"This is Killian, you called?"
"Yes. I've got a warrant for the arrest of Jared Pratt, I thought you might like to know."
The detective was thunderstruck. "What's he done?"
"Nothing," the probation officer replied. "It's a Mickey Mouse warrant for moving without permission, being late for one appointment two months ago and failing to be gainfully employed. I told my superior that I wanted to get him in front of a judge to see if that wil1 scare the kid into a job. He approved it.
"I took the liberty," Worthington continued, "of obtaining a certified copy for you if you want it."
"I'll be right over." Jesus, Killian thought rushing out his office door, Jesus Christ.
~
The team met briefly at ten beside a Laundromat. Rachel looked sprightly, soaked as she was in sun-block. Ross was his usual skeptical self, Killian ecstatic.
"The probation violation warrant helps us a lot," he explained. "It means our search of him and his car will be legal and will make any charges involving Rachel very difficult to throw out of court on a technicality." Killian held the warrant up. "This really strengthens our hand."
The operation was set to go that day at ten-thirty. All three officers assumed their positions as they had. Today, Killian thought his jaws working in knots, today.
~
Jared rose at two-thirteen, his night's sleep had been filled with frightening dreams of strange shapes and motions. He was adrift, uncertain and alien within the familiarity of his cottage. Jared sat beside his bed and it was as though he viewed himself from a distance. It disturbed him and he gripped the edge of his bed with sweaty palms and held on like a lone survivor in a swamping raft.
It was nearly three in the afternoon when he drove out of the alley. In his pocket was a folding Buck hunting knife.
A Wednesday. A work day. School was still in recess and would be for another three weeks. August, unquestionably the worst month of all in Phoenix with its searing and muggy heat. Many small businesses were closed while the owners escaped to the mountains or sea, the larger businesses undermanned, employees gone for annual vacations.
Traffic was moderate that day and not expected to be a factor in the operation. Jared drove by Rachel at three-fourteen and again at three-thirty six. He barely glanced at her either time.
It was four-sixteen when the policewoman assumed her place for the third time day, Ross vigilant behind the Ford, Killian tired but alert.
Four slow minutes passed before the familiar car came into view. Rachel smiled brightly and her location, identity and the time for Ross to record. Jared pulled in and got out of the car.
"Hi, mister. Wanna buy some flowers?" Ross heard her clearly over his recorder.
"Yeah. What's those?" Rachel watched Jared lick his upper lip.
"Carnations. They're three dollars."
Jared stared brazenly at her then said, "You got nice tits." Rachel remained silent thinking of the tape slowly turning and recording it all. Here it comes, she thought. "Real nice tits. Are they for sale too?" Jared snickered obscenely.
"No, they're not and I'm not either," Rachel replied, keeping her voice small, frail and vulnerable.
With a speed that surprised her, Jared pulled his knife from his pocket and opened it in one smooth, practiced motion. He seized her arm, pressing the blade to her side and pulled her against him and towards the car.
"Get in! Get in or I'll kill, whore! Get in! Now!" He pushed the knife into Rachel's flesh, an involuntary cry emitting from her as she was plunged headlong into the car. "Down! Get down!" Rachel was pushed and abused forward, her head against the floor board, curled away from her abductor.
Jared pulled the car into the afternoon traffic.
~
"Now?" Ross asked Killian over the radio. Their conversation was not recorded. "In a minute. Let him get far enough for kidnapping. Monitor the conversation for intent."
Ross pulled westbound onto McDowell heading toward the desert. Killian was pulling, also westbound, onto McDowell. Unfortunately, Jared swerved through traffic and turned east.
"Stay down bitch or I'll kill you," he shouted at Rachel. He held the knife blade against her buttocks. A small circular blood stain appeared across her tight white cotton shorts.
"Please don't hurt me," she whispered, telling herself it was a role she played, not entirely convinced.
"Shut up or I'll kill you!" Jared shouted savagely his eyes glazen.
"What the hell!" Ross yelled, "he's heading east!"
Killian swore bitterly and nearly struck a pickup truck as he attempted to cut across two opposing lanes of traffic. A tractor-trailer rig, eastbound on the far side of the road, boxed him in.
The driver had seen Killian swerve into and then across the traffic and had applied his brakes, stopping so as to inadvertently hold Killian immobile. Ross maneuvered successfully into the correct lane narrowly averting disaster but found himself now almost hopelessly too far behind Pratt. He accelerated briskly, passing off three cars in quick succession to his left. Ross pulled closer to Pratt’s car and called back to Killian.
"I've got them visual. What's your situation?"
"All fucked up," Killian responded. "I've got a traffic jam going for God's sake. I'll get free in a second. Don't loss them and keep the recorder going."
Ross glanced at his speedometer and saw he was exceeding sixty but still only just matching Pratt’s pace. "Bob, we better call in backup. It's getting too risky. We've got enough," he said into the microphone.
