Drake gave the cop one final, hard stare then stood up. “Okay.” He let the flatness in his voice convey his displeasure, but he knew it was pointless to argue further.
At the door, he paused. “Can I get someone to drive her car home for me?”
“Probably. Let’s check with the Feds out front. I believe they’re through processing it.”
Feds. Drake walked into the lobby, realizing for the first time that half the investigators on the scene were in suits rather than uniforms. Of course, he thought. Bank robbery and kidnapping. Both were federal charges. For some reason he felt a tiny bit better.
Gonzales posed the question to the FBI senior man, a gray-haired paunchy guy with the resigned look of someone who’d hoped there wouldn’t be another major case before his retirement date rolled around. He introduced himself as Cliff Kingston.
“Yeah, I don’t see why not. Our guys gave the Jeep a once-over,” he responded to Drake’s inquiry.
Drake patted his pockets, forgetting why, then remembering that a spare key to Charlie’s Jeep was on his key ring. He fumbled it, picked it up from the floor. Gina, the teller who’d called him at home stepped over, Charlie’s purse in her hand.
“She dropped this. The police said they don’t need it.”
Drake took the purse, rubbing at the soft leather. Memories flashed through his mind—all the times Charlie had reached into that bag for something, the way she would curse when her pen or lipstick eluded her in the depths of the black lining.
“Thanks.”
Gina patted his forearm and sent a sympathetic smile his way.
Gonzales wandered away and, ignoring Drake, the FBI men gathered in a knot.
Drake approached Kingston. “My wife . . . what can I—”
Kingston stepped in closer. “What’s she like? Passive?”
Drake almost chuckled. Charlie, passive? Hardly.
“If she doesn’t just meekly follow along, she’ll probably try to save herself. Contact you. Best thing you can do is wait for a call.”
Drake pictured Charlie, how she’d reacted in other bad situations. Couldn’t see her whimpering in the face of danger. Kingston was right. She would try to get away or somehow contact him. But for him to wait idly by—that felt impossible.
Chapter 3
The duct tape made my face itch and one corner had caught a single hair near my temple. With each wobble of the truck it tugged at that hair with a shock that felt like a needle being drilled into my skull. I wanted to reach up and yank the hair out by its root but my bound hands, deadened into numbness, were still taped behind my back. I nudged the robber beside me and mumbled incoherently into my duct-tape gag.
“What’s that?” he whispered, leaning closer.
The two men in front were talking quietly and the radio covered their words. I repeated what I’d said, which was something along the lines of, “If I ever get loose, I’m gonna kill you.” My guardian spoke again, this time right near my ear.
“What you want, lady?”
The more quietly I spoke, the closer he came. I finally let out something I hoped he’d take for a sob.
“Just a second. Be real quiet,” he told me.
He peeled up a corner of the tape on my mouth, slowly, agonizingly.
“Ouch!” I whispered with a hiss.
“What’d you say back there?” The voice of the leader bellowed over the seat.
My guard sat up straighter. “Nothin’, String. Didn’t say nothin’.” His voice wavered when he addressed the leader.
I listened as they readjusted their positions and settled down. Then I whimpered again.
Shaky Voice moved in close and a heady mixture of sweat and bad breath came at me. “If you’ll stay quiet, I’ll take this all the way off,” he whispered.
I nodded and gritted my teeth as the remaining tape came off my mouth. No unsightly mustache for me, but I didn’t care if a layer of skin was missing; I was thrilled to be able to breathe through more than my half-covered nostrils.
Judging time and distance when you’re uncomfortable as hell and can’t see a thing isn’t easy. The truck initially made a series of jerky moves and quick turns, but had settled into a steady pace—highway pace—for quite some time now. I gradually edged at the metal toolbox with my hip until it was partway underneath the seat, giving me a tad more space on the floor. With that little luxury came the ability to shift my weight off my shoulder and arm and let some blood flow to my numb hand. The kerchief had slipped off my eyes and my guard didn’t replace it.
