Fugitive Father

by Jean Barrett

  No! Common sense told her he had to be responsible for the deaths of both Howard Buchanan and that young deputy. Anything else was too far-fetched, nothing but a cunning temptation he’d concocted because he would do or say anything to trick Joel’s address out of her.

  “Rain’s stopped, Ellie. We can go now.”

  She was relieved. They left the bench, started back toward the van. Both of them were silent now. She regretted the scene she had slyly encouraged in the gazebo, but it did have one result in her favor.

  There were public rest rooms next to the parking lot When she indicated her need to stop there before they resumed their journey, not only did he permit her to go alone into the women’s side but this time he let her take her purse with her. He was actually beginning to trust her!

  Once he’d checked out the rest room to make certain it was empty, she hurried inside, leaving him safely behind on the sidewalk. She wasted no time in locking herself into a stall, opening her purse, and searching excitedly through its contents. She would scrawl a plea for help, a message she’d leave where it was bound to be discovered. Maybe she’d even have time for a second note she could hide in her clothing. That way it would be ready to pass to someone, anyone, should the opportunity ever occur.

  Where? Where was her pen? She never failed to keep one or two of them in her purse, along with a couple of pencils. And there were always bits of paper. She raked frantically through the assortment. Gone. Even her lipstick had been removed. Nothing to write with or write it on, unless you counted several tissues.

  Damn him. He had managed at some point to empty her bag of anything she might use to contact help. No wonder he had trusted her to keep it. There was nothing here that would do her any good. Disgusted, she started to close the purse. That was when her attention was captured by the packets of sugar which had accumulated on the bottom. Her fingers sifted through them. She was seized by an inspiration.

  OFFICER JUDY BELUCCI presented herself in the cluttered office to which she had been summoned.

  “Sir?”

  Superintendent Hamish Bolling waved her to a chair in front of his desk and went on studying one of the crime lab reports that were routinely submitted to him. Judy slid into the chair and waited for him to shift his attention in her direction.

  She had a lot of respect for Ham Bolling. He was a thirty-year veteran of the St. Louis police force, a bull of a man with grizzled hair and glasses that were forever sliding down his nose. Like most of his officers, Judy regarded him as tough but scrupulously fair.

  However, she was puzzled by Bolling’s action in connection with the manhunt for Noah Rhyder. The homicide division Bolling commanded was not responsible for recovering the fugitive, but he had asked her to be an unofficial liaison between him and the team that was in charge of the search. He hadn’t bothered to explain the request.

  Superintendent Bolling finally shoved the report to one side and looked at her over his glasses. “All right, Belucci, what’s the latest from the other side?”

  “Not much, sir. Kenny DeMarco is back in custody and not talking.” Bolling nodded impatiently. He obviously already knew the mobster had been recaptured. “But Rhyder is still out there somewhere. They think now he can’t be alone, that someone must be hiding him, only nothing has turned up so far.”

  “His kid?”

  “In the East and safe with his guardian. It isn’t likely Rhyder will get anywhere near him, even if he tries.”

  She watched the superintendent poke at his slipping glasses. He was silent, thoughtful for a moment, then he made up his mind.

  “Tell you what, Belucci. Let’s get Lew Ferguson in on this, see what he has to say.”

  She was surprised. “Sir,” she reminded him, “you removed Detective Ferguson from the case before it ever went to trial.”

  “I know, but the review board was satisfied the spot of blood on Rhyder’s shirt cuff wasn’t planted evidence.” He shrugged. “And who knows. Maybe it could have happened when Rhyder punched Senator Buchanan in the nose and not when he finished him off with the poker. With all the other evidence, it ended up not mattering. The point is, Lew seemed to have gathered a lot of information about Rhyder. With his knowledge, maybe he has some insights that could be useful in locating the fugitive. Something we could pass on to the team.”

  “Detective Ferguson is off duty for a couple of days, sir.”

  “Call him. Have him come in.”

  Judy got to her feet. She didn’t like Lew Ferguson, maybe because he was too much of a loner, but it wasn’t her place to say so. There was something, though, that she did feel entitled to ask before she returned to her desk.

  “Sir, you never explained when you gave me this assignment just why you’re so interested in the fugitive. Our division was finished with Noah Rhyder when he was sentenced. Is there something about the case that doesn’t satisfy you?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m convinced we got the right man. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what’s got me itching. Let’s hope Lew can scratch it for me.”

  But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, Judy realized an hour later when Bolling called her back into his office from her desk in the bull pen.

  “Sir, I’m unable to reach Detective Ferguson. He doesn’t respond to his pager or answer his phone. I did speak to his landlady. She saw him leave the building with a suitcase, but she has no idea where he was going.”

  Judy watched Ham Bolling frown with displeasure. An officer’s personal life was his own business, but the superintendent expected his people to maintain some channel of contact with the department, whether on or off duty. Lew Ferguson had apparently chosen to ignore that rule.

  “All right, Belucci, let’s have it.”

  “Sir?”

  “There’s something else on your mind.”

  She had to hand it to him. He had uncanny perception. “It’s just that I ran into Phil Gates on my way to communications.”

