by James Swain
Buster wagged his tail enthusiastically. It brought a smile to Burrell’s face, and I realized that it had been awhile since I’d seen her do that.
“I guess it’s worth a shot,” Burrell said.
CHAPTER 30
urrell quickly took charge. The first thing she did was to make me write down everything I knew about the five abductions on a legal pad. I was carrying a lot of information in my head, and the details ended up covering several pages.
Burrell then read everything back to me. Several times she stopped to question something I’d written or to clarify a point. It was an exhausting process, but there was no other way to bring her up to speed.
A half hour later, we were done. Burrell rose from her chair at the table in the War Room, and so did I.
“One last thing,” Burrell said. “You said the FBI determined that the abductors are driving a late-model Jeep Cherokee based on the tire tracks you picked up. Can I give that information to the media?”
“You mean without pissing off the FBI?” I said.
“Yes. They don’t always share with us.”
I probably should have called Linderman and gotten his permission, only I’d found the tracks, and could have just as easily made the vehicle without his help.
“Go ahead,” I said.
Burrell called Deborah Bodden at Fox on her cell. While she was on the phone, I went to the copy machine, and made copies of the missing women’s files, along with a copy of my own notes. I handed the originals back to Burrell as she hung up.
“A Fox News team is on their way over,” Burrell said.
“That was fast.”
“I told Bodden I was giving her an exclusive.”
“Anything else I can do?”
“I hate to ask you this Jack, but you need to leave before they get here.”
The request did not offend me. My work for the police was strictly under the table. The last thing Burrell needed was for me to be seen by the media.
“Good luck,” I said.
Buster and I took the stairs to the first floor. I stuck my head into the reception area to make sure no reporters were there. The reception area was deserted, and I stole outside and jogged across the parking lot to my car. The sun hung directly overhead, the midday heat like an oven. A brightly painted Fox News van entered the lot and drove directly past me. I kept my head down and my hand in front of my face.
Reaching my Legend, I glanced over my shoulder. The Fox van had braked next to the front entrance. Deborah Bodden and her cameraman hopped out and ran into the building, their bodies a blur.
I jumped into my car and fired up the engine. Back when I was a cop, TV news reporters had taped their interviews and edited them before putting them on air. But times had changed. Most TV reporters now broadcast their interviews live in order not to be scooped by iReporters, who sent out their stories instantly on the Internet. I was guessing that Bodden would broadcast her interview with Burrell live.
I burned rubber leaving the lot, and drove down Andrews Avenue looking for a bar with a TV.
Broward County had so many bars that people called it Fort Liquordale. The bar I picked was called The Pour House, and was located within a dingy shopping center filled with empty storefronts. The place had no windows, just a small sign with its name.
I bellied up to the bar and ordered a soda. A giant-screen TV showed a mixed martial arts bout while the jukebox played Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind.” A crew of aging, pot-bellied bikers sat at a corner table, drowning themselves in beer.
The bartender was a small, hardened woman with fresh stitches on her chin. I saw her eyeing Buster.
“You got bad eyes?” she asked.
She thought Buster was a Seeing Eye dog. “Yeah,” I lied.
“I don’t have no problems with dogs. Two bucks for the soda.”
I slapped a five-dollar bill on the bar and told her to keep the change. She stuffed the tip down the front of her blouse.
“It’s safer than putting it in a bank,” she explained.
She put my drink down in front of me. I asked her if she would change the TV to FOX. She agreed, and surfed the channels and found FOX. The words Special News Report were running across the bottom on the screen. I took out my cell phone and called Linderman at work. He picked up right away.
“Turn your TV to FOX,” I said.
“What’s going on?” Linderman asked.
“The Broward cops are about to blow this case wide open. It’s coming on the TV right now.”
“I’m turning on the set in my office,” he said.
I ended the call. The interview had started, and a life-size Candy Burrell appeared on the giant screen. Her hair was tied into a bun, and she wore a dark shade of lipstick. One of the bikers gave a wolf whistle.
Deborah Bodden stood beside Burrell and began to ask questions. The TV’s volume was muted, and the text ran across the bottom of the screen. I had been interviewed enough times to know when a reporter was on my side. It showed up in how the questions were posed, and whether the reporter interrupted you. Bodden liked Burrell, and was making her look good.
The interview lasted five and a half minutes. That was an eternity in TV time. Moments after it ended, Linderman called me back.
“What did you think?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you call me with this information, instead of going to the police?”
Linderman’s voice was strained. He sounded angry.
“The Broward cops helped me find these new victims,” I explained. “It was their information to begin with. Is something wrong?”
“I want you to tell me why my daughter Danielle wasn’t included with the other victims,” he said. “I told you that she was taking nursing classes at the University of Miami when she disappeared five years ago. Why was she left out?”
Linderman had raised his voice and was yelling at me. I was no longer speaking with an FBI agent, but with the distraught parent of a missing child. I didn’t want to upset him any further, and chose my words carefully.
