I wanted to talk to her, and I wanted to throw her in jail. But at the moment, Muller was armed and at large and bullets were flying at us again from her direction.
CHAPTER 93
JOE WAS RELOADING his gun when I saw four sets of headlights bumping over the rutted road toward the hangar. The cars drove past us and formed into a rough semicircle twenty-five yards away from the building and Muller’s crew. I heard Knightly shouting, ordering people to drop their weapons, and he had plenty of gunpower to back him up.
And then Alison Muller stepped out from between two cars with her hands in the air.
“Hold your fire. I’m unarmed!” she shouted.
She was walking toward the headlights in surrender pose, her bodyguard beside her, when one of the Asian men in Muller’s crew aimed his gun—at her. Her bodyguard yelled, shoved, and threw himself between Muller and the shooter in one movement. They both dropped to the ground.
In that moment, I recognized the bodyguard. But I didn’t have even a second to process the thought because the man who had fired on Muller and missed aimed at her again.
Before he could get off his second shot, Knightly fired and dropped him, and in the same moment, Muller got up off the ground.
Seeing Joe, she called, “Joe, Joe! Don’t shoot!”
She ran toward him and he lowered his gun.
Just then, I became aware of the waffling sound of helicopters coming in from under the lee of the mountain range, flying across the meadow toward the hangar, two choppers beaming light down on the airfield.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had arrived. The odds had decidedly shifted in our favor. My heart lifted as one of the choppers hovered near the de Havilland and landed in front of it, blocking the runway. There was more engine racket as the second helicopter cut off the Cessna’s escape path as well.
The din was deafening and the rotor wash swept the field, blowing up dust. I turned away from the choppers, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Joe and Alison in a stunning tableau.
I hadn’t heard what Joe had said to her, but clearly Muller had gotten the message. His gun was aimed at her head. And Alison, her blond hair whipping across her face, stood absolutely still with her hands in the air.
CHAPTER 94
DAWN WAS CASTING a cinematic glow over the remains of the firefight. Airplane and chopper pilots were getting out of their aircraft. Munder and Knightly took the three men left standing into custody and stepped around the dead bodyguard. But all of that was in the background.
I was watching Joe, listening as he said to Muller, “It’s over, Alison. Turn around. Put your hands behind your back.”
She looked at Joe and asked, “How could you do this to me? How in God’s name can you humiliate me like this?”
I was standing only ten feet from Ali Muller, and even though she’d been caught moments away from her great escape and had been shot at by her own people, she looked composed. If there was the slightest trace of vulnerability in her face, it was that of hurt feelings. And the way she looked at Joe made me think she was taking her arrest personally.
She said, “Are you kidding me, Joseph? Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing and why?”
Joseph?
His smile was a grimace. He used Flex-Cuffs to pin her wrists together behind her back, after which he encircled her biceps with his hand. She twisted away, but it was halfhearted. She kept looking up into his face—I have to say, adoringly. I followed them across the grass, between the trailers and toward the shot-up Audi.
I listened as Muller tried to make her point.
“Joseph, have you lost sight of the truth? I’m still working for you. Don’t you get that? This was part of our plan.”
“What plan? You left the country. You were on the run. You’re a traitor, Ali. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this, but not now.”
“I’m a traitor? You knew I was going to work for us once I got to China. I told you. Didn’t you understand that? Weren’t you paying attention?”
Joe scoffed, but what I could see of his face was clouded.
Alison kept selling, working hard. Was she working Joe into giving her an alibi? Or was she telling the truth? How could I possibly know?
“You’ve told me you loved me,” she said. “And now, what? You don’t love me anymore?”
Joe loved her? Hearing that hurt worse than the beating I’d taken on Lake Street. Far worse. The left rear door of the Audi creaked as Joe opened it. He put one hand on Muller’s head and angled her into the backseat. He closed the door hard and opened the driver’s side door for me, and I got in.
“I have to talk to Knightly,” he said through the open window. “I’ll only be about ten minutes. Watch her, Lindsay. And don’t believe anything she says. She has an advanced degree in making shit up.”
Muller called out, “Joseph. Joseph, don’t leave me with her. She shot at me.” She almost sounded panicky. “She’ll kill me. Is that what you want?”
Joe reached into the car and threw the door locks. He said, “Lindsay, don’t shoot her unless you have to. But if you have to, do it. Do not let her leave.”
“Copy that.”
Did he want me to shoot her?
Would that solve a lot of problems for Joe?
Well, I had my own agenda.
Out on the rosy airfield, Knightly was speaking with the helicopter pilots from the RCMP. Joe said a few words, then headed over to the hangar, joining the agents who were loading the survivors of the shootout into vehicles.
I was alone with Alison Muller, the modern-day Mata Hari who had just sucker-punched my heart, then jumped on it and set it on fire. Oh, yeah, I was throbbing from the pain of that, but I had to push it all aside.
If the City of San Francisco was ever to have the chance to prosecute Muller for the Four Seasons murders, I had to get her to talk to me. I couldn’t let my injured feelings compromise a case against her.
This meeting with Muller was why I was here.
I sat with my legs across the length of the front seat, my feet under the steering wheel, my face turned toward the honey-trap beauty. I showed her my gun.
“I’m Lindsay,” I said. “Joe is my husband.”
CHAPTER 95
MULLER SLID DOWN in the backseat catercorner from me. She stuck the soles of her boots up against the back of the driver’s seat and got as comfortable as I imagine she could with her wrists bound behind her back.
I reached up to where Joe’s phone was still clamped in its holder, below Ali’s line of sight. I pressed the On button. And I pressed Record.
Then I turned around to face her.
I took a good long look at Muller’s strong, almost mesmerizing features: her gorgeous skin, the shimmering blond hair with the signature bangs, her large eyes, which were almost all pupils at the moment. No matter the bravado she was exuding with her feet cocked up on the backseat, she’d been through a shit-storm and she was feeling the effects of it.
She spoke. “So you’re his wife, huh?”
“That’s right. I’m also a cop. SFPD. Just so you know, you don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say can be used against you in court. Do you understand?”
Her merry laughter filled the car.
Then she said, “You can’t touch me, babe. I’m in federal custody and that trumps the SFPD any day, every day. Do you have any idea who I am? Do you have any idea who your husband is? Don’t bother to answer. You don’t know jack. You don’t know Joe.”