The Last Hostage

by Nance, John J. ;

  “I heard that exchange, and I was stunned. But I wonder if the conclusion isn’t premature.”

  She nodded. “We were stunned, too, but there’s no question that if Bradley Lumin didn’t take that picture—and he couldn’t have—then he didn’t kill Melinda. In fact, he may not even have been involved.”

  North sat back, looking off balance. “But, there was a picture of Melinda on his computer, wasn’t there?”

  “Planted,” Kat shot back. “Lumin was never there. Somebody purposely framed Lumin.”

  Bill North looked carefully at Ken Wolfe, then back at Kat. She could almost feel the herculean effort he was making to stay calm.

  “Well, who, then?” North asked. “You think someone working for one of my companies knows the answer?”

  She shook her head. “No, Bill. I think you know the answer personally.”

  She could hear Ken shift position to her left and almost feel his puzzlement.

  North was shaking his head. “Me? I told you, I own a lot of companies—”

  She raised her hand to stop him. “There’s a cabin in Maine that’s been used for some time as a sort of studio for kiddie porn films. We have independent evidence already of that, discovered in Lumin’s trailer in Colorado. That’s the same cabin Melinda was held in and raped in. Lumin made sex videos there. Of course, that Maine cabin hasn’t been used since Melinda’s death, but it was a filthy porno studio, and Bill, it was feeding one of your enterprises.”

  He snorted and looked around as if in awe of her naivete. “Certainly you can’t believe the chairman of a distant holding company would have any direct knowledge of such activities, even if that were true?”

  “Not only do you know about that cabin, Bill, you own it, albeit indirectly. See, we never knew where to look for that cabin before. Maine’s a big place. Now that you’re involved, we know where to find it.”

  Bill North smiled suddenly and shook his head. “Kat, you’ve got this all tragically wrong. If someone’s been doing illegal things in one of my companies, or even if someone bought and misused an insignificant piece of property I happen to own somewhere, I wouldn’t have any notification. I’m just the overall owner of a holding company.”

  “Oh, it gets far worse, Bill, and much closer to your doorstep. Your company in Chicago will eventually tell us how close your contacts were, and we know they maintained the e-mail address called SHRDLU2, which was later used to place a horrible picture taken during Melinda’s captivity on Bradley Lumin’s computer to frame him, and another one on Rudolph Bostich’s computer to warn him to keep quiet, and that was after Bostich had been tipped about Lumin. When we get to the end of that corporate chain, we find Bill North himself, and not as just the distant CEO.”

  North had been sitting with his mouth open and an expression of outraged alarm. He stood suddenly with an air of bravado and shook his head.

  “I’ve had about enough of this irresponsible nonsense. Get the hell off my airplane!”

  Ken raised the .44 toward his head.

  “Sit down, North! Now! You’re going to answer our questions fully, or you’re going to die. I’ve heard more than enough to justify killing you already.”

  Bill North looked down the barrel of the .44 and swallowed hard, then looked at Kat, who nodded and gestured toward the swivel chair. He sank into it again, his face a study in fury. He shook his head and snorted. “I can see why they don’t trust you at the FBI, Bronsky. You’re an amateur! You’re trying to incite a hijacker by personally connecting an investor with supposed misdeeds of employees of subsidiary companies light-years distant. No prosecutor would listen for a minute to such garbage. And what’s worse, you’re torturing this poor guy for nothing!” he gestured to Ken.

  She stared back hard at him. “Bill, I haven’t made myself clear. I’m not saying that someone in your company framed Bradley Lumin and intimidated Rudy Bostich. I’m saying you did so yourself.”

  “WHAT?” North sat back with a wild-eyed expression.

  Ken stood away from the wall suddenly, his voice taut and urgent. “Kat, what do you mean?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Ken, Bill North is the owner and user of that e-mail site.”

  “How do you—” Ken began, but Kat raised a hand to silence him.

  “Bill,” Kat said, “as of this moment, I have to inform you as an FBI agent that you are under investigation for involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Melinda Wolfe. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right—”

  “WHAT? What kind of bullshit is this?” Bill North snapped, his eyes wide with surprise and fury.

