by J W Becton
He had to do this.
Had to.
Lacarova dragged his palm across his brow, mopping up the cold sweat that had suddenly oozed onto his skin.
There was no easy way out of this situation. If he didn’t make the girl disappear, the boss would only send someone else to do it and then frame him for the crime anyway. Better to do the job himself. That way he could make sure it all went right and that there was no evidence to trace back to him.
He opened his eyes and stared at his target, trying not to see the tiny little girl but to imagine the evil, maniacal woman she could grow up to become. A woman who, like the boss, might have a fetish for torture and pain. Who might take pleasure in abuse and destruction. Who would enjoy making life difficult for everyone around her.
Those now-innocent blue eyes might one day hold nothing but scorn and twisted joy at the power to wound and control.
Lacarova felt his jaw tighten.
That sweet young girl could turn out as twisted as the boss.
He watched as the child toddled over to a low-hanging swing and tried to hoist herself into it. Oblivious to her small charge, Red had seated herself cross-legged in the center of the rainbow-colored merry-go-round and was busy chatting with her friends while apparently trying to make herself dizzy enough to puke.
After landing on her pink backside a few times, the little girl gave up on the swing, opting instead to try one of the springy horse toys. That kept her occupied for about five minutes, and then she dropped onto the ground and began picking through whatever mulch they had used for the footing.
Thirty minutes later, the child was still digging around on the ground when Red finally remembered she was supposed to be babysitting.
Lacarova watched as Red yelled, “Sasha! Let’s go! Snack time.”
Red gestured for Sasha to follow but didn’t take the girl’s hand this time, just joined her friends as they walked, leaving the youngster to amble along very slowly, her pink backpack dangling from one hand and dragging across the ground behind her.
He cranked the engine and felt profound gratitude when the harsh rumble of the car drowned out the innocent sounds of the playground. Now, he waited as soundless pink patent leather shoes hit concrete sidewalk well behind the herd of teens.
Then he gunned the engine, leapt the curb, and did the one thing he had to do in order to free himself, to free everyone else.
The car bore down relentlessly, and at the last moment, Lacarova cursed and swerved to miss the kid. The air filled with the screech of brakes and the odor of burning pads.
“Shit!” he said as he shoved open the door.
Cold air swept into the car as he leaned out, snaked his hands around the little girl’s tummy, and hauled her inside, depositing her on the seat beside him. Her bag landed in his lap, and he threw it into the back seat.
Slamming his door, Lacarova hit the gas hard, rocketed back off the curb, bounced onto the street, and pulled a U-turn so hard the kid flew up and whacked her head on the passenger window.
He expected her to start bawling, but she didn’t. Instead, she simply looked at him with wide eyes, mouth open, her little hand raised to the place where her head had struck glass.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Lacarova commanded, almost laughing at his own directive. After all, what did it matter now if she got hurt?
The girl did not move a muscle, just stared at him with an expression so blank he wondered if that whack to the head had given her instant brain damage.
He slowed the car once he was a good distance from the park. He didn’t want to draw more attention to himself by careening through a residential area, but he made sure to take lots of random turns just in case. It felt like the thing to do.
The kid still sat there gaping at him, and Lacarova watched her out of the corner of his eyes and then swore under his breath as he began to realize what he’d done.
The boss was going to go apeshit when she found out he’d disobeyed her orders, and he knew for sure that his actions had effectively stamped his life with an expiration date. That date wasn’t very far out, and his expiration would be neither painless nor fast.
No, the boss would ensure that he suffered on his way out.
Jesus, he would probably end up in a rendering plant if she caught him.
That thought lit a fire under him.
He no longer had the option of taking his time and making a perfectly clean break. He’d have to hide the kid just long enough to take care of basics: dump the car, gather his cash, pay off his debts so no one else would have any reason to chase him, and disappear.
Looking between the kid and the road ahead, he wondered what was up with the kid’s silence. She should be crying and pissing herself.
Was she even potty trained?
He pushed the thought away and looked at her.
“I’m a friend of your parents,” Lacarova lied.
He wasn’t sure why he was offering her an explanation, but he was.
“Your parents asked me to pick you up and…uh….babysit. They want you to be a good little girly,” he said.
Sasha moved farther across the seat, pressing herself against the door, but now she was watching him with a bit less shock on her face.
Having the girl less frightened would make things easier, he supposed. He could stow her at his place while he disposed of the car and then he’d figure out what the hell he was going to do with her.
Lacarova arrived at his house in Woolfolk Fort in minutes, and only after angling his car into the crumbling driveway did he begin to calm down a bit. He took a deep breath and glanced up and down the street. He took in the potholed road, checked behind the wonky chain-link fences, looked behind broken window glass. No one was around—even the dogs seemed to have disappeared—but if someone had seen him arrive, people who lived in Woolfolk Fort chose to forget what their neighbors were up to. It was safer that way.
Hell, murders had happened in the middle of the street in broad daylight here with no witnesses. No one would say a thing of him bringing a kid into his house.
Still, as he emerged from the car, he took another good look around before circling to the passenger side and slowly opening the door. The kid had been leaning on it, and he didn’t want her hitting the ground. He reached for her small hand.