“There are five victims that we know about,” I said. “Each of them was abducted from their apartments. There was a reason for that. The giant is big and he’s slow. By going to his victims’ apartments, he’s able to trap and subdue them. That’s his M.O., and he’s used it every time he’s abducted a young woman.
“Your daughter’s abduction was different. Danielle went for a run in the woods near her dormitory, and was never seen again. She was a good athlete, and could have run away from her abductor, if she’d realized she was a target. But she didn’t. My guess is, she was tricked by her abductor and then subdued, which is how those type of abductions usually happen. Based upon that information, I decided not to include her in the group.”
My explanation was met with stony silence. One of the bikers fell off his chairs in a drunken haze, and his buddies began ridiculing him. Their noise couldn’t have come at a worse time, and I cupped my hand over my cell phone.
After a few moments, Linderman spoke to me.
“Are you ruling Danielle out completely?” he asked.
I was good at what I did, but I wasn’t infallible. What if the giant had gone to Danielle’s dorm room, found her gone, and had tracked her down in the woods and abducted her? There was a possibility that this had happened, and I had no right to tell Linderman otherwise. He had lost a child, and people who lost children needed to believe that one day they’d see those children again, or at the very worse, find out what had happened to them. All of my experience did not give me the right to extinguish that hope.
“No, I’m not,” I said. “Your daughter was athletic, and she was studying nursing. She’s still a possible victim. I just didn’t feel comfortable including her in the group of known victims. I’m sure you’ve done that with investigations before.”
Linderman exhaled deeply into the phone.
“Yeah, a few times,” he said, calming down.
“Then you understand what I did,” I said.
“I’m not giving up on finding your daughter.”
“I know you’re not. I’m sorry. I just lost my cool.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
I heard a click on the line. Someone was trying to call me. I told Linderman I’d call him right back, and took the incoming call. It was Burrell.
“You were a star,” I said.
“Where are you? What’s that noise in the background?” Burrell asked.
“Just some drunks. I went to a bar to watch you.”
“Well, get in your car,” she said. “I think we may have found your abductors.”
CHAPTER 31
uster jumped into my car and I drove to the address Burrell had given me.
Ten minutes earlier, a 911 call had come from the Happy Days motel in east Davie. According to the caller, a customer had tried to leave without paying his rent, and the motel’s owner had confronted him in the parking lot. A fistfight had ensued, with the owner getting his nose busted and some teeth loosened. The customer had gotten away.
As 911 calls went, no big deal. People skipped out on their motel bills all the time. What made the call notable were two things. It had come two minutes after Burrell’s interview on FOX had aired. And the customer in question had been driving a Jeep Cherokee.
By exceeding the speed limit and running several red lights, I made it to the Happy Days in five minutes flat. Had I been able to make my car fly, I would have willed it to do so as well.
I pulled into the Happy Days’ lot with tires squealing. A police cruiser was parked in front of the manager’s office. A man with a bloodied face leaned against the cruiser, giving a statement to a beefy uniformed cop with a bored look on his face.
I parked and got out with my dog. The uniform shot me a look that said not to interfere. I approached him anyway.
“I’m Jack Carpenter,” I said. “Detective Burrell sent me.”
“Who?” the uniform asked.
“Candace Burrell. She runs Missing Persons. With your permission, I’d like to case the place.”
The uniform scratched his chin. It was a known fact that the local police did not look for high IQs when fielding new hires. Occasionally, someone smart slipped through the cracks, but the majority of the officers were like the big lug standing before me.
“Well, okay. Just don’t touch anything,” the uniform said.
“I won’t,” I replied.
I did a quick tour of the grounds. The motel was an L-shaped building with a sagging roof line and window AC units. It was painted tropical pink, the color washed out by the sun. Twelve units faced the street, each with a car parked in front.
Something didn’t feel right. Normally when the cops were called to a disturbance at a motel, people came out of their units to see what was going on. Not here.
I walked around to the back of the motel. A dozen more units faced a retention pond. Each of these units had a car parked in front as well. I banged loudly on several doors, but no one answered.
Then it hit me what was going on. The Happy Days was a hooker hangout, or what cops called a hot-bed joint. It was against the law for motels to rent by the hour, but that hadn’t stopped the practice. There were streetwalkers in every one of these rooms, and they weren’t coming out unless the doors got knocked down.
One room did not have a vehicle parked in front. It was at the very end of the building, and its door was ajar. I rapped on the door frame.
“Anybody home?”
I pushed open the door with my toe. The interior was darkened, and I found the light switch on the wall, and flooded the interior. The room had a king-size bed and some junky pieces of furniture. I stared at the pieces of white rope tied to the bed frame that had been used to hold Sara Long captive.
My breath caught in my throat as I entered.
———
I quickly inspected the room. The TV was turned onto FOX, the volume a whisper. On the floor in front of the TV was an open box of Animal Crackers. I glanced inside the box without touching it. It was filled with crumbs.
