Middle Of Nowhere b-7

by Ridley Pearson

He said dreamily, as if nothing had happened between them. "He bought it for me at a truck stop. This trip we took once. David. My brother-"

  She said nothing, knowing it best to allow him to calm. Her breast burned. Her weapon beckoned, but she dared not move. She glanced down quickly only to see her purse had fallen on its side, the knurled handle of the handgun showing. She extended her knee and placed her foot over the weapon, covering it. She knew now what he would do to her if he found out who she was. All she wanted was out of that car-but she also knew he could not feel threatened by her departure, could not feel she would go running to police, or he would never let her go. One slip of the tongue had brought her here to this moment; she guarded her words carefully. She had a role to play.

  Her voice rasped dryly as she spoke, requiring deep breaths to get any sound out at all. "You could have killed me," she said.

  Flek had left. The adrenaline had kicked the drugs in ahead of schedule. He ground his teeth so hard she could hear them-like a rock scratching slate. "Out there in eastern Colorado. Might as well be Kansas, it's so damn flat. There was a 'T' on the cup when Davie bought it-TABBY-but he scratched it off with his penknife and handed it to me, saying it was my birthday present."

  "I'm going to get out of the car now," she announced, having no trouble playing the terrified and wounded stranger. "You're going to drive off and leave me." With her foot, she tried to stuff the handle of the gun back inside, but it wouldn't go, so she covered it again.

  "No, no, no…" he said, suddenly aware of his predicament.

  The car idled on the side of the road.

  "This was a mistake on my part," she said. "I should have taken the taxi."

  "A little late for that."

  "You're upset over the loss of your brother. You're lucky I'm a professional, because I understand that. I've seen men in your condition before. Another woman would report you to the police-"

  He said sarcastically, "And you're not going to!"

  "No, I'm not. That would hardly be fair. It would only further aggravate your mental condition."

  "I do not have no 'mental condition'!" he objected. "I am not no mental case!"

  "Your grief," she said calmly. "I'm referring to your grief over your brother's loss." She would have to turn her back on him to try manually for the door lock, and the car was one of those where the nub of the lock barely protruded when in the locked position, so it was not going to be an easy feat. There wasn't a mastercontrol-lock in her door panel-there was only the one window toggle and it was once again child-locked and inoperable.

  "We got ourselves a situation here," he said, rubbing his sweaty face with an open hand.

  "I'm going to unlock the door," she informed him, "and I'm going to get out of the car. All you have to do is drive away and there is no situation."

  He seemed to be talking to himself more than her. "The thing is, you look so familiar to me, and I been trying to sort that out. And then you go and speak my name like that, and I'm thinking you are a cop, that that's where I seen you. Something to do with Davie. And now you say you won't tell no one, but that's bullshit and we both know it." He hit the accelerator. The rear wheels shot out plumes of mud and the car slowly squirreled back out into the lane nearly hitting a passing car that swerved to avoid them.

  Daphne turned and went for the lock, deciding she could jump at this slow speed. It accelerated quickly. She only had a moment…

  She heard the breaking glass and felt the blow simultaneously. The nauseating smell of cheap tequila engulfed her. One moment she was struggling with that damn door lock. The next, there was only pain, and the dark, blue, penetrating swirl of unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER 51

  Waiting for the 9:10 ferry to Bainbridge in the enormous State Ferry parking lot, his cellular voyeuristically held to his ear, Boldt agonized as he overheard the events that led up to the struggle between Daphne and Flek, Daphne's calm pleading that followed and the final crashing of glass that had silenced all discussion. Only the faint groan of the car engine told him the line was still active. He couldn't be sure if the car had been wrecked or if Flek was still driving.

  Movement in his rearview mirror attracted him, or perhaps it was the magnetism of the man he saw there, walking with a limp through the light rain. The passenger door came open and a bruised and battered John LaMoia climbed into the car painfully. He glanced over at his lieutenant-everything below his eyebrows and above his chin a mass of swollen black and purple and yellow-orange skin-and said through a wired-shut jaw, "Couldn't let you have all the fun."

  "Now you've screwed up everything," Boldt said, "because now I've got to drive you back to the hospital instead of boarding this ferry."

