Drone: An Eli Quinn Mystery Read online

  I wasn’t the only person who had done a lot of thinking about what else could be done with a drone. Like my friend, Pauly, who was deep into drones. He helped me build another one, more powerful yet quieter and more sophisticated. Flew it a few times. It was fast and maneuverable, with a longer range, but after learning the basics of flying and a few tricks, I got bored with it.

  “Let’s soup it up,” Pauly had said.

  But even his enthusiasm didn’t keep me in it. As with a lot of other hobbies, I learned yet again that I didn’t have the patience of a real do-it-yourselfer. Other hobbyists were building serious drones, downright scary machines that could fly higher, farther, carry a payload, and be controlled with pinpoint accuracy. The FAA was issuing regulations, but anyone who would put a bomb on a drone probably wasn’t worried about those rules.

  “Didn’t get a very good look at it,” I said to Sam. “But it wasn’t an off-the-shelf model. Quadcopter. Bigger than most of the ones you see advertised. You have to practice a lot to fly one that accurately.” I looked around at the skyline, a mix of two-story, Old West facades and modern, one-story stucco store fronts, all laid out in a perfect grid around the central traffic circle. Wondered if the pilot had been standing on a nearby roof, or maybe even was in the crowd. I logged in my mind the direction the drone had come from.

  Lasko hadn’t moved, still standing next to his car. He watched the scene, talking on his cell phone in a normal tone of voice. Law enforcement officers were trained to deal with crises. Jack Beachum had reacted well. The other posse members had reacted well. But none looked as calm as Sergeant Lasko. I made a mental note of that, too.

  Chapter 3

  All of the promised 108 degrees had settled in by mid-afternoon. My red Jeep Wrangler’s top was down. As long as the Jeep was moving, the heat was bearable. I rarely put the top up, when it was raining or for a few weeks during the Arizona winter when temperatures in the Valley dipped into the forties overnight, sometimes lower.

  I didn’t have anything to do. I was no longer employed by The Arizona Republic, so I wasn’t reporting on the day’s biggest story, the apparent attempted assassination by drone of Arizona State Senator Jackie Brand, in critical condition at a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, I still didn’t have any cases. Solo and I had gone home to eat lunch. Then I drove us back to the office.

  I came in from the north on Pleasant Way, turned left across the northbound lane and angled into a parking spot in front of the office, just up from Funky Furniture and Lulu’s Grind and within sight of the police tape that blocked off the traffic circle. Started to sweat as soon as I parked. Solo hopped out of the back and immediately heeled. We walked up onto the wooden sidewalk and into my office.

  The bells on the door rang. Sam sat behind my big oak desk. Solo went straight to Sam, sat next to the Aeron chair—my one indulgence of expensive, modern furniture—and waited for a scratch behind the ears, which he got.

  “Just filed,” she said, closing her laptop and leaning back. “Thanks for letting me use your office.”

  “Glad it’s getting some use.”

  The office was sixteen feet wide and slightly deeper. Along the back wall was a counter with a sink and coffee maker. A small fridge was tucked underneath. I sat in one of the two client chairs facing the desk. They were from World Market, made of low-grade leather and inexpensive light-colored wood stained dark to look richer. They were not particularly attractive, but I had picked them up at forty percent off, and they were comfortable.

  I tried not to look directly at Sam. It was always hard to look at her without staring. A moment passed silently. I glanced up to find her studying me. Solo looked at me, too. Solo stayed by Sam.

  Sam was the only person Solo would choose over me, ear scratch or not.

  I was pretty sure Sam knew what I was thinking about. She always seemed to. I wondered if Solo did, too. Probably. I pressed my lips together. Not a smile, but an acknowledgement. I was confident Sam wouldn’t rush me, wherever we were going with this. I leaned my head back and stared up at the open beams and the bare, ancient wood ceiling, eight-inch-wide planks that formed the floor of a hair studio above.

