Rusty Nail

by J. A. Konrath

  Sleep. That’s what I needed to do. I needed to sleep.

  I fell to my knees. Then to my butt.

  This spot looked comfortable. Nice and grassy and comfortable. I could sleep here, no problem.

  I laid my head on my arm and curled up my legs.

  So nice to finally sleep.

  When I closed my eyes, it was to the sound of someone laughing.

  CHAPTER 40

  HEY, LADY, YOU okay?”

  I’d been having a disturbing dream, where I was tied to a chair at a dinner table and everyone around me was a rotting corpse. When I tried to pull off my ropes, I realized I was dead too, and my blackening flesh began to slide off my bones like BBQ ribs.

  Opening my eyes, I stared up at a cop with a funny hat. I read his badge. Park District Ranger.

  I startled, wondering how he got into my bedroom. Then I realized my bedroom didn’t have trees in it, and my bed wasn’t made of grass. I sat up. The action made me dizzy, and provoked an unhappy reaction in my stomach.

  The ranger grinned at me. “Celebrating a little too much, huh?”

  “Where am I?” My voice sounded strange, far away.

  “Busse Woods. I’m going to check your friend.”

  I watched him walk over to a woman lying on the ground a few yards away. Holly.

  I touched my temple, which had begun to throb, and looked around. Spotted a cooler on a picnic table, a bottle of champagne next to it, a carton of OJ, two packages of bologna . . .

  The wedding.

  A nice surge of adrenaline helped cut through the fog, and I remembered toasting to Harry and Holly, and then realizing we’d all been drugged.

  I craned my head around, searching for Harry and Phin.

  They weren’t there.

  I saw Harry’s car in the lot, along with mine. My watch told me it was a little after six o’clock. I’d been out for over five hours.

  The ranger was having some difficulty rousing Holly.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Pulse is strong, but she won’t wake up.”

  I felt like curling up and going back to sleep myself. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation; more like a fever dream that accompanies the flu.

  I managed to get to my feet and began to walk to my car, a little unsteady, but better with every step.

  My cell phone was plugged into the cigarette lighter. I needed to call Harry, to find out where he was.

  The message light blinked at me. I dialed my voice mail.

  “Jack, it’s Captain Bains. Lorna Hunt Ellison escaped from custody this morning, and then grabbed Bud Kork at Mercy Hospital. Six cops, two Feds dead. A few miles away the Indiana Highway Patrol found an abandoned FBI vehicle. No sign of either perp. It might be a long shot, but there’s a chance they could be headed your way. Stay on your toes.”

  Yeah. Some long shot.

  I wondered how they found me. Tailed me from my apartment? Possible. I was so high from Latham’s call, I could have had a dozen Abrams tanks following me and wouldn’t have noticed.

  But if Lorna and Bud were after me, why’d they let me go?

  Another adrenaline spike, which made my hands shake.

  They took Phin and Harry.

  I tried to reason it out. Lorna escaped, went to get Bud, and then came to Chicago. They followed me here from my apartment, and probably watched the ceremony from the forest. Then one of them snuck into Harry’s car and doctored the orange juice we used for the mimosas. The drug was probably Rohypnol, or GHB, or some other easily obtainable tranq currently popular on the nightclub date-rape scene. Odorless, colorless, and a tiny amount could take effect within ten minutes and knock out a bull.

  Bud must have assumed Holly was a cop, my partner. They might have also assumed Phin was my boyfriend.

  They wanted to hurt us by hurting our men.

  But how did they find my apartment? And how did they find tranquilizers so quickly after escaping?

  And how did Lorna, who had the IQ of a tennis ball, escape from prison and rescue Bud?

  Apparently I’d misjudged her.

  “What’s going on?” The ranger had awoken Holly, who appeared to be panicked. “Where’s Harry?”

  “Take it easy, miss.”

  “Jack? What happened, Jack?”

  I gave my head a brisk shake, but the fuzzies clung to me. I managed to get over to Holly without falling on my face.

