by Reed Arvin
I point. “That.”
Myers walks to the van and drops down to see. “Son of a bitch.” He reaches under the bumper of the van and rips off a strip of duct tape. He pulls a cell phone from underneath the van. “The motherfucker set us up.”
I see black and cough up something from deep in my throat. I lean forward until I’m on all fours, and I think I might throw up. I’m trying, Jazz. Hang on. Myers stands up and lets out a long string of expletives.
“The driver doesn’t know anything,” Newton says, walking over. “He was on his regular route. Bridges must have waited for him to come by, pushed “send,” and taped the phone while the guy was inside a building making a delivery.”
Myers nods. “So wherever the truck was fifteen minutes ago, that’s where Bridges was.”
“Which means he could be twenty miles away by now.”
I pull myself to my feet. “You’re missing the point.”
Myers looks at me. “What?”
“This means Bridges and Jazz probably aren’t even in the same location anymore.” I look away. “He could have taken all these pictures hours ago, and he’s just letting them out as a game. She could already be dead.”
The agents stand silently. Myers looks west, toward Franklin. “We’re gonna get this guy. I swear to God, we’re gonna get him.”
Newton and I walk over to the driver of the truck. He’s on his back, sniffling. Newton gets him on his feet, and the man stands helplessly, a dark, wet stain covering his left leg. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you were the man who kidnapped my daughter.”
The man stares back at me. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t have anybody’s phone.”
I nod and walk off. “Let’s get back,” I say, heading toward the car. “Apparently, the bastard isn’t done yet.”
MYERS CALLS HIS DISPATCHER, and when a couple of agents arrive to make sure the driver is OK, we pull back into traffic. A dozen agents and police swarm the area where the delivery van was when the call was placed, but nobody in our car thinks for a moment that Bridges would be stupid enough to hang around.
“You know how much evidence there is linking Bridges to any of these crimes?” I say.
Myers looks over. “How much?”
“None. None to his parole officer. None to Carl. And so far, none to Jazz. Stolen cell phone calls. Digital photographs. None of it physically connects to him.”
Myers grips the steering wheel. “Yeah. I know.”
“I’m saying that even if we somehow caught him, with the right lawyer, it’s not inconceivable he would walk.” I stare out the window. “The ultimate irony.”
“It ain’t over,” Myers says. “You got to hang in there as long as there’s hope.”
Ten minutes later we’re back at Sarandokos’s subdivision, but when we drive in, there are police at the gate. Myers rolls down his window and shows his ID. “What’s going on?”
The cop looks in the car and nods. “A couple of news vans slipped in behind cars when the gates were up,” he says. “We got called to control access.”
Myers looks at me. “I told you Sarandokos going on TV was gonna make trouble for us,” he says, gritting his teeth. “A bunch of reporters is the last thing we need.”
We drive down Wentworth Place and park in front of Sarandokos’s house. Bec is waiting in the doorway. She finds my eyes, and I shake my head. I’m sorry, baby. She looks at me silently a moment, then disappears back into the fortress of her grief. I drag myself up the stairs and go after her. Not that I have any idea what to say. The adrenaline rush pulled me out of my blackness for a moment, but now I’m drowning inside again. I find her in the master bedroom, alone, sitting on the edge of the bed. The room is large—at least twenty by twenty—with a fireplace and sitting room at one end. She looks up when I enter, then stares back down at her hands. It’s so quiet I can hear a clock ticking on the nightstand beside her. I walk slowly up to her and sit down on the bed a foot away. “I’m sorry,” I say, quietly. “I thought we had him. He’s had a long time to plan this out.”
“I can’t cry anymore,” she says, her voice distant. “It’s like I’m already dead. Even if we get her back, I won’t be the same.” In spite of her words, a single tear falls to her hand, and it sits glistening on her beautiful, slender finger. Without looking up, she says, “You’ll kill him if you can, won’t you, Thomas? If you get the chance?” The clock ticks away seconds. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’ll kill him if I can.”
“Swear it, Thomas. Swear to me you’ll kill him.”
“I swear.”
