by GM Ford
The white patch could have been anything. A scrap of refuse sucked from the highway and wedged into the exhaust system. A gallon jug lying in the parking spot when the car was parked. From this angle, all things were possible…if it weren’t for the Band-Aid. The Band-Aid changed everything. What they were looking at was the top of someone’s bald head. A bald head with a Band-Aid on it.
“Damn it,” Craig said, pushing himself upright. He pulled the radio from his coat pocket. “I need a forensics team post-haste,” he said.
ATF came crackling over the frequency. “We’re going to need to clear the area first sir,” the voice said.
“There’s no frigging bomb,” Craig said. “Get me a forensics team.”
“I can’t risk personnel until we clear the area,” the electronic voice insisted.
Craig wasn’t prepared to argue. He strode quickly to the driver’s side and reached for the door handle. Audrey took in a great gulp of air and held it. Craig looked over at her for a moment. Their eyes locked. He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Perhaps you’d like to…” he began.
She returned the smile and shook her head.
From behind them, a bullhorn began to bellow. “Don’t touch the car sir. For your own safety, please clear the area. Whatever you do sir, don’t touch the vehicle.”
He grabbed the handle and pulled the car door open. Audrey waited for the bright white flash of the fuse, followed by the great whoosh of air rushing to feed the explosion in the nano-second before the energy burst reversed itself and blew both of them to carrion. Nothing happened. Audrey exhaled and looked around. Sixty yards away, the little red light said the robot was filming his little circuits out.
The rear window began to inch downward with a groan. Another excruciating moment passed before the window stopped moving and Jackson Craig appeared at the back of the vehicle holding the car’s key pad in one hand and a colorful bouquet of wires in the other. Red, white and yellow. Two intertwined bundles, each about three feet long. He found his hand radio and held the wires high above his head.
“Wires to nowhere,” he said into the mouthpiece. “False alarm.”
Apparently, the other end of the conversation was still holding its collective breath. Audrey watched Jackson Craig drop the wires onto the roof of the car. He used his thumb to push a button. A snick of the lock set the cold air to moving around Audrey’s head, pulling her back to the present.
Craig didn’t hesitate; he swung the rear gate open, revealing the pair of army green storage containers. In a single deft movement, he grabbed a plastic container in each hand, jerked it out from behind the rear seat, and set it on the pavement behind the vehicle. He pried off one lid and then the other before kicking the containers over on their sides, exposing the empty interiors to the robot’s digital cameras.
“Empty,” he said into the radio. “There’s no damn bomb. Now I need a medical team and a forensics team. Right now. Let’s go.”
The bullhorn crackled. “On the way sir.”
A minute passed before the slap of running feet began to sound a bit like the beginnings of timid applause.
__
The sky was the color of steel wool; the air hung dense with water. To the north, across the narrow valley, a jagged range of foothills hovered. While the soaring stone flanks held the rough Canadian wind at bay, they also put the sun to bed early on winter days such as this. Seemed like it went from morning to evening in about as much time as it took to eat an egg salad sandwich.
He swept his eyes in a slow semi-circle. The browned-out grass and stunted bushes had begun to undulate in the freshening breeze. The tops of the stringy oaks danced as the leading edge of the storm began to sweep across the valley floor. A quick gust of wind tore by, pushing his hair down across one eye like some old time movie vamp. He pushed it back.
He locked the car and took a careful circuit of the cafe. Only things hiding in the overgrown lot were a couple of stripped out cars, dozens of discarded tires and enough old grease to oil the skids of hell.
Back at the car, he looked around again and asked himself : ‘Which way would I go if I were a kid?’ He leaned back against the car. East and west the land was empty and unused. At least a mile of mesquite and sage grass rolled out of view in each direction. “Too scary,” he decided.
Huge droplets of icy rain began to fall. Semi-frozen snow-cones bouncing off the car with a series of sharp metallic sounds. Ping, pong, pung.
