by Anne Frasier
Elise looked at David, then took the folded piece of paper and opened it.
David watched her read the note, watched her face go pale. When she was done, her eyes met his, and she seemed startled to find him there. Without a word, she passed the note to him.
It was his turn to go white. He had an answer to his earlier question. This wasn’t an unrelated child abduction. The message was from Remy, and he wanted to make a trade.
Someone jostled him. Like the mother just minutes ago, David looked up and experienced a brief moment of panic when he didn’t immediately see Elise. She reappeared with an evidence bag. She handed it to him, and he stuck the note inside. Too late to worry about touching it.
They finished questioning the flower seller.
“He had a voice that made me think he was white and middle aged. I imagine people certain ways, just from their voice. I’m right about eighty percent of the time, even down to hair color, but when I’m wrong I’m really wrong.”
While David looked on, heart still slamming, Elise thanked the man and gave him her card. He tucked it in the same pocket where the note had been. As if on cue, her phone rang. She checked the screen and answered it. As she listened, her expression went through a transformation that told him the identity of the person on the other end, a man who seemed to know everything about them while they knew nothing about him, not even what he looked like.
CHAPTER 43
As Elise stood on the edge of Forsyth Park, some distance from the abduction spot, sun beating down, the world shrank to nothing but the voice at the other end of the line. She moved away from anyone within earshot, hitting “Speaker” so David could listen.
“I want to make a deal,” the man said. His words were muffled and distorted, and she had to strain to hear.
“Okay. I’ll deal,” Elise told him. “Whatever you want.”
Beside her, David nodded, opened and tapped his “Record” app, and held it near Elise’s phone. Recording the conversation was legal. Georgia had a one-party consent law, but if she’d used her own phone app to record, it would have alerted the caller.
“I’m calling from a burner phone, so don’t waste your time trying to trace this. And I’m also not anywhere near my home base, so don’t waste your time trying to triangulate the call. Within minutes of hanging up I’ll be far from this location.”
Which meant he was in a vehicle.
“I want confirmation that the child is alive,” she told him.
The abductor put the boy on. Elise spoke to him, softly, assuring him that he’d be home with his mother soon. He cried. But at least he could cry. For now. She tried not to dwell on the likelihood that the recording of the conversation might very well be the last time his mother heard his voice.
“That’s enough,” the man told the boy, reclaiming the phone.
“What do you want?” she asked.
They might not be able to trace him, but the longer she kept him on the phone, the more likely he’d slip up and reveal something that would help them find him. A speech pattern, or background noise that might alert them to his vicinity. Anything.
“I want Jackson Sweet to suffer,” he said. “I want him to turn and twist and lose his mind.”
So it was Remy. “The child has nothing to do with this. Why involve him?”
He didn’t answer her question. “You think I’m bad, but I’m not.”
“I’d like to believe that.” She wanted to point out the bad things he’d done. Instead she said, “If not, let Taylor go. Drop him off at a corner. Or in a park. We’ll find him.”
“Your father framed me. Did you know that? Framed me for a murder I never committed. He ruined my life.”
“Let’s talk about this. Let’s discuss your options. Maybe we can get the case reopened.”
He wasn’t listening. “I had a girlfriend. I was engaged to be married. Had my own business. He took all of that away from me. If I’m a bad man, he made me one.”
“So you didn’t kill children before your incarceration?”
“I love children. Is that what he told you? I wanted children of my own.”
John Wayne Gacy had professed to loving children too. “The house with the bodies inside. What do you know about that? And Zane Novak? I’d like to get to the truth, and if you know who’s behind these crimes, we should talk. Can we talk? Face-to-face? Right now?”
“It’s too late.”
“What about Florida? Do you have any insight into the Florida cases? You might be of help to us.”
“Just some crazy lunatic.” He sounded distracted now. She was losing him.
Quickly, before he hung up, she repeated her earlier question, keeping her voice smooth as she attempted to placate him. “What do you want? What can I do for you? How can I help you? Let me help you.”
“I want to destroy Jackson Sweet the way he destroyed me. And in order to do that, I want to destroy the person who means the most to him.”
“Strata Luna,” Elise said.
“I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about you.”
No reason to correct him. This worked in their favor. “You’ll have me,” Elise said as David gestured frantically, trying to stop the direction of the conversation even though she had no intention of going anywhere with Remy. “Just tell me where and how. You can have me right this minute if you tell me where to meet you.”
“You, for the boy,” Remy said. “Downtown tomorrow night, during Johnny Mercer Day.”
Like Remy’s choice of an abduction site, downtown was a smart move. The noise and the confusion and the crowds would be his cover. And the area was a dark maze, with alleys and stairways and passages cut between stone. Such an easy place to vanish.
“The boy is your fault, Elise. I tried to meet you under different circumstances, but you wouldn’t cooperate.”
Criminals often saw themselves as victims, with everyone else to blame. “You’re the one behind the goofer dust on my porch,” Elise said.
“Not me.”
“How about the tainted apple?”