  “I barely get going with this new private detective agency thing, and there’s a bombing a block away, shuts down the town,” I said.

  Footsteps clicked above and the ceiling creaked.

  “Not very good for business,” Sam said.

  “The pumps on my ceiling?”

  “The bombing.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe Sheriff Otto will hire me.” I got up, walked over to the fridge.

  “I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “Agreed. Otto would be glad to see Jackie Brand out of politics,” I said.

  “Been a thorn in his side for years.”

  “Makes you wonder,” I said.

  “Does.”

  “How is she?”

  “In a coma,” Sam said. “Down at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. They’re being tight-lipped, so I don’t know much more than that.”

  “How about the assistant?”

  “A nasty cut on the head, a few other scrapes, nothing major. Just a lot of bleeding. She’ll be OK.”

  “Head wounds do that.” I didn’t have much to add. I pulled my iPhone out of its holster and launched Pandora. The same station that was playing hours ago started back up on the Bluetooth. Van Morrison sang:

  And it seems like, yes it feels like

  A brand new day, yeah

  I opened the fridge, bent over and looked in. There was a six-pack of Sierra Nevada, a case of bottled water and some ketchup. The beer was calling. I took a water. “Want one?”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  I tossed a bottle across the room. It was a mediocre toss. She caught it like Larry Fitzgerald, reaching high, one-handed.

  I looked at the beer a little longer, closed the fridge, began pacing, front to back. It was a detective’s tactic to make it look like I was thinking. I tried to do that, too.

  “Awfully well-targeted attack,” I said. “And did you notice how Lasko had all the posse members behind the crowd?”

  “I did.”

  “What else did you notice?”

  “The barricades were farther back from the senator than I would have expected.”

  She’d noticed the same things I had. No surprise. Sam was a noticer of things, too. Especially things having to do with people. Like many journalists, she’d come to the profession with a degree outside the field, in this case a Master’s in psychology. Most people didn’t know that about Sam. She’s learned not to flaunt it, since people would then tend to treat her questions like a psychoanalysis. It was a lot easer to get answers by just being a reporter.

  “And nobody but the assistant was anywhere near Jackie Brand,” she said.

  “Almost like Lasko expected the drone.”

  “Almost.”

  “What’s Otto have to say?”

  “The usual bullshit.” She pushed her sharp chin down to her chest spoke in a Sheriff Otto voice—low, slow, gravelly and with a slight slur: “We don’t know who was behind this tragic event, but my prayers go out to the senator and her family. We will pursue every clue until we find the evil person behind this. Meanwhile, I want to thank my deputies and the Pleasant town posse—they are heroes today. They contained the situation, prevented panic, tended to the senator. Blah blah blah.”

  “Otto hates Jackie Brand.”

  “In a big way. Not just over the bill to stop putting illegals in that outdoor prison. She’s backing the mayor of Scottsdale for sheriff in the November election. She’s built bipartisan support for him with key movers and shakers in and out of politics.”

  “Nobody’s been able to unseat Horace Otto in, what, a century or so?”

  “Six terms,” Sam said. “Twenty-four years.”

  “Otto plays hardball.”

  “He’s got as many enemies as he has friends,” Sam said. “You’re either with him or against him. And
if you’re against him, you better watch your back.”

  We’d both reported on Horace Otto intimidating mayors, journalists and other law enforcement officials. He’d had many of them investigated. Had a few arrested. Charges were invariably dropped, but elections were lost, careers ruined, reputations destroyed.

  “What’s the deal with Sergeant Lasko?” I asked.

  “Not directly reporting to Otto. There’s a couple layers between. But Lasko is known to be in Otto’s inner circle. Otto owns guys at all levels of the organization. All the deputies know they have to watch what they say. If you’re not an insider, you either pretend to be or you just keep your mouth shut.”

  “Never know when the one you’re talking to is going to run to Otto and tattle.”

