36 Hours

by B. J. Woster

  She reached out and attempted to shove open the refrigerator door, but the movement caused a sharp, unbearable agony to ricochet throughout every nerve in her body and she screamed again. Had she realized that the latch to the old fridge locked automatically from the outside when closed, she could have saved herself the effort and the agony. It was a design flaw in the older style refrigerators. Had she been shut up in a newer model, she may have been able to prevent a more rapid end to her life.

  “If you’re awake, I want you to know that I’m sorry for your pain, Brooke,” a voice interjected into her anguish, “but you won’t have to endure for much longer now.”

  “Christian, please, let me go,” Brooke yelled, her voice choked with tears. “I’m hurt really bad. Isn’t that enough suffering for one person to have to go through? Surely my life isn’t worth taking just because I wasn’t your star pupil.”

  “Do you really think this has to do with you?” Christian sighed loudly.

  “Of course it has to do with me, or is there actually someone else inside this refrigerator, and I’m simply unconscious somewhere having a terrifying out-of-body, very realistic experience!” she screamed.

  There was no reply, only several faint whirring sounds, followed closely by loud hissing sounds, which lasted for more than five minutes. Shortly after, the rancid odor of bitter almonds reached her nostrils and she cringed.

  “It’s 7:25 a.m. now, Brooke. If you’re fortunate, and the police arrive before the given deadline of 7:30, you may not suffer any long-term effects from the concentrated dose of Hydrogen Cyanide which was released a few minutes ago. At 7:30, if they haven’t broken through the door, I’ll notify the police of your whereabouts, so to give you a fighting chance. Believe me, I’m rooting for a speedy arrival, and a happy ending. As promised, I’ll stay with you until the end.”

  Brooke wanted to pose a response but couldn’t. She felt overwhelmingly dizzy and nauseated. Her eyes stung and she was having more difficulty drawing a breath that didn’t burn her lungs. A memory of her chemistry class flittered into the forefront of her mind and she knew she was dead, for Hydrogen Cyanide was the same chemical the Germans had used in World War II to commit mass murder.

  She tried to prepare herself for the potential symptoms she was likely to face, but only listed a couple before another symptom manifested: loss of consciousness.

  Chapter 14

  7:40 p.m.

  Hardwick and Wilson stormed into the warehouse on Northside Drive, and immediately began kicking in doors of the rooms lining the main hall. They kicked open the door of the room where Brooke was being held and immediately fell back as the Hydrogen Cyanide escaped, assaulting the detectives’ eyes and throats as brutally as an assailant with an Uzi.

  Hardwick reached in and pulled the door close rapidly, knowing that there was no way they’d be able to reach Brooke now—not before the gas killed her. They weren’t even going to be able to enter to search for her, not without putting their own lives at risk.

  Hardwick kicked the wall, then turned on Wilson, grinding out the next instructions between his clenched teeth, “Get back to the radio and call in the hazmat unit. Inform them of the situation and ask that they arrive in all haste.”

  Wilson nodded and then bolted back out the way they’d come.

  Hardwick slid down the wall and sat, waiting. He was supremely angry—over the loss of Brooke Madison, over the feelings of incompetence welling inside his chest, but especially at Christian Price.

  “When I find him, his life is forfeit,” he murmured, just as the hazmat team arrived. Hardwick glanced at his watch—8 a.m. It had only taken the hazmat unit fifteen minutes to assemble and arrive, but it was still too long. Next time—and he knew there’d be a next time—he would ensure that all departments were on standby and ready to act on a moment’s notice.

  The hazmat team worked quickly to expel all traces of the gas, so that the detectives could begin their search; however, that took another half hour, so that it was nearing 8:30 a.m. by the time the sergeant in charge of the hazmat unit declared it safe to enter.

  “We didn’t see any signs of her while we worked to clear the gas,” the unit chief announced. “Maybe this wasn’t the location—”

  “It’s got to be the location,” Hardwick interjected.

