The Wicked Flee (A Marty Singer Mystery Book 5)

by Matthew Iden

  He could hear Eddie’s voice, smug and confident. Torbett didn’t care. “The On Ramp. You’ll see it across the road a minute after you exit the turnpike. You can’t miss it.”

  “I’ll be there,” he whispered, and ended the call.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Snow was flying sideways by the time we pulled onto Breezewood’s main corridor of restaurants and gas stations. Visibility went from zero to two hundred feet based entirely on what direction the wind blew. Piercing white lights of fluorescent signs and multicolored sale banners showed us the way to an all-night doughnut shop parking lot, where Chuck swung into an open space. A second later, Sarah pulled her cruiser next to us. I rolled down my window and signaled for her to join us. She got out, her shoulders hunched against the cold, and opened the back door to the Integra. The blast of cold made me wince.

  “A doughnut shop?” Sarah asked as she slid into the backseat. “Are you serious?”

  “Habit,” Chuck said, then turned sideways to include her in the conversation. “Let’s put our heads together. We know anything about this guy besides the fact he’s driving a black Mustang? Like, where he might be meeting? Tell me I missed something.”

  “What do we think we know?” I asked.

  “They need a place that’s easy on, easy off,” Sarah said immediately. “It won’t be far from the entrance to the turnpike; otherwise, why meet here? They’ll want a quick exchange so they can get on their way.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “So we start on the strip and work our way out.”

  “Does he want a place that’s crowded or not?” Chuck asked. “Does he want to use traffic for cover or the back of a gas station to avoid witnesses?”

  “It’s almost five in the morning,” I said. “Most places qualify as deserted.”

  “Not really,” Sarah said, tilting her head toward the main drag. “Truckers and snowbirds are getting an early start. A few will even be finishing breakfast and hitting the road soon.”

  “Whatever. What’s his thinking?” Chuck asked, impatient.

  “I’d want activity,” I said, “but nothing too transient. A gas station has a lot of people, but they’re coming and going too quickly. A Mustang hanging around with a girl in the backseat or kicking in the trunk is going to attract attention. I’d pick a fast-food place, maybe with a side lot or a drive-thru that circles around back.”

  “They’ll want to avoid security, though,” Sarah said. “And those kind of places have cameras and some kind of system covering the back door.”

  “Hotels or motels?” I suggested. “There’d be enough cars to make it look busy and they might have cameras on the doors, but none of the flophouses around here have the budget to maintain surveillance on an entire parking lot.”

  “Makes sense,” Chuck said.

  Sarah had her smartphone out and was tapping away. “There are . . . five motels in a one-mile radius.”

  “What about restaurants?” Chuck asked over his shoulder.

  “Depends on your definition,” she said, studying the map. “Including fast-food joints and coffee shops, maybe a dozen? But everything’s compact to take advantage of the turnpike traffic. And the motel locations overlap with the food, naturally, to nab the overnighters.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “Everything Breezewood has to offer is less than a mile away?”

  “There are . . . let’s see, two or three spurs off of the main drag. Probably where the town’s expanded and a few old run-down places where the new construction has passed them by. We should be able to see them from the road.”

  “Anything we’re missing?” Chuck asked.

  I chewed my lip. “Rest stops that don’t fit either description. There’s one by the turnpike entrance, I forget the name. And a Flying J on the east end of town, although they cater to truckers. We passed it on the way in.”

  “That looked more like a gas station with a convenience store,” Sarah said.

  “Still might be worth checking out,” I said.

  “We gotta get going,” Chuck said. “I’d rather cover some ground than think this to death. Sarah, you want to take the south side of the strip, at the west end? I’ll do the other end and we’ll work our way towards each other.”

  “Got it. We should try those spur roads, too, if they’ve got a business on them,” she said. “Singer, you staying with Rhee?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You know this area better than we do, so it might take both of us to catch something.”

  “You got our cell numbers,” Chuck said. “Call if you see something, touch base in thirty minutes if you don’t. If you find Eddie, don’t move on him without us.”

  Sarah nodded and left, throwing a “Good luck” over her shoulder as she jumped out of Chuck’s car and into the cruiser, ducking the biggest flakes. She started the cruiser, the headlights flashed on, then she turned left out of the parking lot. Chuck put his Integra in gear and we took a right, heading in the opposite direction down the stretch of lights, cars, and snow.

  We were silent as we concentrated on the darkened storefronts and shadowed driveways, but it was difficult to believe the mutual silence wasn’t hiding an unpleasant truth. Namely, that the odds of uncovering the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack were better than our chances of finding Lucy.

  Maybe it wasn’t that bad. In one regard, the odds were with us. We had decent information that we were in the right place at roughly the right time. Breezewood was a tiny town with a minuscule permanent population, so there were a fraction of the private homes with basements, garages, and attics that there would be in even a small town. In other words, the places where one could hide a victim or a car or a crime. And the three of us all had police experience and the authority—well, some authority—to demand and get answers and access if we really needed it.