“That wasn’t me either. If it had been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I would have snagged you the night you walked to the cemetery.”
Was he telling the truth? Had David been right about the apple and the goofer dust having no connection to Remy? Was the information she’d gotten from LaRue accurate? “But you were the one tailing me,” she said. “And you attacked me in the parking garage.”
He ignored her question, and she could sense he was growing more agitated. “I have something for you,” he told her, jumping to another topic. “A gift.”
“I’m partial to jewelry.”
“You don’t wear jewelry. You’re just trying to keep me talking. Let the present be a surprise. Tomorrow night,” he said. “Stroll west on River Street through the middle of the crowd. I’ll find you.”
“And you’ll have the boy.”
“I’ll have the boy. If anything goes wrong, he’ll be killed. I don’t want to do it, but I will.” His voice shook with what seemed excitement. “I’ll torture him; then I’ll strangle him. And it will be your fault. I’ll even record it so the mother can watch over and over.”
CHAPTER 44
Once David failed to talk Elise out of the exchange, he turned his attention to making sure nobody got hurt, especially Elise. They’d go through the motions of Remy’s game, catch him, and it would all be over.
He e-mailed the recording to digital forensics to see if they could pick up any background noise or lift the muffle from the voice. Somebody else was researching green sedans registered in the county, state, and beyond. Once again they were asking for help from the public, and the tip line was ringing off the hook. A few people were prioritizing the calls, and officers were knocking on doors and conducting interviews, but David had the feeling it was all an exercise in futility.
“This can’t happen,” Sweet said. After hearing about Remy’s demands he’d driven st
raight to the police station, frightened and intimidated the officer at the security checkpoint, then stormed into David and Elise’s office. Avery was also on board, leaving his barricaded home to be part of the operation.
They were braced for what had to be done, but none of them were quite prepared for the storm that was Jackson Sweet.
“Remy, and I’m sure it’s Remy, isn’t going to let that kid go.” Sweet paced while Avery sat on the corner of Elise’s desk, nervously rubbing his face and staring at the floor. He obviously didn’t want to be there, but he was back to support Elise.
“Can’t talk her out of it,” David said. “I tried.”
But Sweet was right. David wasn’t going to fool himself. He knew there was a good chance the boy wouldn’t survive. There was a good chance he might be dead already, but David tried not to think about that. “We have to go into this knowing we might fail and the boy might die anyway,” he said. “Remy likes to kill kids, and it seems unlikely that he’ll release this one.”
“He might,” Elise said. “Since we’re promising him something he wants.”
“I don’t see that we really have a choice,” David told Sweet. “Not if there’s any chance of saving the boy, no matter how slight.”
Sweet stopped in front of him, and for the first time David saw the full-blown persona Elise had told him about. “You always have a choice.” The friendly grandpa was gone, his face replaced with cold, calculating eyes and an overall aura of emotionless brutality that sent a chill up David’s spine. That brutality was now directed at David. “Don’t drag Elise into your do-over. You’re trying to make up for your own failures by backing this dangerous plan.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your kid. The older we get, the more we try to fix our mistakes, mistakes that can’t be fixed. You want to save this kid because you couldn’t save your own.”
Elise stepped forward and tried to urge Sweet away, but he jerked his arm from her hand and refused to break eye contact with David, unaware of the daughter he was defending. “You can’t bring your own child back,” Sweet said. “You can’t make up for not noticing you were married to someone who was a danger to that child. Don’t use this stage to try to make yourself feel better about your life and your loss.”
“You son of a bitch.”
Sweet’s words were basically the same words Lamont had spoken to David not that long ago. And David had knocked the ex–FBI agent on his ass. It took everything to keep him from punching Sweet.
Sweet saw David’s attempt at restraint and smiled. Even his smile was chilling. “You’d like to hit me, wouldn’t you?”
“If you weren’t so old and feeble and pathetic, I would.”
Sweet finally broke eye contact and swung around, faced his daughter, but his voice still held that cold edge. “Don’t do this, Elise.” It was spoken as an order. A parent telling his child she could not, must not, endanger her life.
“If we’re going to talk about the psychology of our own behaviors,” Elise said, “then let me point out that the reason you’re protesting is because of the guilt you’ll feel if anything happens to me. Remove yourself from the equation for a moment, and think about the right thing to do.” She stared back at him, cold eyes to cold eyes, waiting for a response.
He said nothing.
“I didn’t think so,” she said. Her father dismissed, Elise addressed the others in the room. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about why we shouldn’t do this. That’s a waste of valuable time. Let’s focus.”
The next two hours were awkward, but they formulated a plan, coordinating with their sniper team, all of them knowing no exchange would actually take place. Elise would not be going with anybody. She’d wear a tracking device in the off chance they lost her in the crowd. They’d have police positioned in various locations. Snipers on roofs.
“You’ll walk through the crowd,” David said. “When you reach Remy or the boy’s handler, you grab the kid and drop. We’ll take Remy out.” He glanced at Sweet, then back to Elise. “I know you’ll want to go after Remy, but your one and only focus will be to shield the child and protect yourself. We’ll do the rest. We’ll have people stationed up and down the street, people on buildings. Remy won’t get out of there.”