  "No way," the man mumbled, his words barely discernable. "Haven't been on a ferry in years." He added, "Don't worry-I'm not feeling any pain, Sarge. Matter of fact, I feel pretty great."

  Boldt's ear adapted to the odd speech impediment brought on by the man's wired jaw. He sounded halfsouthern, half-drunk. Medicated to the hilt.

  Boldt handed him the phone and said, "No talking into it, but what do you hear?"

  LaMoia pressed his other ear shut, though the move was clearly painful. "Eight cylinder. Twin barrel maybe. Bad pipes."

  Boldt was not thinking in terms of a gear head. He had wanted a straight answer. "But it's a car. Right?"

  "You tell me."

  "A car engine. Idling or running?"

  "This baby's on the road, Sarge. Three thousand RPM and cruising." LaMoia added, "What channel is this anyway? SportTrax?"

  "She left her cell phone on."

  "You told me," LaMoia reminded him.

  "But it's still on. There was a struggle, and no one's doing any talking." Boldt spoke frantically. "I made the call to Poulsbo PD from a pay phone. Told them they couldn't use any radios because this guy's a scanner. They have one plainclothes detective over there. He was going to sit on the Liberty Bay Grill with some radio cars nearby as backup. Maybe we've still got a shot at him."

  The ferry lights approached.

  "Finally," Boldt said.

  "No chopper, I take it," LaMoia surmised.

  "All tied down for the night. One pilot was available, and he said with drive time and prep it would be an hour and a half before he'd be off the ground. Ferry's thirty-five minutes. I opted to have the car once I'm over there."

  "Hang on a second, Sarge. We got some action here. This guy's pulling off the road-some place bumpy." LaMoia handed the cell phone back to Boldt who listened intently.

  "He's pulling over," Boldt told his sergeant. "Stopping… Oh, thank God!" he said with a little too much emotion.

  "What?" LaMoia begged.

  "She's groaning. It's her! She's alive!" A loud scratching. The line went dead. Boldt knew it was not just silence on the other end, but a full disconnect. "Oh, no…" he moaned. He passed the phone to LaMoia, who jerked it to his ear.

  "She may be alive," LaMoia said, "but this baby's dead."

  "He disconnected the call."

  "Or the battery went dead," LaMoia suggested. "How long has that thing been on anyway?" He added angrily, "And how the fuck did she find this skel ahead of you anyway, Sarge? What the hell's that about?"

  "I found him," Boldt answered. "She just took the call. Flek's cell phone records," he said, the words catching in his throat like chicken bones. "I… had… them… work… their… call… logs."

  "Sarge?" LaMoia knew that tone of voice in his boss.

  "That's why she left the call open, John. It wasn't so I could listen in, it was so I could find her."

  "Sarge?" LaMoia repeated.

  "Get Gaynes over to AirTyme Cellular in the Columbia Building. A guy named Osbourne. Wake him up if we have to. Escort him, I don't care. Just get him downtown. Now!" He added in dry whisper, "Now, before her battery dies… and she along with it."

  CHAPTER 52

  She awakened in a dark, confined space, foul smelling and warm. It took her a moment to id
entify it as the Eldorado's trunk. By now Flek had found her weapon and her ID wallet. By now he understood that to kill her-a cop-meant the death penalty, if caught. By now he was plotting what to do, this man wired on a glow plug cocktail. Whatever the stakes previously, for Bryce Abbott Flek they had just escalated.

  Her wrists were handcuffed, her ankles tied together with white plastic ties. Sight of the ties stirred memories of Sanchez and Kawamoto, and stole her breath. Her mouth was gagged with an oily rag. Pulled tightly around her sore head, it was knotted in the back. She felt a strange sensation on her neck and decided it was damp blood: whatever injury she had sustained, it was not life threatening. The man behind the wheel was another story.

  The car rattled and bounced and she blamed the pounding headache as much on the seeping fumes as the blow to her head. A pinkish-red light from the taillights seeped through the car fixtures. Her blouse, soaked in tequila, radiated a sickening smell of her own fear, perfume, and the alcohol. She had no idea where they were, no idea where they were headed, though by the sound of oncoming traffic passing quickly, she knew they were traveling fast, and with so few roads in this area, it meant either toward or away from Poulsbo. If headed away, then her message to Boldt had failed. Only the open phone line presented any ray of hope- however faint-and only then, if Boldt figured it out.

