by Alex Kava
“He seems like a nice guy if I had a chance to know him,” he said, glancing at Charlie in the mirror again.
“Oh, yeah, Jared’s cool.” He nodded. “He knows a lot,” he added as an afterthought.
“He’s kind of hard on your mom sometimes, isn’t he?” Andrew tested the water. Where exactly did this kid’s loyalty lie?
“Whadya mean?” But the topic wasn’t enough to draw his attention away from his vigil out the window.
“I don’t know,” Andrew said, keeping it casual, as though it were only an observation. “He yells at her a lot.”
“Oh, that.” Charlie snickered under his breath.
Andrew waited for an explanation, but none came. Evidently, it wasn’t something Charlie thought deserved a response.
Suddenly the garage door opened and a blue Chevy Impala backed out. Andrew saw Charlie grab the gun, but his hold loosened when he recognized Jared behind the wheel, Melanie beside him in the passenger seat. They pulled up alongside the Saab so that Andrew wouldn’t be able to open his car door. Jared rolled down his window and indicated for Andrew to do the same.
“Charlie, transfer our stuff.”
The kid practically jumped out of the car. Andrew popped the trunk and Charlie filled his long arms. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner Andrew could be free of them. He felt Jared staring at him, and he didn’t like the prickle at the back of his neck that his scrutiny produced. Was he sizing Andrew up, deciding whether he could trust him? Or was he trying to decide what to do with Andrew’s body?
Jared reached out his hand. “Give me the keys, Andrew.”
He didn’t hesitate, pulling them out of the ignition and handing them over. Okay, so what if Jared wanted to play games? He waited, expecting him to toss them into the gravel, so Andrew would have to search for them on hands and knees, slowing him down and maybe humiliating him one last time. But Jared didn’t toss them. Instead, he called Charlie over, said something to him and gave him the keys in exchange for the gun.
Andrew’s panic returned, an immediate banging in his chest. Christ! Was this guy crazy? Why had Andrew ever thought Jared would leave him alive? But he’d believed it, and now it was too late for a backup plan. Andrew’s eyes darted back to the house, though he knew if the farmer weren’t dead, he wouldn’t be coming to the rescue. Jared wouldn’t have left him without, at least, locking him in a closet or tying him up.
Jared inched the Chevy forward, enough that Jared was free to open his car door but so Andrew’s door was still blocked by the bumper of the Chevy. Jared got out and looked at him, his eyes never leaving Andrew’s as he came around to the passenger side and opened the door.
“Come on, Andrew.”
Terror paralyzed him. Not only was Jared going to kill him but he wanted to humiliate him by making him crawl out of his own car.
“Why don’t you just do it right here?” he managed to say.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“If you’re going to shoot me, just do it. Do it right here. Right now.” He couldn’t believe the words actually made it over the gathering lump in his throat. He grabbed the steering wheel with his one good hand as if in a last defiant move. Why not here? Why not die in his brand-new car, the fucking car that was to symbolize his success, his new beginning?
“Andrew, get the fuck out of the car. We don’t have all day.”
When he still didn’t move, Jared started to laugh.
“If you don’t get out of the fucking car, man, I am gonna shoot you, you asshole. Come on. You’re driving. Hell, when you drive this fucking Chevy after being spoiled by your Saab, you’ll probably wish I had shot you!”
Slowly, reluctantly, Andrew crawled out of the car, banging his shoulder as he tried to protect his head wound.
In a matter of minutes they were ready to go, waiting while Charlie parked the Saab in the garage. Andrew watched it disappear behind the descending door and with it went any sense of hope he had left.
Andrew was just about to pull out, when Jared suddenly said, “Wait a minute. I forgot something.”
Andrew didn’t think anything of it until he saw Melanie’s face, her wide eyes watching Jared run up the porch steps, her lower lip between her teeth again.
“What do you suppose he forgot?” he asked her. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t look as if she even heard him.
Then, just as sudden as her panic had been, so was her relief when she saw Jared come out the front door, jumping off the steps and jogging back to the car, too quickly to have done what she must have feared he would do. Andrew watched her entire body relax into the fabric of the seat and there was a hint of a smile. It had only been the farmer’s red baseball cap that Jared had forgotten. He slung it on in an exaggerated gesture, making Charlie laugh.
Andrew, however, felt his entire body stiffen. It couldn’t be. No, he was being paranoid. In his latest novel Andrew’s killer goes back to take a victim’s fedora, only it’s in the dead of winter and the killer needs it for warmth, thinking to himself why not take it, the dead guy’s not gonna need it anymore.
He watched Jared, smiling at the others as he climbed into the back seat. How ridiculous. How could he even be thinking about his stupid book? Except that Jared had commented about it, mentioning specifically about Andrew’s fictional killer taking one of his victim’s thumbs. Jared had paid attention and seemed fascinated by the book. But he was in and out of the house so quickly. And there hadn’t been a gunshot. Christ! Things were bad enough, he didn’t need to make them worse in his mind.