  She placed a finger to her lips, then finished the Miranda warning.

  Ken had remained in the same position next to the left wall, but now he was moving forward again, the gun shifted to his left hand, his right hand suddenly on her shoulder. “Kat, what’s going on here?”

  She looked up at him with a flint-hard expression of command. “Bear with me, Ken! Just listen. And trust me.”

  He licked his lips, his eyes shifting to North and back to her. He nodded then, and backed away, keeping the gun pointed in North’s general direction.

  There was a look of panic mixed with rage on North’s face as his eyes darted between Ken and Kat.

  “Agent Bronsky, if this is how you repay the efforts of a concerned citizen, then I’d say it’ll be a cold day in hell before I’d recommend helping the FBI again.”

  She looked at him and nodded. “It did surprise me, Bill, that you made your aircraft available so fast. Then I found out you’re the vice chairman of the airline involved. Later I discovered that the key to some of the evidence in Melinda’s killing lay in your hands.”

  “Bronsky, what on earth are you talking about?” North asked through the most sarcastic expression he could manage.

  She sighed and looked at the thick carpet, then reached out and traced a line along the surface of the ornate coffee table, letting him wait for several moments until she snapped her eyes back to his.

  “Bill, let’s talk about what really happened to Melinda Wolfe.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, and gestured to the ceiling with the palms of his hands as he sat back. “Fine! Hold a gun on me and talk about anything you want, Agent Bronsky!”

  “All right. Let’s talk about a growing business of providing pornography to a world that seemingly can’t get enough of it.”

  “I suppose that’s all my responsibility, too?”

  “You service the demand, but you cross the line when your products show children engaged in sex.”

  “None of my companies knowingly—”

  “CAN IT!” she snapped, letting her voice return instantly to a quiet, controlled level. “We already know your companies bought the filthy kiddie porn videos Bradley Lumin made. You provided the studio cabin because these were special porno productions that could bring top dollar. It was all business. You’d personally rather be with a girl physically than just watch, but you’re a businessman and such things make money.”

  “I have no knowledge of any such productions anywhere in my companies.”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes, you do. Of course you kept a good layer of insulation between you and the operational side, but one day, Mr. Lumin, who worked under contract, snatched the wrong kid. Instead of some female street urchin who’d do the flicks, take the abuse, then take the money and never complain, Lumin snagged a little girl named Melinda who didn’t want to roll in the gutter with vermin like him. Lumin’s an idiot and a pedophile coward. Suddenly the picture of the little girl he’s got drugged and tied up in your cabin in Maine is on every newscast on the East Coast as a kidnap victim. He rapes her, beats her to get her to shut up, then panics and runs when he thinks he’s killed her, and your middle man breaks all the rules and calls you in Salt Lake and tells you about it.”

  “This is fantasy, Bronsky!”

  “There are phone records, North,” she shot back, s
atisfied at the impact of her words.

  “He tells you there’s a mess in Maine, and he’s not going to clean it up. In fact, he quits on the spot, and tells you never to call him again. You don’t know what to do, and you’re afraid the little girl may be dead or dying, so you have to race to Maine and take care of it. Bottom line, you end up in that cabin with Melinda Wolfe.”

  “WHAT?” The roar of outrage from her left caused Kat to jump, the chance that she’d gone too far with Ken’s patience a real worry as she turned to find him moving forward toward North, his hand twitching on the grip of the .44 as he leveled it at North’s head.

  “Are you saying this bastard killed Melinda?”

  Again she raised her left hand to stop Ken, aware that his compliance was tenuous. “Ken, stay calm. Mr. North’s got a lot to tell us. Right, Bill?”

  “I have no goddamn idea what you’re talking about, Bronsky!” North snapped.

  She leaned forward, her eyes boring holes in his. “You were in that cabin with Melinda.”

  “Bullshit! I was never anywhere close!”

  “She was alive when you got there, wasn’t she, Bill?”

  “I wasn’t there! Goddammit, what does it take to get through to you? I wasn’t anywhere near Maine or Connecticut or anywhere else but Salt Lake City at that time. I can prove it!”

