He paced for some time, then made a decision.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“I cannot believe what I’m hearing.” Annie sat in the tub, up to her neck in hot water in more ways than one. “You’re going to go? Now? Just like that?”
“Not just like that.” He shifted from one foot to the other, a gesture of impatience. “I’ve thought about this a lot.”
In that moment it became clear to Annie that Reid didn’t want to talk about this, despite what he’d said when he joined her in the bathroom ten minutes before. He’d already made up his mind. This so-called discussion was one step better than merely bolting, but the fact remained that he would walk out that door regardless what objections came out of her mouth.
“Don’t you understand about the tattoo?” he was saying. “Don’t you see that there’s only one way to explain the tipster knowing about the tattoo?”
“It may be that the security guard is Bigelow and that’s why he has the tattoo and the tipster saw it. But maybe the tipster knows about Bigelow’s tattoo some other way and is playing you. Didn’t you tell me that happens sometimes? Some lowlife has reasons of his own for wanting to send Reid Gardner on a wild-goose chase?”
“No.” He shook his head vigorously. “That’s not what’s happening here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know a good tip when I see one.” His voice hardened. “I’ve been doing this for years and I can separate the wheat from the chaff.”
“I think you’re seeing what you want to see. Hand me that towel.” She was going to lose this argument but didn’t want to do it naked and wet. She rose, wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out of the tub. “Even on the slim chance that this security guard actually is Bigelow, what’s the rush? Didn’t the tipster say the guy has been working at that apartment complex for six months? He’ll still be there in a few days. Or a week.”
Reid shot Annie a look of astonishment. “Are you kidding me? You think it makes sense to sit on this? That’s crazy.”
No, what was crazy was Reid bailing on her at this incredibly dangerous juncture to pursue a tip that seemed dubious at best. “Meanwhile what do I do? Paint a target on myself and then sit here and wait?”
“As I have said to you repeatedly, you will be fine.”
Yeah, right.
“I took a huge number of precautions to make sure that nobody followed us here and I am completely sure that nobody did. You will be safe. And I won’t be gone long anyway. Four, five hours max.”
She barreled out of the bathroom and dressed without bothering to towel herself dry. “At the cabin it took the killer only a few hours to get to me. I doubt I’ll have four or five hours tonight.”
“Don’t get melodramatic, Annie. Let’s keep things in perspective here.”
More remarks in that vein and Annie knew she’d skid from angry to irate. “What part of the big picture am I missing, Reid? Pray tell.”
“I have had just about enough of your sarcasm, too.” He got in her face the way he did when he wanted to make a point. “I have an opportunity here to take down Bigelow. You know how important that is to me. And you know I’ve been trying to do it for five years. I would think you’d be delighted if I could snag him and once and for all close that chapter of my life.”
He didn’t say what naturally followed but she heard it all the same. I could be with you then. There’d be nothing holding me back. We could be together.
Could Reid be so cynical? Was he dangling her dearest wish in front of her to get her blessing for this nocturnal jaunt of his? It was like showing a cancer patient a cure, a barren woman a baby, and saying, Do this one thing and get your heart’s desire.
In this case the one thing required Annie to be alone and vulnerable to a killer who’d very nearly sent her to her maker just 24 hours before. While Reid tilted at the windmill that remained forever on his horizon.
She threw out her hands. “Why do I even bother arguing? If it has to do with Bigelow, if it has to do with Donna, I lose. I know that already so why do I bother?”
“This isn’t some sort of competition, Annie.”
Like hell it isn’t. She spun around and gave him her back. She couldn’t look at him anymore. “Fine, then. Go. Just go.”
He needed no further encouragement. She heard him grab his keys and slam the door. His feet stomped away down the motel’s exterior corridor and in short order the pickup’s engine sprang to life. He took off at a tear. She could tell from the squeal his tires made on the asphalt.
Apparently this motel was a hotbed for drama. Between the two of them and the couple next door, Hollywood producers could launch a primetime slate of reality shows.
She collapsed onto the bed, its fraying coverlet already askew from when she and Reid had sat side by side watching the news. His attention had begun to stray even then, when he’d learned further details about Sheila Banerjee’s arrest. While Annie had occasionally envied Sheila for her longstanding relationship with Reid—the nature of which remained a mystery to her—she felt terrible for Sheila having been drawn into this morass. And Reid would feel doubly bad. Annie knew he hated nothing more than being unable to help those he loved when they needed it most.
She felt sure that Reid cared a great deal for her as well, but the fact remained that she found herself once again alone, once again trumped by his Bigelow obsession. Yes, she expected Reid to return. Yes, there was a chance she’d be just fine when he did. But it was equally possible that disaster would have struck. It had just the night before. What was that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
And Annie wasn’t risking only ignominy. She was risking death.
She catapulted off the bed as an idea that had been niggling at the back of her brain took center stage. She looked at Reid’s laptop, still booted up, abandoned on the desk. There was something that had bothered her from the start about this Bigelow tip but until now she hadn’t been able to put her finger on exactly what.
