Tricky Twenty-Two

by Janet Evanovich

  “This here’s the latest in fashion accessories,” Lula said. “I’m starting a business in bedazzling them.”

  “Are they expensive? My sister might like one. Do you need your lawn cut? I have a lawn mower.”

  “Neither of us has a lawn,” Lula said. “And anyway we came to give you a ride.”

  I introduced myself and fed him the line about rescheduling his court date.

  “I guess that would be okay,” he said.

  He stood, and when I tried to cuff him, he yelled “Run!” to Frank, and the two of them took off.

  Lula and I ran after him, across the lawn. Lula lost steam and quit before she got to the loop road on the other side of the green space. I stuck with Jesus and Frank, but I was tiring and they weren’t. I chased them for a block and gave up. They were too fast, and the bond was too small. If I was determined to catch him I could stake out the sister’s house, but at this point I couldn’t care less about catching him.

  I was bent at the waist, sucking air, and I saw a rusted-out, dented white van roll past. It turned at the corner and disappeared. I was pretty sure I saw Pooka behind the wheel. I walked to the corner and looked up and down the street. No van. I retraced my steps and I was halfway across the street on my way back to Lula when the van burst out of a driveway behind me. I jumped away, but the right front quarter panel clipped me, and I was punted about fifteen feet. I was caught totally off guard, feeling more shock than pain. I rolled onto my back, and I saw Pooka looking down at me.

  “Look what fell onto the road,” he said, holding my stun gun.

  He pressed the prongs against my arm, and twenty-eight million volts sizzled through my brain.

  A stun gun doesn’t necessarily knock you out. It scrambles your neurons so you have no muscle control and there’s a lot of confusion. When the confusion cleared I was in the back of Pooka’s van, cuffed with what I assumed were my cuffs. I’d put the cuffs and the stun gun in my back pockets when I set out for Jesus Sanchez.

  It was hard to tell what sort of damage had been done when I got hit. I had some stinging pain in my left knee and my jeans were soaked in blood. I wiggled my toes and moved my legs and nothing seemed broken. No bones sticking out anywhere. My elbow was killing me but it was behind my back, and I couldn’t see it. No headache. No double vision. I didn’t land on my head. One bright spot in my day.

  It was a panel van. No seats in the back. Just me rolling around every time he made a turn. Plus some cartons of firecrackers, a box of blasting powder, and a couple empty aquariums. At least they looked empty. I suppose there could have been a few carsick fleas hunkered down in the bottom of the cages. I had to wonder what he did with the fleas that used to be in the aquariums. Not a good thought. Also hard to have good thoughts about my immediate future.

  The van stopped and I heard a garage door roll open. The van eased into the garage and the door rolled back down. I was trying not to panic. I was taking deep breaths, telling myself to stay calm and alert. I had to wait for my opportunity. It would come. And people would be looking for me. Ranger and Morelli. I trusted them to find me. They were smart. They had resources.

  Pooka left the driver’s seat, came around, and opened the back door.

  “Fate,” he said. “Amazing, isn’t it? I’m driving down the street, and there you are. I was going to come get you, but you came to me.”

  He grabbed my ponytail and pulled me out the door. I fell off the bed of the van onto the garage floor, and he dragged me up by my armpits. My knee hurt, my arm was on fire, my elbow hurt, and I was breathing hard, trying to control the pain and not cry. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to show fear or weakness. He pushed me in front of him, opened a side door, and pushed me into a grungy kitchen. Chipped red Formica countertops. Filthy linoleum floor. Decrepit stove and refrigerator. Stained avocado green porcelain sink filled with trash. Aquariums filled with fleas as far as the eye could see. The stench was sickening.

  “Why does it smell so bad in here?” I asked.

  “It’s the smell of black death,” Pooka said. “I’ve soaked the mice in contaminated blood and the fleas are feeding on them. Soon they’ll be ready to release. I’ve got thousands of fleas in the bedroom that are infected. I released some of them earlier today. I was returning from the release when I came across you.”