  On the other hand, most of my career had been spent looking for singular items and usually with a particular someone actively trying to hide them from me. The odds of finding something as ubiquitous as “a car” or “a person” were . . . well, let’s just say if I still had my day job, I wouldn’t feel like I had a chance unless I had a warrant, ten more cops to go door to door along the strip, and an Amber Alert notifying every driver on the interstate.

  And we didn’t have any of that.

  Chuck kept the Integra crawling along at twenty or so to give us a chance to look over each parking lot and storefront on our side. Once or twice, cars ran up on us and hung on our bumper until Chuck irritably waved them around. A guy in a silver SUV pulled around and matched our speed so that the passenger could start screaming the riot act through her window, but she shut her trap and they scampered away when Chuck pulled out his badge and slapped it, face out, against the glass.

  Several of the lots were empty and we gave them no more than a cursory glance. Two had drive-thrus or wide delivery alleys that required investigation, but we found nothing but Dumpsters and chain-link fencing in back. All were well lit and deserted—no Mustang, no Lucy, no exchange. After fifteen minutes, we’d covered half of our assigned end of the strip and I wasn’t feeling good about our chances.

  “Chuck, even if they label Lucy a runaway, I think it’s time to call in the cavalry—” I began.

  “Wait,” he interrupted, pointing. “What’s that?”

  We were pulling adjacent to a restaurant, a retro-styled diner with polished aluminum sides like an old Airstream trailer. Inside, yellow lights revealed sleepy-looking waitresses shuffling between tables with coffeepots and menus. Most of the patrons huddled in booths, although a few sat at the counter in a scene reminiscent of Nighthawks—sans the moody romanticism and the classy dress. The thought of the coffee being poured inside made my stomach gurgle and my heart ache, but what had caught Chuck’s attention were seven cars hunkered down in the lot. All but one of them were bunched around the door. Not surprising, considering the
weather. The odd car out, however, was a black Mustang GT, parked in the farthest corner of the lot, at least five spaces away from its nearest neighbor. Compared to the others, it had only a light dusting of snow on its trunk and roof, and the tracks leading from the entrance to its stall were still visible. It hadn’t been there long.

  “That’s it,” Chuck said, his voice strung tight as a wire. “You ready?”

  “Just drag him out of the car?” I asked. “Assuming they’re in there?”

  “He might be packing,” Chuck said, understanding my question, “but he’s not expecting us. He thinks he’s meeting his payday. And there’s no reason to keep his gun trained on Lucy. She’s not going anywhere at this stage and he wouldn’t shoot her even if she was.”

  Good enough for me. “Let’s do it. I got passenger’s side.”

  Chuck wheeled into the parking lot and pulled in behind the Mustang, blocking it in. We jumped out and raced to either side of the muscle car. Adrenaline was racing through my arms and legs, making them feel itchy, but I ignored the sensation and drew my gun. In two steps, I was next to the car, close enough to hear a bumping sound coming from inside.

  I ripped open the passenger’s door with my left hand, keeping my gun trained on the space behind the window while Chuck did the same on the other side. Hot, moist air spilled out of the car. I caught a flash of legs, revealing a length of upper thigh, the skin stark white in the darkness of the car’s interior. A girl screamed at my intrusion and tried to climb into the backseat. A small part of my brain noticed that she wore—rather incongruously, I thought—fuzzy, shin-high fur boots, a short dress, and a leather jacket. Inside the diner, a few people glanced up from their cups.

  “Out of the car, motherfucker,” Chuck bellowed on his side, reaching in and grabbing a handful of hair. He dragged a man out of the car and shoved him face-first into the snow.

  With more finesse and care, I leaned in and got hold of the arm of the girl in the passenger’s seat, tugging her out into the light. “Lucy?” I asked. The girl’s black hair cascaded forward, hiding her face, and I bent down to look under the curtain.

  “Who the hell is Lucy?” she said, ripping my hand away. She ran a hand through her hair, revealing her comely—but very Caucasian and definitely not sixteen-year-old—face. Her lipstick was smeared and blue eyes glared back at me. I blinked. Not the reception I’d been expecting.

  Chuck was screaming obscenities at the driver on the other side of the car and wasn’t exactly beating him—yet—electing, instead, to lift him by the collar of his coat and slam him onto the ground like he was a pile of laundry. He raised his gun and pointed it at the back of the guy’s head. The look on my friend’s face was not good.

  “Chuck!” I yelled, skidding and sliding as I came around the back of the car. I grabbed at his arm. “Chuck!”

  Chuck tried to pull away and, for one dizzying moment, the barrel of his gun was pointed at my face. I ducked and used both of my hands to point his hand skyward. A weird noise was coming out of his throat.

  “It’s not him,” I shouted. “It’s not Lucy. Chuck! Listen to me!”

  Something I said got through. Chuck stopped body-slamming the driver long enough for the guy to roll over and backpedal away, the heels of his shoes slipping in the snow, his eyes wide and as round as eggs. We didn’t have a description of the guy we were looking for, but my intuition told me that the fiftyish white guy with an expression of stark terror on his face was not the hardened, lifelong criminal we were looking for.

  “Jesus Christ,” the guy whimpered. “Please . . .”

