by J K Ellem
Without looking at her, Ryder could tell that Beth was thinking about the question. The silence confirmed she knew something.
Ryder’s finger paused on the glass screen of the iPad. She frowned. Scrolled some more, right to left, then back again.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ryder whispered, her words faint, almost inaudible in the room.
Beth sat forward. “What?”
Ryder slid the iPad across the table. “Do you recognize this person?”
Beth jiggled the tablet in her hand until the image on the screen fell into place. It was the enhanced picture of a man’s face on the screen. A grainy but clear image taken off the CCTV footage this evening.
Beth placed the tablet down, unzipped her patrol jacket, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it and laid it flat next to the iPad, smoothing out the edges.
Ryder stood up and looked down at the two images. Both taken from CCTV footage. Both of the same man. One taken from last night at the gas station, the other taken tonight at the truck stop.
“Who is this man?” Beth asked, her finger planted solidly on the paper image she had kept.
“Someone I know all too well,” Ryder felt like saying, but she didn’t. “Someone you don’t want to mess with, believe me,” she said instead.
33
Carolyn Ryder stood up. “Let’s get out of here,” she said looking around the small, claustrophobic room. “I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a damn cage.”
Beth smiled. Maybe they could work together, she thought. But one thing was certain. If she was going to save the woman, she would have to confide in Ryder, share what she knew. She was going to need the full resources of the FBI behind her if she was going to catch the truck driver who had tried to kill her. The same person Beth was now certain was the highway killer.
Beth sat away from everyone else, in a quiet booth near the window, well out of earshot from those who were milling around inside the diner. The kitchen staff had kept the coffee pots replenished, but as expected the food service had come to an abrupt halt as had the rest of the truck stop operations. Barriers had been erected at all entrances and exits outside and the parking lot and truck parking area had grown into a forest of portable lights. She was amazed at how quickly manpower and equipment had been deployed, almost like a military invasion. FBI agents buzzed around outside and inside the complex, some in suits, most clad in dark blue windbreakers with FBI in big yellow lettering on their chests and backs.
Beth watched out the window as a large flatbed truck with her crumpled SUV onboard slowly pulled out of the truck stop. Looking at the wreck that was once her police car, she couldn’t help but feel how lucky she was to be alive. The sight of her crushed car fanned the burning flames of retribution that she felt right now in the pit of her stomach.
Ryder walked back inside, talking on her cell phone. She paused a few feet from where Beth sat, finished her call, then came over and slid into the booth across from her. She placed a plastic evidence bag on the table. Inside the bag were Beth’s personal effects Ryder had managed to salvage from the vehicle. It was being towed to a processing site where the FBI would pull the vehicle apart looking for clues like residual paint transferred from the truck to the police car at the point of impact.
“Thanks,” Beth said as she turned the plastic bag over in her hands. It was a kind gesture by the FBI woman. She didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t protocol but she was building a bridge between them, a bridge based on trust.
Ryder smiled then began scrolling through her texts. “Good news,” she said, looking up. “Davis is out of surgery. They removed the bullet from his shoulder, didn’t hit anything major.”
Beth nodded, the relief obvious on her face. It was never a good thing for a police officer to be injured, let alone killed, in the line of duty. “Has he regained consciousness yet?”
“No,” Ryder replied. They both knew Davis might have gotten a look at the truck, perhaps seen the license plates. They had no CCTV footage of the truck, and Beth had been blinded by its headlights as it bore down on her. She’d gotten no clear view of it except for a brief glimpse of the driver. An older man with pitiless dark eyes.
“So do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Ryder placed her cell phone on the table, her look intense.
For the next ten minutes Beth told her everything about the last twenty-four hours. About the incident at the gas station where the hitchhiker had first laid eyes on Abasi Rasul. About how she had given a copy of the enhanced image of him to Sally Monk, the waitress in the diner, and asked her to keep an eye out for him. About the frantic phone call she had received from Sally telling her she had seen him.
“So what exactly were you going to do when you got here?” Ryder asked. She was more curious than concerned.
“Question them both about the incident, about Rasul,” Beth replied. “Take them both into custody, bring them in.”
“You weren’t going to tell us?”
“I didn’t know,” Beth explained. “I had no idea Rasul was the same man in the gas station. We couldn’t see his face clearly. I only recognized him when I went into the motel room after we got the call.”
“Doesn’t explain what the biker was doing in the room or the other evidence we found. Others had been there. Not just the two bodies we found.”
Beth looked at the image on the page spread out in front of her. “So who is he?” she finally asked. “Is he a terrorist as well?”
Ryder rested her head back against the booth and looked at Beth for a moment, wondering if she could trust her even if she was a cop. She was out of her depth, but Ryder needed as much information as possible. Like Shaw, Carolyn Ryder and her bosses within the FBI believed that Abasi Rasul was just a grunt, a puppet whose strings were being pulled by people who remained hidden. If they had taken Rasul alive at least they would have had a chance to interrogate him. If they couldn’t break him then, reluctantly, they would turn him over to the CIA. Rasul would have probably ended up in some CIA black site with electrodes hooked to his testicles. But they would have gotten their answers eventually.
