Tumbledown

by Cari Hunter

  “I’m so sorry,” Leah whispered, helpless to do anything more than delay Sarah’s inevitable death. She relaxed her hold a little. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but there was still too much blood on her hands, her shirt, and the ground beneath Sarah.

  She squinted as the light she had been working by disappeared. When she looked up, she saw Caleb pushing the patrol car down a small embankment, saplings splintering and cracking beneath its weight. He had moved Tobin’s body, presumably concealing it in the car, but neither was likely to remain hidden for long in a picnic spot popular with day-trippers. Tobin had chosen the perfect meeting place—remote, deserted through the night, yet providing easy access to the coastal routes—never suspecting that it would become the scene of his murder.

  Apparently satisfied with his efforts, Caleb ran toward Leah, his eyes wild with exertion and adrenaline. “She still alive?” he called as he approached.

  “Yes, but…” Leah’s voice trailed off as he dragged Sarah up and hauled her over his shoulder. He set off at a jog, her limp form jostling against his back. Leah followed him to where his car was waiting with the trunk already open. He hoisted Sarah into it, cut off a strip of duct tape, and used it to gag her. Leah recoiled on her behalf, but Sarah barely reacted to his touch or to the pain his rough handling must have caused her. Her hair was soaked with sweat and Leah had never seen anyone so pale. Caleb casually tossed the roll of tape into the trunk and slammed it shut.

  “Move,” he told Leah. “We’ve wasted enough fucking time here.”

  She fastened her seatbelt as he yanked the car into drive. He tore back up the access road and took a left at the junction. “How far d’ya think we’ll get?” he asked, a grin splitting his face.

  “I don’t know, baby.” She answered by rote, unable to stop thinking about the young woman with the shattered leg who lay bound and unconscious not three feet behind her.

  Caleb laughed. “Can’t remember when I last saw the ocean.”

  “No.” Leah had never seen it, and she hated him even more for making this her first time.

  The road widened, still empty of traffic and descending gradually. With a whoop of triumph, Caleb lowered his window and stuck his head out, making a show of breathing deeply. Fresh, salty air rushed into the car, and as they rounded a bend, Leah could hear the sound of waves crashing onto rocks. They passed a signpost for Northport and he flipped it the bird, his speed increasing recklessly, almost as if he wanted someone to spot him and start off the chase.

  “Reckon we can at least get out of this shithole state,” he said, and hammered down on the gas.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Alex, honey—”

  “Don’t.” Alex cut off Esther’s entreaty. “Please don’t even say it.”

  Kneeling beside her, Esther took hold of her hand. “Only an idiot would tell you to go home, but when they find Sarah—and they will find her—she’s really going to need you. So, what I was going to suggest is that you find a quiet corner and get some sleep.”

  Alex gave a wry laugh and looked around the open plan office. Unfamiliar faces occupied each of the four desks: FBI agents from the local field office, who had utilized the space to set up their own equipment. Working with the Avery and Prescott police departments, they were coordinating the search for Tobin and interviewing anyone who had been involved in the initial case. There had been none of the traditional posturing upon their arrival. Quinn—still looking heartsick—had immediately ceded command of the investigation and was now en route with Emerson to liaise with the Prescott police. Alex’s request to join them had been vetoed on the grounds of her own safety. An agent had already interviewed her at length and seemed to have taken on the responsibility of keeping her updated, at least until Castillo arrived. Every so often he would come to her with a progress report, but he was obviously running out of ways to tell her that they hadn’t found anything yet.

