He took several deep breaths. As scared as he was, now was not the time to act like a baby. Now was the time to get out of here and get them both away from Gudger. He looked around the room—the window was hopeless—the only other way out was the door.
Getting to his feet, he took down his torn poster of Peyton Manning and studied the door. It was nothing special, just an ordinary door with three barrel hinges, to which Gudger had, of course, added a deadbolt lock. He realized that made it more of a jail cell than a bedroom, but he’d once watched a YouTube video where someone picked a deadbolt lock with two hairpins, so he knew it could be done. If he could just figure out how to do it himself, he could escape while Gudger watched the ball game. Then, he could at least find out what had happened to his mother.
Hurrying over to his dresser, he retrieved the Swiss Army knife that had been his father’s. He turned his overhead light on and pulled the bedspread from his bed, stuffing it under the door in case Gudger walked by. After that, he started to work. He tried to thread the smallest of the knife blades into the lock, but he couldn’t catch the mechanism that turned it. Frustrated, he tried a different blade. He had no luck with that either, so he pulled out the little plastic toothpick that came with the knife. That seemed to catch the mechanism better, but every time he almost got the thing to turn, the toothpick would slide out of the notch. He worked doggedly, his neck muscles burning with fatigue as tears of frustration rimmed his eyes. Finally, when he heard a screech owl’s quivery call outside his window, he sat back on his heels. He knew then that he could work this toothpick until the sun came up—it was never going to open this lock.
He slumped to the floor, his stomach growling, eyes grainy with exhaustion. It had been dark for hours and he hadn’t eaten since early morning. Maybe if he slept a few minutes, he might wake up less hungry, with a new idea about how to open the door. He reached up to turn off the overhead light and wrapped himself up in the bedspread. Cool wisps of air-conditioning came under the door, and he heard the refrigerator shudder as it came on. He realized then that he hadn’t noticed when Gudger turned off the baseball game, had been unaware of the silence that had fallen on the house. Wonder where Mama is, Chase thought, his eyelids drooping. Gone to bed with Gudger? Or stretched out on the kitchen floor, dead?
He pushed the image out of his mind, replacing it with a happier one, back when he and Sam would both run and jump in their parents’ bed on Christmas morning. His mother would get up to make coffee, but his father would scoop them both up at the same time and carry them into the living room, plunking them down beneath the Christmas tree. “Can you believe all these presents Santa Claus left?” he would say. “You two must have been awfully good this year!”
He nestled down into the warmth of the dream, remembering how strong his father’s arms were, how his mother smiled at his father in a way she never smiled at Gudger. He was remembering that smile when, suddenly, he heard his mother’s voice, just outside the door.
“Chase, I know you’re probably asleep …” she whispered.
He bolted upright. “Mama?” he cried, pressing his mouth close to the door, praying he wasn’t still dreaming. “Are you okay?”
“But I’m going on in to work,” she said. “I’m going to give Dr. Knox my notice and come home early. When I do, we’re leaving. Gudger got real mad last night. He did something to my ear …” Her voice dissolved in sobs.
A wave of sweet relief washed over him—Mama wasn’t dead—Gudger hadn’t killed her. “Oh, Mama, please don’t leave,” he begged. “Stay here and call the police! Gudger’s gonna sell me to the same
people he sold Samantha to!”
“Anyway, I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.”
“Mama! Wait!” he pleaded. “Don’t you hear me?”
Apparently she didn’t, because all he heard next was her footsteps padding softly to the back door. He held his breath, listening, wondering if Gudger was going to wake up and storm after her. For a long moment the world seemed suspended in silence. He heard the engine of her old Dodge catch, then diminish as she drove down the driveway.
He sat on his haunches, wondering if his mother had really said those things and then left for work, or if he’d just dreamed she had. It seemed odd that she hadn’t heard him, but she said Gudger had hurt her ear. He would, he decided, accept it as real—that she was alive and coming home from work early to leave. He only hoped he would still be here when she came.