The closet and under the bed revealed nothing. The garbage can by the door was more helpful. It contained take-out bags from Burger King and McDonald’s. I dumped the bags’ contents on the floor and unfolded the wrappers. Mouse and the giant seemed to exist on a diet of greasy hamburgers and french fries, while Sara continued to eat fish sandwiches.
I checked the bags for sales receipts. I was guessing that Mouse had purchased the meals from drive-throughs. Many fast-food restaurants employed call centers to process their drive-through orders, and these centers used hidden cameras to snap photos of the driver placing the order, along with the driver’s license plate number. If I was lucky, a receipt would lead me to the license for Mouse’s vehicle.
The bags did not contain any receipts. I cursed under my breath.
I inspected the bathroom last. It was the size of a phone booth, and just as inviting. The walls were peeling paint, and the shower stall looked like a science experiment gone bad.
Buster brushed past my leg, and stuck his head into the garbage pail beneath the sink. I pulled his head out of the pail, and found two items. The first was a cotton swab covered in blood, the second a plastic syringe with the needle still attached. The blood was fresh, and had not congealed. Every piece of information was helpful in an investigation, and this was no exception. Either Sara was being drugged, or one of her abductors was an IV drug user. Or they both were, and shared the same needle.
I brought the pail into the bedroom, placed it on the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed. I called Burrell on my cell phone, and heard her pick up.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Stuck in my office,” Burrell replied. “The switchboard has gotten fifty phone calls from drivers on their cells who’ve spotted suspicious Jeep Cherokees. I’ve got half the cruisers in the county tracking them down.”
“Tell the cruisers to concentrate on the Davie area,” I said.
“Why? What did you find?”
“They were at the Happy Days motel, and took off. I’m sitting in their room. They left the ropes they used to tie Sara to the bed.”
“Do you know which way they went?”
“No.”
“How about the color of the Jeep Cherokee, or any distinguishing features, like a missing hubcap or a dent.”
“I’ll go ask the motel manager. You need to send a CSI team over here and have them check out the room they were staying in. They left lots of evidence behind.”
“Will do. Call me back once you know something.”
I hurried from the motel room. Outside, I nearly collided with an overweight Hispanic woman pushing a cleaning cart. She was heading for the room I’d just left. My wife was Mexican, and I knew enough Spanish to carry on a conversation.
“You can’t go in there,” I said in Spanish.
“Gotta clean up the room,” she replied in broken English.
“Leave it alone.”
“We got to rent it out again. Boss’s orders.”
She started to enter the room. I pulled a business card from my wallet, and shoved it into her face. Then I drew my Colt, and showed it to her in a nonthreatening way.
“I’m with the police,” I lied. “Stay out of the room.”
“Okay, okay,” she said.
She left. She would probably return once I was gone. I went into the room, and snatched up the garbage pails and the box of Animal Crackers. Walking to the front of the building, I found the slowwitted uniform sitting in his cruiser, filling out a report.
“Where’s the motel manager?” I asked.
“In his office. He decided not to file a complaint.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“He suddenly got amnesia.”
“You need to put the heat on this guy. A woman’s life is in danger.”
The uniform continued writing his report. I’d planned to give him the evidence so
he could turn it over to the CSI team when they arrived, but he impressed me as someone who might just toss the stuff away.
“Do you mind if I go talk to the manager?”I asked.
“Be my guest.”
I put everything I’d found into my Legend along with Buster. Then I entered the motel manager’s office. The room was small and stifling hot. I rang the bell hard.
The manager appeared from the back with a Scotch in his hand. He wore his hair slicked back like a mobster, and sported a pencil-thin mustache. His face was busted up, with a little purple pig below his left eye.
“I need to ask you some questions about what happened,” I said.
“I already told you—I didn’t see nothing,” the manager declared.
“You called in the make of the car they were driving, a Jeep Cherokee. Did you bother to write down the license plate?”
“Nah.”
“What color was it? You must remember that.”
The manager took a swig of his drink and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Look, it’s over. I don’t want any more trouble.”
“Listen to me. Those guys were holding a young woman hostage in their room.”
“It’s a sick world.”
No longer being a cop had its advantages. For one thing, I didn’t have to respect people’s rights, especially when those people had just crawled out from beneath a rock. Reaching across the counter, I grabbed the manager’s shirt and lifted him into the air. His teeth chattered in his skull as I shook him.
“You’re hurting me,” the manager cried.
“I’m just trying to jog your memory.”
“I remember now!”
I dropped him on the counter without letting go of his shirt. His drink hit the floor. “Start talking,” I said.
“I think it was black. Or maybe navy blue,” the manager said.
“Make up your mind.”
“Okay. It was navy blue with tinted windows. Hadn’t been washed in a while. The rear bumper was dented, and someone had keyed the driver’s door.”
“Which way did they go after they left your motel?”
“Right.”
“You mean west?”