by Rusty Ellis
Averett’s phone rang and startled him slightly. He reached for his cell phone on his desk and saw the number was blocked. This was common with the number of high-dollar clients he represented. Given his clientele, he always felt the need to answer the calls, even though he was just as quick to hang up if it turned into an unwanted sales pitch.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Turing?”
“Yes, this is Mr. Turing. Who’s this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the voice growled. “Your daughter, Sara, went up to the prison yesterday. Bad move, Mr. Turing.”
“Who is this?” Averett now demanded.
“You need to have better control of your house, Mr. Turing. My employer is not pleased.”
“Don’t tell me how to run my house,” Averett’s anger ignited at the insinuation. With his heart pounding and his free hand clinched, he continued through gritted teeth, “And stay away from my daughter.”
“No need to get excited, Mr. Turing. You just don’t want her to dig up anything that, well, could complicate your life. Paula wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to her daughter, now would she?”
“Don’t you dare talk about my…” Averett heard the phone click. The call ended. The threat clearly received.
Part IV
Monday
7
Foster stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling. The mattress on his metal bunk was worn thin. To offset the flattened fabric under his head—laughingly referred to as a pillow—Foster had slid a sweatshirt inside the case to at least raise his head higher than the flattened mattress.
The echos of chatter up and down the cell block were a constant reminder he wasn’t completely alone in his solitary cell. A muffled thud sounded next to the end of his bed. Raising up on his elbow, he could see a piece of paper with a string tied around it had been heaved down the hallway and landed on the floor just outside the bars of his cell.
Foster climbed off his bed and knelt down by the bars, hesitant to reach through one of the gaps and retrieve the paper. Pressing his face as close as he could to the bars, he attempted to see the string’s origin. Unable to determine its starting point, he looked at the note and noticed it starting to move as the deliverer retrieved the string. He shot his hand through the bars and snatched the note in his fist, tearing the paper in half as the string disappeared out of sight.
With the torn paper in his hand, he waited for any sign of movement in the walkway up and down the hall in front of his cell. The normal chatter continued and any sign of the string’s appearance was gone.
Foster returned to his bunk and sat on the edge of the mattress. Opening his fist, he peeled open the crumpled pieces of paper and held the two halves together.
“Best wishes to you and your daughter. Choose your visitors wisely.”
Foster stared at the note. They were watching. Of course they were watching. The only thing lower than a snitch in prison was being flagged as a sex offender. Either one could get you killed. The irony of being a snitch was someone had to snitch on Foster to get the word outside the prison.
Someone had eyes on him. Another inmate. A guard. A secretary or employee in the warden’s office. Anyone with access to the visitor’s log or just seeing the visitors enter the facility. It wasn’t rocket science; word spread fast when detectives showed up at the prison.
He never should have met with Ransom and his partner. He could handle whatever was dealt inside, it was part of the daily game and grind. But his daughter didn’t sign up for this. She was an easy target and they knew how to get to her. She wasn’t hiding. Why should she? She hadn’t done anything wrong. That didn’t matter to them. To them, she was a pawn in a bigger game. Collateral leverage. Collateral damage.
Foster had to shuffle the pieces on the board. He had to get his daughter to safety. Once safe, he would go after them.
He needed to make a call.
8
“Did you get your paperwork done?” Ransom asked as he slid his cane into the front seat of Leesa’s sedan and plopped down on the seat.
“Do we ever really get the paperwork done?” Leesa shook her head and put the car in drive.
Ransom couldn’t help but laugh out loud and grasp his hands to his chest, “Oh, how I miss the paperwork.”
“I bet you do. Jerk.”
Ransom gave Leesa a sour face and she repeated her last comment a second time for good measure.
“So what are your thoughts on the Gianni angle?” Leesa switched into case mode.
“We need to knock the dust off the file and see if anything falls out. We could start with where Foster hung out and with who.”
“Sounds like a long-shot.”
Ransom shrugged, “Go with what we’ve got. Could you swing through the drive-thru…”
“I know, I know, to grab you a protein power berry drink. Maybe I should drop you off and swing around the block while you order it. I can’t have your sissy drinks messing with my reputation.”
“If you say so,” Ransom started to open his door while the car was still moving.
“Shut the door!” Leesa instinctively grabbed his arm. “We’ll go through the drive thru, but I do all the talking, got it?”
“Yes ma’am,” Ransom saluted.
9
The phone rang three times before a male voice picked up, “Hello?”
“Who’s this?” Foster demanded, confused at not hearing his daughter’s voice answering her cellphone.
“A friend of Amber,” the voice laughed.
“Put her on the phone,” Foster insisted with a low growl.
“She’s not available right now. Let’s just say she’s a little busy.”
Foster could hear a muffled cry in the background. His body went cold, helpless against the sound of his daughter with her captor.