  She credited her training-her ability to transcend the moment, to rise above a patient's despair and think clearly-for the steadiness of thought she experienced. She did not wallow in self-pity or succumb to fear. Instead, after a quick flirtation with the latter, she began to reposition herself in the trunk, knowing what had to be done.

  She had been inside a trunk once before in her life. A different life, it felt like. A different woman. She had no intention of this experience resulting in the same outcome. This time someone would die. And she wasn't going to allow that person to be her.

  CHAPTER 53

  The ferry steamed on through the dark, churning waters interminably. Wind and rain frothed the waters into sharp, angular chop, unique to the Sound, but the ferry plowed down the peaks and beat them out its wake as a subdued, white, rolling foam.

  Boldt and LaMoia sat off by themselves on a mostly empty deck. A few tired businessmen occupied the other seats, and a couple of kids with backpacks. On these milk-run legs, the ferry definitely lost money.

  "You shouldn't have come along," Boldt said.

  "True story," LaMoia answered through his clenched jaw.

  "What do we feed you?"

  "Ensure, through a straw. If I puke, I die. Nice thought, isn't it?"

  "Then why?"

  "The last time this happened, she got cut bad, and you… you beat yourself up pretty hard over that. I hear you been beating yourself up over my little accident. It ain't worth it, Sarge. My gig. My choice. My bad," he said. "I'm slow, but I'm not useless. Besides, I knew you could use the company."

  Boldt's cellular rang. It was Gaynes. She said, "Os bourne provided Daphne with a location for Flek that probably pretty well matches where you are right now- in the middle of the Sound."

  "And she went off of that?" Boldt asked.

  "She had a time to work with: the eight-thirty ferry to Bainbridge."

  "So we're at least an hour behind her."

  "You're right about Osbourne. He has the capability of pretty much pinpointing a call's location, the only bummer being that none of it is real-time. It's taking him about fifteen minutes per transmission signal, which ain't bad, but ain't great."

  "Transmission signal?" he asked.

  "The phone, being on an open circuit, was constantly transmitting. So he asked me to pick various times of the call for him to reference. I chose three different times, each several minutes apart. Her call originated less than a mile from Sandy Hook-west, northwest of there. When you get near the Agate Passage Bridge, you should call me. I'll help direct you."

  "And a few minutes later?" Boldt asked. "Where was she then?"

  "He's still processing. Says it's west of there, probably near Lemolo. He'll have an exact in a few more minutes. Maybe five more minutes, he says."

  "Let's plot the last known reference," he advised.

  "But unless we know where he was ahead of that," she suggested, "we won't know in what direction he was headed. You want the direction, don't you, L.T.?"

  "We'll be off this ferry in fifteen minutes," Boldt said. "I want answers by then. What if Flek's headed back for this ferry? I need to know that! I could drive right past the guy."

  "Understood."

  "So have Osbourne pull some help. An officer's life is at stake here."

  "I'll suggest that."

  "Don't suggest it, order it!"

  "Right," Gaynes said, though she didn't sound convinced.

  "Whatever you can do, Bobbie," Boldt said. It was as close as he could get to an apology.

  "He has a couple guys working on another technology. We could pull them, but I don't advise it, L.T. What they're working on is some kind of real-time technology. It could be the ticket."

  "She disconnected the call!" Boldt objected. "That's not real-time, that's waste-of-time."

  "These guys are cell phone nerds, L.T. They think they've got something going. I'm reluctant to butt in on that. I will if you want, but I think we cut them some slack here and see what they can do for us. They're pretty excited about this other possibility. Your call," she said.

  Boldt said to LaMoia, "Osbourne's using manpower on a long shot, and Gaynes wants me to go along with that." Boldt never consulted LaMoia on such decisions, and the sergeant's obvious surprise reflected that.

  LaMoia said, "A wise old cop once told me that the dick in the field's in a better position to make the judg ment call than the suit back in the office." He was quoting Boldt back to himself, though not verbatim.

