortress. The windows, largely intact, were covered by rusty iron bars, some of them hanging loosely on their mountings on the exterior of the building. The second structure was a dilapidated wood-frame storefront.
Ernie and his team quickly cleared the brick building, since the solid wooden doors to both the front and back entrances were padlocked shut from the outside. Once Ernie gave the all-clear, Tom walked up to the building and pressed his face against the window, attempting to peer inside. All he saw was a dense curtain that appeared to be nothing more than thick layers of black plastic garbage bags. His first thought was that they looked similar to the ones found filled with trash near Amelia Salazar’s body.
This is where those girls were held prisoner, Tom thought grimly. This is the real crime scene.
By the time he stepped away from the window and back out onto the street, Jaime’s team had cleared the storefront and then moved on, leaving behind what must have been the business part of town and progressing into the residential area. That consisted of four tin-roofed wooden shacks, little more than one-room cabins, all of which appeared to be in fairly decent repair. They all had glass in their windows, and their coats of exterior paint were probably only a few years old. They were no bigger than what HGTV often refers to as “tiny houses.”
They reminded Tom of the old miner shacks that still clung like so many brightly colored burrs to the hillsides above Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon.
The first three were all padlocked shut and showed no sign of habitation. Up close, Tom could tell that the one on the end, the fourth one, was different. For starters it was half again as big as the others and had a no-kidding white picket fence around it. A lone cottonwood tree, leafless now, towered over the front yard. Beneath the tree sat an old wooden Adirondack chair. In the heat of summer, the tree would have provided a pleasant, shady retreat.
Tom spotted the fence first, then the tree, and finally the chair. A moment later he saw something else—an evaporative cooler hanging on the sill of a side window. That suggested that the house was most likely occupied or had been occupied fairly recently. The front door was closed, but it wasn’t padlocked shut, meaning that someone might be inside.
Tom motioned his team into a whispered strategy session on the far side of the fence. Then, with the others covering him and accompanied by Terry and Mojo, Tom walked up to the door and pounded on it.
“Police!” he shouted. “Open up!” But nothing happened. There was no sound from inside and no movement either.
Terry reached out and tried the doorknob. It twisted in his hand, and the door cracked open. “Should I send Mojo in?” he whispered.
Tom didn’t want to send any of his team into danger, but with Deputy Raymond already in the hospital, putting the dog in jeopardy was better than losing another person. He nodded reluctantly. “Send him in,” he said.
“Find him!” Terry ordered the dog, and Mojo sprang forward, slamming the back of the door hard against an interior wall and sprinting into the house. Tom held his breath, but nothing happened then, either—no shouts of alarm, no gunshots. Half a minute after Mojo charged inside, he came back. Wagging his tail, he went straight to Terry and was rewarded with a “Good dog!” pat as well as a suitable treat.
“Clear,” Terry reported. “Believe me, if anybody had been inside, Mojo would have let us know.”
Tom pulled out the satphone and an index card, squinting at the card until he located the number of Deputy Creighton’s satphone. “Are you finished?” he asked when Dave Hollicker answered.
“Just about,” Dave said. “The tow truck is on its way. Why?”
“Come on up to Starvation Canyon Road. I’ll send someone down to move the patrol cars out of the way and pick up the spike strips. We’re about to bust down some doors on a building or two, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to have another whole crime scene to investigate.”