KnockOut

by Catherine Coulter

  “I heard Blessed grunt and say he’d stymie me easier than Nat Hodges. That was the word he used, ‘stymie.’ Then Grace said something, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “I felt frozen, so terrified I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, could scarcely draw a breath. Finally they moved away, probably to the kitchen, so Blessed could make this horrible old woman a whiskey sour.

  “Later, probably after three o’clock in the morning, Autumn showed me the tree branch outside the window and we climbed down.”

  Ethan said, “Did you go to the cemetery before you went to get your car? To know for sure?”

  Autumn turned in to her mother and wrapped her arms around her back. “It’s all right, sweetie.”

  Autumn nodded and turned back. “Mama wanted to see it with her own eyes. But she said she believed me now after what she heard Mrs. Backman say. She knew I didn’t see it in my head.”

  Joanna hugged her daughter tightly to her. She kissed her hair. “Know this, Autumn, from now on I will always believe exactly what you tell me.” She gave her daughter a lopsided grin and another hug. “However, whether or not I want to believe you is a very different matter.” She looked up at Ethan. “It was too dangerous to stay. We had to get out of there.”

  Ethan studied the little girl’s face. “Tell me, Autumn, what were you doing in the cemetery so late, and alone. When you saw them burying the people?”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. She glanced at her mother, then quickly away. Finally she said, “I wanted to say good-bye to Daddy.”

  Joanna looked like she’d collapse in on herself.

  Ethan said matter-of-factly, “Okay, thanks for telling me. So, Joanna, you got out of there fast?”

  He’d thrown her a rope and she grabbed it. “You bet. Thankfully my car was on a bit of an incline in front of the huge garage, and I put it in neutral, pushed, then jumped in as it gained speed and steered it back down that long driveway. I didn’t have to start the engine until we were nearly at the road that runs past the driveway.”

  Autumn said, “I was looking back, and I didn’t see any lights go on. I told Mama we’d be okay.”

  “I drove until morning. Believe me, I never stopped, even for an instant.”

  Autumn said, “I tried to call Daddy, and that was stupid because there couldn’t be an answer now since he’s dead. But before he died, I spoke to him when he was in prison. Do you know, Ethan, Daddy would talk to me about everything, but he wouldn’t ever talk about his mother or his brothers. I guess I know why now. They’re creepy. I’m glad he ran away.”

  Ethan asked without thinking, “Your dad had telephone minutes?”

  Autumn cocked her head at him. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, he did,” Joanna said. “That’s enough for tonight, Sheriff.”

  “One last thing you might help explain, Joanna. Blessed must know we’re aware of who he is now, where his family lives, yet he still tried to take Autumn. What did he intend to do with her? Where did he think he could take her? And why? And what did Shepherd mean by saying Autumn was stronger than Martin?”

  “You’ll have to ask Blessed that, Sheriff. He didn’t exactly share it with us.”

  20

  GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Sunday evening

  “That was a good call on Buzz,” Savich said to Jimmy Maitland, who’d stopped by after dinner. “He’s safe now, no way the two of them can get to him in Aruba. That would mean passports, and Lissy Smiley doesn’t have one.”

  “Victor Nesser does, but the alert’s out on him. I would strongly doubt they have the sophistication to obtain good forgeries,” Maitland said. He accepted a cup of coffee from Sherlock, cocked his head at her. She said, “Yeah, yeah, the coffee god over there made it, not me.”

  Maitland toasted her with his cup. “You’re looking pretty good, Sherlock. Like I told my wife, in the long scheme of things, I’d rather lose a spleen than some other parts I can think of.”

  Sherlock wanted to whine about how her body still wanted to sleep when she wanted to keep working—even piddling everyday stuff—how a nice sweaty workout was still at least a week away, but she smiled. “I’m feeling it less and less every passing day.” She handed Dillon a cup of hot tea.

  He said, reading her quite clearly, “Another couple of weeks and you’ll be throwing me all over the mat at the gym. Be patient.”