  “It’s not black death anymore,” I said to him. “The plague can be cured with antibiotics.”

  “My plague is super bad,” Pooka said. “I’m breeding super fleas, and I’ve mutated the plague bacilli. No one will survive. No one. My fleas will march across the Kiltman campus and lay waste to everything in their path.”

  “Like a little army.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Why did you kidnap me?”

  “You’re a terrible person. You ruined my moment of beauty and surprise. Everyone’s moment. I’m going to infect you and you will slowly die a horrible death. But before you die you’re going to redeem yourself by feeding my fleas.”

  I looked around. The shades were drawn on all the windows.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re at the gates of everlasting.”

  He moved toward me with the stun gun. There was a flash of blinding light, and I crumpled to the floor. I felt him drag me across the kitchen into another room. I heard clanking and grunting. A door clicked closed and there was quiet. I struggled with the fog in my head, struggled to push through it. The room swam into focus. Small room. No furniture except for a mattress on the floor. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was a form on the mattress. It wasn’t moving. I took a moment to breathe. To get myself together. I had feeling back in my arms and legs. I managed to sit. He’d changed the cuffs so my hands were in front of me now. A thick chain tethered me to the wall. I could move around a little but a padlock attached to my cuffs was also attached to the chain. The chain was bolted into the wall.

  The form on the mattress moved, and I realized it was a person.

  “Becker?” I asked.

  “Unh,” he said.

  I moved closer and saw that his arms were full of needle punctures. Some in his upper arm and some over veins.

  “Drugs,” he said. “Make me tired.”

  His hands were cuffed in front like mine. He was also chained to the wall. His eyes were completely dilated. I wasn’t sure if it was from the dark or the drugs.

  “Crazy,” Becker said, slurring the word. “Evil crazy.”

  I could hear Pooka moving around the house, mumbling to himself. Drawers opened and closed. There was the smell of gas and then something burning.

  “What’s that smell?” I whispered.

  “Bunsen burner,” Becker whispered back. “Never works right. Probably because he’s got it hooked up to bottled propane. Not sure what he does with it. Defrosts the mice for the fleas, I think. He left the door open yesterday and I could watch him boiling stuff and measuring it out. And he injects himself with something. I always thought he was creepy, but it’s so much worse. He’s completely insane.” A tear slid down his cheek. “I think I’m dying.”

  “No way,” I said, but honestly he didn’t look good.

  “He needed a blood donor for the fleas,” Becker said. “He drugged me and chained me up in the garage and made me call my parents. And then there were always more drugs and I was so tired.”

  Pooka opened the door and came at me with the stun gun. “This makes everything so much easier,” he said. “Say good night.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I AWOKE SLOWLY with a throbbing headache. It took a full minute to orient myself. Kidnapped. Chained. Stunned. I looked at my arm. Two puncture wounds. One in the vein in the crook of my left arm. One in my upper arm.

  “He took blood,” Becker said. “And he drugged you. And he said he infected you. He said I should tell you so you’d know. I’m sorry.”

  “Where is he now? The house is quiet.”

  “He left. I heard him moving around out there and then
I heard the garage door open and close. And I think I heard the van leave.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know. I’m confused.”

  I pushed myself up and fought back nausea that was as much from fear and horror as from the drug. I stood on shaky legs and managed to get to the wall. The bolt that the chain was attached to had been screwed into the wall and epoxy glue had been poured over it. I rapped on the wall. Sheetrock. I grabbed the chain with both hands and yanked. Little pieces chipped away around the bolt. I yanked again putting my weight into it, and the bolt broke loose.

  I stood there holding the loose chain in my hand and I burst into tears. Loud hysterical sobs.

  “S-s-sorry,” I said to Becker. “This is an emotional moment.”

  I wiped my nose on my arm and went to Becker’s chain. I gave a tug, but the bolt held firm. I put one foot on the wall, leaned forward, and pushed off with every ounce of strength I could muster. The bolt broke free, and I fell over backward onto Becker. We both let out a woof of air on contact, and neither of us moved for a beat. I wrestled myself off him, and tried to get him up onto his feet but he was dead weight.