“His name is Ben Shaw. He used to work for the United States Secret Service.”
Beth seemed shocked. The man looked like a drifter, a nobody, a face lost in the crowd. Then she remembered how he moved and disarmed Rasul so efficiently. “So he’s one of the good guys?”
“He’s one of the very good guys. But he’s out of his depth.”
“Then why did he kill Rasul in the motel?” Beth asked.
“Shaw wouldn’t, not his style and definitely not like that.”
“Where do you think they’ve gone?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, the young woman he was with vanished as well.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Shaw had vanished, but Ryder wasn’t forthcoming with all the facts. Partly because she didn’t know all the facts and partly because she was still testing the waters with Beth Rimes. If Ryder was going to volunteer information then she expected some information in return. Quid pro quo. Ryder wanted to know where the chloroform pad she had found fitted in.
“What about the woman with him?” Beth asked. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Jessie Rae, a twenty-eight-year-old African American flight attendant. She may have been kidnapped by Rasul outside the airport in Salt Lake City. Then forced to drive him south to here.”
“Why here?” Beth felt so inadequate asking so many questions. It was her neck of the woods but she was oblivious to what had happened.
“I don’t think this was his final destination. We believe he was going farther south, meeting someone. Pulled into the gas station last night just to fill up the car.”
Beth sat back, processing the information. Pieces of the puzzle were locking into place in her head. “Then he ran into Shaw,” Beth said thoughtfully.
Ryder nodded, repeating the words back. “Then he ran into Shaw. Unfortunate for Rasul, lucky for Jessie Rae.”
“Shaw recognized him in the gas station. Maybe from all the television coverage. Decided to apprehend him.” Another lie Ryder shaped like the truth.
“So why didn’t he call the police?” Beth asked the question that had been bugging her ever since this entire chain of events started. “Why didn’t he just call us or even the FBI?”
Ryder stood up, said nothing. She walked away and came back a moment later with two steaming cups of coffee. She wasn’t expecting to get any sleep in the next twenty-four hours so she might as well be caffeined-up for the long haul.
“Let’s just say Shaw isn’t exactly conventional,” Ryder said, sitting back down again. “And he has a distinct distrust of the FBI.”
Beth smiled behind the rim of her coffee cup. I like him already, she thought.
“Listen Beth, I need to find him.”
“Find him?” Beth said in disbelief. “I’ve never even met him. All I’ve seen is the trail of destruction he’s left behind. Maybe he did kill Rasul in the motel room. You can’t be certain he didn’t. I want to arrest him, not give him a medal.”
Both women said nothing for a few minutes. Finally Beth spoke. “You know him, don’t you?” The question hung for a few moments while Ryder contemplated telling her about the past.
“We dated once, a few years back,” Ryder finally conceded. She put it down to trust building. No lies this time. “He was starting out in the Secret Service; I was starting out at the Bureau. Our paths crossed, literally.”
Beth just listened.
“He’s a good person. There’s a logical explanation for what he did. He didn’t kill Abasi Rasul. Like I said, that’s not his style.”
“What about the other biker in the room?”
“Yep, that’s more Shaw’s style. I’d say he walked into his room and there were unwelcome visitors in there.”
“What about Rasul? He is a terrorist. Who killed him?” Beth asked.
“Forensics will tell us that, Beth,” Ryder replied. “But it wasn’t Shaw.”
“Are you certain? This man Shaw sounds unstable. Rasul was tied to the plumbing, like he was being tortured,” Beth countered. “Why would Shaw do that?”
“The same reason Shaw didn’t call the police.” Ryder leaned forward. “He did what any sane, normal person wouldn’t have done. He grabbed Rasul because he was going to use him to get to the others, the real people behind this attack.”
“So he doesn’t trust the police or the FBI to do their job?” Beth asked.
Ryder shrugged, “He is a very distrusting person. Only trusts himself.”
“But he trusts you?” Beth asked. “Even though you’re FBI?”
“I’m the only one in the FBI he does trust,” Ryder answered. This time it was the truth. “Tell me about the person driving the truck, Beth. Why would someone deliberately run into your car?”
“What makes you think it was deliberate?” Beth asked cautiously.
Ryder smiled, “Call it woman’s intuition. Gut feel. As I said, we have two dead bikers found right there where the truck was parked.”
“Maybe Shaw killed them,” Beth countered.
Ryder shook her head. “Like I said, not Shaw’s style. Too gruesome. A lot of hatred mixed with some joy by the person who killed them.”
Beth was running out of options. Ryder was persistent.
“Trust me, Beth,” Ryder said. “We need to work together. There is something else going on here and you need to tell me. The woman Jessie Rae—I think someone took her.”
Beth shook her head, deciding to relent. “I’m not going to tell you.”
Ryder threw her head back, exasperated.
Beth stood up. “I’m going to show you instead.”
34
They put a hypodermic into his thigh. One hundred milligrams of sedative, not to kill him, just to confine him, make him more malleable when he finally woke in about six hours. Until then, they took him to the barn, tied him to a chair with a guard to watch over him and another guard outside the door.