She reaches her hand across the space between us and takes my fingers in her own. Her hand is warm and soft, and the feel of it brings a rush of memories flooding back through me. “I don’t want him to go to jail, Thomas. I want him to die.”
MYERS RECONNECTS WITH Kipling at Sprint, but the waiting is different now. It’s different because we know the pictures Bridges sends may be hours old, and because we know that he and Jazz may be separated by miles. Newton’s studious expression has grown detached, like he’s already preparing himself for defeat; even Myers’s slick, professional demeanor has grown edgier. Sarandokos, who stands fifteen feet or so apart in the living room, has finally given up answering the freak phone calls and stares absently out of a window. Every one of us is a man of action at our core; even Sarandokos, with his slicing off of extraneous fat and wife stealing, isn’t a man to stand around and watch. And every one of us is being forced to wait on a brilliant psychopath who, unable to cope with his own failed life, has decided to extract his revenge with grand strokes of cruel irony.
At 6:00 p.m., Maria brings in dinner. The meals mark time, I think. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Sooner or later, days will pass. I catch myself wondering if we’ll ever find Jazz, and even—self-revulsion filling me—hoping we don’t, if what he’s done to her is too despicable. I try to eat but give up and walk into Sarandokos’s sunroom. The agents have finished examining it, and in its emptiness it seems almost innocent, as though nothing were different about this horror of a day. Light streams in through a north-facing wall of glass, and the brilliant light reflects off a floor of spotless Mexican tile. Plants grow in hanging pots and stately, oversized urns. A fountain sends water down a geometric gathering of stones until it gathers a few feet away from me in a clear, spreading pool. Large, orange fish move serenely through the pool, endlessly circling their small environs. I lean back into a flowered, upholstered chair and close my eyes. I understand Bec leaving me. It’s not just the money, although God knows she loved that. It’s this—this hermetically sealed life, protected by wealth—that she really wanted. No mess. No criminals climbing into her backyard. No death threats. But my past caught up with her, and she couldn’t make her escape. Exhaustion creeps over me, now plainly impossible to forestall. The fountain sends its soothing song across to me, and the hazy, dimming light from outside bathes the room. I settle into the chair and feel my breathing slow. My eyes get heavy. Just a minute. I have to check out for just a minute.
I sleep, and from out of the darkness grows another dream. Rebecca and I are back in Florida, and like last time, Jazz is with us. Jazz is running on the beach in her little bathing suit, excited to feel the warm sand on her feet. She and her mother are tanned dark by the sun, and, like her mother’s, Jazz’s black hair is long and beautiful.
Nothing bad happens. There is no drowning surf, no dangerous undertow. I sit in a beach chair in the sand, the sun glinting so brightly off the water I have to raise my hand to shield my eyes. We’re a family. We’re happy, and it’s beautiful.
“Thomas.”
I breathe deeply, turn my head, and open my eyes. Agent Myers is standing in the doorway. He looks at me, and I know that my enemy is back. “Tell me.”
“He’s taken it to another level.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks like he’s finally ready to end this thing.”
CHAPTER
WHEN I KILLED WILSON OWENS, he died according to the strict precepts of law. Records indicate he requested a meal of spaghetti and meatballs, a cheeseburger, grits, blackeyed peas, and a beer. I have it from the warden that the beer was supplied, even though it was against regulations. Owens was provided with the services of a minister, which he refused. He was then restrained and walked to the Brushy Mountain execution chamber, where, because the prison is soon to be torn down, he most likely became the last person executed there.
That night, I walked in my mind down the hallway with Owens to his death. I watched him stretched in the death chair, and I saw him struggling to escape as the doctor inserted an IV into his forearm. I watched as the plastic bottles containing the lethal mixture of chemicals were carefully checked. I saw—my own heart pounding—as the doctor turned on the fatal drip, sending the drugs that would paralyze Bridges’s heart and lungs. In my mind, I watched—sitting alone in my office, even though it was 11:35 p.m.—a doctor pronounce Wilson Owens dead.