  “Go,” he said. “Leave me here.”

  “No way,” I said to Becker. “You’re coming with me if I have to drag you.”

  I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him out of the room and into the kitchen. Difficult to do because my hands were still cuffed. I stopped long enough to look around. The place had been cleaned out. No more aquariums. No Bunsen burner. Pooka had moved on and left us behind to die. Fortunately for us he’s a lousy carpenter.

  It was too difficult to drag Becker by his shirt so I got him by an ankle and tugged.

  “Keep your head up,” I said to him. “I don’t want to go to all this effort only to give you a concussion.”

  I managed to get him out the kitchen door and into what might pass for a yard. It was mostly hard-packed dirt and scrub grass and garbage. The driveway leading up to the house was dirt, and we were surrounded by woods. I had no idea where we were. I tried getting Becker up again, and he was able to stumble to the tree line. I walked him far enough into the woods so he would be hidden, and I left him there.

  “I don’t think Pooka is coming back,” I said, “but stay hidden just in case. I’m going for help.”

  I limped down the driveway, got to a paved two-lane road, and still saw nothing but woods. No houses. No cars. No 7-Eleven. I had a dilemma now. If I heard a car coming, and I went out into the road to wave it down, I ran the risk of it being Pooka. No guarantee that he’d still be in the white van. Also no guarantee that anyone other than Pooka would stop. I looked like something from a horror movie. My one arm was covered in caked-on blood. My jeans were torn and blood soaked. My hands were shackled and the thick chain was still padlocked onto the cuffs. A small chunk of wallboard was attached to the end of the chain.

  I was at the edge of the driveway, trying to decide to walk left or right and a black SUV came into view from my left. I stepped slightly into the road so the driver would be sure to notice me. I was fighting the drug and the blood loss, working to stay focused. The SUV slowed and stopped just short of where I was standing. Black Porsche Cayenne. Tank behind the wheel. Ranger out of the car and running toward me. I would have done more sobbing, but I didn’t have the energy.

  Ranger wrapped his arms around me and held me close against him. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

  “How did you find me?”

  He reached into the front pocket of my jeans and removed the key to the Macan. “GPS key tag,” he said. “You had your car key with you.”

  “Becker is at the other end of the driveway. He’s not in good shape. He’s been drugged and had blood taken from him. And probably he’s been infected with plague.”

  Ranger looked down at my arm with the needle marks.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Babe,” he said, so soft it was barely a whisper.

  He took a universal handcuff key out of a pocket on his cargo pants and opened my cuffs. He looked at the chunk of wallboard still attached to the chain and raised an eyebrow.

  “Pooka might be a brilliant biologist, but he doesn’t know a lot about construction,” I said. “If he’d drilled the bolt into a stud I couldn’t have gotten free.”

  “I’m sure it still took some muscle to get this out of the wall,” Ranger said.

  “I was motivated.”

  Ranger tossed the cuffs and the chain into the back of the SUV, and Tank drove us up the driveway to the ramshackle house.

  I led Tank and Ranger to Becker, and we got him out of the woods and unshackled. Tank folded the backseat down and stretched Becker out in the Cayenne cargo area. Ranger and Tank did a fast walk-through of the house. We left Tank on the property to wait for Rangeman backup to arrive, and to keep everything secure until the police took over. Ranger, Becker, and I left in the SUV.

  “Did you call Morelli or did you call dispatch?” I asked Ranger.

  “I called dispatch. Morelli is unavailable.”

  “Did Lula call you?”

  “Lula called everybody. Fortunately I was on the list because no one else would have thought of the key fob. You could also have been tracked through your phone, but you left it behind in your messenger bag.”

  “I ran out of pockets.”

  The woods disappeared after a half mile, and we were in a lower income neighborhood of small bungalow-type houses.

