[Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski 04.0] No Way Back

by Rick Mofina

  Oh God!

  Engler and Tribe were finger-tightening the lug nuts on the raised wheel. Ann ran her sweating hand on her shirt and twisted the loosened screw, turning, the driver missing, she kept twisting, her wrist was on fire with pain, her hand was slipping, the screw coming out seeming like the longest screw in the world, the truck shifting, the screw bobbling; then it was out. The jack whirred as the truck dropped so they could use the wrench. Ann pulled on the loosened end of the handgrip, pushed the metal cuff against the interior upholstery, wedging it, pushing it, working it, working it. Please, dear God, help me! The cuff slid away. She grabbed it so it wouldn’t make a sound, then bent over and freed her ankle. She slipped out the open window, vanishing down the steep hill that dropped off the highway into the forest.

  “Jesus Christ!” Engler came after her, tossing his keys to Tribe. “Del, take the truck to that side road. She can’t get far!”

  Please, God, help me. Someone help me.

  Ann’s heart thundered in her rib cage, tree branches snagged and scraped at her, her ears pounded as she slid and tumbled down the slope until she hit flat ground running, widening the distance, running faster. Don’t look back. Run. Run. God. Please. She couldn’t feel her tears, the splinters, the cuts tearing at her arms, her face. She was between life and death and she was running. Something whip-snapped through the leaves near her head.

  The first pop of gunfire.

  Ahead, Ann saw the river and the jagged banks with a drop that was nearly straight down. She jumped, sliding, rolling down the slope, then crashed into the water. The rocky bottom was mossy, slippery. It was up to her chest, about fifty yards wide. Using her arms it took a combination of running and breaststrokes to get to the other side where a rock chip hit her leg from the second gunshot.

  Downstream Ann saw a small wooden bridge and Tribe driving the SUV across it. He was close. She ran in the opposite direction. Searching for a highway, a farmhouse, a farmer. Anything. Please.

  She cried out.

  Through a stand of trees fifty yards away, she saw a mobile home park and ran toward it as if it were salvation. She saw the eviscerated junked pickup trucks, saw the white sheets, T-shirts, pants, flapping on the clothes-lines, the satellite dishes, children’s bicycles. A dog barked. A falling-down picket fence bordered the park. Ann ran to the nearest home screaming.

  “Help, call the police! I’m Ann Reed! I’ve been kidnapped!”

  No sign of life. Ann ran to the side porch and banged on the door.

  “Help me! Call the police! Somebody! They’re coming after me!”

  Ann ran across the lane to the next unit. A white double-wide with U.S. flags. She flew to the side door, banging on it, screaming. “Help me! Please. My name is Ann Reed. I’ve been kidnapped. Please!” She pulled at the door. It opened. She ran inside. A TV was on. A pot was boiling on the stove. “Help me! Help me!” Her eyes went round the place for the phone but stopped on the white woman in her late twenties standing in the hallway. She looked six months pregnant. Her brown hair tied in a ponytail, she was gripping a baseball bat with both hands. She was wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and shorts. Fear filled her face.

  “Get the hell out of my house!”

  “Help me, please.” Ann dropped to her knees. “Call the police now, my name is Ann Reed, I was kidnapped in San Francisco. Please call the police.”

  “That’s enough, Ann.” Engler was at the doorway, holding out his wallet as if it were official ID. His handgun in the other hand. He gasped. “Ma’am, I’m Dean Weller. I work for the county, bail bondsman. This lady here’s a bail jumper. Escaped my custody.” He pointed his gun to the handcuffs dangling from Ann’s wrist. The pregnant woman nodded slightly, thinking.

  “No!” Ann said. “He’s a murderer! He and Del kidnapped me. I swear, it’s the truth! They’ve killed a police officer and two other people. They’re on the news.” A game show was on the TV set.

  “Ma’am,” Engler said, “don’t listen to her. She escaped custody.”

  “No,” Ann screamed. “I’ve got a son. Call the police. Please!”

  Confusion masked the pregnant woman’s face. She noticed the puddle of water growing under Ann’s drenched clothes.