Elise nodded, then blinked as she received a text. She pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the screen.
David was on full alert. “That him?”
Elise stuck her phone back in her pocket. “It’s nothing.” She excused herself and left the room while David watched her go.
Down the hall, Elise made sure the restroom was empty, pulled out her phone, and read the message again. Further instructions from Remy for the exchange, these meant for her alone. If she didn’t comply, if she didn’t follow the instructions to the letter, the child would die. If she told anyone else, especially her partner, the child would die. She leaned against the wall, eyes closed, head back, heart pounding, legs weak. Could she risk being captured? For the child? Coming to a decision, she called James LaRue. “I need to meet with you,” she told him.
“Where? When?”
“Right away. And LaRue? I want you to bring something.”
“Can’t imagine what that would be, but shoot.”
“TTX.”
“I already told you, I don’t mess around with that stuff anymore.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I had nothing to do with that incident with you in the cemetery.”
He sounded a little too adamant, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d tricked them again. Had he supplied Lucille with the drug? That would be just like him. “I didn’t say you did. This isn’t a bust. I don’t want to arrest you. I don’t want to pry into what you’re doing. But I need TTX.”
He thought about it, then said, “Okay.”
She told him to meet her outside the market and gas station just around the corner from the police station. He agreed.
“I don’t know what you’re going to use this for,” LaRue said thirty minutes later. He sat across from her at a small table in the blazing sun, eyes unreadable behind dark glasses as he pushed a small white envelope to her. “I cut it so it wouldn’t be so potent, but this small amount is still enough to kill a grown man.” His voice held concern. “More than enough.”
Or kill a grown woman.
She picked it up, folded it, and stuck it in her pocket.
He took a long suck from a straw and leaned back in his chair. “Can I get you some sweet tea?”
“I’ve got to go.” She stood up. “But thanks.”
Remaining seated, head tilted back, he said, “Sorry about that time I drugged you. I’m not really a bad guy, you know.”
“Sorry about that time I sent you to prison.”
“Would you go out with me sometime?”
The straightforward innocence of his question caught her off guard. “I don’t think so.” She didn’t add that she might not be around much longer.
CHAPTER 45
Everything was ready for the exchange, the setup and positioning to take place in several hours. There was nothing else Elise could do but pace and wait.
She wanted to go home. Just for a while. When she voiced that desire, her father said he’d sit at her front door with a gun, and Strata Luna said she’d send her driver and bodyguard. But Elise didn’t trust Sweet or Strata Luna right now. Sweet was so adamantly against the plan that she wouldn’t put it past him to hold her captive until the evening was over and the child was dead.
In the end, David went with her.
Everyone experienced those fleeting or not-so-fleeting moments of dread and something that felt like a solid and trustworthy and impossible-to-ignore portent of the future. Some came true and some didn’t. When those events happened, when the dreaded thing occurred, Elise always wondered about the how. Did thinking about it put it out there in the world? Make it happen? Was time somehow more flexible than people knew? Ha
d she already lived it, and the reason it resonated more than déjà vu was because it was something bad, very bad?
This time she understood the sense of finality she felt about the day and about her life. She caught herself thinking that this could be the last time she unlocked her front door, the last time she stepped inside to the scent of old and new. In the living room, she inhaled and let the space calm her, soothe her. She needed this house in this moment. And as much as she’d convinced herself she’d gotten the home for Audrey, Elise understood that she’d also bought it for herself. It calmed her. It centered her.
David had been quiet on the drive. Too quiet for David.
“I don’t want Audrey to know about this until it’s done, until it’s over,” she told him.
He nodded.
She wanted to lie down in her own bed, for just an hour, maybe two.
David followed her upstairs. In her bedroom, he pulled a chair close. “I’m sitting here until it’s time to go.”
Once she was in bed and the light was out, she whispered in the softened room shadowed by the light from streetlamps seeping in around the shutters. “Come lie down beside me.”
He did, with a sigh, arm behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling.
She turned to him and put a hand to his unshaven jaw. Had she ever touched him like this? She didn’t think so.
No spells. No mojos. Nothing that was false or forced. Nothing that didn’t feel right. It wasn’t fair to David, coming to him now, but it also seemed the only way she might ever come to him, on a night that could very well be her last.
What would a shrink have to say about that?
Their time together was measured and sad—the removing of clothing, the exploration and memorization of muscles and curves. Like that other time in his apartment, David trembled and his breath caught. She found herself soothing him, shushing him, whispering to him, words she didn’t even realize she was saying until they were spoken.
She wanted to tell him she loved him, but that would be too cruel. It was bad enough that she’d given in during the final hour. If she were to die, if she were to lose her mind, he’d have one more thing to face. So, as they wrapped themselves around each other, as they held on tightly, she whispered, “This doesn’t mean I love you.” The lie was a gift for him.