He got to his feet, feeling a sudden need to urinate. Hopping on one foot, he went to the window and raised it as far as it would go. Then he unzipped his pants and let fly a stream of urine that arced out into Gudger’s yard, splatting against the big oak tree outside his window. Somehow the act of pissing cleared his head, gave him fresh energy. When he turned away from the window, he looked at his bedroom with new eyes. He remembered that his mother had hung their winter coats in his closet—maybe he could make some kind of lock-picking tool from one of her coat hangers!
He hurried to open the closet door. He turned on the single light bulb that dangled from the ceiling. The pale light illuminated their cold weather wear—jackets and sweaters, Sam’s blue parka, a frayed black coat his mother brought from West Virginia. He pushed the clothes along the rack, looking for the thinnest coat hanger. He found it at the end of the closet—a slender white wire that held the near-weightless lining to a raincoat. He shoved the other clothes down the rod, then his gaze fell on a tattered cardboard box lying in the far back corner of the closet. He blinked, wondering if he were hallucinating. That box looked exactly like the one that held Cousin Petey’s gun!
“Oh my gosh!” he whispered. Forgetting about the coat hanger, he pulled it out of the closet. It was heavy, the twine wrapped diagonally in the same odd way his mother tied up their Christmas presents.
“But Mama was supposed to get rid of the gun!” he whispered, still unwilling to believe his good luck. “Gudger made her promise!”
Clutching the box to his chest as if it were some rare and precious jewel, he took it to the middle of his bed. He cut the twine with his father’s little knife and opened the lid. Inside, nestled in some old quilt batting and smelling sharply of oil, lay the Army Colt Cousin Petey’s father carried in Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. The barrel was dark blue while the handle was satiny brown wood that felt as smooth as silk. Gudger had taken it away from him, back when they were living in the duplex and Gudger still wore a uniform.
You don’t need to be playing with guns, son, he’d warned, holding out his hand for the gun. Your mama needs to get rid of that thing before you blow your own foot off.
Though he’d begged her not to do it, his mother had said Gudger was right—he probably would blow his own foot off. Dr. Knox, at work, collects old guns, she’d told him. Maybe he would like to buy it. Anyway, Chase, we can use the extra money.
That had been the last he’d seen of the gun. He assumed she’d sold it to Dr. Knox—he’d never mentioned it again, and she’d never brought it up. But apparently she had, for once, not done what Gudger told her to do. Here was the gun, ready to do the bidding of anyone who could load it with bullets and pull the trigger. At that moment, it felt like a gift from God.
Chase picked up the revolver—it was cool to his touch, but so heavy that he had to hold it with both hands. There was a graceful lethality about the old gun that made him tremble; he couldn’t imagine the terror of having such a thing pointed at your heart. Cousin Petey had thoughtfully included a dozen bullets inside an empty cold cream jar. He smiled, remembering the day she gave it to him.
This is my varmint gun, she’d croaked, in her old-woman voice. I’ve run many a fox out of my hen house with this. Since you’re the man of your family now, you might someday need to do the same.
“I think I do, Cousin Petey,” he whispered, fitting six bullets from the jar into the empty chambers of the gun. “And I think tod
ay might be the day.”
Twenty-Five
Shortly after 2 a.m., Boyko Zelinski’s cell phone beeped on the bedside table. Though the naked woman who lay next to him only murmured in her sleep, Boyko sat up in bed immediately. The ring was “Borodin’s Night on Bald Mountain,” a piece that had denoted discordancy to him ever since his childhood in Kiev. He’d assigned the piece to emergency calls only; that there was an emergency while he was spending the night with a lingerie model troubled him.
“Boyko here,” he answered in English. He frowned as the man Smiley began speaking.
“Sorry to wake you up, Boyko, but we got a situation here.”
“Tell me.”
“We did the baby trap tonight, to clean up a pal’s mess. We got something we didn’t expect.”
“What?” Boyko looked over as his bed partner rolled over. Her sheet slipped down, revealing amazing breasts—natural breasts, not a trace of silicone in them.
“A girl cop.”
“So?” said Boyko, slowly peeling the sheet down to the girl’s navel. “Take care of her like the others.”