  “Lew’s last partner. With narcotics now.”

  “Yes. I asked him about Detective Ferguson, thinking maybe he knew how to reach him. He didn’t, but he did share something about Ferguson and the Buchanan case that he said no one wanted to hear at the time.”

  “Go on.”

  “He said Ferguson had this intense need to prove Noah Rhyder was guilty. That it was more than just a good detective determined to get the murderer. Personal. That was the word Phil used to describe it. He said Detective Ferguson was too personal about it.”

  This time Bolling didn’t bother adjusting his glasses. He removed them altogether. “Maybe I’ve got more here than just an itch that needs scratching. I think Lew and I need to have a real discussion. Keep trying, Belucci. I want him located.”

  Chapter Six

  The sealed sugar packets were the kind that fast-food restaurants supplied with containers of coffee. Whenever Ellie, who hated waste, was given more of the packets than she needed, she tucked them away with the intention of one day making use of them. She rarely did. Instead, weeks or months later, while cleaning out her purse or glove compartment, she would discover the forgotten collection, stale by now, and throw it away.

  Sitting there in the rest-room stall, Ellie blessed both her thriftiness and her failure to sanitize her purse in the last six months. She counted the packets which had settled to the bottom of the bag. There were fourteen of them. Was that enough?

  How much sugar did it take to foul up a carburetor? She had no idea. She wasn’t even sure that sugar poured into a gas tank would have any effect at all on a car. Maybe it was just an automotive myth.

  On the other hand, short of doing nothing, and that had become unthinkable, what else was left for her to try? Noah was guarding her too carefully to permit her to escape or to contact help without risking lives, including her own. But if she could secretly sabotage the van, stop him cold in his tracks…

  All right, so a dead engine wouldn’t prevent him from reaching North Carolina It
would, however, force him to seek repairs or another method of transportation. Either way, it meant contact with other people. A situation in which he might be identified or where she could safely signal her need. If nothing else, it would delay him, and time was his enemy.

  Anything was possible, providing, of course, she could manage this little trick without his knowledge. But if he’d left the packets in her purse, it couldn’t have occurred to him that—

  “What’s taking you so long in there?” he called, startling her with the sound of his knuckles thumping on the rest-room door.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she shouted back.

  The sugar! She couldn’t leave it in the packets like this. It would have to be loose, ready to dump into the tank. How could she contain it until then and at the same time conceal it in a way that would appear innocent? There was nothing available but the tissues.

  Working with a feverish haste, Ellie slit the packets and dumped their contents into layers of tissue. All the while she feared that at any second he would lose patience, burst into the rest room, and discover what she was doing.

  “Hey!” he called again.

  “Coming, I’m coming.”

  Slipping the tissue-wrapped sugar into her purse, and covering the bulge with a couple of crumpled tissues, she flushed the empty packets and left the stall.

  Noah gazed at her suspiciously when she joined him on the sidewalk outside. “What were you up to in there all this time?”

  “Chiseling an SOS with my nail file. Look if you don’t believe me.”

  “Think I won’t?”

  Taking her by the hand, he drew her back inside the rest room where he rapidly checked both stalls. Ellie held her breath, praying she’d left no telltale grains of sugar behind and that he wouldn’t demand to search her purse again.

  Satisfied, and without mentioning her purse, he ushered her out to the van. They had lost considerable time here in the park, and he was in a hurry to get them back on the highway. He wasn’t going to be pleased by the necessity of another stop. Too bad.

  She waited until they’d regained Ridley’s main street to tell him. “We’re low on gas.”

  “Again?” he grumbled.

  “It was early this morning when I last filled up. Since then we’ve crossed Kentucky and a good chunk of Tennessee. How far do you think this van can go on a tank of gas?”

  “All right, pull into the next station, and make sure that like the last one, it has a credit card facility at the pumps.”

  They reached the edge of town before she found what he ordered. Once again he appropriated the keys after she turned off the engine.

  “Okay, Ellie, you know the drill.”

  She did. It was what she had been counting on. Thankfully, he let her keep her purse when she climbed from the van, regarding it as harmless now. He still had her sweater tied around his waist to conceal the gun in his belt. He didn’t need her purse anymore for that.

  Repeating his caution of this morning, he mounted guard at the hood of the van while she handled the fill-up. Now comes the fun part, she thought. Executing a bit of legerdemain on a man who had the eyes of a worried panther, which meant she had to get the sugar into the gas tank without his catching her doing it. But Ellie had foreseen this part and planned for it.

  While waiting for the tank to automatically fill, she opened her purse and removed her credit card from her wallet. He would approve of her having the card out and ready, anything to lessen their time at the station. It made a reason to leave her purse conveniently open, hanging by its strap from her shoulder.

  Seconds later, the snap of the shutoff indicated the tank was filled. Her finger quickly depressed the lever as she removed the nozzle, allowing gas to trickle down the side of the van. Muttering over the “accident,” she reached inside her purse.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded when she produced the wad of tissues.

  “Just mopping up a bit of spilled gas. Well, it’s your own fault. You make me nervous watching my every move.”