  “We were drugged, Holly. Bud Kork escaped, with his girlfriend. I think they’ve got Phin and Harry.”

  Holly stared at me, her mouth hanging open.

  “My husband . . .” she whispered.

  I reached down and squeezed her shoulder.

  “We’ll find them, Holly. I promise.”

  “But will they still be alive when we do?”

  CHAPTER 41

  PHINEAS TROUTT OPENS his eyes. His vision feels lopsided, off center, and his shoulders hurt. He’s in a chair, but when he tries to move his arms and legs, they don’t respond.

  He takes in the scene. It’s a warehouse of some sort, concrete floors and thirty-foot ceilings, row after row of empty aluminum racks. The windows are boarded up, but there’s a light on somewhere behind him, illuminating a decade’s worth of dust in swirling motes.

  Phin does a body inventory checklist, flexing his toes, legs, fingers, arms, neck, and jaw. Nothing seems damaged. But his legs are bound to the chair legs, and his hands are bound behind his back.

  He jerks himself to the side, trying to get the chair to tilt or move. It’s secured to the ground somehow. He pulls on his arms, hard, and feels wire bite into his wrists.

  This isn’t a good situation.

  Phin closes his eyes, which helps him push away the panic. How did he get here?

  The last thing he remembers is the forest preserve, toasting to the newly married couple.

  Someone had drugged them.

  Okay, but why?

  Phin has enemies, probably more than his share. But no one knew he was going to that wedding. And during the cab ride to Busse Woods, Phin kept a careful eye on the rearview mirror, a subconscious paranoia that served him well in the past. He hadn’t been followed . . .

  That left Jack, Harry, and Holly. Jack was a cop, Harry and Holly private investigators. They undoubtedly had enemies too. Phin might have gotten caught up in someone else’s revenge scheme.

  A sound, a low rumble, comes from behind him. Phin can’t turn far enough to see. It comes again, louder.

  Snoring.

  “Hey! Wake up!”

  “I’m awake. I’m awake.”

  More snoring.

  “Goddammit, McGlade, wake up!”

  “Huh? What’s happening?”

  “We were drugged at your wedding.”

  “I got drunk at my wedding? There’s a shocker.”

  “Drugged, McGlade. We were drugged.”

  “Is that you, Jim?”

  “It’s Phin. Wake up and tell me what you see.”

  A long pause. Phin wonders if the moron fell asleep again.

  “I’m in a chair, tied up. Looks like some kind of factory or warehouse. There’s a cargo docking bay off to my right, but the door is closed.”

  “What else?”

  “We gotta get out of here, Phin. If I don’t get this tuxedo returned by tonight, they’re charging me for another full day.”

  “Concentrate, Harry. What else is around you?”

  “There’s some kind of office in the corner. Door closed, no lights. On my left . . . holy shit!”

  “What is it?”

  “This has got to be some kind of bad dream.”

  McGlade yelled in pain.

  “Harry? You okay?”

  “I bit my tongue to see if I’m dreaming. I don’t think I am. Or maybe I bit my tongue in my sleep . . .”

  “You’re not asleep, Harry. Tell me what you see.”

  “I think my tongue’s bleeding.”

  “Harry!”

  “Okay. I see a l
ong steel table. Got a bunch of equipment on it. And some stuff, new in boxes.”

  Phin doesn’t like the sound of that.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “A blowtorch. A power drill. A set of vise-grip pliers. And a chain saw.”

  This has gone from bad to worse.

  “Maybe they’re building a birdhouse,” McGlade said.

  “I doubt that.”

  “There’s also a big bottle of ammonia, and some paper towels. Spring cleaning?”

  “The ammonia is to wake us up when we pass out from pain.”

  “Oh. That makes sense. CAN ANYONE FUCKING HELP ME! HEY! HELP! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  McGlade screams for several minutes.

  “You’re wasting your breath, Harry. No one’s going to hear us.”

  McGlade continues to scream anyway.

