The Wicked Flee (A Marty Singer Mystery Book 5)

by Matthew Iden

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I think so.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Out of habit, Eddie would’ve kept his speed pegged at the limit anyway, but as he drove away from Tuck’s place, he obeyed every speed limit sign and stoplight he came to religiously. Getting pulled over by a cop was never a good time, but with an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl in the passenger’s seat, he would’ve been dead meat on a traffic stop.

  He’d come prepared, though. Five minutes away from Tuck’s, Eddie pulled over on a side street in a subdivision, choosing a lonely spot between houses. The delay made him antsy, but he needed some kind of story. He parked and hurried to the trunk, where he pulled out a blanket and an old letterman jacket.

  His inclination was to dump the girl in the trunk. Roll her in the blanket, wrap the whole thing in tape, and hit the road. But this was a special situation, calling for extraordinary measures. One bruise or cut on the girl and the whole deal could be over. Not to mention, if he got stopped for any number of stupid reasons, one of the first things a cop would do is ask him to open the trunk. Sorry, Officer. Let me just move this unconscious girl out of the way and let you get on with your search.

  No, it might be nerve-racking, but he needed the girl to be in perfect condition, so she was going in the front seat. If he could keep her doped up or even just intimidated long enough to get through the night, he might pull off the biggest trick of his career.

  Eddie opened the passenger’s-side door and held the girl’s head as she nearly rolled out of the car. With effort, he got the blanket tucked around her, from feet to neck, then balled up the letterman jacket and slid it under her head, propping her against the door as he shut it carefully. He examined her through the passenger’s-side window, acting the part of a cop looking at the same scene. With a bit of imagination, she appeared asleep, passed out drunk, or sick. He shrugged. It would have to do. All he needed was a couple of hours.

  One last thing. He pulled out her phone, which he’d taken from her purse. With a stomp and a twist, he cracked open the case wide enough to pull out the thin, lithium-ion battery. A quick sidearm winged it through the woods lining the street. The rest he snapped back together and pocketed. He’d toss it as he drove. There wasn’t a phone made that could be tracked when its battery was forty miles away from its working parts. He hopped in the driver’s seat, closed the door—careful to use the frame, not the armrest—and was back on the road minutes after stopping.

  Woodbridge was a pit, with but one redeeming quality: it was literally a mile away from Interstate 95, the East Coast’s major north–south artery and chock-full of cars from Maine to Florida. He could hardly ask for a better, faster, or more anonymous route out of Virginia. With easygoing lefts and rights, always using his signal and driving smoothly, Eddie found himself on the on-ramp for the highway, where he bumped his speed up to the limit, merged with traffic in the right-hand lane, and set the cruise control. He was an economical driver, twitching the wheel a hair to avoid cracks and potholes, using deft, precise movements to pass when he needed to. Driving a highway at fifty-five was enough to drive him crazy, but better safe than sorry. Not to mention, even this late at night, there was traffic and there were morons. A few times Eddie had to slam on the brakes or swerve to avoid someone doing something stupid. He gritted his teeth, fighting to stay calm. It was going to be a long night and he needed to keep his cool.

  He fell into his driving rhythm, watching idly as he flew by each highway lamppost. Cars by the dozen passed him, their red taillights twinkling in the night and leaving the afterimage of a red cat’s tail. Oncoming traffic heading south was mercifully light. Headlights, especially the new blue LEDs, hurt his eyes and gave him a headache. Freeway walls the color of sandstone rose on his right, protecting the townhome communities from the worst of the noise. In the places where the highway planners hadn’t bothered, malls and industrial parks lit the countryside with bright red, blue, and yellow store signs. White lamps stood sentry in the parking lots, arrayed in perfect rows for no one to see.