  Maitland looked at the two of them, saw the shadow of fear still in Savich’s eyes from the thought of the bullet she’d taken. Then Savich lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I take that back. If you were being patient about this brief vacation, I’d wonder where my Sherlock was.”

  Maitland said, “Sit down, Sherlock; let’s talk about what happened at the airport.” He took a sip of coffee, sighed, and smiled. “Okay, after Buzz called me, we got over there fast, but Victor and Lissy were gone.

  “We looked at the security videotapes, saw Victor helping Lissy across the terminal, straight to the Caribbean Air counter, then flat-out running with her toward the line at security. But they missed Buzz; he was already through and on his way to the gate.

  “Next we saw them ducking through an employees-only door that led down to the tarmac. This part borders on the hard to believe—Buzz was not only sitting in a window seat, his seat was on the terminal side. To top it off, he just happened to be looking out the window to see Victor sticking his head out the door, Lissy behind him. Then he calls me, tells me what a lamebrain he is because he didn’t suspect a thing when he dropped off his car at his mechanic’s, didn’t think about anything hinky until he saw Lissy and Victor eyeing him from that employees’ doorway.

  “We sent the bomb squad over to the car, but it wasn’t rigged. They only found water mixed in with the gasoline in the gas tank. Buzz was lucky he got as far as he did.”

  Maitland paused a moment, took a drink of his coffee. “I guess because of how close this was, I decided to make doubly certain Buzz will be safe. He’ll stay only one night in Aruba, then one of our agents is escorting him to Barbados on a private plane so there’ll be no earthly way for Victor and Lissy to trace him. I may be going overboard on this, but I like the guy.”

  Maitland grinned. “Buzz said he was going to visit the horse-racing tracks in Barbados first thing—he was feeling real lucky.”

  Savich said, “Okay, so that means Victor and Lissy got to his neighborhood just a few hours after she escaped. They found Buzz still home, spiked his gas, and followed him to the car shop, then on to the airport. What undoubtedly saved him was that Lissy’s injuries slowed them way down. Pretty smart, though, not taking Buzz on at home where he was armed. They knew he wouldn’t be carrying a gun on his way to the airport.”

  Sherlock nodded. “I’m wondering, though, what would they have done even if they’d caught up with Buzz? Would they have shot him right there in the terminal?”

  “I believe she’d sure give it a try,” Savich said. “During the bank robbery, Lissy Smiley was out of control, whether from drugs or a misfiring brain, I don’t know.”

  Sherlock said, “The word nuts comes to mind.”

  Maitland set down his coffee cup, picked up the plate with the small slice of apple pie in the center, the only slice left after Sean had demolished it. “But why sneak out to the tarmac? Were they thinking they could shoot him as he boarded? Blow out the landing gear? What?”

  Savich said, “I can see Lissy pushing it to the end, without hesitation. Each moment for itself, no thought or reflection of what might happen, that’s Lissy.”

  Sherlock said, “All spur-of-the-moment, just reaction when they saw Buzz hop into that taxi.”

  Maitland said, “So now they look like losers again. And that leaves you, Savich. I really don’t want them to blow up your new Porsche.”

  Sherlock said, “Our insurance carrier would kick and moan, that’s for sure.”

  Maitland saw she was both mad and worried, and that was good. She said, “I w
onder why Lissy went after Buzz first when you were the one she threatened?”

  Savich shrugged, sipped his tea. “I’m thinking I’m the frosting on her cake.”

  “She and Victor will figure out we live in Georgetown,” Sherlock said. “After all, you were in one of the local banks.”

  “I expect they’ll find out our address. Remember, they found out about Buzz’s flight to the Caribbean, so one of them’s pretty clever. We’ll know which one soon enough. Sherlock and I are going down to Fort Pessel, see what we can find out.

  “One other thing, sir, can you get round-the-clock surveillance on both the Smiley house in Fort Pessel, Virginia, and Victor Nesser’s apartment in Winnett, North Carolina?”

  Maitland got to his feet. “All right, for three, four days. You think we can get them in that time?”