  Phin tunes him out. He wonders where Jack and Holly are. Were they taken as well? Are they at another location?

  Are they already dead?

  He has no idea how long he’s been out. A few hours? A day? He rubs his chin against his shoulder, feels some facial stubble, but not much. Less than twelve hours.

  Harry stops yelling. Phin listens to him grunt and struggle for a while. The sounds eventually stop.

  “Man, I’m thirsty.” This from McGlade. “You thirsty, Phin?”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “I am thinking about it. How can I not think about it? If I try not to think about something, I think about it even more because I have to think about it to try not to.”

  Time ticks away. A plane passes overhead, low and loud. Either taking off or landing. Phin guesses they’re in the northwest suburbs, someplace near O’Hare. Elk Grove has a large industrial section, not far from Busse Woods.

  “I gotta pee.”

  Phin squeezes his eyes shut. Being tortured to death is going to be bad enough. Being tortured to death alongside this idiot is even worse.

  “It’s like someone’s turning a vise on my kidneys.”

  “Let’s not talk for a while, okay?”

  McGlade is blessedly silent for a few minutes. Phin concentrates on relaxing his shoulders; they’re beginning to cramp up. The wire is tight enough on his wrists to make his fingers tingle. It’s a heavy gauge, about the width of a coat hanger but more pliable. He pumps his fists several times to get blood into his hands.

  “If I die in a rented tuxedo, how long to you think they’ll keep charging my credit card?”

  Phin rolls his eyes. “Christ, McGlade. Does it matter? You won’t have to pay it.”

  “Yeah, but my wife will. If they don’t find my body, she’ll keep getting charged every month. It could run into millions of dollars.” McGlade doesn’t speak for a moment, then says, “I hope she’s okay. Jack too. You think they’re okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe they got away. Maybe they’re on their way to rescue us.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And maybe they’re bringing cool, refreshing beverages. And a toilet.”

  This guy used to be Jack’s partner? Phin can’t understand how she let him live for this long.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, McGlade, but I can’t understand what the hell Holly sees in you.”

  “I dunno. Love is blind.”

  “Apparently it’s also deaf. And learning disabled.”

  “Maybe Holly loves me because I’ve got so many layers. Like a big, sexy onion. I’m an enigma, wrapped in a mystery.”

  “You’re an enigma, wrapped in an idiot. Layers? Harry, I’ve only met you twice, and you’re about as deep as a spilled beer.”

  “You’re just jealous. Holly and I have something special. We have trust, and loyalty, and commitment.”

  “Commitment? What commitment? You cheated on her four times last night.”

  “They were midgets. If you add them together it only counts as twice.”

  Phin doesn’t answer. This conversation is pointless. They need to think of some way to get out of here. He didn’t undergo months of chemotherapy to suffer and die in this abandoned warehouse.

  But much as Phin pulls and stretches and strains, he can’t free himself.

  There’s nothing they can do but wait.

  CHAPTER 42

  MY STOMACH HURT. I didn’t know if it was an effect of the tranquilizers, or the fact that I was burning up to do something but didn’t have anything I could do.

  The Elk Grove police were called, but they really didn’t have much to do either. Our statements were taken. A few pictures were snapped. I explained to a nearly catatonic Holly what I suspected was going on with Bud and Lorna.

  “So what now?” she asked. “We just wait around for them to contact us?”

  “I’m going into the office, calling Indiana. Maybe they have some sort of idea where they’d go. Got someplace to go?”

  “I’m going to stick around. Maybe something will turn up here.”

  I looked at the twelve Elk Grove cops, standing around talking sports. Nothing was going to turn up here.

  “Call me if you need me, Holly.”

  She reached out to hug me, but it was stiff and mechanical; all of her life force had been drained from her. I explained to the uniforms I was leaving, and when nobody protested I hopped in my Nova and headed back to Chicago.