“I’d cross the highway”, he finally decided. “Over there is a whole new world, different from this one. Probably better than this one. I’d try to get myself into that thick grove of trees running along the base of the hills and I’d hide there.”
He pulled up his hood and jogged across the empty highway.
The rain began to fall in earnest now. Coming in ranks, as he trotted along the edge of the highway, the sound of its falling drowned out even thought, making it impossible to focus on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other and the roar of the rain. Took less than a minute to soak him clear through.
The wind rumbled overhead like a train on the L. As he jogged along, he kept peeking out from under the hood, making sure he didn’t run himself into the roadside ditch.
A hundred yards up the road, an abandoned track veered off at angle. A pair of ancient ruts overgrown chest high…except where the grass had been bent over by the recent passage of small feet. The rain redoubled its efforts. Nothing existed but the rising roar of the wind and rain. He picked up his pace.
29
“Don’t talk to me about the DNA,” Jackson Craig snapped. “That’s hours away. I need to know the victim’s name and more specifically what he was driving when he arrived here this morning, and I need to know now.”
“With the fingers missing it’s likely to take some time sir,” the nearest medical technician said.
Jackson Craig turned away in frustration. No one had been prepared for the blood bath they found when they’d backed the Browning SUV out of the parking spot. What seemed like gallons of blood lay in dark pools on the asphalt. The victim had been stabbed fifty-seven times in the chest and another dozen in the area of his crotch. Which happened first was anybody’s guess. He’d bled to death in less time than it took to go through his pockets.
According to Forensics, the removal of the victim’s fingers had been post mortem. Small blessings, Craig supposed.
In his mind’s eye, Craig could visualize the murder. Their kidnapper had simply driven around until he spotted someone in the process of parking a car. He’d pulled up behind the victim’s vehicle, blocking him in, gotten out, approached the poor fellow on some pretense or other, killed and mutilated him right there on the spot and then covered the body with Gil’s SUV. His grisly handiwork finished, he and Michael had then driven off in the victim’s car.
Childishly simple but neat as could be. Like ‘the bomb.’ The two storage containers Gil and Emelda used to transport their food and clothes and some wire he found in the car’s tool compartment. Adapt and survive. That’s what he did.
Craig watched as the family SUV was winched onto the bed of the tow truck. By the time they got everything chained up and bolted down, he’d wandered down row Sixteen D, had located his cel phone somewhere deep in his clothing and speed-dialed a familiar number. “Tell him it’s Jackson Craig,” he told the operator.
“Jack.” Bobby Duggan joined him on the circuit thirty seconds later.
“We need to go public with this thing Bobby.”
Bobby cleared his throat and chuckled. “What sort of public did you have in mind Jack?” The drawl was thick and syrupy enough to double as flypaper.
“I want a national Amber Alert on Michael Browning and an appeal for assistance through the media. We need the public’s help on this thing, Bobby. Right now. Today. I need everybody in America looking for this guy. Otherwise, I’m not certain we can pull this off.”
“That, my friend, as you very well know, is
a rather sticky wicket,” Bobby said. He went on for a full minute and a half about the system and all the egos and red tape connected with declassifying something, how legacies were involved here.
“Is that a no?” Craig asked when Duggan finished.
“That’s an ‘I don’t get to make those kinds of decisions’,” Bobby said. “I’ll be happy to inquire through channels on your behalf however.”
It took a great deal of self-restraint for Jackson Craig to remain civil. The best he could manage was to clamp his jaw closed and leave it that way.
The awkwardness of the moment was broken by Audrey Williams, who, at that moment, was jogging his way, waving a hand to attract his attention. He’d never seen her quite this excited and few intrusions had ever been more welcome.
“Something’s come up,” Craig said into the mouthpiece. The connection broke.