  The crummiest strips reminded him of Carolyn Park, the bastard child of suburbia and city ten minutes south of Baltimore. It wasn’t the ghetto, but it sure as hell wasn’t the crème de la crème, either. That was the problem. Nobody was too low or too high. All the souls floated forever in the lukewarm soup of the lower-middle class. Life was high school football and Budweiser signs and jobs down at the shipyard. Neon “OPEN” signs were the lighthouses, guiding the faithful to the church of the Dollar Tree. Welfare checks papered single-parent homes, three-job mothers slept in basement apartments, drunks and sluts and crooks smoked together on the corner of Too Little and Too Late. That was Carolyn Park.

  Eddie laughed softly and shook his head. He still couldn’t hitch a verse together that didn’t reek of melodrama. But he couldn’t seem to leave it, either. He was a thug and a pimp and a crook, but he was an artist at heart. For what that was worth. Not much call for poets in Carolyn Park. Try telling people on Pennington Avenue about Ginsberg or Baldwin or Williams and they thought you were talking about the rookies on the Ravens’ starting defensive line.

  He cracked the window and glanced at Lucy to make sure the static roar of wind hadn’t woken her, then deftly lit a cigarette while keeping the steering wheel on track with a knee. A deep drag filled his lungs, calming him. He held it for a long minute, then pursed his lips carefully and exhaled toward the open window. So, a would-be poet in a dying dockyard town keeps his mouth shut if he doesn’t want to go crazy or get his ass beat—well, that happens anyway from a father and an uncle—so he turns all that creativity and thought and energy toward girls. And he’s as good with them as he ever thought he’d be with sonnets and rhymes, but instead of reading at slams and open mics and applying for scholarships, he’s writing love notes and quoting the same ten lines of Lorca memorized from a book in the library and getting laid in the back of the auditorium between periods.

  But sex isn’t money . . . until you make sex into money. Make them love you and let them think you love them back. Then they do anything for you.

  Eddie held the cigarette to the crack in the window and let the wind take the ash away. He glanced at the girl. Still out cold. He reached out one long arm and felt for the pulse in her neck. If Tuck had given her one pill too many . . . but no, she was fine. Well, alive, at least. She groaned softly at the touch and her head lolled to one side. He pulled the blanket up to her chin. She was going to be sick as a dog when she came to. Roofies did that. He might as well make her as comfortable as he could.

  This wasn’t the life he’d planned. Then again, he’d never had a plan. Nobody in Carolyn Park did. You worked, you drank, you fucked, you died. If you wanted anything else out of life, you were either delusional or you left. Plans were almost as bad as dreams and most dreams in the Park ended right after they were jotted down in high school yearbooks or on the last page of a diary or whispered in your girlfriend’s ear.

  Eddie refused to dream. Dreams were a good way to make sure you didn’t actually accomplish anything. But he’d had an idea once, an idle thought that he’d refined and patched and buttressed for years.

  He’d make money, enough money to slip away from the life. He’d leave the girls and the drugs and the booze and he’d go north, maybe Vermont or New Hampshire or Maine. And he’d buy—no, he’d build, with his hands—a cabin. In the woods. Near a creek. It would be cold as hell most of the year, but he’d chop wood and pump water and do whatever else had to be done to stay alive on the border of the Great White North. And when he wasn’t doing any of those things, he’d write poetry. Reams of it, all kinds. Sonnets and couplets and stanzas. And it wouldn’t matter how good or bad it was. Poetry would simply be who he was and what he did. If it didn’t get published or bought, he wouldn’t care, because he’d have his cabin and his wood chopping and his poetry. And that would be good enough.

  Of course, lif
e had decided that plans weren’t any good if they didn’t involve a few major detours along the way. What had started out as a pretty modest desire had taken one hell of a turn a few months ago, making the whole plan seem pretty silly. And the future scary. But it was still doable, as long as he kept his head, got some help along the way, and the score was big enough—

  Cop.

  Eddie’s pulse jumped and his mouth went instantly dry. Flashing lights, coming at him on the opposite side, south on 95. Fast. Real fast. A hundred? One twenty? A quick glance as it passed told him it wasn’t a cruiser—it was a plainclothes car. Not your typical plainclothes, either, something sporty and low to the ground. He dropped the cigarette out the window and put both hands on the wheel at two and ten, telling himself to keep it together. He was on the other side of the highway, for Christ’s sake, he was doing the speed limit, no one in the world knew where he was right now or that he had a catatonic sixteen-year-old girl in the passenger’s seat.