"Right. Go ahead. I'm free now. Heading eastbound on McDowell."
Ross reached down to switch over to the general police frequency disturbed by the silence coming from Rachel's body mounted transmitter. At that moment a rusty grey pickup, filled to over flowing with field workers pulled directly in front of him. Ross just had time to swerve to the right. His car struck a grass covered irrigation ditch and then he saw the clear blue sky below him as the car rolled onto its roof.
It had been a remarkably smooth accident and Ross hung suspended by his safety belt, unharmed, thoroughly enraged. He was climbing out the window as Killian skidded to a halt beside him.
"Jesus," Killian shouted. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm O.K."
"Get the recorder and come on."
Ross ducked into the unmarked police car, oblivious to the clustered spectators and grabbed the portable recorder, still operating on its batteries. Nothing was coming over it and Ross feared it had been damaged in the accident.
Ross climbed into Killian's car and the two sped eastward on McDowell. Pratt car was no longer visible. "What about my car?" Ross asked absentmindedly.
"We'll leave it. Time to take care of it later. Put an alert out on Pratt’s car." Both detective's eyes were glued to the road as Ross broadcast the description and a stop on the car, possible kidnapping in progress.
"Shit, what a mess," Ross commented as he finished the broadcast.
"Do you see it?" Killian asked.
"No, we've lost it unless we get lucky."
"We better get lucky fast or Rachel's dead," Killian said though there had been no need. Both knew the obvious.
"God damn it, why the hell didn't he head for the desert?" Ross said aloud though really only to himself. There was no answer and none was offered.
"What's the range on the receiver?" Killian asked vaguely recalling it was a mile or so.
"One half to two miles, depending."
Killian nodded. That would give them some idea as to how far away they were when... if, they started receiving again. In the recorder, the tape continued turning silently.
"Shit. We've got to do something," Ross blurted.
"His place. I can't think of anywhere else he would go,"
Killian said. The two agreed and turned north at full speed heading for Pratt’s cottage.
~
Rachel was silent since Pratt’s last warning, knowing that her silence would cause concern for Ros
s and Killian but too afraid to cross Pratt. She couldn't see him, nor hear him but the sharp bite of his blade told her he was there.
The knife was removed as the car swayed down a dirt road. So soon, she thought, all sense of direction lost. She hadn't expected to reach the desert this soon and she knew that Ross and Killian should have stopped them by now. Something was terribly wrong. Her breath came in short, labored gasps as for the first time she was genuinely terrified.
Jared turned down his alley way and accelerated to the rear of his cottage, stopping abruptly beside it. He pressed the blade back into the woman's yielding flesh and whispered hoarsely, "Out cunt! Get out! Careful or I'll cut you bad." Jared breathed like a long distance runner and perspiration dotted his fleshy face.
Rachel opened the door slowly, Pratt right behind her, his arm gripped about her neck. He forced her to the rear door, fumbling with his key momentarily one handed before opening the lock. Rachel thought to attempt a break but he held her vice-like in his demonic grip.
Christ, he's crazy, she thought as though it were a revelation as Jared shoved her through the gapping doorway. Jared removed a gag from his rear pocket as he tripped Rachel to the floor, leaping on her back, commanding her docility, obedience and silence with the keen blade of his knife laid to her vulnerable, exposed throat.
He tied her hands above her neck so he could control her every motion without difficulty. Rachel was surprised and dismayed at the ease with which she was so effectively incapacitated. Bob, Bob, get here soon, she screamed inside her head. All thought was gone of the case. Rachel was desperate for her life.
Jared dragged her across the dirty linoleum by the nylon cord and tossed her atop his bed, pinning her with his knee, brandishing the knife against her throat. Rachel barely moved but felt the sticky touch of plastic to her bare back and glancing around her without moving her head saw that the bed was covered with a clear, thick plastic sheet.
Jesus, she thought at first and then with slow comprehension, Oh my God!
Jared looked down at her and laughingly hysterically reached forward cut her halter from her breasts. The transmitter remained undisturbed still concealed within her shorts.
"Nice tits," he said as he pinched a nipple harshly with finger and thumb.
Jared produced a cord from below the bed and after securing Rachel's hands to the headboard, with a single hand, tied her legs spread eagle to the lower bed frame. His victim thrashed uncontrollably even though the knife was pressed sharply to the cup of her soft throat.
A thin film of saliva formed on Jared's lower lip as he finished and dribbled down his chin as he pulled Rachel's right breast high into a tight cone and lowered his blade to its base. "Nice tits," he whispered huskily.
~
Killian glanced at his speedometer and noted without reaction that he was topping eighty. The detectives had received permission to roll Code Three and so with magnetic flasher atop the car and
siren blaring they sped northward.
