by John J. Lamb
“Of course you had a choice. You just elected not to make one, because you’re way too comfortable taking orders from your mommy,” I said in a mildly scoffing tone. “Grown men don’t behave that way. They make their own choices.”
“I make my own decisions!”
“Really? So, was it your idea to break off the relationship with Rhiannon?”
Kyle sagged slightly. “I . . .”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Rhiannon was in love with you, Kyle. And you loved her, because you were talking about getting married. Yet you threw it all away simply because your mom told you to.”
“Mom was only looking out for my own good.”
I gave him a pitying look. “Do you honestly believe that? Here’s a news flash, Kyle: It had nothing to do with your welfare. Your mom was jealous of Rhiannon. More importantly, a man your age looks out for his own good. Hell, I’ll bet the idea to steal Patrick wasn’t even your idea.”
“Mom said she was going to lose the house and that we had to do something.” Kyle took another couple steps closer and slowly lowered the pistol to his side.
“So, she forced you to break the heart of the woman you love, steal from your employer, destroy your career, and as a bonus, got you involved in an ambush murder. And this was for your own good?” I chuckled bitterly. “Thank God your mom wasn’t trying to ruin you.”
“It didn’t work out the way she thought it would.”
“Which is a clue that what she’s doing is selfish and wrong. Yet, you’re still following her orders like a little four-year-old . . . who’s terrified that he’ll be beaten and told he isn’t loved if he doesn’t obey. Which was exactly what happened when you were a kid, wasn’t it?”
Kyle’s body stiffened and his eyes met mine. He looked ill.
I sighed and continued in a softer tone, “My mom was the same way. She was a control freak and she played the same manipulative mind games with me that your mother does with you.”
“No, that’s not the way my mom is,” he said feebly.
“Right. Look, Kyle, I know you didn’t have a happy childhood, but it has been a long one. It’s time to grow up and cut the puppet strings. Would you have killed that man on Saturday night?’
“No.”
“If your mother hadn’t told you to, would you have planted the murder weapon in the car owned by the woman you love?”
“No.” Kyle swallowed hard.
“And would you have kidnapped an innocent woman so that you could sell Patrick back to Lycaon?”
Kyle shook his head.
“And if your mom says there’s no other way, are you going to stand by and let her kill my wife simply because we made the mistake of trusting her?” When there was no immediate answer, I continued. “Kyle, I’m begging you, just like you begged your mom in that motel room: Please, don’t kill Ashleigh. For once, make your own choice and do the right thing.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do, and I know that what I’m asking is hard. At least tell me where my wife is.”
“I can’t.” Kyle swiped at his eyes with the back of his left hand and then raised the pistol and pointed it at my face. “Give me Patrick.”
Realizing that I’d failed to sway him, I tightened my grip around the robot’s torso. “Not happening, Peter Pan. You’ll have to kill me and you won’t be able to pawn responsibility for that off onto your mom.”
He kept the weapon pointed at me and I could see sweat beading up on his forehead. His trigger finger was quivering and I found myself holding my breath as I wondered how much and long it would hurt before the bullet finally shut off my brain’s circuitry. Then I caught sight of a pearl gray import sedan flying down Jamestown Avenue and heading directly toward us.
Kyle cast a quick glance over his left shoulder when he saw that I’d noticed something behind him. By now, the car—which I could now see was a Honda—was less than a hundred yards away and we both realized that the approaching sedan was traveling far too fast to stop in time. I tossed Patrick on the ground and actually broke into a reasonable facsimile of a gallop toward the safety of one of the parking attendant kiosks.
Obedient to a suicidal fault, Kyle didn’t instantly flee for his life, but paused to pick up the robot. By the time he’d gathered Patrick into his arms and stood up to run, the speeding Honda was looming over him. The only reason he wasn’t smashed and sent flying through the air toward the stadium was that the Honda swerved away at the last second and only struck him a glancing blow. Still, it was a hard enough collision to send Kyle crashing to the asphalt like a limp marionette. Patrick flew almost ten yards farther, and the robot’s head and one of its arms came off when it smashed to the pavement.
Meanwhile, the swerving maneuver had caused the Honda to go out of control. Skidding sideways, the car slammed into one of the chain-link gates, which collapsed atop the now stationary sedan. The Honda’s motor continued to roar as its horn began blaring.
I half-limped, half-skipped over to the minivan and grabbed the portable radio, “Two-Henry-Sixteen, I need backup and paramedics now! We’ve had a major injury accident with at least two people severely injured.”
The dispatcher immediately acknowledged my call for help. At the same time, off to the west, sirens began yelping and howling like a big pack of robot coyotes. I went over to the Honda to check on the driver and shut the engine off before a fire developed. The left front door was jammed from the collision and the female driver was slumped forward over the steering wheel, her face buried in the fabric of the now deflated airbag. Using my cane to carefully break out the passenger window, I gently pulled the woman’s head back from the steering wheel. I was shocked to see it was Rhiannon. She was unconscious and had sustained a nasty jagged gash on her forehead. The first in a line of black-and-whites and unmarked police cars sped into the parking lot as I reached into the Honda to turn off its motor.