  It was gone. By the time he’d talked himself down from a panic, the lights weren’t there anymore, fading from sight in less than ten seconds. He swallowed and breathed deep, then swore at himself to pay attention. A car like that . . . he never would’ve thought cop. No more daydreaming. This was real. It was dangerous.

  Time to get serious. He put the window up, double-checked his speed, glanced in the mirror. He gave himself a minute and, once he felt he was in a safe stretch, pulled out his phone. Glancing between the screen and the road, he scrolled through his contacts and past calls until he found the number he wanted. He punched it and waited. It rang four times before someone answered.

  “Yes?” The voice was soft and cultured.

  “Is John there?” Eddie asked.

  There was a pause. “I think you have the wrong number.”

  “Sorry,” Eddie said and ended the call.

  He slipped the phone back in his pocket, took a deep breath, and put his attention back on the road. But he allowed himself a brief smile. All systems were go and payday was just a few hours away. He glanced over at the girl to check on her and his heart stopped for a second time in the past minute.

  Her eyes were open, glittering black, and staring straight at him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THIS MORNING

  “We’re doing what?” Sarah asked, staring at Lieutenant Kline. “Sir?”

  “The case is being handed over to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office,” Kline said as they walked down the corridor at the Waterloo Barracks toward their respective offices. Well, toward Kline’s office and Sarah’s desk in the bull pen. And at a record pace, too. Kline was over six feet tall and she had to take ridiculously long strides to keep up. “The homicide was committed south of Hagerstown and west of Frederick. You do know your counties, don’t you, Trooper?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. Sarah imagined putting her irritation and anger in a vise and leaning on it until the jaws clamped tight. “But the evidence that led me to the house, sir, was gathered in Frederick. And I feel like it’s pointing to something bigger than any two or three sheriffs’ departments can handle—”

  “You feel?” Kline said, stopping abruptly. Caught off guard, Sarah bumped into him and backed away quickly, flushing in embarrassment. “Refresh my memory. Was there evidence at the scene that suggested a conspiracy?”

  “No, sir, but we haven’t been through all of—”

  “And have we had a report of any other crimes or convictions that would lead us to believe that there’s more than one criminal at work here?”

  “Actually, sir, I believe—”

  “I think what you meant to say is not at all,” Kline said, peering down his nose at her. His hair was shaved close to the skull, doing nothing to soften the thin, ascetic planes of his face. “Is there a rash of teenage kidnappings being reported on the TV or are teams of hookers storming the state capital?”

  There was nothing to say to that.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Haynesworth, I’m aware of your credentials coming out of Sykesville. I know that you were the youngest trooper to get promoted to TFC . . . and without logging the requisite three years. I’ve seen your work, your grades, and the reports from your academy supervisors. But if you ever tell me you feel you should open an investigation that has me stepping on the toes of half a dozen jurisdictions, we’re going to have a talk. Clear?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Kline stalked down the hall with his skinny cowboy swagger, went into his office, and slammed the door. Sarah glared, then took a deep breath and peeled off in the opposite direction to the trooper bull pen.

  Two out of the six desks were occupied. Jimmy Noles—two years older, but a grade below Sarah—was waiting with a look of sympathy. Aside from his expression, he was regular in nearly every way, from his average height to his average build to his brown hair and brown doe’s eyes.

  “You heard that?” she asked, tossing the manila folder with her notes on her desk and flopping into a chair.

  “His voice carries,” he said. “And, you know, this whole building is the size of a McDonald’s. You can hear everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “It’s so small, I can hear Kline take a leak. And the bathrooms are on the other side of the barracks.”

  “What do you think, Tom?” she asked, turning to the other trooper. Tom Cassidy was squinting at his computer. He had a shaved head and thick salt-and-pepper mustache. He ate sunflower seeds one at a time from a tall, narrow plastic bag.