“So, Andrew,” Jared said as Andrew started back down the long driveway, the gravel sounding like bullets firing against the metal. “We have matching caps now. I thought I’d help myself since I know for a fact that farmer’s not gonna need it anymore.”
Andrew met Jared’s eyes in the rearview mirror, those dark, smiling, hollow eyes, and he knew. And Jared wanted him to know that this was his way of making him a part of all this, a part of his evil.
PART 4
Wrong Turn
CHAPTER 43
11:15 a.m.
Hall of Justice
Grace shoved the second videotape into the VCR. She had decided to review the security tapes from the convenience-store robberies before she talked to Max Kramer again. The investigation was at a standstill, but she didn’t like the idea of needing Max Kramer or his so-called witness. Bottom line, she didn’t trust the guy.
The tapes had been reviewed over and over again. There wasn’t much to see on any of them, anyway. The robber always wore a black mask over the bottom half of his face, a stocking cap, gloves, a dark-colored long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans. The picture wasn’t as static riddled as the bank film, but not much better. The cameras in all three stores shot down at an angle from behind the counter and included the cash register and a slice of the store, a couple of aisles and usually the back freezer case.
She had already watched each of them once and was going through them again from the beginning. She hit Play. Damn! She’d gone back too far. She kept doing it with the first tape, as well, expecting there to be more. She recognized her mistake because there had been customers in the store each time right before the robberies. But the robber always waited. He had to be outside, watching, anticipating.
Grace reached to fast-forward past the array of customers coming in and out of the camera’s view. But she paused it instead.
That was odd. Had she picked up the first tape again by mistake? She stopped and ejected it. No, this was the second one. She pushed it back in, rewound it and hit Play.
She watched the back of the store where a young man—probably a teenager, it was difficult to judge from the grainy picture—walked in front of the freezer case. She hit Pause and left the image frozen with him suspended in midstride. She found the videotape marked #1 and slipped it into the small TV/VCR combo on the shelf below. She rewound it, making sure she went back far enough then she pushed Play and watched
and waited.
There he was.
She hit Pause. She stood back and examined the two screens. It had to be the same kid, same spiked hair, same loose gait and baggy jeans and the same bright white high-top tennis shoes. It was the shoes that she’d noticed first. What teenager, especially a boy, was able to keep his shoes so white? Could it be a coincidence that he was in both stores just minutes before the robberies?
She opened her file folder and shuffled through to find the stores’ addresses. One was on the north side. The other in West Omaha. The third in the northwest section.
She pulled out the third video. Two could be a coincidence. She replaced one of the others with this one, rewound and hit Play.
Nothing.
She rewound farther back and tried again. The store was busy. This must have been the afternoon robbery. The others had been at night. But this last one the robber must have gotten cocky and struck in the afternoon, in broad daylight.
Grace watched closely. She didn’t see him. No walk-through in front of the freezer case. There were others but not him. She rewound the tape again and started from the beginning one more time.
“Grace?”
She hit Pause, turned and looked up at Joyce Ketterson in the doorway to the small conference room.
“It’s the call you’ve been waiting for. Zurich is on line two.”
“Thanks, Joyce.”
She grabbed the receiver, her eyes staying on the paused TV screen.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”
“I’ve got about five minutes before they begin serving dessert and coffee. How are things?”
Vince sounded tired. She knew without asking that he probably hadn’t slept yet, except for a catnap on the long flight over.
“Things are going okay.” She wouldn’t worry him about Barnett. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it. “How’d the meeting go?”
“It’s still going. So, seriously, I do need to get back in there, but I just wanted to see how you were.”
She smiled. He was doing a good job sidestepping the topic of Barnett, too.
“Hey, what’s with the ceramic gnome?” she asked. “Are you planning some tacky front-yard landscaping? Actually, it’s kind of cute.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grace.”
“The ceramic gnome?”
“Gnome? You mean like dwarf?”
“Yes, silly. The one you left on the steps down to the garage.”
“Grace, I swear I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Richard’s waving me back in. I gotta go. You sure you’re okay?”
“Oh, sure, fine.”
“Okay, give Emily a hug for me. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
She decided she’d ask Emily about the ceramic creature. Maybe one of the workers had left it. Although they hadn’t been back since last week. Then it occurred to her—what if Jared Barnett had been in the house? But why leave something like a stupid ceramic gnome?
She shook her head and stared at the TV screen. That was when she saw him again, or rather a sliver of him.
She was certain it was the same kid. He had his back to the camera. His right hand reached up over the door to the freezer case—a strange way to hold it open. But then she saw the reason. A little girl stood below him, getting something from the same case. He was holding it open for her, holding his arm way above her head, so as not to touch her. His hand was in a place where no one else probably touched, where there still might be some fingerprints. And, yes, there at the foot of the screen was one of the bright white high-tops.
She picked up the phone again and dialed.
“Darcy, it’s Grace. There’s something I’d like you to take a look at. Believe it or not, I may have found some fingerprints for us in one of the convenience stores.”
CHAPTER 44
11:17 a.m.