Foster gripped the plastic handset in his hand tighter, the strained plastic creaked in his grip, “If you hurt her…”
“Awww, come on Foster, what kind of a guy do you make me out for? You’re in complete control here. What happens to your daughter is your decision. Say the right words and we leave her alone. Say the wrong thing and she will take a little trip with us…fun for us, not so much for her.”
“What do you want?”
“Hmmm, let’s start with what you told the cops when they came up there to see you?”
“I didn’t tell them anything,” the cold sweat began to bead up on Foster’s forehead and upper lip. He listened intently for any further sounds of his daughter in the background.
“Come on Foster, you and I know better than that. You told them something or they wouldn’t have come down there. You had to give them something.”
“I told them that someone paid me,” he admitted. “But that’s all. There was nothing else I could tell them.”
“Let’s see if your daughter believes you.”
Foster held his breath, unsure of the man’s intentions.
“Daddy!” Amber sobbed into the phone. “Daddy, tell them whatever you know, please…”
Her voice trailed off, “Amber! Amber are you okay?”
“She’s fine, Foster,” the man returned to the call. “Let’s try again. What did you tell the cops?”
Foster fought back the rage at the man’s coolness on the phone, “I told them that a guy paid me and his name was Gianni. That’s it! That’s all I told them!”
The man was quiet on the other end.
Foster waited impatiently and finally spoke up, “Just let me talk to her, just for a minute.”
“I don’t think so. She’s too upset right now. We’ll be in touch. Remember, you’re in control here, Foster. Make good choices,” the man hung up the phone.
Foster dropped his hand to his side, the phone still in a death grip. He closed his eyes and used his other hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.
His daughter’s wellbeing was in his hands, though her current situation was his fault. The result of his choices to talk with Rans
om. The short chain of events had blurred his judgement. The victim’s daughter coming to the prison and her pleas about her mother. Followed by Ransom and his partner. He’d been stupid. He compromised his own daughter by being emotional. By making emotional choices. Stupid.
There was no guarantee his daughter was safe. Safe was an arbitrary word. She needed to be safe from these men. From harm and worse. He was in control—or so the man had said—depending on which end of the phone you were on. Control. He needed to control the situation. He couldn’t just return to his cell and wait for another message to land at his feet.
Foster raised his free hand to the keypad and punched in the number, 702…”
10
“You look like a little kid with your berry drink. Okay, a wrinkly little kid,” Leesa laughed and pulled into the Metro Headquarter parking lot.
Ransom smiled back with the straw still in his mouth, content to focus on his drink. Absorbed in his taste buds, his phone rang in his shirt pocket and startled him. Leesa laughed at the sight and pulled into a parking spot.
Ransom retrieved his phone from his pocket, “Hello?”
The automated voice on the other end of the line answered, “This is a collect call from an inmate at the Southern Desert Correctional Center, to accept the call, please press one on your phone. Otherwise, press two or simply hang up this call.”
Ransom pulled the phone away from his face to look at the keypad, “It’s the prison.”
Ransom tapped one on the screen and returned the phone to his ear, “This is Ransom.”
“It’s Foster.”
“Hey, Foster,” Ransom glanced over at Leesa saw her eyebrows raise at hearing Foster’s name.
“I need your help, Ransom,” the words rolled slowly out of Foster’s mouth.
Ransom turned up the volume on his phone and looked at Leesa who was leaning toward him to hear the conversation, “Okay, go ahead.”
“They have my daughter, Amber.” Ransom could hear Foster take a deep breath on the other end of the call.
Ransom could see the information register on Leesa’s face.
Foster continued, “You know I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I need you to go over to her place and see if they have her there. I’m not sure what to do if she’s not there.”
“One step at a time. What do you want us to do if she's there?”
“She needs to get out of town, I’ll tell her where to go where they won’t find her. Just make sure she’s okay and get that message to her. Will you do it?”
“Of course. What then?” Ransom asked.
“Then she leaves.”
“I got that,” Ransom answered back. “Come on, though. What’s the next play after that, Foster? You’re not going to just let them rough up your daughter and then have her leave town. What’s next?”
Silence fell on the other end of the phone call. Foster answered in a steady stream of words, “You make sure she’s okay, then I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Paula Turing’s death.”
Ransom could see Leesa putting the car back in drive and nodding her head, “Deal. What’s the address?”
11
Leesa pulled her car into the apartment complex and eased off the gas as she neared the apartment. She spotted another dark sedan backed into a parking spot within view of the front of the apartment. Locating an empty spot a short distance from the other car, she eased in-between the lines and parked.
Picking up her phone, she dialed and waited for an answer. A male voice answered on the first ring, “Hey.”
“Hey, Gonzalez. Thanks for coming. Any movement on the front door?”