“Come on and follow me,” he said, wondering if she’d comply. “I’ve got a TV inside for you to watch.”
Sasha did as he said, and he half walked, half hauled the girl up the crooked wooden staircase to his front door.
Keeping her at his place wasn’t a good idea, of course, but it took care of all practical considerations. In this area of town, no one would care if she tried to scream or bang on the walls. Escape was impossible. Security bars covered the windows, which were basically painted shut anyway, and a quick repurposing of a toolbox latch and padlock would keep her confined to one room.
Not that a child so young was mounting an escape plan, he thought.
“Here’s where you’ll stay,” he said, showing her the bedroom. “And here’s the bathroom.”
He looked down at her. She was still clutching his hand.
“You do know how to use the toilet, don’t you?” he asked, hoping that she did.
She nodded slowly.
Thank God.
He pulled her back to the bedroom, turned on the TV, and found the twenty-four-hour cartoon channel—not that he knew where it was or anything. He left her on the bed, her focus now on the TV instead of him.
Yes, this would work out fine as a temporary holding place. Just until he figured out what to do next.
Then, almost as an afterthought, Lacarova removed his phone, gaming system, and laptop in case the kid turned out to be more tech savvy than he expected.
Finally, leaving Sasha occupied with his TV, Lacarova went to the garage, rummaged until he had the supplies to install a padlock on the bedroom door, and returned to screw it into place.
Now that Sasha was secure, he felt satisfie
d with himself. The kid could watch TV, and the bathroom was accessible, so all he had to do was drop food into the room a couple times. She would be fine.
Hell, she would be better than fine. She’d eat junk food and watch TV. Every kid’s dream, right?
Twenty
Tripp Carver and his partner Jimmy Starnes were waiting for me at reception after I got back from a late lunch on Thursday.
“Tripp,” I said, feeling a mixture of pleasure at seeing him and then wariness as I looked at his partner.
“Starnes,” I added with a nod in his direction.
Seeing Tripp lounging casually at Matilda’s desk, I might have suspected he’d come to talk with me in person about Slidell, but Starnes’s presence—and his stiff posture as he perched his hefty frame on the reception sofa—told me this was official MPD business.
I narrowed my one good eye at them while Starnes hefted himself up, his suit pants barely clinging to his rounded middle.
I looked away in case something snapped.
“What brings you two to the DOI?” I asked, looking at Tripp, who was just as delicious as ever in his slightly rumpled suit and loosened tie.
Eyes wide with concern, Tripp approached, ignoring my question completely.
“Jesus, Jules, what the hell happened to you?”
He hadn’t seen me with my black eye yet, and makeup was futile. I guess the damage was showing worse than I realized. I thought yellow would be less noticeable than blue.
Apparently, I was wrong.
“Oh, this? Nothing. Just a mishap at jujitsu practice,” I hedged. I didn’t want to explain my stupid eye injury to everyone in creation. Taking down a thug was one thing; an air bag malfunction was quite another.
One didn’t brag about being defeated in battle by inanimate objects.
“Okay,” Tripp said, drawing out the word. I knew he wouldn’t let me get away with that, but for now, at least, he seemed to be moving on.
And Starnes obviously favored the moving-on option. He cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice still sounded like a metal rake on concrete.
“This is MPD business. Is there somewhere we can speak privately?”
“Follow me. The conference room should be free.”
“Your partner here?” Starnes rasped as he followed me to the room across the hall from Ted’s empty office. The boss himself was still in Atlanta, I recalled.
I’d seen Vincent’s GMC in the parking lot, so I knew he was already in. I deposited Tripp and Starnes in the conference room and then swung by Vincent’s office to find him absorbed in his computer, his sleeves rolled up as if he’d worked through lunch.
I don’t know why, but at that completely inappropriate moment, I thought of our kiss. Flushing, I watched him for a moment before he noticed me in the doorway and smiled, head tilted, eyes searching mine as if he knew exactly what I’d been remembering.
“I….”
I had something to say, dammit. What was it? I couldn’t just stand there, melting under that look of longing in his eyes.
“Afternoon,” he said, his voice almost a caress.
I stood still for a moment, wondering what had happened to my brain between the reception desk and Vincent’s office.
“Everything okay with Justin?” I stammered out the first thing that came into my head.
Vincent let out a breath, almost a sigh.
“I called him,” he said. “We didn’t talk long. I told him I’d run across his car at Allred Racing, and he interpreted it to mean that I was stalking him. Told me he was just having some regular repairs made and to mind my own business.”
“Typical,” I said, trying to bring him some comfort.
“I pressed him,” Vincent said. “Asked why he chose a racing shop if he was just having repairs done. There are places closer to the college, after all.”
“Bet that went over well.”
“Yeah, he indicated that I might want to do something anatomically impossible and then hung up the phone.”
“That’s rough.”
Vincent shrugged.
“I know he’s lying to me, but I’m not sure how deep his trouble is. Is he just wasting his mother’s tuition money on bad paint jobs? If so, that’s between them. But if he’s in danger. If he’s drag racing or somehow involved in their scam….”