  “Exactly.”

  I kept pacing. Drank some water. “Think Lasko is involved in the bombing?”

  “I have no clue,” she said.

  “That’s my line.”

  “You can have it back. It’s not helpful.”

  “Wish I needed it,” I said. “Only thing I don’t have a clue about right now is when I’ll get another case.”

  “You could work on this one.”

  “Pro bono?”

  “Sure. You’re suspicious of Lasko. You know about drones. Sheriff doesn’t seem to have any leads. You’re good at figuring things out. This is what you do now.”

  “I don’t do pro bono.” I pretended to have a bad taste in my mouth.

  “Right. You charged Delores Bernstein a dollar to find her husband’s killer.”

  “Clients like to be sure it’s a business relationship. Anyway, I think at the very least I should have a client before I take a case. I go vigilante and I’ll get a reputation. It’s not what I want to be. Could end up losing my license.”

  “There’s that.”

  I stopped pacing and sat in the client chair. Solo came over to me, sat and stared. Solo was really good at four things. Three of them were sleeping, sitting and staring. Looking at him now you wouldn’t know he was even better at attacking, scaring the shit out of a bad guy, and taking him down with just enough force to get the job done, and maybe a little more.

  “Learn anything about the drone?”

  “Nothing you didn’t figure,” Sam said. “Sheriff’s spokesman confirmed it was a quad, wouldn’t say what type.”

  “Did enough of it survive to provide any clues?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Autopilot? GPS?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  “Not much to go on,” I said.

  “Almost nothing.”

  Solo’s head was on a swivel, listening to us. I scratched his head and he closed his eyes.

  “Still, there’s only so many people could’ve pulled this off,” I said.

  “And even fewer who would’ve.”

  “So we could go looking for people who know how to pilot drones.”

  “Where? The drone store?”

  “Desert Drone Club,” I said. “They fly over at the Cave Buttes Recreational Area off Cave Creek Road near Jomax Road. Bunch of DIY types mostly, pretty serious. That’s where Pauly taught me how to fly one. Or there’s ADU.”

  “ADU?”

  “Arizona Drone University.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “I’m not. It’s a flight school. Teach you how. You get a pilot training certificate, which these days isn’t a bad career move. Department of Defense is hiring. So are police and sheriffs. Remote recon, remote bombings, crazy stuff.”

  “Legal bombings,” she pointed out.

  “Sure. Afghanistan, Syria. Anywhere the American public won’t get squeamish.”

  “And you think you’ll just go out there and find your perp.”

  “Probably not at ADU—a guy would have to be pretty stupid to go to school, be on record, get a certificate so he could assassinate a state senator. More likely I find someone interesting at the drone club, or somebody who knows somebody. It’s informal. Guys give you tips on where to get the equipment, what to buy, how to make a drone lighter, faster, all that.”

  “And Pauly’s there,” she said.

  “A lot.”

  “And he knows about drones.”

  “More than anybody else I know. So these guys learn from each other, drink a few beers together, spend a lot of time out there. They like to show off their equipment and their flying skills.”

  “Exciting stuff.”

  “Well, that’s just it. Friends, neighbors, wives—they all get tired of drones pretty quickly. The enthusiasts gravitate to their own kind. Even the loners and the oddballs, and there are a lot of them.”

  “Which were you?”

  “None of the above. I got tired of it, too. Point is, these guys know their stuff, and they know each other. They have competitions. They travel around to races. They read the magazines, surf the web sites, know the best drone flyers around the country. So our bad guy might’ve been out there a time or two. Or somebody there might’ve heard something.”

  “Might’ve,” she said.

  “I suppose the sheriff will think of that.”

  “I suppose,” she said.

  I pondered some more and neither of us talked for a minute. Not feeling obligated to fill a void in conversation was one of the good things we shared. No pressure. No rush.

  “Quinn?”

  “Yeah.”