  “Ma’am,” Engler said, “this lady’s off her medication and missed her psychiatric appointments. I swear to you, she’s a county prisoner and my responsibility. There’s a reward for citizens who cooperate.”

  “A reward?” the woman repeated.

  “But I have to bring her in. Police involvement cancels the reward.”

  “What?” the woman said.

  A girl, about three years old, stepped into the room from the sliding patio deck doors. She froze. Her big eyes went to Ann on her knees, the big man at the door with the gun. Her mother with a baseball bat. The little girl’s chin crumpled.

  “Misty, come to Mommy, sweetie.”

  Ann bolted through the opened patio door, jumping from the deck, screaming down the roadway between the mobile homes. Her handcuffs reflecting the sun.

  “My name is Ann Reed! Call the police! Please. Ann Reed! San Francisco!”

  An old man in a stained shirt came to his door at one unit. At another, a large woman holding a small dog looked from her window. Ann rounded a parked Mack truck, running smack into Delmar Tribe.

  “Darlin’.”

  His big arms locked on to her so tightly, her ribs cracked. Engler came up behind her. The men wrestled her into the SUV, making certain this time that the handcuffs were painfully unyielding. Ann screamed hysterically, her cries muffled by the closed windows. The people who trickled out of their homes barely had a chance to see the terror on her face as the SUV disappeared in a dust cloud.

  68

  Communications Officer Sareena Sawyer took the first incoming 911 call for police at the Communications Center in Lufkin, Texas. It came from the Big Timber Mobile Home Park, outside of Lufkin just off the Texas Loop.

  Two white men had forced a hysterical white woman, blond hair, late thirties, into a sports utility vehicle. A handgun was seen. The woman appeared to have handcuffs locked on one wrist. She identified herself as Ann Reed of San Francisco.

  Sawyer’s fingers were a blur on the keyboard of the CAD system. Using the police radio, she dispatched units from the Angelina County Sheriff’s office to Big Timber. Then she called Highway Patrol, alerted DPS, the Texas Department of Public Safety. Within thirty seconds of the first call, she got a second, then a third from the park, lighting up the 911 console.

  “...one of the guys had a deformed ear and tattoos like the fella wanted by the FBI in that big murder case in California that was on the news.”

  Lufkin updated DPS that it had unconfirmed reports that the incident at the park was connected to the FBI’s California fugitive case and the BOLOs out of Oklahoma. DPS alerted the FBI in Houston and Dallas, who in turn alerted the FBI’s San Francisco division.

  Word of the break in the case got out fast. The Associated Press wire service moved a national bulletin from Lufkin, Texas. More reporters began calling Reed at his home. Tia Layne was one of them.

  “Tom, please don’t hang up.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Worldwide will fly you to Texas now, pay for the flight and all expenses, if we can accompany you.”

  “I don’t want your help. I’m going on my own.” Reed slammed down his phone and resumed trying to get airline flight times while packing between press calls. Reporters from Texas gave Reed the latest news. TV networks called offering to fly him to Texas. He declined.

  Reed’s lack of sleep and his emotional state made Sydowski and McDaniel apprehensive. Watching him, as they finalized their own arrangements to join investigators in Texas, McDaniel pulled Sydowski aside.

  “If this goes down, Tom could be a problem, Walt.”

  “We should take him with us so we can watch him.”

  “No, we should insist he stay here. Put people on him. He�
��s reckless, he’ll get in the way.”

  “We can’t arrest him, Steve. And there’s no way he’ll stay. He will go off on his own. Reporters are feeding him information. I say take him.”

  It went against McDaniel’s better judgment, but he knew Sydowski was right. They could control Reed if he was with them.

  “I don’t like this. It’s not the way we do things, Walt.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll make calls. You’ve got your bag. Tell him we’re leaving now.”

