Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [42]
He hadn’t believed it, and his skepticism had only deepened after a thirty-minute interrogation of the suspect. Mitch was indigent. He lived off handouts and soup-kitchen charity. He slept at shelters and in alleys. He had no driver’s license and no means of transportation.
How was he supposed to have abducted Sharon Andrews and taken her to the White Mountains, roughly a hundred miles northeast of Tucson ?
Mitch hadn’t answered that question or very many other questions. He had merely reiterated his mantra with tiresome regularity while his expression varied between epileptic twitches and utter blankness.
The one bit of solid information Shepherd had coaxed from the man was the place where the faces could be found.
CDS, Mitch had said.
When pressed, he carefully repeated the acronym, enunciating each letter with exaggerated precision.
CDS stood for Central District Supply. The company, now defunct, had operated a warehouse near South Tucson. The three letters, painted ten feet high, still adorned the side of the abandoned building.
Looking ahead. Shepherd saw those letters now rising over the roof of a lower building at the end of a dead-end street south of 22nd. “That the place?” he asked Mitch.
Mitch nodded. “CDS.”
“The faces are in there?”
Another nod. “I steal their faces.”
Shepherd looked away. “We’ll see.”
* * *
Hirst parked in a vacant lot alongside the looming bulk of the warehouse. She and Alvarez climbed out of the unmarked Crown Victoria, then helped Mitch to exit.
He stood vacantly, swaying and humming, his wrists handcuffed behind him. Shepherd had insisted on the handcuffs. He knew you couldn’t take any chances with these people.
Shepherd himself got out last, unfolding himself from the close confines of the sedan’s rear compartment. He was tall and slim, and at thirty-eight he kept himself in shape by rising at 5:30 every day to play vigorous handball at Fort Lowell Park. This morning, after his game, he had driven directly to Tucson police headquarters and showered there. Somehow he had misplaced his comb, and he’d had to smooth and part his close-cropped brown hair with his fingers, a procedure that had left him slightly unkempt.
As he stood by the car, a dusty breeze kicked up and made mischief with his hair, and he knew that if Ginnie were here, he would catch gentle hell from her for the state of his appearance. Ginnie had been the one who’d always straightened his tie, exclaimed over loose threads in his slacks, and made tut-tutting noises when he came down to breakfast in a week-old, unwashed sweatshirt and Jockey briefs.
He smiled, thinking of his wife, but the smile turned to sadness as the wind blew harder. He had not been able to think of Ginnie without sorrow for a long time now. There was a hurt in him, deep and raw, and even an hour of pounding the handball until his palms were numb could not assuage it.
“Show us how to get in,” he told Mitch, hoping the man was sufficiently lucid to comprehend the order.
With a nod, Mitch led the three cops through knee-high weeds and swirls of windblown dust toward the tall chicken-wire fence surrounding the warehouse. He took long, stiff, clumsy strides. He hummed louder.
At the rear there was a gap in the fence, professionally cut. Mitch hadn’t done that. The work was too clean, too competent.
The four of them slipped through the gap and came to the back of the building, where Mitch pointed at a door that had been chained shut.
The chain links had been severed—again, a neat, professional job.
“Somebody busted in here,” Hector Alvarez said, “probably hoping there was still some merchandise inside.”
Janice Hirst studied the broken chain. “Long time ago. See? The links are rusty even where they were cut through.”
Mitch just stood, waiting.
“So they’re inside?” Shepherd asked him. “The faces?”
Nod.
“Anybody else in there? Friends of yours?”
Head shake.
It was probably true. But Shepherd unholstered his Beretta anyway.
“Janice, stand post out here