  I was rubbing Solo’s head, watching his eyes open and close with pleasure. If he were a cat, he’d have been purring. I felt Sam looking at me. I looked up. Took a deep breath. She smiled, then let it fade with a sigh. Whatever she was going to say wasn’t going to be said now. I had a good idea what it was. Part of me wished she’d say it. Part of me didn’t.

  “I gotta get back to the paper,” she said finally, looking away. “Zee wants to have a big news meeting, brainstorm some angles on this.”

  Nick Zee, the managing editor of The Arizona Republic. I nodded.

  “You’re itching to do something,” she said.

  “I guess so.”

  “You’ll have a case soon. I can feel it.”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll be OK?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine.” I found myself nodding again and stopped. That was enough nodding for today.

  Sam stood. Solo stood. Sam put her laptop in her bag. She came around from behind the desk. I kept staring at where she’d been sitting. I wanted to do something other than sit there and look at the chair. Sam bent down and let Solo lick her face. Then she turned to leave. She paused, put her hand on my shoulder, squeezed it. We didn’t say goodbye. The bells clanged and the door closed behind her.

  “Damn,” I said.

  Solo looked at me, looked at the door, looked back at me.

  “Not that simple, pal. Wish it was.”

  Chapter 4

  In the backyard with my second Sierra Nevada, I lit two pages of crumpled newspaper under some mesquite charcoal in the starter chimney. The desert sky was wide. Pinnacle Peak rose abruptly to the northeast, glowing orange with blocky shadows painted by the sinking sun. It was still hot but tolerable.

  I took a long pull on the beer and soaked up the view. It was hard not to think of Jess this time of the evening, our favorite. My mind drifted quickly to Sam. Usually my mind drifted the other way, from Sam to Jess. Progress. Even mulling how my mind was muddled about all this made me feel guilty. But less so now. Trying to move on from Jess. Not succeeding yet, but trying.

  The mountain faded to purple, went colorless.

  By the time the charcoal was ready, three beers were gone. I felt good, yet knew I’d had enough to drink. I cooked two steaks for four minutes on each side, took them inside, cut the unseasoned steak in half. Solo sprang up and followed me back out. The half steak went in his dish. Solo sat rigid. He waited for the command to eat, and then he did, voraciously.

  Back inside I opened a bottle of wine to go with the steak, a nice merlot from Cali
fornia with complex flavors I couldn’t put names to. Solo had water with his.

  “Latvia,” I asked Alex Trebek, who had answered “Estonia, Lithuania.” Category: “Geographic Trios.” The contestants had to wait for Trebek to finish the answer before they could ask, so I beat them on this one, as I often did. Easy one. I drank some wine to congratulate myself anyway.

  I wondered if Sam was watching Jeopardy. It was among the few shows we both liked that wasn’t a comedy or detective show, or both. We were going through past seasons of Leverage and Psych again, sometimes together and sometimes separately, in sequence and in tandem.

  “What is Mount Whitney?” I said to the TV. Alex had answered, “The tallest peak in the contiguous United States.” Category: “Big and Tall.”

  The steak was perfect, medium rare. Sautéed zucchini on the side. I rinsed the dishes, went back outside with the wine glass and the bottle, sat and put my feet up on the flagstone rim of the fire pit that wasn’t lit, and tried not to think.

  That didn’t work.

  Jess had picked out the chairs. Her hands were in the plants, the trees. She was in every room.

  I let myself think of Sam. The opposite of Jess. Jess never did anything without thinking and planning. She had lists for everything. She was almost always in a good, level mood, but she stressed about the little things in life, stuff that to me didn’t seem stress-worthy. Our relationship had been waning, and before we figured out what was wrong, she was gone.

  Sam was prone to dark moods. She could flare in an instant. She lived in the present. She dismissed the little things. And our relationship was waxing, as much as I could stand to let it. I admitted to myself for the first time that I loved them both, in totally different ways.