“You don’t understand. This one’s special. She’s the governor’s cop.”
Boyko frowned. American government confused him at times. He knew the president led the country and the Congress collected huge salaries for little work, but he was hazy on what governors did. Mostly, he just dealt with police chiefs and union bosses. “What’s a governor’s cop?”
“She works for the governor of North Carolina, Boyko. Aren’t you in Charlotte now?”
“Yes.”
“The governor runs the state, up in Raleigh. And she’s not somebody we want to mess with, if you know what I mean.”
Boyko sighed. Sadly, he knew what Smiley meant. It meant no more nibbling the model’s rosebud nipples or having her wrap those long legs around his waist, at least for tonight. It meant getting up, putting on clothes, driving over to figure out what to do with this cop. Still, he knew he had no choice. His employers would not be pleased if he remained here and let that durachit’ Smiley take care of things.
“I’m coming now,” he said. He clicked off the phone, then after a long, regretful look at the girl’s magnificent breasts, he pulled the sheet back up to her chin.
He dressed quickly, redonning the white linen suit he’d worn earlier. He decided against the less traveled highways and took I-85 west to Smiley’s place. It would get him close enough, and he liked the way his white Mercedes ate up the straight superhighway. As the mile markers flew by, he wondered about the cop who’d fallen for Smiley’s trick. Probably fat, he decided. Most American girls carried an extra ten kilos, the Southerners even more. Occasionally the weight was nicely proportioned—large breasts, round butts. More often it was pot bellies and lard-dimpled thighs. He pictured this cop as one of the politsiya korov in Moscow—fat, short-haired women with wide duck feet shod in black athletic shoes. He snorted with disgust at the thought. Until he’d removed them, his model had worn red spike heels with tiny little straps that crisscrossed her ankles.
He continued down I-85, exiting just shy of the South Carolina line. From there he drove northwest, to Smiley’s dump. It was an old hunting camp that had expanded to a motel, then shriveled to extinction when the interstate opened some fifteen miles to the east. It backed up against a forest thick with dark pine trees, much like the Ural Mountain work camps his grandfather had described. He pulled up beside Smiley’s Cadillac and walked into what had once been the lobby. Smiley sat behind a battered desk, his oily face shiny with sweat and concern.
“Thank God you’re here,” Smiley said, getting to his feet. “I was beginning to worry.”
“Don’t be such an old woman,” Boyko snapped. “You only called two hours ago. Where’s the cop?”
“Follow me.”
Smiley locked the lobby door, then led him down a dark hall. He housed the girls awaiting transport here, far away from the ones who took their baggage to the street every night. He walked to the second room on the right and unlocked the door. On a single bed, away from the boarded-up window, a woman lay on her back, her legs spread, one arm dangling off the mattress. Boyko walked over to get a closer look.
“This is the governor’s cop?”
Smiley shrugged. “According to Ralph Gudger. ”
“You didn’t take any IDs, did you?”
“No, we didn’t touch nothin’. She came out of her car like they all do, all panicky over a kid being dumped by the side of the road. Her name’s Mary Crow. Gudger says she’s investigating gay hate crimes for the governor.”
Boyko frowned. “Gay hate crimes?”
“Queers,” explained Smiley. “Homos.”
Boyko shrugged but leaned over the bed, moving the woman’s head to get a full view of her face. She didn’t look like any policewoman he’d ever seen—high cheekbones, straight nose, a lower lip that begged kissing. He straightened up and saw that though her breasts were not especially large, neither were her hips, and she wore leather sandals instead of the boxy black walkers he’d been expecting. He turned to Smiley. “You know, certain men would find this woman very attractive.”
“She’s better than most of girl cops we get.” Smiley looked down at the drugged woman. “Personally, she don’t do so much for me.”
“That’s because you like big tits and small brains,” Boyko replied. “This woman goes far beyond that.”
“What do you know about her brain? She’s fucking out cold!”
“You look at the details—her clothes aren’t cheap. Her hair’s clean. No silly tattoos, nothing pierced except her ears. A beautiful mouth. I cannot imagine what she must look like with her clothes off and her eyes open.”
