***
She swung her car into the hotel’s parking lot, watching to see if she could spot the man with the duffle bag. If it had been Hawthorne, if he was culpable in any of this murder business with Helen, he was hiding in plain sight. Just like him to be brazen.
Her arms cranked the wheel, straightening out the car as she drove behind the building instead of where she she saw the man’s car.
Parking now, she stopped to decide on some plan of action while the car idled.
Behind the hotel, the wall of oleanders wagged wild in the breeze from the storm pushing closer. Behind the bank of oleanders a glint of something shiny and dark caught her attention. She shifted the gear down again and drove closer to the hedge then parked letting the car idle again. She got out and stepped nearer to a shallow, dry riverbed running just parallel to the shrubs—the same riverbed that curved and twisted northeast toward the coming storm. Placing her hands between some limbs, she pressed the branches open.
Hawthorne’s big black truck sat empty down in the narrow channel. It was all the proof Georgette needed, him hiding there.
She knew he had killed Helen and now he had Roberta.
Making her way back to her car, she remembered she had no way to protect herself. Looking for anything, she pulled open the glove compartment. Scraping out its contents and finding nothing, she sat back and stopped to think.
Using the car’s interior control, she popped open the trunk and jumped out fast. Lifting the trunk open, she pulled out her emergency kit with the flare gun inside and pressed the trunk closed again and got back to safety inside her car. She angled around, looking for anyone who might be witnessed her. When it appeared no one had, she unlatched the box and pulled out an even smaller box.
Her heart pounded when she considered what she might have to do. But if it meant she might save Roberta, well then, she would do anything. The cardboard lid squealed when it came off.
She flicked the small latch and holding the handle in her left hand, she loaded one thick, oversized red signal into the flare gun’s chamber. Closing it, she pocketed another flare. She noticed the box stated the flare gun’s 500 foot projectile capability. “Okay.” She whispered. That was plenty far for her to maintain a safe distance from Hawthorne.
Turning toward the steering wheel again, she turned off the car and started to get out, but stopped. She looked again at the other two flares in the box, snatched them both and stuffed them into her other pocket.
***
Tanner regained duty of rolling the oversized, heavy duffle bag from the hotel room to the car. Stopping at the elevator, they waited, each looking up at the lights striking numbered floors. A maid’s cart clanged down the hall after pulling out from a room she recently cleaned.
“Did you put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door?” Biggs spoke low.
“Dammit to hell.”
“You moron. They don’t need to find our gun ever and if they do find one, not until after we’re long gone. Give me the key you retard.”
Biggs held his hand out when the elevator chimed and swooshed open. “You get Georgette’s piece?”
Tanner tried not to act flustered, tapped his pocket and nodded his head ‘yes’ about the gun, then said, “Here.” Handing off the handle to Biggs. “I’ll get it and catch the next one. Go on.”
An elderly woman, leaning on an oversized black umbrella like a cane, stood inside the elevator, smiling as she held the doors open with the button.
“Going down?” she said almost yelling to them after waiting for them to come in.
“Yes, ma’am. Just uno momentito.” Biggs winked at her, making her cloudy eyes almost disappear in a wrinkle from smiling.
“See you down there.” Tanner walked off reversing his steps toward their room.
Biggs tugged the heavy bag into the elevator, pivoting it around so it was beside him, away from the woman.
“Looks like rain,” she said.
“Does it? Haven’t been out today.”
He felt the bag move. He coughed to distract the woman. Roberta moaned inside.
“I’m sorry?” she said.
“Haven’t been outside.” He spoke loudly, realizing the woman’s hearing was impaired.
“Oh, my, it’s absolutely gorgeous today. Even with the storm coming.” Her soprano voice warbled from age.
He whispered low to check for sure. “You’re an old bat, aren’t you?”
She turned and smiled when the elevator bottomed out. Roberta moaned again, pressing against the wall of the bag. He kicked it to shut her up and stopped her wriggling.