Audrey skidded to a stop. “Investigations got us a name,” she said. “Victor Abbruzio. Forty-seven years old. Taking the red eye to Omaha to visit his son and daughter-in-law.” He heard Audrey draw a long breath. “Mr. Abbruzio was on his way to see his new granddaughter for the first time,” she said. Her face was somber. Putting a name on a victim instantly humanized him, making his untimely demise all the more senseless and sad.
She anticipated the next query. “The shoes,” she said. “Apparently the victim had unusually large feet. Quadruple EEEE’s something like that. Only sold locally in a couple specialty stores. The first clerk Investigations showed the post mortem photo to lost his lunch and keeled over. Had the victim’s phone number and everything.”
“The clerk’s certain?”
“Investigations called the wife. The wife says Mr. Abbruzio bumped his head in the attic the other day and was wearing a Band-Aid to cover the cut.” She read from her notebook. “A two thousand and eight Lexus LS. Amber Pearl in color. “ She read the Colorado tag number.
“Put it out as armed and dangerous,” Craig said. “Killing people seems to be his primary problem-solving technique.”
“He really likes using a knife,” Audrey said. “Enjoys penetrating things. The literature says he’s probably impotent. Between twenty and forty years old. White. Single. Lives alone. Brushes his teeth. Pays his bills. Probably never been involved in a successful relationship of any kind.”
Craig nodded. “Makes complete sense,” he said.
“This is the angry one,” Audrey went on. “The one Harry Joyce made. The kind of anger that’s born out of frustration, out of feeling like you have no control over anything, that you’re just a pawn in somebody else’s game of chess.” Audrey kept talking. “This isn’t a BTK kind of guy. No mild-mannered, church-going dog catcher during the day and psychotic torturer by night. This guy’s not like that. He doesn’t have a job. Doesn’t have friends. He’s holding on by his fingernails.”
“We need to push him over the edge,” Craig said.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Audrey said. “Most killers are narcissistic. They’re able to do what they do because they’re unable to imagine the pain and suffering of others. They’re chameleons. They change their personality to meet individual situations. This guy’s not like that. He hates himself.” She stepped closer to Jackson Craig and lowered her voice. “Abruzzio was stabbed nearly seventy times. Once he starts he can’t stop himself. Do you have any idea how long it takes to stab someone that many times? How much anger you have to have bottled up inside to do something like that?”
From her peripheral vision she saw Special Agent Owen Hirt approaching from the direction of the main terminal. Since the Denver office had arrived on the scene four hours ago, Hirt had, on several occasions, unsuccessfully tried to use Audrey as a gofer. The tension between them was palpable. She snapped her notebook shut. “I’ll see if forensics has come up with anything new,” she said and sauntered off.
Hirt was their liaison with the Denver Secret Service Field Office. He was supervising the door to door aspect of the investigation. His people had showed the victim’s photo to every disgruntled passenger and anxious airline employee. Nobody recognized the man in the photo. His people were also charged with working the victim’s clothes. This was going to count as a serious feather in his Secret Service cap.
“Nice work,” Craig said. “I was beginning to despair.”
“We got lucky,” Hirt scoffed. “Guy had feet like snowshoes.”
“Always take credit for good fortune,” Craig advised.
“Your unsub disabled the car’s ONSTAR system before driving off, so that’s not going to be of any help, but Telemetry is working the cell phone as we speak,” Hirt said.
“What cell phone?”
“The one we didn’t find on the victim’s body.”
“You’re sure he had one?”
“The wife says he keeps it in his briefcase, probably still in the trunk of the car with the rest of his luggage.”
As if to punctuate the point, Hirt’s beeper went off. He found his phone and made a call. Mostly he listened. He thanked the caller and broke the connection.
“Mr. Abruzzio’s phone is currently in Sterling, South Dakota.” He read a set of GPS coordinates out loud. “I’ll arrange transport and ground assistance. Apparently the local sheriff’s stretched a little thin.”
__
“Wet,” he shouted above the rush of the river.
The boy didn’t answer. He stood on the river bank with his dark hair plastered to his skull and big drops falling from the tip of his nose. His lips were blue.