  “Where are we?” I asked Ranger.

  “South Trenton. This street runs into Broad. Blatzo lives one street further south. We’ll be at St. Francis in less than ten minutes.”

  I looked back at Becker. His eyes were closed. His breathing seemed regular.

  “How’s he doing?” Ranger asked.

  Becker kept his eyes closed, but he gave me a thumbs-up.

  “He’s doing great,” I said.

  “Tank will have called ahead. The hospital should have someone waiting for us at the ER entrance. How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay. Slight headache. Probably a drug hangover. Or it might be my life. He stunned me and injected me with something that had me out for a couple hours. Becker said that while I was out Pooka took blood from me and infected me with plague.”

  I took a moment to breathe and pull myself together. It was hard to stay calm about the plague.

  “What about the blood caked on you?”

  “I was chasing an FTA and Pooka came out of nowhere and bounced me off the front of his van. He got to me while I was still dazed, and he used my cuffs and stun gun to immobilize me. When I came around I was in the back of the van.” I looked at my arm. “I think it’s all surface scrapes and bruises. At least it’s stopped bleeding.”

  Ranger swung into the drive to the ER entrance and stopped in front of the doors. Two uniformed Rangeman guys were waiting for us, plus a nurse with a gurney, and a bunch of men in badly fitting suits.

  “Who are the suits?” I asked Ranger.

  “CDC, FBI, EPA, Homeland Security, Trenton PD.”

  “I’m surprised Morelli isn’t representing the Trenton PD. He’s the principal on the murders.”

  “Word is he’s getting a colonoscopy.”

  So maybe I didn’t have such a bad day after all. At least I didn’t get something stuck up my butt.

  We off-loaded Becker onto the gurney, and I walked beside him, holding his hand into the building.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I told him. “Even if you are infected with the plague, it’s treatable now.”

  “My parents…”

  “You need to call them. I know they’ll want to see you and make sure you’re okay.”

  “I haven’t got a phone. Pooka threw my phone away. He was worried about being traced through it.”

  Ranger was standing behind me. “I’ll have Hal get a phone to him.”

  “And Gobbles,” Becker said. “I need to talk to Gobbles. I should have
listened to him. He said to stay away from Pooka.”

  Becker was wheeled off into an examining area and two of the suits walked with him.

  Susan Gower was the charge nurse on duty in the ER. I went to high school with Susan and smoked my first and last joint with her.

  She came over to me and grimaced. “You look like you got hit by a truck.”

  “It was a van,” I said.

  “Do you want to have someone look at whatever it is that’s wrong with you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” Ranger said.

  “Boy,” she said, looking Ranger up and down, “if I wasn’t happily married—”

  “I’ve just got a few scrapes,” I told her.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” she said. “Come on back. I’ll put you in a room and get someone to clean you up. If you need stitches you want to get them sooner rather than later. Later doesn’t work.”

  The room was actually a small space separated from a lot of other small spaces by privacy curtains that didn’t give you much privacy. I filled out a lot of paperwork, waited a half hour for something to happen, and finally a nurse came in with a pair of scissors and cut my jeans off above my knee.

  “Omigod,” she said, “what’s that on your ankle? It looks like a flea collar.”

  I’d forgotten I had them on. They were hidden under my jeans. Ranger was sitting in a plastic chair on one side of the bed. He didn’t move, but his attention went to the flea collar and it drew a smile.

  “You can cut it off,” I said to the nurse. “I have one on the other ankle, too.”

  It was after six by the time I had all the pieces of gravel picked out of my cuts and abrasions and everything was cleaned and bandaged. I’d needed ten stitches under my elbow. I got a tetanus shot. I had blood drawn. I was started on antibiotics. And I was told to return if I developed symptoms.

  Three guys in suits were slouched in more of the plastic chairs in the waiting room. They all stood when I finally limped out of the examining area, and they all handed me their cards. Chris Frye, CDC. Chuck Bell, FBI. And Les Kulick, Homeland Security.