“Believe me, if I had any great advice, I’d give it to you.”
And that reminded me of why I’d come to his office in the first place.
“The MPD is here,” I said with total awkwardness. “Conference room.”
“Ah,” he said, sounding slightly amused at my fumbling speech patterns. “Something special happening?”
“Don’t know,” I said as he stood and rounded his desk, suddenly taking up a great deal of space in the small office. “Starnes is even more grating than usual, so there’s that to look forward to.”
We fell into step together in the hallway, and I could feel his upper arm brushing my shoulder in the confines.
“Delightful,” Vincent murmured, as his eyes met mine.
I strode ahead of him into the conference room, and by the time everyone had greeted each other and gotten seated, I was in business mode.
Starnes began in his eight-pack-a-day voice.
“We understand that the DOI is pursuing an investigation involving the Accident Care Clinic and Dr. Steven Keller. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling dread settle in my stomach.
The man who had informed us that he’d been threatened by fraudsters was now being discussed by the MPD.
That couldn’t be good.
Tripp picked up with a narrative. “This morning, three-year-old Sasha Keller was abducted.”
The room fell silent as Vincent and I registered the news. Dr. Keller’s daughter had been kidnapped.
“Jesus,” Vincent said, his hand scrubbing across his jaw in agitation.
“How?” I asked, picturing the adorable little girl who’d opened her door to us.
“The victim was walking home from the park with her thirteen-year-old babysitter and a group of adolescents who live in the neighborhood,” Starnes said.
“Where were her parents?” I demanded.
“Mrs. Keller was at work, Dr. Keller was at the golf course, and she was being watched by a kid on school holiday,” Tripp said.
I sat back in my seat, allowing a wave of guilt to crash over me, temporarily washing away every other emotion I might have experienced. I could only listen in horror as the detectives continued.
“So far, we’ve got zip to go on,” Starnes said, his tone so acidic it could have dissolved the wooden table between us. “The babysitter had apparently let Sasha fall well behind the group, and they had gone around the curve in the road when the abductor approached. She said she didn’t even realize anything was wrong until she heard the screech of brakes and ran back to check on Sasha. She saw the car pulling away. She was unable to provide a description of the abductor, but we do have an excellent description of the vehicle: it’s a blue car that is ‘kind of low to the ground’ and ‘had fat wheels.’”
Starnes snorted in disgust, as if vague descriptions were something new in police work. I cut my eyes to Tripp, and he gave me a little sideways smile before continuing.
“We know the color and body style, so that’s something,” Tripp said. “And we put out an Amber alert right away, but other than a few zillion false tips, we’ve gotten nothing credible on the child’s location. You put one of those alerts out, and suddenly everyone thinks they’ve seen her.”
“So nothing?” Vincent asked, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. “No word on her at all?”
“Nothing yet,” Tripp said, “but we’ve had uniforms talking to neighbors, trying to find someone who saw what happened, get a better description of the abductor, maybe a plate.”
“Keller told you he was working with us,” I surmised.
“Yes,” Tripp said, “and we would have be
en here earlier, but Dr. Keller wasn’t exactly coherent after his daughter was taken. Took us a while to figure out what he was talking about.”
Tripp looked at me and added, “You understand, Jules.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Of course, I understood what he meant. My own father had shut down completely after my sister was raped, speaking only to rage incoherently at someone.
And a raging father did not make the best witness.
My thoughts lurched in a totally new direction at the memory of my own father after Tricia’s rape, and all I could see in my mind was that teenage girl who was living in a house with Slidell. Her life hung in the balance just as much as Sasha’s did, and I became uneasy in my own skin as I remembered another innocent victim I had been unable to protect: Amber Willis, the young woman who had been abducted and murdered in my place. I shuddered involuntarily at the memory of my failure.
Why couldn’t we seem to help these innocent girls?
I glanced at Vincent, who sat stonily beside me. He appeared calm and all business, but I could feel the tension rolling off his body. This—the abduction of a child—was hitting him hard too, especially since we were aware that Dr. Keller had been threatened in the not-so-distant past.
I knew he blamed himself for not taking the threat more seriously.
Knew he would kill himself in order to save that kid, if that’s what it took.
Tripp broke into my thoughts, and I looked away from Vincent as he said, “We understand that you have been undercover at the Accident Care Clinic—”
“And a few other places,” Vincent interjected. “Keller was providing information about a fraud ring. He recently contacted us, told us that someone inside the fraud ring found out that he was working with us. He believed one of his staff had seen him compiling and leaving the building with insurance claims for us to review.”
“Seems he was right,” I said. “We’re dealing with a large, organized fraud ring.”
“Which explains why someone would go to such lengths to keep Keller quiet,” Tripp said.
“Problem is we haven’t yet ascertained who’s in charge,” Vincent added.
“We were planning to question two suspects—Eddie Wohl and Mary Fallsworthy—today in connection with the ring. Eddie delivered some vague threats to Dr. Keller, but we believe there’s also a possibility that Fallsworthy, a nurse practitioner at the clinic, is the inside man.”