‘So?’
‘So three people are dead and we think it’s all about the money, don’t we? I think we better tell that guy his prize customer is out of jail and probably armed and quite possibly dangerous.’
‘Oh. OK, give him a call.’
‘No cell phone, boss. No computer. This guy’s off the grid and barely feeding his family.’
‘Sarah,’ Delaney said, looking at his call-back list, ‘what do you want?’
‘We gotta go find him, talk to him. He probably ought to fix cars at another location for a while.’
Delaney sighed. ‘We have a great deal to do.’
‘This guy’s smart and he’s connected down there. If we make him a friend he could help us. Jason and Oscar can find him fast – they did before.’
‘All right.’ Delaney waved her away. ‘Then talk to the arresting officer for that last break-in Joey did. See if there’s any other charge he can come up with, so we could issue a warrant for a fresh arrest.’
‘Oh, I like that. Thanks, boss.’
When she told Jason, he said, ‘See, I told you we were going to mess up that poor guy’s life.’
‘Blame me all you like after you find him,’ Sarah said. ‘But right now will you hustle your butt down across Valencia and find that guy? I’m getting hives.’
She was tackling the fresh pile of messages that seemed to be spontaneously proliferating on her desk when she answered her ringing phone and heard a voice yell, from some outdoor space filled with traffic noises, ‘Is this Sarah Burke? Right. This is Sam Rollins at the impound yard.’
‘Yes, Sam?’
‘Yeah, well, your name’s on the charge slip so I thought you better know. Somebody cut the padlock off the backyard gate last night, and that old Toyota you sent me yesterday is gone.’
‘Is that the only vehicle missing?’
‘Yup. So I guess you know who’s to blame, huh? And, hey, probably we should be grateful he left the chain-link fence alone – I’ll just replace the padlock and I’m good to go. But I think you’re looking for a Camry and the man who owns it, both.’
‘Yeah, looks like we gotta go around again. Thanks, Sam.’ She ran and told Delaney, who said, ‘Well, there’s our new charge. Will you write up the warrant? I’ll put out the Need to Locate, city and county.’
‘What about Border Patrol? We think he’s a flight risk.’
‘Right. Soon as you finish that warrant call them, give them all the information on the warrant and ask them to turn him around if they find him.’
They got busy, and soon every car in Tucson and Pima County was looking for the Camry, and had a copy of Joey’s last arrest photo in the car.
In the middle of all that busy work, Jason called Sarah from the weedy lot in front of the inconspicuous repair shop.
‘We’re looking in the front window,’ Jason said. ‘The ceiling light is out and the door is locked. The van he kept his tools in is gone too, and all those file boxes where he kept his records. Looks like our boy’s an old hand at this – he knows when to take a powder.’
‘Did you ask around the neighborhood if anybody’s seen him?’
‘Of course. Tried the neighbors on both sides. Talked to Ulysses, the guy in the hairnet that calls himself the chef de cuisine at the hot dog stand. Oh, and you know that unisex hair styling shop where I told you all the girls had big eyes for Oscar yesterday? He got so charming in there a few minutes ago I almost fell in love with him myself, but they don’t have a word of advice for him today. Nobody down here wants to talk to us now – they all say, like, “Juan who?” We’re poison in this part of town.’
Sarah ate lunch at her desk, answering emails and fielding calls. When she walked into the break room to make tea she found Leo sitting there, watching a rerun of an old Barney Miller show on his iPad. She stood by him through a couple of eruptions on the laugh track, till he finally peeled his eyes away and said, ‘What gives you the right to interrupt my lame-brained lunch break, which helps me maintain my sunny disposition the rest of the day?’
‘Don’t know if you’ve heard,’ she said, and started to tell him about the bail-out.
‘I know about the bail-out,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’
She told him about the Toyota stolen from impound. ‘What does that suggest to you?’
‘Flight. Or a mission. Maybe there’s still some money to retrieve? You know,’ he closed his iPad and stood up, looking energized, ‘there’s one very simple thing we haven’t tried. What if there’s an account somewhere in the name of Joey García?’