“Take care.” She clomped her umbrella in front of each step and shuffled toward the lobby.
“Yes, ma’am.” He spoke loud enough that the young Korean reservation clerk, Lisa, looked up at him and smiled.
“Hello, Mrs. Reynolds.” Lisa turned her attention to the old woman and Biggs turned the other way toward the double glass doors.
Pushing through, he tugged against Roberta’s weight in the duffle bag. She groaned audibly. He looked down and saw the green canvas move as she writhed inside it. He pulled over away from the glass doors, away from anyone’s view and punched the bag where he knew Roberta’s face was. He only heard a huff and then the movement stopped. “Stop moving, bitch, or you’re dead.” He spoke only inches from the bag, acting as if he were tying a shoelace.
When he stood, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the keys to their battered beige Impala, the one with no license plates. And rolling the bag again, he walked to the car.
With his key in the trunk lock, he looked up and saw Georgette’s car. He worried she might be looking toward the hotel so he lifted the trunk lid for cover. He peeked out and saw her. She was heading toward the hotel.
He shoved the retractable handle of the duffle bag into itself and waited behind the trunk for Tanner to come out and help. Just as he turned to the hotel doors, Tanner pushed through them.
He had thought enough to put on his sunglasses and golf cap. After seeing Georgette, Hawthorne wished he had done the same as well.
***
“So what is it?”
“It’s only a seven-point match but we think it belongs to a mister Melvin Taggert.”
As Willy sat in his police car, he listened and jotted down notes while he talked with West through the hands-free car phone. “Now, who the hell is Melvin Taggert?”
“Some career con. In and out of Florence on some offense or another. He has a juvenile sheet. From what I can tell, mostly for battery charges. There’s one sexual assault with a seventeen year old. He pled out and admitted he had sex with her but that she consented. She said it was rape. He got five years. Just released about six months ago.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Forty-five, average build, sandy hair, five-eleven, one-ninety.”
“Damn. I was hoping for prints on Biggs.”
“Yeah. Still nothing on a Hawthorne Biggs. Searched CODIS too. Nothing. He’s a no-name. Prob’ly made up.”
Willy noticed the cell on his passenger seat blinking. He’d missed a call.
“Okay. Good work, West.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Will you go check on Georgette Carlisle for me? At her house? She’s not at the diner today.”
“Sure thing, boss. Why should I say I’m calling on her?”
“Tell her we have a lead, but that’s all.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks, West. Bye.”
He pressed the off button on the phone and got out of his car but didn’t close the door. Poking his head above the hood he called out to the other investigators.
“I’m going to check on something. I’ll be back.”
He sat back down and, turning on his car, grabbed his cell phone and dialed to listen to his messages. He had only one, from Georgette. He slid his pencil above his ear and flicked on
the radio. A local newscaster was predicting a severe flood. They reported the news onsite out west of the Greys.
Willy felt for his pocket where he used to keep his cigarettes. He pulled the pencil from behind his ear and placed it between his lips. He hadn’t done that in years. As he turned out off of Roberta’s street his heart thumped hard in his chest.
***
Roberta noticed the dark first, then her sore jaw. The gag wedged between her teeth for so long had chafed the corners of her mouth into raw, seeping wounds.
Bound like a pig, she felt the cool plastic zipper of the duffle bag against her cheek. She remembered they had closed her up inside the bag, zipping it up over her head.
A sense of claustrophobic nausea swept over her and she panicked. She thrashed against the strain of the leather bag but when she did, felt the ligature around her neck tighten.
***
Mrs. Reynolds spent every spring in Sunnydale. Never traveling too far from Phoenix, she still enjoyed getting out of the hustling sprawl of the big city. She’d been coming to Sunnydale now for thirty-seven years. The first time visiting, Mr. Reynolds had joined her, but only two years later he died. Now, at age eighty four, Mrs. Reynolds spent her time in the higher desert alone, reminiscing about her life before. It was Mr. Reynolds who had given her a lust for the desert and all of its unpredictability.