“She’s working on this gay thing,” said Smiley. “She might be a dyke.”
Boyko threw back his head and laughed. “Even better. I know fifty men who would pay a fortune to have a pretty lesbiyanka cop tied up in their bedroom.”
Smiley gaped at him, wide-eyed. “You mean you don’t want me to get rid of her?”
“Absolutely not!” said Boyko sharply. “Phone calls must be made quickly about this one.”
“But this is a real woman—a policewoman—not some doped-up dropout teenager.”
Boyko laughed. “The greater the risk, the greater the reward, Smiley. Isn’t that what you Americans say?”
“But what do you want me to do with her?”
“Is that little blonde still here?”
Smiley nodded. “They’re picking her up tomorrow.”
“Then put this one down the hall.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done a cop before.”
Boyko looked at Smiley’s anxious expression and slapped him on the back. “Calm down, my friend. This particular American cop will also be gone tomorrow. And she’s going to make us a lot of money.”
Some miles away, Victor Galloway rolled over in bed, knowing dreamily that his alarm would soon go off, sending Bon Jovi’s “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” through the room at full volume. He’d woken up to that song since he was in high school, and though it had been the anthem of his youth at Saint Pi High, at thirty-eight he felt more like the lyrics should go, I’ll sleep so I won’t feel like I’m dead. He nestled deeper under his covers, waiting subconsciously for the music to start, for the day to begin. He was thinking about yesterday, wondering what Mary Crow had done last night when his cell phone erupted with the Chipmunks singing “I’m Gonna Whip Somebody’s Ass.” He bolted upright and reached for the phone—that was the ringtone he assigned to Dispatch, for when shit was hitting the proverbial fan.
“Galloway here,” he croaked, his voice grainy with sleep.
“Galloway, this is Pike.”
Pike, Pike. He thought for a moment, then remembered Pike—a lanky patrol officer with buck teeth and acne scars on his cheeks.
“Yeah, Pike. What’s up?”
“We got a 10-53 here that Crump says you might know something about.”
“A 10-53?” Abruptly, the Bon Jovi drums launched. Galloway swatted the alarm off. “Abandoned vehicle?”
“Yeah,” said Pike. “A ’99 black Miata, registered to a Mary Crow. Crump says you know her.”
He sat up straighter in the bed. “Yeah, I know her. Where’s the car?”
“Jackson Highway, about three miles this side of the Gaston County line.”
He remembered they’d been drinking at the restaurant—wine during the meal, a brandy afterwards. Still, Mary had seemed okay to drive. “Does it look like she had an accident?”
“No, no accident. No nothin’. It’s like that other girl—lights and engine left on, keys still the ignition. Purse is still in the passenger seat. Nothing—”
“I’m on my way,” said Galloway before Pike could finish his sen-
tence.
He dressed in two minutes, pulling on jeans as he called her cell phone, then grabbing his keys, weapon, and IDs as he tried the Holiday Inn in Gastonia. At one number he got her recorded greeting; at the other just a telephone that rang repeatedly, with no one ever picking up.
“I should have followed her home,” he whispered as he bolted out the door of his apartment. It was late, they’d been drinking, she didn’t know the roads that well. But she’d seemed fine when they’d walked to the parking lot. And when he kissed her …
When I kissed her, she kissed back, he told himself. She’d looked at him with those incredible eyes and kissed him back. Now she’d vanished, just like Gudger’s stepkid.
He raced down the stairs, through the parking lot, over to the green Mustang he’d babied for the past ten years. Tires squealing, he navigated the long driveway of his apartment building, then pulled out onto the highway. As he drove, he kept calling her cell phone, each time getting the same recorded greeting.
Ten minutes later, he turned on Jackson Highway; fifteen miles farther down the road he saw the lights flashing. Two squads were there, along with the unmarked speed trap car that usually worked the Sligo County line. Some inner part of him offered a tepid prayer of thanks; at least they hadn’t put up crime scene tapes or called for a body bag yet.
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