  He and Wilson, along with a half dozen uniformed officers entered with alacrity, but a quick sweep turned up no trace of Brooke’s body, and for a short instance, Hardwick and Wilson thought that they’d caught a break, that Christian had merely sent them on a wild goose chase and that Brooke was alive and well in another building across town.

  That relief was short-lived when a uniformed officer opened the refrigerator and called out, “Here! She’s here!”

  Chapter 15

  Hardwick sank wearily onto the chair at his desk and started typing up the report on both Sandra McIntyre and Brooke Madison. Now that he knew that there was a connection, he could add the necessary details and combine both files. He realized, however, that there would be another body added to the file soon, if he and his fellow detectives didn’t find the next person abducted by Price—when he got around to abducting her, that is. The more he realized that the end wasn’t in sight, the angrier he got, until he was fairly beating on the keys.

  “Shouldn’t we be out searching for Price?” Wilson asked, as he watched Hardwick type aggressively on his keyboard. “If we catch him, he can’t abduct any more women, and we’ll close the book on at least two dozen murder cases, and you’re about to punch a hole in that keyboard.”

  Hardwick started to respond, but his gaze fell on the image of Cassandra Bouchard on the television monitor in the captain’s office. She was standing in front of the abandoned warehouse reporting, no doubt, on the incompetence of the APD. He watched, with renewed dismay, as paramedics carried the black bag, holding Brooke Madison’s body, to a waiting hearse. The coroner had pronounced her dead at the scene.

  Bouchard had attempted to question him as Wilson and he left the warehouse, but he’d rushed to his car and drove directly back to his precinct. He couldn’t see himself justifying his incompetence. Not right now. Right now, he just needed to return to his cave to lick his wounds.

  As the image of Bouchard faded and returned to the two anchors manning the Channel 5 desk, the anticipated wave of the captain’s hand came. Hardwick stood slowly, “Let’s go get this over with, Wilson. Cortez, Harding, you may as well sit in on this meeting.” He headed over, his legs feeling as if they were filled with concrete.

  All four men filed into the captain’s office, expressions dejected, but the anticipated ass-chewing didn’t happen.

  “It’s going to happen again,” the captain softly, worry in his tone. “Just before I waved you in here, the news agency stated that Price called them a few minutes prior, saying that he would definitely be abducting another woman, and that he was giving the local police department one more chance to prove some level of competency.”

  “Well, isn’t that just thoughtful of him,” Harding snapped sarcastically.

  “Any word yet from the other Zone Commanders, on a willingness to offer some assistance?” Hardwick asked, trying to keep the frustration in his tone at a minimum.

  The captain nodded, “I received word from every one of them, offering their condolences on landing this nut job in our precinct, but, as anticipated, they feel they have too many of their own head cases to deal with, without adding ours to their agendas. Quite frankly, they’re just glad they aren’t the focus of this madman or the media. They also feel this is a political time bomb, so are reluctant to offer any support that’s going to draw attention to their own precincts.”

  “What a bunch of dicks,” Wilson snapped.

  “Politics at its best,” Cortez muttered.

  “Give me something, Hardwick,” the captain moaned. “I’ve got the commissioner and the mayor breathing down my neck now. Tell me you’ve got something that I can give them. A lead on thi
s guy’s whereabouts? Anything?”

  He and Wilson exchanged glances at the request of a location, but before Wilson could throw them under the bus on why they didn’t pursue that information, Cortez piped up, “We can give the press the information we have right now on Price’s former victims,” Cortez volunteered. “That will give them a focus other than our own asses.”

  “What information?”

  “Hardwick had me start an immediate search for Price’s other victims,” Cortez started.

  “What made you think there were others?” the captain interrupted.

  “A conversation that Price and I had just before we started the investigation.”

  “I really need to read the reports more frequently,” the captain muttered. “So, this guy’s done this before?”