Tapping her umbrella in rhythm with each plodding step as she walked away from the reception desk, she decided to take in some fresh air. Even with the storm approaching, she would still enjoy sitting out under the gazebo, amid the small, flowering, landscaped yard positioned nearest the entrance of the hotel’s parking lot. She would be able to watch the approaching storm vividly from there, even through aging eyes, eyes that once gleamed sharp sea green, so green her husband used to say that he wanted to skinny dip in them. Her eyes were now a hazy seafoam green from so many years gone by.
As she walked she leaned against her long umbrella, stopping every three steps or so to catch her breath.
Tanner, strapping himself into his car seat with the old-fashioned lap belt, stopped when he heard a noise emanating from the trunk. He and Biggs stared at each other without speaking for a single moment before they both heard the noise again.
“The bitch is awake. She’s gonna kill herself like that.”
“Let’s get out of here. We can dump her body on our way to the city.”
Tanner pulled his seatbelt snug across his hips. He tugged at the legs of his jeans, adjusting himself before they pulled out of the hotel parking lot.
“You promised me, Biggs. I get a go at her, right?”
“She’ll be dead in a few minutes.”
“Sometimes it’s better that way.” Tanner wiped a gob of spittle from the corner of his mouth.
“Whatever, you sick bastard.”
It was raining hard over the mountains now and a jagged lightning bolt coursed through the sky as Georgette skulked over to the side of the hotel. Looking out at the row of cars parked tight, each nearly on top of the next, she saw the beige one she spied Hawthorne at earlier.
Feeling for the flare gun in the waistband of her pants, Georgette patted at her loose blouse, determining if the gun could be seen. The handle poked out just over her belt, but it was mostly hidden.
A gust of wind made a creosote shrub rustle and slap her in the face. When she recovered, the men had returned to the car. They looked like they were leaving. Tanner split off toward the passenger side and Biggs to the driver side. When Tanner passed by the trunk, he patted it and leaned in, putting his face so close it appeared he said something, something Georgette couldn’t quite hear.
She turned back and ran to her car, intending to follow them, when a howling rack of thunder uncoiled across the sky, stopping her cold.
***
Willy chewed on his pencil, slicing up the yellow paint and digging into the wood with his teeth until it snapped in two at the graphite’s core. He spit one end out of his mouth was tossing the other onto the floor of his police car when the call came in.
The scratchy squeal of the CB arced and hummed until a woman’s voice, Meg’s, came over the radio. “Police Chief?”
Willy lifted the radio’s speaker. “Yep, here.”
“We have a situation, sir.”
“What kind of situation?” Willy had turned the wheel toward Highway 93.
“Well, sir, it seems some yahoo decided to try and cross the gully.” Her voice made it sound like a question but it wasn’t a question.
“Uh huh.”
“With his horse trailer? Which sunk into the wet silt. On the edge of the gully?” She paused.
“Yes, Meg and…” His mood, his voice, meant business.
“Well, sir,” she quickened the pace of her speech. “He’s stuck in the gully and the water is rising. Newscasters have called, sayin’ he’s gonna drown if someone doesn’t do something.”
“Crap Almighty.”
“Good news, though, sir—”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“The horse is safe.”
“Okay. Dispatch Sunnydale Fire Department. I’ll meet them there. But, Meg…”
“Sir?”
“Where’s Mark?”
“Baby’s on its way. Got the call about an hour ago. He’s at the hospital.”
“Crap fire.” He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You know what, Meg?”
“What, sir?”
“Timing is everything.”
“Yes, sir. I believe that’s right, sir.”
“Call the FD. I’ll meet them at the gully.”
“Yes, sir. Over, sir.”
He switched on the car’s flashing lights and flipped on the siren, pulled the car into a full turn the opposite direction and pressed hard on the gas.