This is the history I share with Wilson Owens, and it is this history that means I understand the dark irony of the photograph that Bridges now sends to my phone. All of us see that my daughter is naked, blindfolded, and strapped to a chair. And all can see that behind her hangs a large white sheet, eliminating any possible clue to her location. Beside her is a portable camping stove, and on the stove is an open-mouthed beaker. But Charles Bridges is sending his message to me, and I instantly comprehend it. “He’s making phosphine,” I whisper.
Myers snaps his head toward me. “What?”
“Phosphine gas. It’s produced by overcooking methamphetamine.”
“What about it?”
“It’s the same gas used in a death chamber.”
Myers stares at the photograph. “Are you saying…”
“This is an execution. He’s creating his own lethal gas, just like a prison. She’ll die like a common criminal.” Jazz is faced toward the camera, her face tilted upward, as if she’s listening to the darkness in terror. In her protected, little-girl world, the mind of Charles Bridges has not existed. What he is doing is a violation of everything good in the world. It is a stain on the whole earth. “He’s using the red phosphorus method of meth production,” I say. My voice is cracking, but I push the words out. “He would normally remove the heat after a couple of hours. But he’s not going to remove it from the heat this time. He’s just going to let it stay there. Once the mixture reaches the proper temperature, the gas will be released.” I look away. “Death will come almost instantly.”
“How long does the process take?” Myers asks, in a whisper.
“Five to six hours.”
Newton looks up. “There’s no way that burner has enough fuel to burn that long. It’ll run out of fuel.”
“It doesn’t matter. Burning phosphorous becomes exothermic after a couple of hours. After that, it will generate its own heat until it’s completely turned to gas.”
“There’s no way to know how long ago this picture was taken,” Myers says. “It could have just started. It could already be over.”
I hear crying, but I can’t place it; then I realize it’s coming from the speaker phone. Myers hasn’t muted the microphone, and Kipling is weeping into her headset. “Take it easy, Kipling,” Myers says. “Take it easy.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I just thought we would be able to find him somehow.”
“You did your best, Kipling. Just stay on the line. We can’t give up now.”
We sit around the table, bonded by our helplessness. The background behind Jazz—a nondescript white sheet—could be anywhere in the city. There’s nowhere to look. There’s nothing to do. Newton looks at his watch and quietly says, “It’s three o’clock.”
Three o’clock. So no matter when this picture was taken, Jazz will be dead by eight. I stand and step away from the table, stumbling on the chair. I fall forward, dropping to a knee. Myers reaches out to help, but I wave him off. “I’m OK,” I lie. “I just need to be alone.”
Summer has relented for a time, and it’s almost brisk in Sarandokos’s backyard. The temperature peaked today at about seventy-five, and great smothering clouds of gray sit immobile in the sky. She won’t feel any pain, I think. She’ll just breathe in one last time, hating the smell of the room she’s in, and the terror and nightmare will be over. I walk out into the yard, looking at the green, manicured lawn. A rock garden has flowers interspersed through it, but they’re summer annuals, and their season is ending. I stand outside a long time. My mind doesn’t race to think of any last-minute move to save my daughter because I have ceased to believe that such a move exists. Charles Bridges has applied his warped mind to the destruction of my world. Unrestricted by morality or law, fueled by hate, he accomplished his task.
Since every second that passes brings home my daughter’s death, I feel myself detaching from time completely. I can’t bear to watch a minute or a second. I numb myself. At some point, I find myself sitting in an outdoor chair. I may have been there fifteen minutes. It may have been an hour.
The sun begins to lower past me, and I become aware that the afternoon is soon ending. I rise and look at my watch. It’s 6:35. It’s probably over. I walk back inside the house and go to the table. Myers and Newton are still sitting there, turning the problem over in their minds. But in another hour, even they will have to admit defeat. They will pack up their equipment and get on with their lives. The futile, grisly search for Jasmine’s body will be the task of others.
“Hey,” Myers says, seeing me come in the room.
Newton rubs his temples. “What I don’t get is how we never triangulated the call. I mean, the signal on Thomas’s phone was strong. The connection never wavered. There’s a ninety-four percent chance of triangulation to within nine hundred feet on any call with this setup, and he called more than once. Nobody is that lucky.”