  Tobin had used the paperwork he stole from Quinn’s desk to collect Sarah, along with her jail escort, Emily Kendall, at approximately 7:45 p.m. No one had noted his direction of travel, and his car hadn’t been spotted since. It seemed probable that he had arranged to hand Sarah over to Deakin but, with Deakin’s vehicle still unknown, an APB could only be issued for the stolen patrol unit. Having confirmed with the jail that Kendall wouldn’t have been carrying a cell phone while on duty, the agents were working with the telecom company to try to track Tobin’s cell. Alex drew little solace from the fact that Kendall had been armed; if Kendall and Sarah had managed to escape, surely they would have contacted the police or the jail by now. Prescott County Jail was almost one hundred and eighty miles south of Avery, and Alex was feeling the distance keenly. Wherever Tobin had taken Sarah, it was unlikely to have been back up to Aroostook County.

  “How long till your Agent Castillo gets here?”

  The question made Alex blink slowly; she suspected it was not the first time that Esther had asked it. She checked her wristwatch, trying to quell the familiar rising panic as she thought of how much time had already passed.

  “Two, maybe three hours,” she said.

  Esther tugged gently on her hand. “Come with me, then.”

  The small room Esther led her to contained a sofa, a low table, a stack of tattered paperbacks, and a kettle.

  “Back when I started working here, there were no other women on the force.” Esther patted the lumps out of a cushion and laid it at one end of the sofa. “Quinn gave me this room for my rest breaks and he’s let me keep it ever since.” She steered Alex to the sofa. “Give me the key to your new place and I’ll get my youngest to go over there, feed that menagerie of yours.”

  Alex fished in her pocket and handed the key over. “Thanks, Esther.”

  “Sleep. I’ll come and get you the second anything happens.”

  “Promise?”

  “Of course I will.”

  The light clicked off as Esther closed the door. Alex got up and switched it back on; she didn’t think for a second that she would go to sleep, and there were far too many monsters in the dark.

  *

  A firm touch on Alex’s shoulder woke her just before the nightmare could. Finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings, she covered her face with her hands, unsure whether she was really awake. The skin there was sticky with sweat and dried tears, and the feel of it made everything that had happened come rushing back.

  “Shit.” She bolted upright on the sofa, to find Mike Castillo standing over her. As soon as she moved, he eliminated the height difference by dropping into a crouch.

  “Hey,” she said, battening down the urge to launch herself into his arms. “When did you get here?”

  He looked exactly as she remembered, except that stress had pinched new lines into his face, and the smile he gave her didn’t come close to reaching his eyes.

  “Couple of hours ago. Esther peeked in and found you sleeping. Didn’t seem enough of an occasion to wake you.”

  “But now?” Dread made the question stick in her throat.

  “We’ve located the patrol unit and found Tobin.”

  She stood too quickly and had to put a hand out to the wall. “Has he said anything about Sarah? Where was he? Are they bringing him in?”

  “He’s dead, Alex.”

  Don’t use euphemisms, police officers were always told. Don’t say, “He’s passed on,” or, “He’s gone,” because people in such situations need to be spoken to in direct terms. Castillo’s bluntness worked as effectively as a plunge into icy water, shaking off any remnants of sleep still clinging to her.

  “Did you find Sarah?”

  “No. There was no sign of her or Kendall. Tobin had been executed and dumped in the trunk of the car. Telecoms finally came through on his cell, and two officers found the body at a picnic area.”

  “Where?”

  “Off Highway One, on the outskirts of Belfast. We’ve altered the search parameters since then, but the initial exam of the body put the TOD
at around nine p.m., which is almost four hours ago.”

  “Meaning Deakin could be in New Hampshire by now.”

  “Yeah.” Castillo used one hand to massage the back of his neck, his expression pained.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Alex said.

  He nodded, but then shook his head. “I’m so fucking sorry for all of this.”

  “Not your fault, Mike.”

  An urgent knock on the door prevented him from replying. The door opened at once, the agent beyond it too impatient to wait for permission.

  “Sir,” he said, but then hesitated when he saw Alex. “Aw, hell.”

  “What is it?” Castillo prompted. It would have been futile to try to continue the conversation in private when Alex had heard the start of it.

  “Uh…” The agent cleared his throat. “Tobin’s patrol car had a video camera. He had it switched on during the meet.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Alex said. “Do you have the recording?”