“No. Hatch saw the curtains move. Most likely someone just walked by them, but that’s it.”
“Okay. I don’t know how many people we have inside. We know at least one female and one male, possibly a second male. More than likely they have her restrained. That’s all we have.”
“So how do you want to do this?” Gonzalez asked.
“I’ll knock on the front door and ask for Amber. I want you guys close, on either side of me and the door. If anyone answers we’re going to make our way in.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Leesa looked at Ransom, “Wanna take the window at the back of the apartment in case we have an escape artist.”
Ransom smiled at the comment, “Absolutely.”
Leesa climbed from her vehicle and headed toward Detectives Gonzalez and Hatch as they exited their sedan. Ransom grabbed his cane off the seat next to him and made his way around the trunk and headed for the rear of the complex. As he turned the corner of the building, he could hear Leesa knocking on the door at the front of the apartment. Ransom located a window directly through to the where the front door was located.
Ransom leaned against the wall, his cane planted between his feet on the gravel surrounding the building. A window latch clicked next to Ransom and he saw the aluminum frame holding the window whip open. A man’s head and shoulders popped out of the window’s opening. The man was instantly startled at Ransom smiling and standing next to the window. The man hesitated long enough for Ransom to grab him by the collar and yank him the rest of the way through the window and drop him onto the ground.
Ransom placed the rubber tip of his cane in the middle of the man’s back and leaned on it, “Don’t move.”
The man remained still with his hands to his side. Ransom fought the urge to laugh thinking about what the man had going through his mind; facedown in the gravel with a cane in his back.
Ransom heard several familiar commands being yelled inside the apartment and then Gonzalez poked his head out the open window. Gonzalez spotted the man on the ground and Ransom with his cane between the man's shoulder blades. He couldn’t stop laughing while holding onto the window seal for support.
“Are you okay?” Gonzalez finally composed himself and asked.
“Peachy,” Ransom replied.
Gonzalez pulled himself through the window and dropped down onto the ground. He pulled out his handcuffs and took the bewildered suspect from Ransom.
“Is everything alright in there?” Ransom nodded toward the apartment.
“Yeah. One is custody and the girl seems to be okay, just shook up.”
Ransom walked behind Gonzalez and the handcuffed man to the front of the building and into the apartment.
“We found a friend of yours,” Gonzalez said to the man handcuffed and sitting on a chair in the kitchen.
The man in the kitchen looked at his partner and then at Ransom as he walked in with his cane. He was now as confused as the man Ransom had pulled out of the window.
Leesa spoke to Hatch, “Can you call dispatch and get two patrol units over here to transport them to headquarters? We can question them there.”
Hatch nodded and stepped out front of the apartment to make the call. Ransom spotted Amber sitting in the living room area on a sofa. She sat there rubbing her wrists and staring at the ground. Ransom walked over and sat by her on the adjacent loveseat.
“You okay?”
“Who are you?” Amber looked dazed by the events and the entrance of the plain-clothes detectives.
“Let’s just say I know your father. He called me and that’s why we’re here.”
“You’re a cop?”
“I used to be. I’m retired,” Ransom continued. “I’m actually the one that arrested your father.”
Amber’s look of confusion showed. The additional information not helping as she fell further down the rabbit hole of the day’s events.
“I’ll explain further after we get these guys out of here, okay?” Ransom pushed himself up from where he was sitting, “I’ll be right back.”
Amber simply nodded and returned to staring blankly at the floor.
Ransom stepped outside and Hatch passed him coming back in, “Two units are on their way.”
Ransom pulled out his ph
one and dialed, “Yeah, this is Ransom Walsh, could you put me through to the Warden?”
12
“Did you get a statement from Amber?” Ransom asked as Leesa drove them toward HQ.
“She refused. They must have said something to her. She was really specific to say that she wasn’t being held against her will,” Leesa answered.
“About what I expected. She’s pretty shook up.”
“We can question those two knuckleheads downtown and see what we get,” Leesa shrugged.
“I’m not holding my breath. They know the game, especially if Amber plays along.”
Leesa pulled into the parking lot and parked near the front entrance of the building. The midday sun reflected off the window panes of the doors. Ransom and Leesa both squinted as they approached the sun’s glare on the mirrored doors. As Ransom reached for the door, someone pushed opened the door from the inside. The contrast of sunlight and lobby light took a few seconds of adjusting.
“Thanks…” Ransom began to offer the person opening the door.
The man was wearing a dark, three-piece suit. Ransom recognized the man but couldn’t place him.
“Detective Walsh,” the man put forth his hand.
Leesa noticed the look of uncertainty on Ransom’s face and quickly interjected, “Detective Gardner, and you are?”
The man turned to Leesa with his hand still extended, “Averett Turing. I’m the attorney for the two men you just brought in.”