  “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Sherlock said.

  Savich said, “I’ve got this gut feeling they’ll go back to one or both places before they come after me, hunker down, and try to come up with a plan. Too, Lissy Smiley can’t be feeling great. How she managed to run at all at the airport is astounding. She must be feeling the results of that now. She’ll have to rest, maybe several days.”

  “I can’t see them taking the chance of going home though,” Maitland said.

  “They’re kids,” Sherlock said, “and it’s home. At least Lissy’s a kid.”

  Savich said, “I have a feeling Lissy wants to take me down herself, and she’s got to be one hundred percent to do that, and she knows it. She’s got to lie low for a while.”

  Sherlock said, “I keep wondering why Victor left the Smileys three years ago. What do you think happened for him to make that abrupt break? And why did he get back together with them?”

  Maitland said, “Sex, drugs, or rock and roll; gotta be one of those.”

  21

  NEAR PAMPLIN, VIRGINIA

  Sunday evening, dusk

  “I feel like crap.”

  “I know, Lissy, I know,” Victor Nesser said, and pulled over on the shoulder. “It’s time. Here, take your pain pill.” He unscrewed the water bottle and handed it to her. “Fifteen minutes and you’ll be snoozing.” He came around to the passenger side and tried to get the front seat of the old Chevy Impala to recline more, but it wouldn’t. They should have lifted themselves a newer car where the seats went down flat like a bed. “But you’re better today than you were yesterday. That run through the airport didn’t help things.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll live.” She smacked her fist against the warped glove compartment and cursed, sucked in a couple of deep breaths, and tried not to move.

  He slid his palm over her breasts, patted her cheek. “Rest now.” And he got them on their way again.

  Lissy’s eyes were closed, her hands were on her belly, lightly massaging her fresh scar because it hurt. Another ten minutes, she just had to hang on another—it had to be only nine minutes now—and that sweet numbing haze would float over her brain. She said, “We should have taken him out at the mechanic’s place, a nice, big, stupid target—”

  “Not possible. Remember? The taxi pulled right up. Instant witness.”

  “I could have popped him too.”

  “We didn’t have any time. And there were probably more witnesses than we can count.”

  She said, “Who cares who saw us? They’re never going to catch us, never.”

  He laughed. “No, I’m careful. I’m the brains, Lissy, since your ma died, remember? And you’re an invalid with a big mouth. Be quiet and go to sleep. Let me do the worrying. Get yourself well; you’re not fun like this.”

  She smacked her fist against her palm and winced. “I couldn’t stand seeing that old dude wearing his ridiculous Bermuda shorts, whistling, happy as a clam on his way to the Caribbean. If we’d only caught him at the curb at the airport, I could have snuck right up behind him, popped him fast and clean.”

  No way would that have happened, Victor thought, she was still too weak. But they’d both been caught up in it, both so revved up that all they wanted to do was find that plane and—well, the guy had seen them, and wasn’t that a kick in the butt? He’d looked more startled than scared, but Victor knew he wouldn’t forget. It was a start. Let them think they’d won. It was just a matter of time. “We’ll get him when he comes back from his hideaway. Do what I told you, Lissy, close your eyes and get some sleep.”

  She closed her eyes and said, “I want to fly down to the Caribbean and find him, shoot his ass down there. My mom knew people who could make really good fake papers, driver’s license, passports, the works. We have the money at home to get the best.”

  “No,” Victor said, shaking his head for emphasis. “That’s way too risky. Stop thinking about it. We’ll get the old man when he gets back, when you’re well again.”

  She continued to rub her stomach, eyes still closed, but her voice was vicious. “He killed my mother, Victor. You didn’t see it. The bastard shot her in the neck and all her blood just burst out of her.” She smacked her fist on the glove compartment, moaned at the shock to her belly.

  Victor leaned over, lightly slapped her face, then caressed her cheek. “Shut yourself down, you hear me? Take some slow, deep breaths.”