The timing. The timing was too convenient. This excellent tip appears on the Crimewatch site, complete with photo and precise tattoo description, on the very night Reid is being sought by the FBI. And it sites Bigelow at a Southern California location that Reid is bound to be both close to and familiar with.
Was the tip a hoax? A lure concocted to smoke out Reid Gardner? Lionel Simpson would know how desperately Reid wanted to capture Bigelow; the FBI had been helping him for years. And since Bigelow was a wanted fugitive, Simpson would be privy to the details of his tattoo.
Annie could easily imagine Simpson’s thinking. If I get Gardner, it won’t take long to get Rowell. She won’t be able to stay underground as well on her own. And I bet I can get Gardner to tell me where she is. After all, he’s fool enough to believe the serial killer has her in his sights.
Or …
She spun in panic.
Reid might unwittingly lead Simpson and company back to the motel. Law enforcement might simply follow him when he got back into his pickup, crestfallen, forced to conclude that the tip was a bust, that yet again he’d come up empty, that the security guard wasn’t Bigelow after all.
They’d expect Reid to return to Annette Rowell, their primary prey. And they’d be right.
She had to call him. She had to warn him this could be a trap. That was her only chance of turning him around.
She grabbed the pre-paid cell phone Reid had gotten her—a better method of communicating than the coded messages they’d traded on the Crimewatch boards—and called his pre-paid cell. She was acutely aware that she might fail to make her case. When it came to Bigelow, when it came to anything having to do with Donna’s murder, it was as if a veil came down over Reid’s eyes and he couldn’t see straight. The normally logical, analytical Reid Gardner.
In seconds she flung the cell phone onto the bed. “Dammit!” He wasn’t picking up. He probably didn’t have coverage. There were stretches of the route between Santa
Barbara and the San Fernando Valley where that was likely.
She couldn’t leave him a voicemail, either. If she was right, and the cops were setting him up, they would be sure to listen to the messages on his pre-paid cell phone if they got their hands on him. She would have handed law enforcement proof positive that Reid had been aiding and abetting a fugitive.
She’d try him again in a few minutes. But it was likely she was again on her own. She would have to save herself.
She paced the small motel room and willed herself to think strategically. One conclusion seemed inescapable, the same conclusion to which she’d been forced on other recent nights when she’d been alone and panic-stricken and her imagination conjured a killer in every footfall outside the door, every gust of wind against the window.
She couldn’t evade capture on her own. She needed help. Especially if she decided to act on the escape plan that was hatching in her mind.
In her debut mystery, a character wrongfully accused fled to Mexico. That country’s extradition treaty protected individuals charged with serious crimes, particularly those who might face the death penalty. It was a grim truth that Annie found herself in that camp.
Of course the border patrol would be hyper alert to that possibility. She would need assistance, not to mention a bold plan, to get past them. Who in the world could she call upon to help her?
She halted and stared down at the industrial-strength carpet beneath her bare feet. It was a silver-gray shade whose chief attraction was its ability to mask dirt. It was the very color of prison bars.
Focus. Who would help you?
It had to be someone the FBI wouldn’t expect her to contact, because all of those people would be under surveillance. In addition, it had to be someone who would believe in her innocence, someone she could trust not to turn her in.
Given those parameters, the field was very narrow.
In fact, she could come up with only one name.
Kevin Zeering. Now that she’d dismissed the possibility that he was the killer, she knew he would be on her side. And he wouldn’t show up in her address book or her cell phone, so the FBI would be unlikely to be watching him. Yet it was also possible that he’d been such a loud champion on her behalf that he’d drawn their attention.
Plus he was a good 350 miles away, all the way up north in Marin County. He would come to her if she called him, but that would take time. She didn’t have time.
Was she adding a new parameter? Did she need her help to come from somebody close by? She didn’t know anybody close by.
Actually, she realized after a moment’s reflection, she did. Someone she didn’t know well, but who had voiced his support after she’d been accused.
Maggie Boswell’s husband. Charles Waring. She’d seen him on TV saying flat out that he believed the police were wrong, that no way could Annette Rowell have committed the murders. It was part of the report about the protest her mom and stepdad had organized in San Francisco. He’d written the same thing on her Facebook page.
He was nearby. Very much so. Annie had stayed at this hotel for Maggie’s signing party precisely because of its proximity to the Boswell/Waring home.
Annie sank onto the bed as she turned this unlikely scheme over in her mind. How bizarre would it be for her to contact Charles Waring? It was the last thing in the world the man expected. They barely knew one another. They’d conversed a time or two at a conference, and of course at Maggie’s party, but they hadn’t exchanged even a single word at the funeral. Their acquaintance was extremely limited. On top of that, the poor man was recently bereaved. He was mired in grief. Could Annie really ask him to take on the risk of aiding her, a wanted fugitive? Could she really ask this man who hardly knew her to break the law by helping her escape to Mexico?
A pair of headlights raked the lone front window of the motel room. Annie rose abruptly. However preposterous Charles Waring might find her request for help, the worst he could do was say no. He believed in her innocence; he’d publicly said as much, more than once. He wouldn’t turn her in.