When he was satisfied that Shaw was secured, Hoost drove back to the main house, parked in the driveway, and walked up the steps onto the sprawling front porch.
In the semi-darkness he could see a man in a wicker chair with his back to him. The man didn’t stir nor look up as Hoost approached. Hoost placed the cell phone on a small table next to the wicker chair. He stepped back and waited patiently until the man was ready to acknowledge him.
“Is this the cell phone?” the man asked without looking up.
“Yes, sir. It is. There is nothing important on it.”
The man nodded. “Have it erased then destroyed.”
Hoost picked up the phone.
“And Rasul?” the man asked.
“Dead,” Hoost replied, explaining how Rasul was found dead in a motel on the highway. This piece of information had not yet been released to the public.
“No connection to us at all? No way the police can trace him here?”
“No, the phone was taken by the man who is now in the barn.”
“And his background? Is he police?”
“We’re checking. He’s not law enforcement. But…”
The man turned, sharp intelligent eyes regarded Hoost. “But what?”
Hoost shifted. He could easily snap the man’s neck, but there was something about him that always made Hoost feel uneasy when he was in his presence. “He is something,” Hoost answered. “Maybe ex-military.”
“Will he be a problem?” The question was cool and calm.
“Not after I’ve interrogated him.”
The man nodded, content with the answer. They would extract as much information as they could before he was made to disappear. “What about the woman, the one who was with him? Where is she?”
“Gone, vanished.” Hoost didn’t care about the woman. They had the phone and the man. That was his primary task given by his employer. Rasul was dead, and soon the man in the barn would be dead too.
“And Stage 2?” the man asked. “How is that progressing?”
“The wiring is nearly complete. It will be ready on time.”
“Tell our friend to work faster, we need it finished. Timing is everything.”
Hoost’s expression changed slightly, but it was obvious enough to be noticed by his employer.
“You have a problem with Stage 2?” The man’s expression narrowed, enjoying Hoost’s discomfort with the subject matter.
“No, not at all,” Hoost lied.
The man searched Hoost’s eyes. “You don’t have the stomach for this part?”
Hoost shook his head. “I am fine. It will be completed on time.” But Hoost did have a problem with it. Adults he had no problem with, but children were another matter entirely. He didn’t care much for the rhetoric, and didn’t subscribe to the cause. But there was simply no reason to kill children. Some things were simply off-limits no matter what the reason. The only child Hoost had killed was a young girl in Baghdad who had come toward him and his protection detail with the wires of a suicide vest just visible her under worn and grubby clothing. She couldn’t have been much older than twelve or thirteen. Hoost put a round into her little forehead when she was twenty yards away and had hated himself ever since. But he had no choice. He, his team, and the diplomat they were protecting would all be dead if he hadn’t made that decision.
The man in the wicker chair still wasn’t convinced Hoost had the stomach for what was coming next, but he let it go for now. “I do want to meet our guest while there is still something left of him to meet,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve got something special planned for him.”
On the way out of the truck stop, Ryder insisted that Beth be checked out by the paramedics in the parking lot. Beth sat patiently in the back of the ambulance while they checked her vitals and head for any signs of trauma. They patched up the cut on her forehead and told her if she suddenly felt dizzy or lightheaded to go the nearest ER immediately.
Ryder said she
would keep an eye on her and thirty minutes later they pulled up in front of Beth’s mobile home. As expected, Frank was in bed. Beth opened the door to the spare room and ushered Ryder inside.
For the next twenty minutes Ryder stared at the wall of clues while Beth stood next to her filling her in on her theory. “I think it’s a truck driver,” she said. “Someone driving along the interstate, heading south then coming back on the return leg. Maybe dropping off his load in Vegas.”
Ryder was astonished at the detail Beth had compiled on her wall of pain and suffering. Happy faces looked back at Ryder but she could clearly see there wasn’t any real hard evidence or a solid lead. The links between the victims were scant at best. “And you think it’s the person you saw tonight, the truck driver who rammed into you?”
Beth collapsed into her chair, exhausted, physically and mentally. Ryder took a seat on an old tattered armchair in the corner, worried about Beth. How many hours had she spent in this lonely, depressing room, surrounded by such images? It was bordering on an obsession.
“I can’t be sure,” Beth confessed. “But I did see him and he saw me.”
“And?”
Beth felt like she hadn’t slept for a year; the events of the last few days pressed down on her. “If you’re asking if I can describe him, then no. It was fleeting. It’s him. I know it is.”
Ryder just nodded. She understood. She had forgotten more times than she could remember when she’d felt exactly the same. When your gut told you the person smiling at you mockingly was the perpetrator even though you didn’t have enough evidence to make any charges stick, you just knew.
“You have no clue about the truck? Are you sure you didn’t get a look at the license plates?” Ryder asked.
“It all happened so fast. It was dark. He turned right into me, the headlights blinded me. But why would he have done what he did? And where is the woman Jessie Rae?”