  “Yes. The agents on scene uploaded it onto the system.” He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Ma’am, you probably don’t want to see it.”

  The walls in the room suddenly seemed to shift, the lines of the paintwork crossing at impossible angles. She felt Castillo put his arm around her, and she held on to him just to stay on her feet. He asked the question that she couldn’t.

  “Is Sarah dead?”

  “No, sir, but—”

  “Thank you,” Castillo said curtly. “We’ll be with you in a minute.”

  The agent was sensible enough to close the door behind him. For a long moment, there was silence.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Alex admitted.

  “Then don’t.”

  “I think I have to.”

  “Yeah, I thought you might say that.”

  “It can’t be worse than what I’m imagining, can it?” Just saying that aloud was enough to make her shudder.

  He tightened his arm around her. The fact that he didn’t reply was no comfort at all.

  *

  “She runs and then Deakin shoots her,” the agent had warned Alex, evidently unwilling to let her watch the footage unprepared. After showing her and Castillo into Quinn’s office and explaining how to work the media player, he had left them alone. Before she could change her mind, Alex leaned forward and pressed Play, making Castillo snap his teeth on whatever he was about to say.

  The camera, a standard feature on the district’s patrol cars, had been mounted on the center of the dash. Tobin had started recording as he approached the picnic area, and the first minute of footage showed nothing but murky shapes while he negotiated a rough track. The car slowed, then stopped, and he could be seen shaking hands with Caleb Deakin in the beam of the headlights.

  “Deakin’s gotten himself a new look,” Castillo muttered. He tapped the screen with his pen, indicating the two men. “Guess Tobin brought him in front of the camera on purpose; he wanted Deakin to be identifiable.”

  Alex nodded. “Gives him leverage later, blackmail or a plea bargain if he gets caught.” The men moved out of shot, and she wiped her sweaty hands on her pants, anticipating what was to come and trying to guess what was happening as the camera continued to point into the empty parking lot. Thirty-three seconds passed on the counter at the bottom right of the screen. Unable to keep still, she folded her arms, then changed her mind and sat on her hands. She was breathing too fast, her lungs working hard to keep up with the pace of her heart.

  The camera shook as it suddenly spun around, the car turning to the left until its headlights pinpointed a small, staggering figure. The first bullet flew wide, a cloud of dust marking its place, and Alex watched with horror as Sarah tried to evade whoever was shooting at her. She had had no chance. Hindered by her bound hands and visibly unsteady on her feet, she stumbled along a path that kept her right in the firing line. Deakin stepped obliquely into view. Seconds later, a perfectly aimed shot threw her headlong, a burst of gray mist exploding from her right leg. She landed badly and lay unmoving as Deakin marched toward her.

  “I can’t…” Alex pushed her chair back, not looking away quickly enough to miss Deakin kicking out at Sarah.

  Castillo moved to stop the player, but then wavered, his hand poised above the escape key.

  “Alex.”

  Something in his tone made her look up again. On the screen, a woman tried to clean Sarah’s face and then used her own shirt to bind Sarah’s leg.

  “She’s too young to be Kendall,” Castillo said. “She must be Leah Deakin.”

  As they watched, the woman continued to tend to Sarah, applying pressure to the gunshot wound. Distracted by something, she looked across the parking lot, the lighting catching her perfectly for the camera to render the terror and misery in her expression.

  “Jesus.” Alex scrubbed her face with the back of her hand, a faint optimism beginning to temper her grief. The stranger on the screen leaned down and spoke to Sarah again, and Alex drew comfort from the knowledge that Sarah had had an advocate, that she hadn’t been alone. “That’s good, isn’t it?” she said, like a child desperate for reassurance. “That Sarah has someone looking out for her?”

  The recording lapsed into a mess of gray-white static. Castillo left it running and put his arm around her. “Yeah, that’s good,” he said, his answer as simplistic as her question. “That’s good.”