  He grunted something, but he remained at the hood while she dealt with the spill. His watchful gaze even flicked away long enough, when another car pulled into the station, to permit her to swiftly tip the contents of the tissues into the tank. When he looked back, she was securing the cap.

  Her tension was almost unbearable by the time they left the station. But she had done it! She had sneaked the sugar into the tank! How long before it worked? If it worked.

  Lord , she hoped it produced results, provided her some avenue of escape. Her need to get away from him was growing more urgent with every hour she spent in his potent company. She hated the emotions he stirred in her. They confused her, especially after the park, creating doubts she didn’t want.

  It was afternoon when they finally put Ridley behind them. She disliked leaving the town where service stations were readily available. A dead van out on the open road would definitely complicate things, and she had sort of hoped that before then…But so far there were no signs of trouble. Anyway, she couldn’t expect to order a breakdown in an ideal location.

  They were on the highway now. Ellie kept waiting for some sound or sensation that would tell her the engine was failing. There was nothing, not a stutter or a falter.

  “What are you listening for?” he challenged her.

  Had her anticipation been that obvious? She was going to have to be more careful. But since he was already questioning her concern, she decided not to hide it.

  “I thought maybe the motor was running a bit rough.”

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  That was the problem. It didn’t sound anything but normal. The minutes passed, and it went on performing smoothly. It must have been better than a half hour since the sugar had gone into the tank. Why hadn’t the carburetor suffered by now?

  Face it, Ellie. It was a wasted effort.

  Her disappointment was considerable.

  Another twenty minutes went by. They were in rugged country now, heavily wooded ridges and deep hollows with the farms few and widely scattered. And that’s where it happened. The van was climbing a long hill when it started to miss and chug. At the top the engine gave out. Ellie coasted onto the gravel shoulder.

  There was a brief silence. Noah ended it with a healthy curse, followed by an exasperated, “Don’t say it, Ellie. I’d hate to hear how I should have listened to you.”

  “You should have listened to me.”

  He glowered at her. She was able to conceal her satisfaction, mostly because the sugar couldn’t have picked a worse spot to finally work its magic. There were no other cars on this stretch of the highway and not a dwelling in sight. She hadn’t planned on stranding them in the wilderness.

  “Maybe you can fix it.”

  “I’m an architect, Ellie, not a mechanic.”

  “Well, all I know how to do under a hood is check the oil.”

  “Then let me suggest something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Try starting it again.”

  “Oh.”

  She turned the key, and the engine came back to life. But it was plain that it was still ailing and that they couldn’t depend on it to take them the rest of the way to North Carolina.

  “Hold on,” he said, producing the map as they continued to sit by the side of the road with the engine trembling and threatening to expire again.

  She watched him as he opened the map and consulted it.

  “Yeah, here it is.” He held the map toward her, showing her what he intended. “We just passed it back down the hill where it joins the highway. A county road.” He traced the line on the map. “See, it’s only a few miles along here to a town called Homer. Bound to be a mechanic there.”

  “You’re an optimist. This engine is sick. We’ll get stuck out there along a back road.”

  “So we hike to Homer and a tow truck, and along the way you get to scout locations for your next masterpiece. It’s the nearest town, Ellie.”
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br />   She was getting exactly what she’d schemed for. Why was she beginning to regret it?

  “I don’t suppose we have a choice,” she agreed.

  She turned the van around with care. It protested the effort but kept breathing. This time gravity was on their side. They rolled down the hill without a problem.

  “Coming up on the left, Ellie.”

  His constant directions were irritating and unnecessary. She could plainly see for herself the sign that marked the turning for Homer. When she braked and swung the wheel, the van stalled again. She coaxed it back to life, pumping furiously to feed it sufficient gas.

  “You’re going to flood it,” he warned.

  She glared at him, fought a rising panic, and managed to ease the vehicle through the turning. They proceeded along the narrow county road, dipping, then laboring over another rise.

  “Careful,” he cautioned. “There’s a sharp bend coming up. Are you watching the gas? This thing is spitting again.”

  “If you think you can do any better, then you take the wheel,” she snapped at him. “Otherwise, just close your mouth and let me drive.”

  He was silent. They continued another mile along the winding road. The van was coughing in earnest now.

  “Don’t think we’re gonna make Homer, after all,” he decided, scanning the roadside. “Hey, a mailbox ahead. Looks like the entrance to a farm on the other side. We’re in business, Ellie. They’ve got to have a phone.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that. The rusted rural mailbox was leaning at a drunken angle, and the mouth of the driveway just beyond it looked fit for nothing but horses. But she couldn’t argue their need for immediate assistance. The van was barely clinging to life.

  Slowing, she turned into the lane. They jounced over ruts and grassy humps, crawled about fifty yards, and arrived at a stand of overgrown lilacs. The van wheezed to a halt, uttering a final death rattle before subsiding into an ominous silence. Ellie knew, even as she tried to start it again, that it was hopeless. The vehicle was going nowhere this time.

  “Guess nobody’s at home,” Noah said, indicating what was left of the house just beyond the lilacs.