  Chuck stared down at him, his face stricken. Snow continued to fall, fat flakes that stuck to our hair and coats, not melting. Quicker on the uptake than her man, the girl sensed we’d made a colossal mistake and began yelling, then threatening lawsuits and damages. I reached forward and helped the man to his feet. Without a word, Chuck went back to his car and got in.

  “What was that about?” the man asked. “Did my wife send you?”

  “Mistaken identity,” I said. “Big time. Sorry about that.”

  “Sorry?” the girl said, overhearing me as she came around the car. She stuck a finger in my face. “You shove a damn gun in our faces and you think sorry is going to cover it?”

  I gave her a look, then turned to the man. “You want to report this to the police? First thing they’ll do is call your house to confirm your identity. Second thing they’ll do is tell whoever answers where you are. And who you were with.”

  “Let’s . . . let this one go, Maggie,” the man said, his eyes sliding from mine. He brushed the last of the snow from his jeans and got back into the Mustang. The girl looked furious, but she could either follow his example or stand in the snow and argue with me. She settled for giving me the finger and jumping into the passenger’s side.

  “Carry on,” I said. “If you can.”

  I got back in the Integra. The car was moving before I was completely inside. Chuck pulled out of the lot, took a right, and we continued the search.

  After a minute, I said, “Was it close?”

  “It was close,” he said.

  “Want to talk?”

  “No.”

  I nodded and looked out the window.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sarah had to shake herself every few minutes. Not because she was tired, though she was, but because she was looking at the same homogeneous signs and storefronts offered in every highway rest stop in five states. The pizza joint was followed by a sub shop, which bordered a gas station that shared a driveway with a waffle house, which was adjacent to another gas station. Two years as a TFC and she’d already seen so many versions of the same roadside lineup that she was having trouble even remembering where she was. Familiarity really did breed contempt. Or, in this case, blindness.

  But that wasn’t how you spotted one black Mustang among the dozens of cars already plying the roads. You weren’t going to pick out a frantic face pressed against the window if you were zoning out.

  So she forced herself to choose a significant detail from each building. The tire center had six windows, the convenience store had five. The waffle shop by the exit had a second floor—was it fake or did they have a use for it? That motel had so many lights on that you could probably see it from space but that one . . .

  . . . that one was dark as sin. Sarah sat upright. She actually had zoned out there for a second, but her wandering eyes had stopped cold on the dim silhouette of a building on a slight rise overlooking the strip. It was on one of the spurs she’d spotted on the map. It was completely dark, not just closed for the night. She’d already seen three or four daytime-only businesses and there was always at least a bright spotlight above the entrance or a glow coming from an inside lamp.

  Sarah caught the right to get to the spur, turning the wheel hand over hand, considering her decision. Not ten minutes ago, the three of them had decided that Eddie would choose a clean, well-lighted place for the exchange, with just enough traffic to blend in. The deserted shell of the . . . Calloway Motel, the sign said as the road wound up the hill, was precisely the kind of place Eddie would not pick, according to their theories.

  But it still made sense to check it out, she told herself. It was going to have a great view of the road below. If it was truly deserted, then there was literally no one to interrupt the trade. And it was still only a minute from the exit to the turnpike and the highway. Maybe it was more likely that they’d pick a restaurant parking lot, but it wasn’t impossible that they’d choose an abandoned motel, either. Dropping her speed to a crawl, she crested the small butte and eased into the motel parking lot.

  She wrinkled her nose as her headlights swept over the front of the building. Time had not been kind to the Calloway. The ramshackle motel looked as glum and down in the mouth as anything she’d ever seen in Baltimore. Architecturally, the building had been
built in a Swiss chalet style, with a high, peaked roof reminiscent of Alpine villages, but the effect was ruined by the modern attic vents at the top of the gable—and the bent and twisted louvers of the vents meant the Calloway wasn’t truly vacant; it was now home to a family of raccoons. That was something a childhood spent in rural Maryland told her was for sure. Gutters sagged and had fallen to the ground in many places. The windows that weren’t boarded up were broken. Someone had made a small effort at renovation—there was an industrial-sized Dumpster in the back, evidence of some renovation, maybe. But it wasn’t nearly enough to rescue the place.

  So far, however, none of that would keep it from being a great meeting place for two crooks, though there was no evidence of it now. She completed her circuit of the place, then pulled close to the farthest edge of the lot, nearly dangling the front bumper over the lip of the hill to get a view of the strip. The perspective wasn’t quite good enough to give her a clean look, however, so she sighed, zipped up her parka, then reached into the glove compartment for a pair of binoculars. She put her hands over the heating vents for courage, then stepped out of the cruiser and walked to the edge of the lot to scan the businesses below.

  It was like a bad version of Monopoly. The storefronts below were laid out in two simple grids on either side of the main drag. Each mercantile enterprise was lined cheek by jowl next to its neighbor, trying its best to hook the schools of fish that swam by day and night on their way to the main flow of the highway. Sweeping the binoculars side to side, she checked each lot and storefront in turn, seeing little of note.

  Sarah lowered the glasses, chewing her lip. She was getting lost in the details—the opposite of her previous problem of being too close to the minutiae as she drove by the storefronts. What was the big picture?