Tommy Pakula sat in his Explorer, the door open, his cell phone in his lap. He could see the Sarpy County sheriff’s deputies, their wide-brim hats bobbing between the trees as they searched the woods around the cabin. Bloodhounds were on the way, but Pakula didn’t think they’d find anything. If it hadn’t been for that farmer panicking and calling in his stolen pickup, they would have had the fucking dogs out last night, though he had to admit he wasn’t sure they could work in the lightning and rain. Hell, they even had to ground the helicopter. The sons of bitches had lucked out.
Pakula ran the palm of his hand over his head. It was a good sign that they hadn’t found a freshly dug grave, and yet the flip side wasn’t much better. He had come close to letting the media reveal who the owner of the red Saab was. They’d find out soon enough if they started digging into the registered vanity plate. He had considered plastering the television stations with Andrew’s name and photo. Someone may have already seen him. Could have called it in. But if the killers saw it, they might see Andrew as a liability. One thing Pakula was sure about, if that happened, these two psychos wouldn’t be letting Andrew catch a ride home.
Pakula left the deputies and drove the short distance to where Hertz and the crime lab techs were still going over the crashed car. He could see they were taking the long way around to avoid sloshing through the tire ruts. Their alternate route didn’t look much better. There was more rainwater between the rows of corn, and there was mud everywhere else.
He stepped over the busted barbed-wire fence and noticed a No Trespassing sign still attached, now mud splattered and barely hanging on. That summed it up pretty good. These two guys had no respect for authority, no respect for private property, no respect for anybody but themselves.
“We’re getting what we can,” Ben yelled to him as Pakula stepped from one mud pile to another, making his way to the car. “Then we’ll haul it in and comb the inside.” Ben tapped out a cigarette, and when one of the techs scowled at him, he headed back the way Pakula had just come.
Pakula recognized the tall, skinny kid, Wes Howard, and mumbled a hello. He didn’t envy these two, crawling around in the mud, trying to do their grid of the scene with latex gloves on and plastic bags in hand. He stayed back about twenty feet, trying to get a sense of what those two assholes went through during their scenic crash in the country. What did they do next? How did they happen to stumble onto the cabin Andrew had rented?
“Air bag deploy?” he asked.
“Nope and thank goodness,” Wes said. “Sometimes they make a mess of the evidence.”
“Yeah, but sometimes you end up getting some blood or snot for DNA.”
“No blood or snot but plenty of vomit in the back seat.”
“Really? Isn’t that interesting. Anything else?” Pakula asked.
“We’ll dust the interior for prints after we haul it in. Footprints around the car are pretty much washed away. Although I think I have a partial on the inside back doorstep.”
“Nothing got left behind in the car?” Pakula came close enough to glance inside. It was looking more and more like the assholes didn’t get away with any money.
“Couple of pairs of bloody coveralls, one kerchief. No weapon. We’ll do a good vacuum job back at the ranch. I did find this in the mud.” Wes held up a plastic bag with what looked like a piece of jewelry, some kind of pendant or locket. “It’s not tarnished, so I don’t think it was here before the car crash. Just dirty. And I don’t know too many farmers who’d be wearing something this fancy while plowing the field. Has an engraving on the back.” He took a closer look then handed it to Pakula. “TLC and JMK. Mean anything to you?”
“Probably not tender-loving-care, huh? Mind if I hang on to this for a couple days?”
“No problem. You might check with Darcy. I think I remember her saying she found a broken necklace on one of the victims.”
“Remember which one?”
“No, sorry.”
“Where did you say you found this?”
“Along the side of the car, down in the mud. Kind
of deep in the mud, actually. I might not have found it except that I was scraping for a soil sample. If it was dropped accidentally, it was also stepped on hard enough to press it into the dirt.”
“You think they might have buried it so it wouldn’t be found on them?”
“Who knows. I guess it’s possible.”
“So we have this and a partial shoe print on the back doorway.” Pakula stared at the car as if seeing it for the first time. Something didn’t add up. The Saturn’s hood was smashed in, the front bumper hanging off. There were scrapes where the barbed wire had tried to hold it back. The radiator was probably busted. No windshield cracks, so no heads were busted. But there was something wrong with this picture.
“Is this exactly the way the car was when you guys got out here?”
“Yup. They probably jumped out and ran. Didn’t even take time to close the doors.”
That was it, Pakula thought. That was what didn’t fit.
“Why are there three doors left open?” he asked. “And you said the partial footprint was where?”
Wes met Pakula’s eyes, and he could see the kid was already thinking the same thing.
“Back doorstep,” he said.
“Can you tell if it was stepping back into the car as if someone was getting something?”
Without hesitation Wes said, “No, it was definitely on its way out of the car.”
CHAPTER 45
11:33 a.m.
“We’re headed in the wrong direction.” Melanie said. She had spent most of her life within a hundred-mile radius of Omaha, Nebraska, but even so, she still knew that Colorado was west. They were headed south.
She was getting hungry and tired and the sun was blinding her. She pulled down the sun visor only to be face-to-face with a gold-framed Jesus pin-tacked to the inside fabric of the visor.