  *

  Staring straight ahead until the lights of the convenience store merged into one fluorescent mass, Alex took a sip of her coffee and heard Castillo cough as he tasted his own.

  “Put hairs on your chest, that will,” she told him, stealing one of Sarah’s favorite idioms.

  “Got enough of those already.” He managed a tired smile. “You better watch out though, the guy poured them both from the same pot.”

  She laughed against the lip of the Styrofoam, relieved just to be out of the station. Sitting on the sidelines and watching the investigation proceed without being able to help had been driving her crazy. When Castillo announced that he was taking her with him to meet with the Belfast PD, she had almost kissed him.

  “What time do you think the rental agencies will open?” she asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  “I’m not sure. Some of the larger ones will probably be twenty-four seven. Local ones, not so much.”

  A keen-eyed tech analyzing the patrol car footage had managed to glean a partial plate and the model of the car Deakin had been driving. It wasn’t the one registered in his name, so every rental agency in North Carolina would be getting an early morning phone call. If none of those provided any useful information, the net would be systematically widened.

  “Just gotta keep chipping away at it,” Castillo said. “Local and national news are running Deakin’s mug shot and the stills from the video. Someone somewhere will recognize him or Leah, and offering a reward turns everyone into good citizens.”

  “It also brings out the crazies.”

  “Inevitable side effect,” he said. “But they do tend to stand out in a crowd, and the officers on the phone lines should be experienced enough to spot them.”

  “I think Emerson’s going to be supervising that. He called me just before we left, to say he was on his way back in.”

  “Sorry I missed him. He sounds like one of the good guys.” Castillo took a right, following the interstate toward Bangor. The beacon on his car let him cover the distance a lot more quickly than Alex had when she visited Sarah at the jail.

  “He is,” she murmured belatedly, trying to push the memory of that visit out of her head; it was the last time she had seen Sarah. “You’d like him,” she added, to cover her lapse. She had told Castillo that Emerson was in the clear soon after his unexpected revelations about his personal life. The more sensitive details she had held back, confident that Castillo wouldn’t figure them out.

  “Maybe when this is all over…” He slowed for a stoplight, checked that the road was clear, and then tore through it
. He was about to finish his sentence when his cell rang. He glanced at Alex and put it through to hands-free. “Agent Castillo,” he said.

  “Sir, this is Agent Somers, out working with the Belfast PD. I know you’re on your way over here, but Emily Kendall—the prison officer—has been found on a roadside near Eddington. They’ve taken her to Eastern Maine Med in Bangor. Figured you might want to swing by there first.”

  “Thank you.” Castillo nodded his encouragement at Alex as she began to reset the GPS. “What’s her condition?”

  “Head injury, mild case of exposure, but she’s conscious and able to speak, sir.”

  “That’s great.” He checked the route on the GPS. “We’re about fifty minutes out. Thanks for the heads up.”

  “Happy to help, sir,” Somers said, sounding like he meant it. “I’m going to the hospital myself, so I’ll see you there.”

  “Tobin must’ve dumped her before he met with Deakin. That’s why she wasn’t on the video footage,” Alex said as the dial tone sounded. “Eddington is about forty miles from Belfast, where they found his body.”

  “Ah.” Castillo frowned. “If he didn’t want to kill her, why not just leave her to Deakin?”

  “Maybe someone convinced him there was a third way.”

  He looked at her, and she guessed he had been thinking along the same lines. “Sarah can be quite persuasive,” he said, with considerable understatement. “Did I ever tell you what she had me do so she could sit with you at the hospital the other year?”

  She shook her head, feeling tears well up again. “No, you didn’t,” she eventually managed.

  He fished a napkin from his pocket. “Here, dry your eyes and no crying. It’s a nice story.” He broke into a smile. “Y’know, I think it’s that accent of hers,” he said. “It lets her get away with anything.”