Gregg jumped from his car before it came to a full stop. “What the hell happened?”
“I wouldn’t give Kyle the bear and he was about to kill me when Rhiannon tried to turn him into a hood ornament. She was aiming to kill him, but changed her mind at the last moment,” I replied.
“Rhiannon? What was she doing here?” Gregg turned to look at the Honda.
“For all we know, she was Code Five on Lauren’s house and followed him from there. Maybe this was the first opportunity she had to make good on that promise.”
“What promise?” Gregg asked.
“That Kyle would pay in blood.”
Lieutenant Garza came running up from another detective car. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. How many traffic laws did you break getting here this quickly during rush hour from Fresno?”
“Lots, but that’s what you do when your first training officer calls for backup.”
“Thanks, Bobbie.” I stumped over toward where Heather and Colin knelt over Kyle, who was motionless. “Is he dead?”
Heather looked from the injured man. “No, but he’s got major trauma and I don’t think he’s going to be talking anytime soon. Did he tell you where Mama is?”
“No. That was one of the reasons I wasn’t going to give him the bear.”
“Daddy, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find your mom. I have an idea where to start looking.”
Twenty-five
A paramedic van rolled up and came to a stop near the Toyota. The medics jumped from the vehicle and one of them rushed to examine Kyle, while the other went over to Rhiannon. We all moved over to the side of the minivan to give the paramedics room to work. Meanwhile, more and more cops arrived. Next, a television station van came tearing down Jamestown Avenue. They’d obviously been monitoring the police radio frequencies and knew that a major operation was under way.
I said, “Bobbie, you’re going to have to prevent them from broadcasting any video of the scene. If word of this somehow gets back to Lauren, she’ll kill Ash.”
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“I’ll stop them if I have to break their freaking camera,” said Garza as she ran toward the van, which had come to a stop about thirty yards away.
Heather asked me, “So, where do you think they took Mama?”
“Out of the city. That would explain the lengthy time lag from the actual kidnapping to the delivery of the demand note,” I replied. “I dropped your mom off at Lauren’s just before nine o’clock and it’s safe to assume that she was subdued and moved from the house shortly thereafter.”
Gregg said, “Yet the bear with the demand note wasn’t dropped off at the station until just after one-thirty.”
“That’s maybe four hours after they kidnapped her,” said Heather.
I nodded. “And there’s no reason for that long of a delay, unless they drove Ash a significant distance.”
“But I don’t see how that can help us, sir,” said Colin. “You can cover an awful lot of ground in four hours.”
Another paramedic van rolled up, its emergency lights flashing and siren wailing.
I waited until the siren was turned off before answering, “That’s true, but we can narrow down the possible destinations to a very short list. For instance, Lauren would need to take Ash someplace where she wasn’t going to be seen dragging her kidnap victim into a building.”
“You’re right,” said Gregg. “You’d need someplace private.”
“Someplace like that cabin up in the Gold Country,” I said. “Didn’t she say it was in Volcano?”
“Yeah.”
“What county is that in?”
“El Dorado,” said one of the newly arrived uniformed cops.
“No, it’s Amador County,” said Gregg, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket. “I’ll have dispatch call their sheriff’s department and see if they have anything on file about Vandenbosch.”
“And if not, they need to check their tax assessor’s files,” I said. “They’ve had that cabin since Kyle was a kid, so they ought to have an address somewhere.”
Garza came jogging back from her brief confab with the TV reporter. She said, “We’re good for now. They’ll sit on the story and video until we give them the okay . . . or until some other station breaks the news.”
“So, the clock is still ticking,” I said, watching the new team of paramedics go over to help treat Kyle.
“Unfortunately,” Garza sighed. “Who is Gregg talking to?”
“Dispatch. He’s having them call Amador County SO to see if they have an address on file for Vandenbosch. I think Lauren might have taken Ash to a cabin somewhere near Volcano.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“It’s an old and mostly abandoned gold rush town in the Sierra foothills near Jackson, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from here. The problem is, we need to get there fast.” I checked my watch. “It’s five-thirty-one now and I’d imagine that Lauren will be expecting Kyle to arrive no later than nine.”
“Wouldn’t he call her?”
“Not if she was concerned there was a trace on the cabin’s phone.” I hesitated for a second before continuing. “Bobbie, can we get a chopper here, now? But let’s get one thing straight—I’m going.”
“Of course you are . . . and I don’t feel like arguing with your daughter and her partner either. So we’ll need two choppers,” said Garza, pulling her phone from her pocket. “I’ll have them land here in the parking lot.”
“You’re taking both choppers out of the city? The brass will have a fit, especially when they find out you took a civilian along for the ride,” I warned.
“The brass can kiss my butt.” Garza turned to Colin. “Sinclair, check with the uniforms and see if someone has a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters in their car.”
“I’ve got a set in my trunk. They come in useful when we’re serving dope search warrants,” said Colin.