How much time had passed, I couldn’t begin to guess. It might have been fifteen minutes or an hour. When I sensed slight variations in speed, I imagined that we might be approaching an exit, a town . . . I couldn’t tell. I strained to make out words in the scant exchanges of conversation between the men but phrases like “up ahead” “pretty soon” and “over there” didn’t add a lot to my understanding.
The truck abruptly took a left turn and nearly went up on two wheels. It slithered sickeningly, a graveled surface spitting rocks that felt like they were hitting my ribs through the hot metal flooring. My eyes went wide and a glance at my guard showed his doing the same.
The radio music died abruptly. “Easy, stupid!”
I heard a smack, like the guy in charge had given the driver a slap upside the head.
“Sorry, String.” The truck slowed considerably and we bumped over a rutted track with a loping motion. It took every bit of my self control to keep my stomach from hurling.
Eventually, the vehicle yanked to a stop, sending me slamming against the back of the driver’s seat. Both front doors opened and the truck swayed as the two men exited. I struggled to my knees, catching a view of sandy high-desert terrain dotted with piñon and short juniper trees. The location could be just about anywhere along the Rio Grande corridor within a hundred-fifty miles of Albuquerque in any direction. Something about the configuration of nearby mountains made me think we might be near Santa Fe.
“. . . do you think she went?” The voice of the driver wafted my way on the hot breeze.
We’d stopped in front of a small building, maybe a ranch house. Weathered wood siding had once been painted white, but that was a long time ago. The graying boards clung haphazardly, badly in need of repair. Gray asphalt shingles curled on the roof and the windows were hung with curtains—one red, one blue—faded to chalky hints of their true colors. The place appeared abandoned.
The other man said something but his words didn’t carry to me. He was skeletally thin, not very tall, with greasy black hair combed straight back from his low forehead and at least a day’s growth of heavy dark beard. His shoulders were straight, his chest thrust forward, his stance reminding me of a bantam rooster. He wore black jeans and a black polyester shirt and chewed at the earpiece of a pair of black wraparound sunglasses, which he held with a nervous sort of energy that made me want to stay clear of him. This was the leader, the one who’d shouted the orders inside the bank. He walked up to the house and pounded on the door. No response.
The driver spoke again. “What you want to do, String?” Slight Spanish accent, a little younger than the other guy, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a biker gang logo on it. Multi-colored tattoos started at his wrists and disappeared beneath his sleeves.
The one called String started to turn back toward the truck.
“Get down!” My guard’s voice was insistent. “You don’t want String to see you up like that.”
“There’s nobody out there to see me. I need to sit up. Lying down is making me carsick.” I shifted, not waiting for permission.
He hesitated and I got my first real look at him. Early twenties, a pretty well-established beer belly, that soft pudgy look of a well-fed kid.
“What’s your name?” I asked, settling my butt onto the hard metal floor. On the seat, near my face, lay a heap of canvas bags—the money from the bank.
“Billy. But the guys call me Domino.” He shrugged and
glanced nervously out the window. It must have seemed safe to keep talking. “Cause I work at a pizza place.”
“Ah.” I tried to give as winning a smile as a girl can give when she’s got duct-tape goo on her face and sweat forming on clothing that’s been rumpled on the floor of a dirty old pickup. “Well, you seem a lot nicer than the others.”
He shrugged again then his eyes went wider. “Shh!” He shifted in his seat and loosely stuck the used strip of duct back over my mouth. “Don’t get me in trouble.”
I wanted to tell him they were already in way more trouble than he was ready for. But that wouldn’t have earned me any brownie points at the moment.
From my lowly vantage point I could barely see the heads and shoulders of the other two but it was clear that some sort of argument was in progress. Muted words flew, hands and fingers gestured.
“Get back down! Here they come,” Billy whispered.
I rolled to one hip again, the whole bound-limbs thing really hampering any movement at all. It wasn’t as if I was going to leap out and overpower anyone.
“I can’t believe that bitch!” String said as he planted himself in the front passenger seat and slammed the door. “Just have the car here. It’s all I asked.”