  She settled into the seat, breathed deeply like he said. She felt the throbbing pain ease back. She knew it was still there, but it felt duller now. “We’ve got to get some more pain meds though. I’ve only got one more.”

  “That’s ’cause you took so many you nearly croaked yourself. Don’t worry, we’ll get you some more.”

  “It was sure nice of that nurse to leave her pill cart in the hall,” she said. “Dammit, Victor, we should have blown that old dude to hell and gone.” She turned her face to look at him. “But you insisted you could make his car break down. Talk about crappy information, and look what happened. Big fat zero.”

  Victor shrugged, speeded up a bit. “It looked good on that website, but I’m no car expert.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  He raised his hand, then lowered it. “Shut your trap. I’m the one who found his damned house. Don’t you rag on me, Lissy, you know I don’t like it. I remember my dad always telling my mother to stop her nagging. I don’t remember that she did all that much, but he thought so.”

  “That’s why you hit me sometimes, isn’t it?”

  He looked at her. “Don’t you accuse me of being like my dad. He was dead-on mean. He’d clip me whenever it suited him. I told you how he smacked Mom more. I didn’t like him much. When I hit you, you deserve it, that’s all. When he and Mom went back to his beloved Jordan, I saw my chance to get away from him.”

  She said, her voice dreamy, since she was beginning to fade out, “And you came to me, Victor. You thought I was a little girl, but I wasn’t.”

  Victor remembered that long-ago night waking up with Lissy licking his belly. “Yeah, I came to you. Your mom is nothing like mine. Mine’s all soft and boring. You mom, well, she’d shoot the nuts off a squirrel if she felt like it.”

  Lissy giggled. “She had to be tough, since it was just her. I thought Mama was going to shoot you when she found a pair of your shorts under my bed.”

  Victor remembered that day, remembered how he’d protected Lissy, taking all responsibility—after all, he was five years older, which made Lissy only a kid—but her mom knew her daughter, and that was why, he was convinced, she didn’t shoot him and bury him in the deep woods behind the house. She just ordered him out, which was bad enough.

  The three years he worked for that bush-league home-security company in Winnett had been boredom punctuated with bursts of huge happiness when Lissy e-mailed him. He said, his voice hoarse with the memory of her absence, “I didn’t see you for too long, Lissy. I nearly went crazy without you. Then your mom called me up to ask me if I’d like to rob banks.”

  “Yeah, I talked her into it. I told her you could drive the car. She said that was fine since you were a pussy.”

 
“I’m not a pussy, dammit!”

  “All right, all right,” she said, her voice soft, dreamy. “Do you remember how we’d get under a sheet and play, my flashlight on?”

  The memory made him jerk the steering wheel. He thought about those horrible hours when he didn’t know if she was alive, deadening hours when he’d lurked on the surgical floor, listening to the FBI agents speaking to the nurses and doctors about her. He went to the men’s room and vomited when he heard she was going to be all right. He said, “No pussy could have gotten you out of that damned hospital. Don’t you remember that big FBI agent sitting outside your door? Well, I fooled him good, didn’t I?”

  “You saved me,” she said, her eyes closed, her hands over her belly, gently kneading. “I love you, Victor.”

  He felt a fist squeeze his heart. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s good, real good. Why don’t we just leave now? Why do we have to hang around? I’m thinking I’d like to visit Hollywood, maybe see Angelina, learn how to surf, make love on the beach.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Victor, I’ve gotta kill that old man, blow his brains from here to Oregon. He murdered Mama. I can’t let that go. And that FBI agent, Dillon Savich.” She started rubbing her belly harder now, her hand jerking. “What he did to me, what he did, I can’t let him get away with that, I can’t.”

  “All right, we’ll kill those two, then get out of here. Give your mouth a rest. I’ll wake you up when we get to Fort Pessel. Go to sleep.”

  Four minutes later Victor heard a siren. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a police car, lights flashing, closing fast. He felt a punch of panic, then rage. Why was this jerk on him? He hadn’t done anything wrong. No way did they know this was a stolen car. Too soon for that.