  “You can hear when it’s Kline,” he said without looking away from his screen. “He squeezes extra hard.”

  Sarah smiled, then got to her feet and went over to the coffeepot. Taped over the coffeemaker was a set of eyes cut out of a magazine. Tom had read that people tended to pay on-your-honor expenses more often when they were faced with an accusing stare, even if it was made of paper. Everyone had laughed at him, but the office hadn’t been short on coffee and filter money since he’d stuck it there two months ago.

  Unfortunately, she was out of dollar bills to put in the pot. She put a hand over the face while she poured a cup with the other. Two creams, three sugars, a quick stir and she went back to her desk, averting her eyes from the stare.

  She sat down, put the manila folder to one side, and logged in to her computer. With quick strokes, Sarah put the day’s paperwork in its place—answering e-mails, responding to requests, filing reports. Through it all, she could feel Jimmy watching her. She refused to look at him. He kept staring. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him quirk an eyebrow a few times.

  Without looking at him, she said, “I’m not going to look at it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Jimmy nodded sagely, went back to his own paperwork. A minute of silence passed, then she saw him fold his arms over his chest and tap a finger to his lips in a pantomime of deep thought.

  “Jimmy, it’s over. Kline said so. I’m not going to open it.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I’m just thinking.”

  She sighed, finished the last of her e-mails, then began the paperwork that would transfer the case to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

  During a fueling stop, Trooper First Class Haynesworth was stopped by a white teenage female (“TONYA BECKWORTH”) at the Jessup FastGas filling station on Maryland Route 26. Ms. Beckworth told TFC Haynesworth that, several days before, a friend (“TIFFANY CHILTON”) had gotten into the black Mustang of a man they’d seen at the filling station four or five times over the course of several weeks. The man had wanted Ms. Beckworth to go, as well, but she had refused. Ms. Beckworth had not seen Ms. Chilton since that time.

  “How many homicides you think Washington County gets a year?” Jimmy asked into the air. “You know, the sheriff’s office that’s going to take on the case that Sarah broke wide ope
n?”

  “Less than one,” Tom offered. He still hadn’t looked away from his screen.

  “Crack squad then, probably,” Jimmy said, impressed. “They must have a close rate of between zero and a hundred.”

  Sarah shot Jimmy a withering look, which he returned with a sweet smile.

  Ms. Beckworth relayed that the man in the Mustang had propositioned the girls. Ms. Beckworth refused, but Ms. Chilton agreed and left with the man. She later admitted to having consensual sexual intercourse with the man several times over the following week and that he’d arranged a “special job” for her. Ms. Beckworth described Ms. Chilton as “afraid to let him [the man] down.”

  Unable to investigate, TFC Haynesworth gave Ms. Beckworth her direct phone number. On January 16, Ms. Beckworth called and said she’d seen Ms. Chilton briefly with another man (not the man in the Mustang) in a blue Ford pickup. The truck had not stopped but Ms. Beckworth had been able to record the license, make, and model of the car, then called TFC Haynesworth.

  A trace of the license plates led to the address of a white male (KEVIN HANDLEY). Upon investigating Mr. Handley’s home, TFC Haynesworth interrupted Mr. Handley moving the body of a deceased white female resembling the description of Ms. Chilton—

  Sarah slammed the mouse down and sat back, glaring at the screen, then looked over. Jimmy was watching her, eyebrows raised.

  “What?” Her voice was belligerent.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “You know this one’s connected to the others.”

  “Of course it is,” she said.

  “No bodies,” Tom said, slipping a seed under his mustache.

  “Why do we need a damn body every time?” Sarah asked, kicking her desk. “And who says it’s murder? When did kidnapping or coercion stop being crimes? Three witnesses report a teenage girl getting into a black Mustang at the 95 Welcome Center north of Laurel. A fast-food waitress sees another get picked up outside a school near Columbia and she hasn’t been in class since. Tiffany Chilton was sleeping with a guy driving a black Mustang and the next time anyone sees her, her body’s being dragged through the snow in the back ass of Washington County.”