The driver climbed in slowly, not commenting.
Billy sat so still I was positive he was holding his breath.
“So, where else would she be?” the driver finally asked.
“Well, she better be at Sissy’s. She ain’t—she’s dead meat.”
His voice was low and dangerous and he sounded like he meant it. I kept my eyes firmly on the edge of the back seat. This guy, String, clearly wasn’t somebody to mess with.
“So—go, Mole! Dammit!”
The driver cranked the engine back to life and hit the gas. I bit the side of my mouth as he hit the swale at the edge of the driveway again. Back on the bumpy gravel road he didn’t ease off at all. My body was going to be so bruised by tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow. I concentrated on taking an inventory of the things under the truck’s backseat—I couldn’t let myself dwell on the other possibility.
* * *
At least an hour must have passed, during which we’d gotten back onto a paved highway, exited again, off onto a sandy road—this I figured out when the truck swerved, tires grabbing with that almost-stuck feeling—followed by a slow cruise down a narrow lane and into another driveway.
“All right,” String said. “ ’Bout damn time.”
My sentiments exactly. My stomach was doing flip-flops and if I’d had a meal recently it would have been all over Billy’s shoes. My head felt like a tennis ball in a Federer match.
Billy must have gotten some sense of my plight because as soon as the truck came to a halt he helped me get to my knees and then opened his side door.
String shot him a sharp look over his shoulder.
“She’s gettin’ sick, boss. I just gotta give her a little air. She can’t go nowhere.”
String clearly didn’t care but he didn’t say anything. He and Mole got out and walked toward the tan stucco house where we were parked. Beside the truck sat a silver sedan that had oxidized to a dull gray. A young woman in a tight purple tank top came onto the small front porch as they approached and String let out with a tirade about her being there, about messing up the plan.
She flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and sassed back with a sort of you’re-not-the-boss-of-me attitude and turned her back on him. He grabbed her arm and spun her around, backhanding her across the mouth. Her dark eyes went wide and a trickle of blood ran down her chin. She kept quiet when he shoved her toward the house.
An older woman appeared briefly at the door—blond hair, blowsy features, a tad overweight—but she quickly ducked out of sight when she saw the men. Neither of the women glanced toward the truck. I might have found an ally between them, but it wasn’t looking hopeful.
I lifted my shoulder and wiped my mouth against it until the duct tape came off. “What are they going to do with me?” I whispered to Billy.
Again, the shrug. Didn’t this guy know one single thing? If I’d had an available leg I would have kicked him in the shins.
“Look, this is killing me. Find out if my hands can be tied in front of me. My shoulder feels like it’s getting dislocated. And can I at least sit up?”
He did have the good grace to look like he was sorry. “I’ll ask,” he said in that same shaky voice.
Mole, the driver, came back and started the truck again. Billy posed my requests to him as he steered the truck toward a large barn behind the house. Mole took a full two minutes to consider. I got the feeling that dealing with a woman who was bound and gagged was not a new situation for him. An icy chill slid over my arms as he stared at me in the mirror.
“Do it,” he said, finally.
He jerked the truck to a stop beside a ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee inside the barn and held one of the guns on me as Billy worked on my duct tape. Dang. If he’d left us alone I’d have been real tempted to grab that tire iron I’d spotted under the seat and whack Billy the minute my arms were free. But no such luck. Mole, with his hard eyes and cruel mouth and those creepy tattoos, watched as Billy cut off the old tape and rebound my wrists, this time to the front of me. I braced them as far apart as I could, subtly, but he was pretty vigorous with the tape.
“Are we leaving her here, Mole? In the truck?”
Again, that chilling stare. “No, Domino. She’s going with us.”
My stomach lurched again.
“Cut her feet loose. I don’t want to carry her to the car,” Mole said.
It was amazing how grateful I felt for that one small favor.
My feet stumbled, touching the ground for the first time in hours. I gingerly put my weight on them and took a few practice steps; Mole’s gun stayed on me the whole time. I glanced at my wrist, forgetting that I’d left my watch at home this morning.