  A hesitant, familiar voice reached Kat’s left ear from the passageway to the cockpit.

  “That’s … not entirely correct, boss.”

  Kat looked up to see Dane Bailey standing with a shocked expression next to Ken. Bill North’s head whirled in the same direction.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Bailey?”

  He looked down at a pilot log book in Bailey’s right hand.

  “I keep all my logs aboard. Two years ago yesterday you woke Jeff and me at two A.M. and had us get the jet ready to fly you to Boston, which we did. I remember it very well because it was my son’s first birthday party, and I had to miss it, and I was really ticked off at you. You kept us waiting in Boston for two days, and never explained why it was so urgent.”

  “That was business!” North snapped.

  “Nevertheless,” Kat interjected, “it places you there, and we’ll find the car you used to dump Melinda’s body.”

  “WHAT?”

  Kat sat on the edge of the coffee table again.

  “Bill, did you kidnap and kill Melinda Wolfe?”

  “WHAT? HELL, NO!”

  “Bill, we know you were present in the room with a kidnapped young girl.”

  He started to protest again, but Kat raised her hand for silence and he complied, his face a mask of purple rage.

  “We know, and can prove, that you were present in that cabin with Melinda Wolfe, whose body was later found in a Connecticut forest. She was alive when you were there.”

  He started to respond, then caught himself, and Kat noticed.

  Good! He’s moving toward the edge. He’s dying to tell me she was dead when he got there.

  She moved her face within inches of his. “How could you just take her picture in order to frame someone else, and leave her to die?” She heard Ken suck in his breath and moan like an animal in distress, but she couldn’t stop now. She was too close to breaking North.

  North was shaking his head vigorously, but beads of perspiration were popping out on his forehead.

  “This is insane! These are ‘have you stopped beating your dog’ questions! I wasn’t there, dammit!”

  “You stood before her in that same room and just snapped pictures! She needed help. She was alive, and bleeding.”

  “No!”

  “No what, Bill? She wasn’t alive?”

  His eyes flared open. “I SAID I WASN’T THERE!”

  She regarded him in silence for a few seconds. “Did you rape her, Bill?”

  The impact of her words was almost physical. He sat back in the chair as if kicked.

  “What? WHAT?”

  “Did you rape her? The question is clear enough.”

  Ken moaned again, a feral sound.

  North ignored him and yelled back at Kat. “JESUS CHRIST, WOMAN! I DON’T SCREW LITTLE GIRLS!”

  “Then,” she continued, leaning after him, “why were you there, Bill? Someone raped her repeatedly. Or do you just rape thousands of little girls a year by proxy as a smut merchant?”

  “I WASN’T THERE! LUMIN OR SOMEONE ELSE DID IT!”

  “GIVE IT UP, BILL!” she screamed at him suddenly, leaping to her feet. “Get this straight, Bill North. We’ve got you nailed. Why didn’t you help her? Why didn’t you save that little girl’s life?”

  “Are you sure, Kat?” Ken asked in a broken voice from the left. She nodded slowly, aware of the risks.

  There was total silence in the cabin of the Gulfstream as Bill North froze, his eyes riveted on Kat. She saw his mouth move slightly, then stop. His eyes widened in panic as Ken came forward suddenly with a guttural roar and jammed the barrel of the .44 in North’s mouth.

  “I’m going to blow the back of your rotten head off if you don’t tell me precisely what you did to her, when, why, and how, you bastard! She was my daughter!”

  North reached up and grabbed the barrel of the gun, but Ken kept it immovable until Kat reached over and squeezed Ken’s arm, indicating with her head to back off. Slowly, reluctantly, he withdrew the gun from Bill North’s mouth and stepped back, then leveled the weapon at North’s head and slowly, ominously, cocked it.

  “This is ridiculous!” North said, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth to assess the damage.

  Kat stood up and moved to the aft end of the cabin for a few seconds before turning back to him.

  A male voice behind them spoke without warning.

  “Bill, you’re going to take this fall all by yourself.”