  I spent most of the trip on the phone with the hospital, trying to ascertain Herb’s condition. First he was still in the OR, then he was in Recovery, then there were some kind of complications and they weren’t sure where he was. I asked for Bernice, but she couldn’t be located. By the time I got to the district house I was on my way to a total nervous breakdown, a feeling exacerbated by the two men waiting for me in my office.

  “Hello, Lieutenant. We heard from the Elk Grove Police Department that you’d be here.”

  “I’m really not in the mood right now, guys.”

  Agent Dailey made a face that almost looked sympathetic. “We understand how you must be feeling.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “We lost two good men in Rosser Park when Lorna Hunt Ellison escaped custody,” Agent Coursey said. “They were friends of ours.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Coursey looked at his shoes, which was the most emotion I’d ever seen from him.

  “It should have been us. We were assigned to accompany Lorna. But when you cracked the Caleb Ellison case, we were ordered back to Chicago.”

  “In a way, you saved our lives, Lieutenant.”

  That was a karma debt I really didn’t need.

  “Gentlemen, I feel bad for your loss, but I’d really like to be alone right now.”

  “We’d like to help.”

  “I prefer doing this myself.”

  “Kidnapping is a Federal offense, Lieutenant. This is technically our jurisdiction.”

  I shot venom out of my eyes. “Do you really want to play fucking jurisdiction games?”

  “No,” Agent Dailey said. “We really want to help.”

  I collapsed in my chair. I had no fight left in me.

  “Fine.” I closed my eyes, tried to rein in some semblance of control. “What have you got?”

  “We’ve created a new profile, with Vicky, of Lorna Hunt Ellison.”

  “A new profile. Great. Does it happen to mention where she’s holding my friends?”

  “Probably someplace close to Busse Woods, or perhaps in the woods themselves. We had a chance to interview Lorna before her escape. She’s a DO offender, impulsive, erratic, very low intelligence. Bud Kork has similar characteristics, plus he’s delusional and psychotic. They couldn’t have planned very far ahead.”

  That had been my assessment. Luring victims to your house in the boonies and burying them in your basement, though horrible, wasn’t the work of a criminal mastermind. But escaping from prison, rescuing Bud, then grabbing Harry and Phin took some real intelligence. A DO—disorganized personality type—couldn’t muster that. It didn’t make sense.


  “How did Lorna escape? Give me details.”

  They ran it down for me.

  “We recovered the derringer, and a plastic bag we believed it had been wrapped in. Lorna could have planted it there years ago.”

  I didn’t like it.

  “Then why wait until now to use it? She’s been locked up for twelve years. Why didn’t she pull this stunt a long time ago?”

  Both Coursey and Dailey shrugged at the same time. It was eerie.

  “She might have been waiting for the right moment,” said Coursey.

  “Or she’d forgotten about it until now,” said Dailey.

  “Or”—I reached for the phone—“somebody planted it for her.”

  I caught Ms. Pedersen, the assistant superintendent for Indiana Women’s Prison, on her way out the door.

  “This is a terrible time for us, Lieutenant. I feel partially responsible. I knew Lorna was capable of violence, but didn’t think she could pull off something like this.”

  “None of us did. This isn’t your fault.”

  “I appreciate that.” And it sounded like she did. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “When I visited you the other day, I asked about Lorna’s visitors. You said she had none. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about phone calls? Prisoners are allowed calls, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you keep records?”

  “No. But I can talk to the guards. They’d remember if Lorna had received any calls for the last few days. Can I call you back?”

  I gave her my number.

  “What if Lorna had help?” I told the Feebies.

  “You think she was coached?”

  “Maybe someone planted the gun, and gave her instructions on how to grab Bud and kidnap Harry and Phin. The same someone who supplied her with the roofies, or whatever drug they used.”

  “Caleb Ellison?” Dailey asked. “He was obviously an organized personality. Sending the videotapes, leaving no evidence—”

  “You saw his house, right?”

  They each nodded three times. I almost looked up, trying to see the puppeteer.

  “It was a mess,” I continued. “Garbage and porn all over. And look at the sloppy way he broke into my partner’s house. How would you profile that?”