“Domino, grab the bags,” Mole ordered. “You, lady, over to the car.”
Billy pulled the three canvas bags from the back seat of the truck and walked behind me, near Mole, doing his best to look as tough as the other man but not really pulling it off. We stopped just outside the barn where String waited and he shoved the tall door closed. His pistol was jammed into the waistband of his black jeans, handy at a moment’s notice. I avoided staring at it.
On the porch, the girlfriend in the purple top waited. Apparently once String’s anger dissipated they’d patched things up enough that she wanted to say goodbye. For all I knew, maybe she planned on coming along as part of the entourage. She gave me a long stare as we passed. Oh, no, don’t put me in the middle of some jealous-girlfriend thing, I thought. I held up my bound hands, just to demonstrate that my being here was not my idea.
All at once she grinned hugely. “Cristina Cross! Ohmygod, you’re Cristina Cross!”
Uh . . . no. I had no clue what she was talking about. String strode over to her and gripped her arm, leading her into the house, while Billy threw the money bags into the open trunk of the car and Mole nudged me toward the back seat with the muzzle of the gun. Back seat beats trunk any day, so I complied.
“Down on the floor again!” he ordered.
Oh, crap. But I went, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t remember to tape my ankles again. I got lucky for the moment; he slammed the door and Billy took up his position again as my guard. Mole started the car, which purred like a silken cello compared to the old truck.
The front passenger side door stood open, waiting for String. The sun blasted full-force on the car and sweat trickled from my hairline. Apparently, it had no air conditioning. Ten minutes must have passed, during which no one in the vehicle spoke. I could tell that Mole was getting restless.
Two muffled shots sounded, somewhere out of sight. Mole tensed, and I felt a jolt of adrenaline race through me. A minute later String dashed out of the house and jumped into his seat. He plopped a plastic grocery bag on the center console whil
e he slammed his door.
“Lunch,” he announced. “I had Melinda make us a sandwich.”
The car took off, slithering through the soft spots in the sandy road, heading back toward the highway. My mind raced with the knowledge of what I’d heard back there. Two women in that house. Two shots. No more witnesses.
Billy was a little wide-eyed but the other men acted like nothing had happened. String pulled the plastic bag onto his lap and rummaged through it. He retrieved sandwiches and passed one to each of the men. The car filled with the scent of peanut butter as Billy bit into his.
“Here,” String said. “Melinda sent one for the lady, too.”
The plastic bag crinkled as he handed another sandwich to the back seat. Billy took it and placed it in my bound hands. I wasn’t exactly hungry, considering, but I managed a few bites.
Mole turned to their leader. “So, what was that all about?” he asked.
“On the porch there?”
“Yeah.”
“She swears the lady is some television star. One of them daytime shows, the soaps, I guess. Does movies too.” String leaned over the seat and stared at me, still crouched on the floor. “Your name Cristina Cross?”
I felt my mouth gape open.
He didn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t you see?” he said to Mole. “This is better than the whole bank thing. We got something valuable now. We can get a huge ransom for a movie star.”
Chapter 4
Oliver Wendell Trask reached into his jeans pocket. He felt the gaze of the motel clerk on his hands as he extracted two twenties from the wallet that was attached to his belt loop by a chain, and slid them across the worn Formica counter.
“ ’Nother two seventy-five,” the man monotoned. “Gotta send the governor his share.”
Oliver carefully pulled out three more singles. He watched as the chubby, balding man in grimy blue work pants and a sagging sleeveless undershirt cracked open a paper roll of quarters and emptied them into a cardboard tray in the drawer. He held out his hand to receive one of the shiny disks and noticed rims of black encrusted around each of the clerk’s fingernails. Sadie Trask might not have been much in the mothering department but she’d drilled the concept of clean fingernails into Ollie for most of their fourteen years together. He held his palm a couple of inches below the other man’s fingers so he’d drop the coin without their hands touching.
Stardom Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #12 Page 2