  There was a scuffle of feet to her left, and Kat’s heart jumped to her throat. She turned, expecting the worst from Ken, but was stunned to see that Rudy Bostich had been standing quietly in the aisleway, his hands still cuffed behind his back.

  Ken followed her gaze and turned, too, equally startled. “What the hell are you doing here, Bostich?” Ken growled at him.

  His eyes turned back to Bill North, who was staring at him with an expression of terror.

  “I was listening at the door,” Bostich began. “I couldn’t believe it when I sat over there after everyone had gone and realized whose jet this was. Of all the sleazy vermin on the planet, guess who showed up at my execution? The slime responsible for framing me.”

  North was shaking his head. “What the hell are you talking about, Rudy?”

  Bostich smiled and dipped his head. “See? He knows me. But, my good old golf buddy, Bill, here, probably hasn’t gotten around to telling you that it’s regular old adult porno I’m into, not kiddie porn. And I’m damn sure he hasn’t told you he planted that kiddie porn on my computer along with that picture of the captain’s daughter because he thought I was going to tell the Connecticut judge that Bill North was the source of the tip on Lumin. But my friend here may not realize that he doesn’t have any more leverage over me, because he’s already ruined my life.”

  “Bostich, get—” Ken began, but Kat raised a hand to silence him.

  “No. Let him continue.”

  Bostich raised his eyebrows and nodded, his eyes boring into North, who looked panicked. “Well, guess what? I never suspected he was involved with the Wolfe girl’s murder, but as I’m standing here listening to you question him, it all makes sense.” He looked at Ken Wolfe, then at Kat. “For what it’s worth, I’ll testify against this garbage on every detail I know about. He did put that smut on my computer without my permission. I didn’t buy it, contrary to what you thought. He threatened to ruin me, and I lied to the judge to protect myself and him. But I had no idea he was directly involved in her murder.”

  “I’m not, you fucking idiot!” North snarled.

  Ken turned toward Bostich. “Out of here. Now. Sit a
t the bottom of the steps.”

  Bostich shrugged and moved to the entryway as Bill North snorted loudly.

  “Okay, Bronsky. I think that’ll be all the questioning for today until I contact a lawyer and sue the FBI into penury.”

  Kat glanced at Ken, who was leveling the gun again at the Gulf-stream’s owner. “If you want a lawyer, Bill, you’ll have to ask permission from the hijacker, Melinda’s father here, and I think he would rather have your full explanation right now.”

  Ken nodded silently, his lips white from the pressure of his grim expression.

  Kat looked at the carpet and intertwined her fingers. “As I said before, let’s talk about what really happened, Bill. You didn’t kidnap her. You didn’t even rape her. You raced in to clean up the scene and bury the evidence and any connection with you. But the world knew she was kidnapped, so somebody had to be prosecuted or the trail might lead to your doorstep. As you’re driving to Maine from Boston that day, scared out of your mind, you’re figuring how to plant a package of evidence on Lumin’s computer, and that requires a picture of the girl. I mean, you reason that Lumin kidnapped her, abused her, and left her to die, so he should take the fall. You acquire a Polaroid camera and film. You arrive at the cabin expecting a dead body. You find a limp little girl tied to a chair who appears to be dead. You wouldn’t have a clue what to do if she were still alive, so you want to believe she’s dead. You take the pictures you need, dump her body in the trunk, drive to Connecticut, and haul her off into the forest, where you leave her.”

  “I don’t—”

  “ZIP IT!” she yelled. “Just stay quiet and listen, because not even you know the rest of the story yet.”

  He was trying to glare at her, but his hands were shaking ever so slightly as she leaned forward, her face inches from his.

  “You broke an electrical fence when you drove into that forest, Bill. That’s why we know when and where. You drove in, carried her deeper into the forest, and dug a grave for her, about two feet deep.”

  Kat could hear a choked sob behind her from Ken. He had never been told.

  She kept her focus on North and pressed in further, her voice low and intense. “You dumped her body, Bill, covered it over, drove away, cleaned up, dropped off the car, and reappeared at your airplane. That’s what really happened, isn’t it?”