  "I'm not in the office!" Boldt protested. "And I'm not a suit." It was the ultimate slur, and Boldt wanted nothing of it.

  LaMoia's words garbled. "You're on a boat in the middle of nowhere, Sarge. That's even worse." LaMoia was looking a little green. "I think maybe I need some air."

  Middle of nowhere, Boldt thought. To him, it summed up both his professional and private lives. It had started with the Flu, this feeling; he had no idea where or when it would end.

  Into the phone, Boldt said, "It's up to you and Osbourne. Just get me something by the time we're back in the car."

  "Thanks, L.T. Back at you." She disconnected the call.

  CHAPTER 54

  " You know what a talented person can do with a color scanner and a paint program these days? And I'm talented. Yessiree. Courtesy of our corrections programs, which taught me damn near everything I know. Maybe not hundred dollar bills, but you, Lieutenant Daphne Matthews, just gave me my passport outta here. You and your ID and your badge. Before that, what choice did I have? Hide out jumping islands for six months, lift a driver's license and give it a run at the border before it's reported. That's shaving it a little close for this boy. But a cop's badge? Are you kidding me? I surrender your weapon at the border and drive right across, all official-like. Slam dunk. Gone and lost forever. The way it should be."

  They were parked in dark woods, the air laden with the pungent smell of pine sap. Flek had propped her up to sitting in the trunk, the rain falling down on both of them. Her clotted blood began to melt and paint her blouse that eerie but familiar rose. He held a cellular in his hand, switched on. Hers or his? She wondered if he had disconnected her original call to Boldt, or if it had been transmitting all this time. She held to that hope.

  What Bryce Abbott Flek did not know was that she had spent the last ten to fifteen minutes scrunched down into one corner of the locked trunk, the right taillight's plastic housing pulled away, shorting out its connection in an endlessly repeating stream of three short, three long, and three short bursts. They had traveled good road for most of that ride, and she had to think that some car or truck had been back there, some Boy Scout or former Marine aler
t to a taillight blinking Morse code. She counted on someone having taken down the plate number, of calling it into authorities on a hunch that the SOS meant something. This, along with Boldt's earlier call into Poulsbo for backup, a call she was also counting on having been made, seemed certain to alert authorities to her general vicinity. The psychologist in her wouldn't succumb to the evidence at hand-the fact that Flek looked and sounded unstable, apparently the victim of another glow plug or two, that he held her weapon in the waist of his pants and had a glassy look in his eyes that forewarned her of that instability. That he was capable of violence against her, she had no doubt. She had already witnessed this firsthand. But a larger agenda loomed behind those eyes, and she wanted her chance to redirect its course. The first step was the gag. She needed the gag removed to have any chance whatsoever. She made noise for the first time, sounding like a person with no tongue.

  She had no idea of their location. She guessed they were somewhere on or near the Port Madison Indian Reservation because it was dark as pitch out, only a faint amber glow to the bottoms of clouds many, many miles away. The road was gravel and mud. Though in a partial clearing, they were surrounded by tall giant cedars, ferns, and thick vegetation. She heard a stream or river nearby. If she could run to that water, she could swim it, or float it, and he'd have a hell of a time finding her. She could climb a tree and hide. Wait out the sunrise. She clung to these positive thoughts in the face of her impending execution. Did he know enough to blame her for his brother's murder as well? On the surface, Flek seemed to be explaining why he was now going to kill her, though the psychologist knew that if that had been his intention he'd have already carried through with it. Either he was plagued by doubt, or he had something else in mind. She tried to talk at him again, the rag tasting like gasoline on her tongue.

  "When you talk," he said, "you'll tell me his phone number-I don't want to hear nothing else from you, not another word. Just the phone number. This Lieutenant Louis Boldt. This one did this to Davie. A pager's fine. His cell phone. But nothing in no office. No land lines. I call once. One call. You understand? You screw this up, and it's on you what happens next. Maybe I fuck you. Maybe I just snuff you sitting right there like that-all wet and disgusting. Maybe you go out ugly, lady. Ugly and unlaid and dead. Not much worse than that."