  “In five other states that I’ve located thus far, and there have been at least twenty other victims. We give that information to the press and they’ll run with it. They’ll be doing so much investigative work on their own, that they may even tell us something we overlooked. It’ll also make us look less incompetent, because it’ll show that the deadlines are impossible and that other police precincts had the same difficulties, despite putting their best men on the job,” Cortez concluded.

  “Okay, bring me the data and I’ll contact the press.”

  Cortez left the office and the captain turned back to address the remaining three officers, “Okay, onto other business. Has the lab been able to find any trace on the camera or the canister left at the scene?”

  “There hasn’t been enough time for the lab to find any trace evidence. They’ve been advised that it’s a rush,” Wilson answered. “You know what I don’t get? That was a wireless remote camera, which means there had to be a Wi-Fi signal in use from somewhere, but that’s an old warehouse, not one that’s been revamped yet…”

  “It was a wireless camera, as you mentioned, Wilson. In order to use it, he would simply need to be—”

  “He was nearby!” Cortez interjected angrily. “¡Ay Dios, Santa Maria!”

  “Not necessarily,” Hardwick said, shaking his head. “There are Wi-Fi boosters that can extend a signal a fair distance from the source. Either way, his location makes no difference. The fact that he managed to set up so elaborately tells us he’s highly educated and skilled…in electronics and chemicals.”

  “Okay, how can that help us?” the captain queried.

  “If there were a serial number on any of the equipment left at the scene, we maybe could run a trace on it. Get a better ID on the guy,” Wilson replied dejected. “But he didn’t just file it off, which may have been reversible—at least according to a Bones episode I watched.” Wilson blushed at the looks aimed his way and cleared his throat, “Sorry. Anyway, if he had filed them off, it may have been possible to read the serial numbers still, but he didn’t; he removed them in a way that has left it impossible to retrieve.”

  “Okay, since he removed identifiable markings, we can assume that he’s also familiar with forensics,” Hardwick added.

  "Great, we’re dealing with a Kim Ung-Yong," the captain quipped sarcastically.

  “Who?” Harding asked.

  “One of the smartest geeks on the planet, with an IQ of around 210,” Hardwick replied instinctively.

  “Sorry,” the captain apologized, “I know that wasn’t helpful. So, this guy, Price, he monitors the area with a camera. When his deadline is reached, he releases a chemical agent into the room via…”

  “It was set on a timer,” Hardwick responded. “Our techs say it was set so that the timer cancelled if the door was breached by whatever time Price designated. If the door remained closed, the countdown went to zero and activated the release of the gas. He didn’t have to be anywhere near the location to know what was happening, to know whether Brooke lived or died.”

  The captain sighed heavily, “Okay, so do we have any idea on how to approach the next abduction? How do we go about finding her without wasting manpower on all-out searches? This city is simply too big to conduct effective sweeps, and if he places her outside of our particular jurisdiction, we’ll really be up shit creek.”

  “There isn’t anything we can do different, Captain, other than alert hazmat to be ready at a moment’s notice and continue to work around the clock,” Hardwick replied. “Unless he gives us better clues, there isn’t a damn thing we can do. We followed the leads we had, but they were pointing more toward finding Price than the victim.”

  “What do you mean, finding Price,” the captain queried with a heavy knit in his brow. “You mean, we had the opportunity to stop—”

  “No,” Hardwick interjected quickly. “We were only following up leads—”

  “And the primary lead,” Wilson jumped in, not wanting his partner to take the full brunt of the captain’s wrath; especially since the decision not to pursue was equally his fault, “didn’t guarantee an arrest.”

  Hardwick sighed and picked up the explanation, “The priest gave us a hint, a nibble, as to an area in which we might locate Price.”

  “But the area was too sizable, much like the search for the warehouse,” Wilson continued. “It wouldn’t have been prudent to split our search teams. We needed all men looking for Brooke.”

  “Okay, I get it, but now we have quite a bit of leeway before Price’s next abduction—”

  “That we know of,” Hardwick interjected. “For all we know, he could the call within the next hour.”

  “Fine, if the call comes in, we recall all units, but until then, we have some time. What can we do with it?”