***
Breathing short and quick in pants, trying to relax and loosen the grip of rope around her throat, Roberta felt a nub and knew it was the backside of the pulltab of the zipper. She nosed it to see if it would move. When it did, she worked slowly at first, making sure the cinch around her neck wouldn’t tighten. It hadn’t.
Moving her legs seemed the only thing that made the noose constrict. Forcing her back against the bag, she added just the right amount of pressure to work the small nub.
A preoccupation with the thought she might get free from the duffle bag took her mind off the fact these two men were going to kill her if she didn’t escape. So escaping was her only option.
She continued working the top of the zipper with her nose, moving it only a millimeter every time. And, each time she jimmied the zipper, the effort rubbed her skin until it became raw. By the time she moved it a half-inch, the abrasion on her nose felt like someone had taken a rasp to it but she continued through the pain, through a mix of tears and fear, until she created each time, each millimeter, she created an even larger opening in the zipper.
She paused and placed her eye to the hole. Blinking, trying to focus on something within her dark shell, Roberta could make out tiny rays of light piercing the interior of the trunk.
She remembered similar rays of light like that through holes in clouds after the rain. Jesus-rays. That’s what she called them. Jesus-rays.
Wrestling harder against the zipper, she dug open an even larger hole. A hole big enough to get her chin through. But she knew not to move too violently or else the noose around her neck would tighten again.
Stopping from exhaustion, she started to whimper but then she thought about the Jesus-rays. She sniffled until her tears stopped and then began to pray.
***
The old woman stopped once before looking down and setting her right foot onto the blacktop of the parking lot and continuing on her path to the garden area. When she looked up again, Mrs. Reynolds saw her target, the wooden slatted bench under the gazebo. It looked amazingly inviting to her, set off among all the wispy pink and white petunias and red curly geraniums.
Still, the cloudy sky worried
her. She halted her motion forward and leaned using the umbrella like a cane to hold herself up. Putting her other hand out, checking the weather, she determined that the rain might hold off a while for her to sit outside long enough to enjoy the outdoors.
Mrs. Reynolds had never minded the rain. It was only water. Her years had taught her that much. Also, water evaporates. If she got a little wet, she knew she would dry. Plus, she had her umbrella.
***
“Phoenix, that’s what he said.” Biggs worried about Pinzer’s decision on going back but didn’t let Tanner get a whiff of his doubt.
“Dammit, boss. You’d think he’d send us somewhere… unrelated.” Tanner tapped his foot nervously on the floorboard.
“We do as he says.”
“Let me talk to him. It sounds crazy. Phoenix is high-risk territory. We should go north. Let me ask him.”
“He doesn’t know you. Pinzer and I have history. I won’t tell you again. He deals with me. And he says Phoenix.”
Biggs turned the key and rolled down his window. A blast of rain-filled air washed over his face and he realized he was sweating. He wiped his brow. When he brought his hand down, he wiped the moisture off onto his pants then he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a paper towel and blotted his face.
“Turn on the air, Biggs.” Tanner’s voice grated. He was angry. “Christ. You’re sweating like a pig.”
Biggs dropped the towel and flung his heavy right arm out, flat-handing Tanner in the chest, thumping him with a crushing force that made him convulse under the weight of his blow.
“Listen, you little prick. I’m not going to tell you again. Pinzer deals with me. Only! Get over yourself.”
Sucking air back into his lungs, Tanner coughed and grabbed at the front of his shirt.
Biggs flipped on the cooler, making the old car fizzle and spit out a slow stream of air. “Piece of crap car,” Tanner whined.
Biggs rolled his eyes as he turned up the window and strapped the seatbelt over his lap. He grabbed hold of the steering wheel gear shift, shoving the stick into reverse. He twisted his head to look behind him. Pressing slowly onto the gas, he watched the old woman he’d ridden down in the elevator with ambling out from under the lobby canopy, performing a shaky balancing act with her umbrella. When she stopped, her head tipped upward and her hand leaned out as if trying to catch a drop of rain. Then she continued out into the lane.
Hotter than Helen (The Bobby's Diner Series) Page 14