“We best go,” he said, extending a hand.
The boy’s eyes darted left and right, checking for exits like a cornered animal.
With his hand still extended, he closed the distance between them in several leisurely, non-threatening strides.
The panic in the kid’s eyes glowed in the gloom. The boy tried to maintain his distance, moving back toward the river, slipping on the slimy stones, putting one foot into the storm-swollen water.
“Easy now,” he said to the boy.
He moved forward again, hands in his jacket pockets now. “Come on. Let’s go. It’s nice and warm in the car.”
The kid shook his head and scowled.
“Come on,” he repeated.
“No,” the boy said. “I don’t like you.”
“Me?” he said disbelievingly.
“I want to go home,” the boy said.
“Yeah,” was all he could think of.
The kid didn’t believe a word of it. He took another backward step, stumbled again and put a hand on the riverbank to steady himself.
Overhead, the wind rushed like a freeway. All around them, the stunted oaks lurched this way and that in the swirl of the storm.
“Nothing to be scared of,” he assured, moving forward quickly now, closing the space between them in three long bounds. The boy feinted right and then dodged the other way, tiptoeing downstream along the edge of the bank, one foot in the swift brown water, his hands clutching at the riverbank vegetation as he slid downstream .
He watched impassively as the boy lost his purchase on the bushes, slipped on the stones and suddenly disappeared beneath the water. For a brief moment, he wondered if it was worth the trouble. If perhaps he couldn’t carry on as he was and somehow get through the rest of his life.
Then he saw the boy come up for air, twenty yards downstream, his eyes as big as pizzas, flapping his arms like a wounded bird. Without willing it so, he began to run along the riverbank. “Let it go,” a voice screamed over and over in his head. He continued to run. Next thing he knew he was swimming.
30
“Could get a little rough here in a minute,” the pilot’s voice crackled through their headsets. “You might want to hang on,” he suggested.
Audrey Williams swallowed twice and shot an apprehensive glance Jackson Craig’s way. “Is he kidding?” she asked.
For the past twenty-five minutes, as they’d been winging their way to Sterling, South Dakota, their Bell
429 helicopter had been held hostage by the storm, swerving wildly, dropping what seemed several stories at a time, dodging this way and that as it fought for traction in the angry air. As far as Audrey was concerned, things were already way past ‘a little rough.’
“Instruments are only accurate to a couple of feet,” Craig said evenly. “He’s going in blind.” He looked around. “I assure you, the crew doesn’t want to die any more than we do.” He looked over at Audrey. “At least that’s what I tell myself,” he said.
“Oh…don’t I feel better now?” Audrey groused.
The passenger compartment shuddered as the helicopter swirled downward. The half dozen uniformed Secret Service personnel were throwing glances at one another and hanging on tight as they spiraled through the storm. Even Craig with that smooth manner of his…even he gripped his padded arm rests with white-knuckled fervor. For whatever reason, Audrey was cheered by the sight.
They touched the ground, bounced hard and then touched down again. It seemed as if everyone was holding his breath. The rotors began to whine as they slowed. The aircraft settled onto its springs. The cabin lights blinked on. Everybody exhaled and looked around, silently checking one another for missing body parts.
Craig and Williams followed the uniformed officers out the exit door. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. The breeze seemed to come from every direction at once, carrying with it the smell of damp straw, everyone squinting and bending double as they duck-walked their way over the uneven ground, hunched low despite the fact that the rotors had ceased rotating.
The makeshift landing zone was illuminated by two sets of headlights, a pair of Simmons County police cruisers playing X marks the spot out into the middle of a vast patch of high desert. The bubbling of percolating water filled the air as Audrey straightened up and looked around. Dark was settling over the valley floor. She checked her watch.
From within the glare of the headlights, a figure approached. The uniformed officers huddled up and began a weapons check. Craig and Williams moved out from under the rotors and waited for the back-lit apparition to arrive.