  “I’m not certain it will be effective because it would mean doing another all-out sweep of the residential zones around The Tavern at Phipps Plaza, and that’s assuming that he’s still lying low in a place around that area. He could’ve moved on. If not, what can we do? We’d have to call in all black and whites to accomplish a search that extensive, and not one of them has slept in over thirty-six hours. Still, with the sketch we got from the bishop, we’d definitely have a better shot at getting Price into custody than locating an abductee at this point.”

  “Searching for Price is better than sitting around doing nothing while he plans another abduction. So, let’s get the sketch to every patrol’s on-board computer,” the captain snapped, “and have officers start an immediate sweep. I want each area in each grid closed down during the search. No one enters or departs until cleared. Put the men on rotations. I know we’re short-handed, but the officers aren’t going to be any good to anyone if they crash a patrol car, or overlook something vital. Half on patrol, half on mandatory rest here at the precinct. Two hour rotations.”

  All three men nodded as Cortez came back carrying a file for the captain containing all the other potential victims linked to Price. “I’ll take care of getting this to the press; you take care of the other,” the captain said, picking up the receiver to dial the local media.

  Chapter 16

  Price tilted his head and listened to the sirens in the distance. He judged them to be some distance away, yet instinctively knew that the police were searching for him. That angered him, but he knew he couldn’t allow that anger to control his actions. He took several deep breaths and then continued packing up his computer gear. If not for the search, he may have been able to utilize this apartment for his next abduction. Having to locate to a new place to monitor from, set up for the experiment, and finding another unwilling participant for his experiment would take more time than he wanted; but he couldn’t get caught.

  He cocked his head, listening carefully, judging how far away the patrol cars were. The further away they remained, the longer he had to clear out his equipment. The one thing he couldn’t do was rush. Rushing meant overlooking something, and when he left a location, he left it as clean as if no one lived there. He knew that was suspicious in itself, but since the occupant generally had no recollection of the time he was there, he or she generally had no recollection of the condition of their living quarters
either. He knew that those individuals he stayed with would waken in a fog of lost time, could always report that lost time to the police, but there wouldn’t be anything linking them to him. That’s because he always chose those people as carefully as he did his victims. In this case, he’d selected to stay with Consuela from his martial arts class because she’d mentioned starting a vacation this week, which meant she wouldn’t be missed.

  Price also felt less rushed because not only were the police a fair distance away by the sound of their sirens but also because he had set up in a densely packed apartment complex, so even if they arrived before he left, they would have hundreds of apartments to search. Still, he didn’t want to risk that because it would make leaving tricky.

  All of this was assumption on his part, but assumptions kept him from getting caught. For all he knew, there was merely an accident that the police were rushing to but they weren’t. In actuality, the police were searching for him; however, they were searching in an area he’d never been, thanks to one misdirection he’d let slip to make the job of finding him more difficult, just as imparting a false name to his victims. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before the police connected him to All Saints’ Episcopal Church and that the priest would know who he was, so he’d called the priest one evening, pretending to be drunk, and let slip his location. He never knew whether the seed would sprout and the information would be passed on to the police but he left nothing to chance.

  An hour later, he concluded the living room to be as footprint free as was possible. He then went to the bathroom to retrieve the trash, which contained the empty contents of his recent purchase of hair dye and nothing more. He tied up the bag and returned to the living room, placing the bag into a larger trash bag that sat next to his computer supplies.

  Finally, he went into the bedroom to check on Consuela, sleeping on the bed. He carefully removed the IV that kept her sustained with fluids, nutrition, and sedatives, rolled up the IV line and set it aside. He then went to the bathroom and disposed of the remaining fluid in the IV bag. Once all of that was packed away in its case, he carried it to the front door, then returned and removed the adult diaper. He’d changed her a couple of times a day, so had a bag full of dirty diapers sitting beside the bed. He stuffed this last one in, sealed it tight, and then retrieved a pair of XL panties from a nearby drawer and slid them on her.