Myers pushes back in his seat. “So you’ve said, ten times in the last hour.”
I pull out a chair and fall into it. Triangulation. I picture the process in my mind: the signal from Bridges’s phone hitting three towers fractions of a second apart, the difference in time equating to only one possible location for the source. Triangulation. A thought is pushing through the fog of fatigue, and I can’t quite grasp it. Triangulation. Three towers. I look at Newton. “You said it takes three towers.”
He looks at me, exhaustion etched on his face. “Yeah. But everywhere in Nashville is in reach of three.” He points at his monitor. “I’m seeing five from where we sit.”
“And when this thing works, you have a circumference of nine hundred feet, right?”
“Right.”
I look over at Myers. “What if the other phone is inside that radius?”
Myers looks up cautiously. “What?”
“It’s a nine-hundred-foot range. So if his phone is somewhere inside that radius, it would be impossible to triangulate. His phone would be indistinguishable from your phone.”
Myers looks at Newton. “Is that right?”
Newton’s eyes are wide as he works through the statement. “I don’t know. Hell, it never even occurred to me.”
“What about it, Kipling?” Myers barks. “You getting this?”
“Yes, sir,” the voice answers. “I need just a—”
“Come on, Kipling! Is Dennehy right on this thing?” There’s a long, agonizing pause. “Talk to me, Kipling.”
“I believe Mr. Dennehy is correct, sir. But to be certain to work, the other phone would have to be very close. Within yards.”
“Move your asses!” Myers shouts, coming to his feet. “Get the cops outside searching the area. Every house. Break down a door if you have to. Nine hundred feet; that can’t be more than a couple of blocks. Move!”
I hit the front door in a dead run. A cop outside starts toward me to find out what’s going on, and I wave him off. “Get everybody in these houses out into the street.” The cop gives me a confused loo
k, which Myers settles with a barked command: “Hit the siren, officer. Search every house, door to door. Every room, I don’t care what the objection. Start next door and move outward, one door at a time. And get some help over here!”
The officer stares a second, then moves to his car. A moment later, the air is filled with the searing whine of his siren. Myers is pounding on the front door to the left, and a cop is hammering away on the door to the right. I run past him, mentally calculating: nine hundred feet. The lots are large, so that’s a circle of only five or six possibilities. Cops are spreading out to the houses nearby, but I grind to a halt. A house for sale, around the corner. I sprint down the side fence of Sarandokos’s house, running alongside the backyard. At the end of Sarandokos’s property, I scale a fence and drop down in the property that backs to it. The house I was staring at from the sunroom is before me. I pull the .45 out of my belt without breaking stride. The yard is a little overgrown, and there’s no furniture on the large patio. This is it. There’s no one living here. I jog up to the patio, slowing down to figure out the best way inside. There are heavy wooden blinds on each window, obscuring the interior. Fuck it. Blow off the lock. I empty two rounds into the back door lock, and it explodes with impact, the .45 cutting a swath through the metal and wood. The door swings open. I take a step toward it and stop cold. If it’s already over, the room she’s in is my death, too. I shake my head and plunge into the house.
The back door leads into a breakfast room that widens out into an open floor plan. The light is dim, and I can’t see very far across the house. I sprint through the kitchen, calling out. “Jazz! Are you in here? It’s Daddy!”
No one answers. I sniff the air but smell nothing except the musty air of a closed-up house. He could have sealed the door with towels. It would make the death chamber more efficient. I move through the main floor, opening door after door. Finally, I stand in the entry foyer. Steps lead both up and down. “Jazz!” Nothing. I head upward, taking the steps three at a time. Fuck, there’s a lot of rooms. Door after door opens, each revealing nothing but a cold, empty space. I work my way down a hallway until I reach the last door. I turn the handle, and it doesn’t move. Locked. I sniff the air; nothing. I look down at the floor; the hall is carpeted, and there’s no visible room between the bottom of the door and the floor. I take a set and kick the lock with everything I have. The doorjamb cracks but holds together; I kick again, and the door swings open.