“Good. Then cut the lock on that gate, so we can get into the parking lot.” Garza pointed to one of the entrances to Monster Stadium.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Colin and Heather went to open the gate, as Garza began pressing the numbers into her phone. Meanwhile, I limped over to where Patrick’s decapitated and broken body lay on the asphalt. The robot’s head was several yards from the torso. I bent to pick up the fur-covered cranium and found it was surprisingly heavy. Torn wiring, heavier data cables, and part of the metal skeleton protruded from the bottom of the head, looking like a caricature of human viscera. I peered into Patrick’s dead blue eyes and tried to comprehend how something so cute and innocent had been the cause of so much tragedy. Then I reminded myself, the bear hadn’t caused this. As always, it was evil and selfish people who were at fault. Meanwhile, I heard a metallic snapping sound and glanced over to see Heather and Colin pushing the gate open.
Gregg’s excited voice jerked me from my morose reverie. “We’ve got an address!”
“What?”
“An address. I talked to the night watch commander from Amador SO. The county tax assessor employees had already gone home, so he broke into the office and looked up the information.” He waved his notepad.
“Is the cabin in Volcano?”
“Yeah. In fact, the watch commander knows the place. It’s just east of town, back in the hills, on some side road. He’s going to send a deputy in an unmarked vehicle to see if the Outback is there.”
“If the place is that isolated, Lauren is going to notice a strange car.” I tried to keep the fear from my voice.
“Don’t worry. We talked about that and you can apparently see the front of the cabin from a hilltop that’s about two hundred yards away. The deputy is going to scope the place with binoculars and then pull back. And before you say anything, all the communications will be done via phone. He’s also calling in the local CHP office and the regional SWAT team, just in case.” Gregg pointed at Patrick’s head. “What are you going to do with that?”
I tossed the head once in my hand. “I know it’s evidence, but I’m going to take it with me. Lauren is going to want proof this is over.”
Garza snapped her phone shut and walked over to us. “One chopper has an ETA of two minutes. The other is re-fueling now and will be here in ten minutes.”
As Gregg brought Garza up-to-date on what he’d learned from the Amador County Sheriff watch commander, I walked over to Heather, who’d just signaled me with a tiny wave. She stood with Colin next to their unmarked car.
“What’s up, honey?” I asked.
“Chris just called. He’s on his way to St. Louis to catch a flight to Oakland,” said Heather. “If there aren’t any delays, he’ll be here just after midnight.”
“Hopefully, we’ll have good news for him by then.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s frightened, Daddy.”
“That makes three of us. The choppers will be here soon.” I glanced at Colin. “I know you’re a member of the SWAT team. Do you want to bring anything special with you on the flight?”
“Just this.” Colin reached into the backseat of the car and pulled out a brutal-looking black submachine gun with a laser-sight.
Off in the distance, we could hear the thrumming sound of a helicopter approaching fast and from the north. Then the airship rushed into view and I was relieved to see it bore the blue seven-pointed star of SFPD and not the logo from a TV station. The police helicopter circled the stadium once to make sure there weren’t any nearby telephone or power lines, and then landed in the parking lot, about thirty yards away.
Garza trotted up to me and shouted to be heard over the deafening whine of the chopper’s turbine engine. “Do you want to wait for the second helicopter so that we can all go together, or do you and Gregg want to head out now and we’ll catch up?”
“Has he heard anything back from Amador SO?” I asked.
“No. Too soon.”
“Then we’ve got to roll the dice and go.”
“That’s what I figured you’d say.”
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br /> I turned to Heather and Colin. “I’ll see you in just a little while in Amador County.”
In no time at all, we were over the bay, flying low and fast. So low, in fact, that it looked as if we were about to slam into the gray water, but we were near Oakland International Airport and had to stay low so that we kept out of the flight paths of the passenger jets. Then we were back over land again and our elevation began to increase.
About ten minutes later, the observer officer turned in his seat to tell us that the second helicopter, carrying Heather, Garza, and Colin, was on its way. I was glad we’d decided to go on ahead. I didn’t hear it, but Gregg’s phone rang as we were flying over the Central Valley.
There was a short, shouted conversation and then Gregg disconnected from the call and spoke loudly into my ear, “The Outback is there.”
I felt simultaneously relieved and terrified. I replied, “We can’t land too close to the cabin.”
“There’s no place to land up there anyway. We’re supposed to set down in Jackson, about thirteen miles away. The regional SWAT team is getting ready to deploy. They’re going to establish a loose perimeter, just to make sure Lauren doesn’t go mobile,” said Gregg.
I reached up to tap the observer officer on the shoulder and yelled, “What’s our ETA?”
He half-shrugged and loudly replied, “Twenty minutes or so.”
Ahead and in the distance was the grayish-brown bulk of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was just after 6:50 P.M. when the helicopter began to descend into a narrow valley hemmed with forested hills. Raising myself slightly so that I could look out the windshield, I saw the red-and-blue flashing lights of two police cars marking a high school football field as the LZ. We were on the ground less than a minute later. The Air Bureau cops wished Gregg and me good luck as we clambered from the aircraft.
A lanky and gray-haired Amador Country Sheriff’s captain met us as we hurried toward the patrol car. Shaking hands with us, he introduced himself as Mitchell Tewksbury and told us that he was in command of the hostage rescue operation. There wasn’t any fresh news. The SWAT team was in position, but they’d seen no activity around the cabin.