"Can you hear anything?" Killian demanded referring to the receiver at Ross’s feet.
"Nothing, not over this racket."
One quarter mile from Pratt’s cottage Killian cut the siren. "Now what?" he asked.
"Nothing. No... just a second. ‘Nice tits‘. He just said 'Nice tits'!"
Killian took the corner into Pratt’s alley in excess of forty miles per hour, the car momentarily standing on two wheels, the detective fighting for control. Ross seized the microphone and called out the code for 'officer needs assistance'. He recited the address as the car skidded some sixty feet to a stop.
"You take the front!" Killian shouted as he leaped from the car with his snub nose thirty-eight in hand. Ross abandoned the recorder in the car and dashed to the oleanders, plunging into them only to strike cyclone fencing. Cursing savagely he pawed his way over it, fighting the confining jungle around him.
Killian hit the back door at a dead run risking shoulder injury in the event Pratt had braced the door from within. He had seen the lock before and knew it would not hold by itself. The door gave.
Killian lurched to his left, spotted Pratt hovering above Rachel's naked body, a blade lowered to her breast. "Freeze, mother fucker!" he shouted at the top of his voice, cocking his weapon as he ran towards Pratt forgetting the tape.
"Freeze asshole or you're dead!" he shouted as he almost reached the two of them.
Pratt jerked his head sideways and Killian applied pressure to the trigger prepared to take the man's head off for that slight movement. Just then the front door flew open and in rushed Ross, covered in dust from the brush, gun leveled at Pratt.
"Hands up, asshole," Ross shouted. Pratt hesitated, head twitching back and forth from officer to officer – then slowly, so very slowly, he raised his hands.
Ross seized the man, cuffing him behind his back, reciting his Miranda Rights from memory primarily for the sake of the recorder in the car, hoping for some spontaneous admission as icing on the cake.
Killian took the Buck knife, sliced Rachel's bonds and removed her gag. He sat holding her, rocking back and forth. "Are you alright?" he breathed into her ear.
“Just hold me. Just hold me," she whispered while in the background sirens blasted the air as marked cars responded to Ross’s call for urgent assistance.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jared Pratt was arrested at four-forty one on a Wednesday afternoon twenty five days following the death of Tracy Fremont. Ross handled the actual booking, listing as charges: Assault with a Deadly Weapon with Intent to Cause Great Bodily Harm, Kidnapping, Sexual Assault, Sexual Abuse, and Aggravated Assault.
Because Jared was booked at the jail so late in the afternoon he was not to appear in court for his initial appearance until the following morning. At that time a Court Commissioner would decide on an appropriate bail.
Ross had long before reluctantly accepted that virtually everyone he arrested was routinely released, usually without bail, within one day and often before he had completed the departmental report. In normal circumstances Pratt could expect to be released. At this stage of the legal process the court's sole concern was Pratt’s propensity for keeping court dates. That had already been established previous to his abducting Rachel. It was a peculiar, perverse quirk of law that the more often a man was adjudicated the better risk the court considered him to be for pre-trail release.
Booking was complete at six-fifty two at which time Ross called Diana then went to the police station to write his first departmental report on the entire episode since the operation had begun. He knew he would need to consult with Killian on some of the details. Their two reports must match exactly. Glancing at his wristwatch he calculated that he’d finish at midnight.
~
Killian had covered Rachel before the uniformed officers arrived and taken her outside to the car. The recorder had been still running so Killian turned it off then slipped the cassette into his pocket. A detective arrived a few minutes later and began interviewing a sobbing Rachel. Even though she was a police officer she was after all the victim and procedure called for a detective not involved in the operation to take the report from her. Later she would also prepare a departmental report on the incident just as every officer even remotely involved would.
Pratt laughed periodically and inappropriately but had nothing to say at the scene of the offense. He was taken outside and an officer assigned to stand with him not just to insure he remained but to overhear any spontaneous comments the subject might utter. They would be admissible.
Killian and Ross began their search as soon as Pratt was removed from the cottage. In previous years they could legally search Pratt’s entire cottage since he had been arrested inside it. Recent court decisions had struck such searches down and now arresting officers were restricted to approximately arms reach, the accepted area in which the subject might have concealed evidence just prior to his arrest.
A store room of heroin might be in a bedroom and the officers cou
ld seize it but Pratt could not be legally charged with it, not unless it was within arm’s reach of the point of arrest. Under the bed as Killian knew they would, the detectives discovered the shoe boxes of women's panties. In daylight they
examined them, uncovering the soiled, blood stained pair Killian had taken the specimen from a few days previously. They also found another knife by the bed.
Killian elected to systematically search the entire residence. There was a remote chance that something tying Pratt to Tracy's death might be uncovered and possibly a good prosecutor would find a way of making a case from it. Not likely but possibly.
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