She grabbed her pre-paid phone and tried Reid one more time. When again he didn’t pick up, she glanced at his laptop. She had a task or two to complete before she left. She began hurriedly to gather what she would need. Whatever came of this desperate plot of hers, she wouldn’t be back.
*
Lionel Simpson watched Sam Trotter stare at the screen on his laptop. The internet browser window was open to the Crimewatch web site, where Trotter was trolling through tips that had led to fugitive arrests. Or takedowns, as the show liked to call them.
“Damn,” Trotter said. “I’m good.”
Simpson couldn’t argue. Trotter had crafted a cunning tip of his own. Now, while they waited for it to work its magic, Simpson sat in Trotter’s San Fernando Valley apartment. Along with Mark Higuchi, he occupied half the chairs at Trotter’s dining-room table. It was a pick-it-out-in-five-minutes piece of furniture, and suited the rest of the unit. Typical bachelor crib, down to the black leather sofa in the living room and the elaborate stereo equipment.
Though outwardly precious little was happening, Simpson believed himself finally to be gaining traction. True, his gambit of arresting Sheila Banerjee on obstruction of justice charges hadn’t produced the results he’d hoped for. She hadn’t caved and coughed up information. Nor had the rapidly spreading news of her arrest routed out her boss.
But Simpson and his team had built a very promising trap into which Reid Gardner well might fall. After which Simpson believed he would have a real chance to nab Annette Rowell, since Gardner was so deluded he believed he was the only thing standing between her and a serial killer.
“I bet Gardner’ll bite,” Higuchi said. “I bet he’s on his way right now to find—” He flashed big quotation marks in the air. “—‘Larry Bigelow.’ ”
“I gotta hand it to you, Lionel.” That from Trotter. “You called it. Gardner may be on the lam with Rowell but damn if he doesn’t still keep an eye on those online tips.”
At least the ones having to do with Larry “Eight Ball” Bigelow.
So maybe it was cynical of Simpson to prey on Gardner’s Achilles heel. That didn’t mean he felt bad about it. He had a job to do.
And though he felt no need to justify his behavior, Simpson also believed he was doing Gardner a favor. Maybe even saving his life. Gardner had lost all perspective when it came to Annette Rowell and Simpson had given up hope he’d get it back any time soon.
At least not without help.
*
By the time Annie arrived at the Boswell/Waring home, on foot, it was past 11 PM. She had had no trouble finding the place, although she had felt like the criminal she was accused of being wandering the unlit oceanfront streets. It was extremely odd to show up unannounced as well, especially at this hour, but Annie had no choice. She knew no phone number for Charles Waring, and of course, given Maggie Boswell’s celebrity, the home number was unlisted.
The property was better described as a compound than a home. It comprised a trio of two-story white clapboard buildings that occupied perhaps a hundred feet of prime beachfront. Annie remembered Maggie Boswell explaining during the book party that one of the smaller structures housed her office and the other served as guest quarters. As did all visitors, Annie approached the property from a dead end street whose other showcase homes hid behind towering ficus hedges or security walls.
On the walk over, Annie realized she might well end up spending the night like a vagrant, catching a few winks outside the perimeter near a sheltering shrub. As undesirable as that would be, especially given the chill in the air, it would hardly strengthen her case to waken Charles late at night to declare that she, a fugitive wanted in a series of murders, had chosen him above all others to spirit her past border patrol to safety in Mexico.
Yet when she peered at the main house through the iron gate that blocked the driveway, not every window was dark. Behind the curtains of an upstairs room, presumabl
y a bedroom, was the flickering light of a television.
She screwed up her courage and pressed the buzzer on the call box. A minute passed while she imagined herself under Charles’s surprised scrutiny. She was pondering whether to try again when she heard a static-y version of his voice emerge from the call box. “Yes? Who’s there?”
He sounded frightened. Annie could hardly blame him. “I’m so sorry to intrude on you like this, Charles, and in the middle of the night, too. It’s Annette Rowell.”
“Annette Rowell you say?” Now he sounded positively astonished.
“Yes. I wouldn’t have come except that I’m in desperate circumstances and I really need your help. I didn’t know where else to turn. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, no. But you’re at the gate? The gate of my house?”
“Yes. I walked over.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
A few seconds passed. Then, “Of course you must come in. Of course. Just take the path up to the main house. You remember it? You can manage in the dark?”
That was the least of her worries. The hydraulic gates swung inward and after a short walk up the driveway Annie found the narrow flagstone path to the house. Salty air tickled her nostrils. The surf’s lulling rhythm reminded her how exhausted she was. For a moment she allowed herself to imagine Charles accepting an abbreviated explanation for her appearance and graciously speeding her toward the luxurious guest house where, for a matter of hours at least, nothing would be demanded of her but sleep.
She had just arrived at the front door when it opened. “Come in, come in.” Charles stepped back and waved her inside. He looked very alert for the hour, fully dressed in jeans, topsiders, and a light gray Stanford tee shirt. His thinning gray hair was neatly combed. “Let me turn on a few more lights,” he said, and bustled away.
Chasing Venus Page 28