  Two hours after the first emergency call from the Big Timber Mobile Home Park, Reed was in the back of Sydowski’s unmarked SFPD Caprice as it raced south on the Bayshore Freeway to San Francisco International Airport. His stomach was clenched with tension. He’d clamped his hands together to stop shaking. Turgeon was driving. Sydowski and McDaniel were each being updated on their cell phones by detectives in Texas interviewing eyewitnesses at the park near Lufkin.

  “She was wet. She must’ve gone through a river to escape,” Sydowski said.

  Alive. Reed could barely breathe. Ann was alive less than three hours ago. She escaped. She was fighting. Reed gazed at the city rolling by, deaf to the siren, blind to the pulsating red light, until he leaned forward to ask Turgeon to drive faster. That’s when he saw the speedometer vibrating between ninety and ninety-five miles an hour as she knifed through traffic.

  The private investigator hired by Cooter and Tia Layne tipped them to the break and the police flight to Texas.

  Layne and Cooter paid a taxi to speed from their Tenderloin office directly to departures at the airport. They arrived minutes ahead of Reed but weren’t first. In fact, they were behind. Cooter had been right. The San Francisco press had good sources too. News cameras dotted the cluster of press people who’d beaten them to the airport where the unmarked Caprice screeched to a halt at departures. Half a dozen officers from the SFPD Airport Bureau met Sydowski, McDaniel, and Reed, escorting them through the terminal and a barrage of press questions.

  “Did you speak to your wife, Tom?”

  “Tom! Please, can you make a statement?”

  “What can you tell us, Tom?”

  Reed’s face was taut. It was all he could do to keep his composure as the cadre of officers jostled him through the news pack.

  “We’ll put out a statement when we know more,” McDaniel said.

  “What about now? Tom, share your thoughts now!” Forgetting he knew most of the faces in the crowd, that many were friends who’d offered prayers and support, Reed waved them off. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Excuse us!” Sydowski said, pulling Reed toward a security checkpoint.

  Much had been pre-cleared. The FBI had found a travel charter jet filled with a tour group of seniors flying directly from San Francisco to Houston. The bureau arranged seats for McDaniel and Sydowski. It took intense last-minute grumbling before they’d secured a seat for Reed. After undergoing security checks and presenting FBI and SFPD credentials, they were rushed by airport security and police to the Jetway where they hurried aboard the waiting 737.

  Inside the terminal, several San Francisco reporters scrambled to ticket counters for the next commercial flight to Houston or Dallas. Tia Layne was near the front of the line, tapping her credit card against her palm, when Cooter joined her, setting his camera down.

  “You get Reed?” Layne said.

  “Got what everyone else got. We going to get a flight?”

  “Yes. Next one leaves for Dallas very soon. We’ll drive a rental to Lufkin from there. Hope your card’s not maxed out.”

  “I’m good.”

  “She’s alive. Do you believe it, Cooter?”

  “Wild, huh?”

  “The story’s exploding. I called New York. They’ll buy anything we can get.”

  A world away, in row 19 of the crowded plane, Reed let his head drop to the headrest feeling each bump in his heart as the jet crept into position before stopping on the runway to await clearance.

  Acknowledging the flight attendant’s request, McDaniel and Sydowski continued with final calls on their phones while Reed thought back to the time he’d first met Ann. The first time he saw her smile and touched her hand.

  The turbines whined and the 737 began rolling down the runway, wings springing as it gathered speed, the ground rushing under them as they lifted off, Reed welcoming the thrust that forced him into his seat. Faster. Goddammit. Can’t this thing go any faster? As they climbed, Reed gazed down at the earth dropping below him and was overwhelmed.

  Ann was alive. But Engler was a psychotic killer with a vendetta against him. Tribe was a murdering rapist. How could Ann ever be the same? Don’t think about that. No matter what happened, he’d be bringing her home—in the seat beside him, or in the cargo hold below.

  He swore to God, he’d be bringing her home.

  69

  In Houston, a group of investigators met Reed, Sydowski, and McDaniel. On the phone, the Texas lawmen had let Sydowski know they didn’t like the idea of bringing Reed with them. But on the ground at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, they were hospitable.

  “We wish the circumstances were different, but welcome to Texas, Tom. Ira Doyle. FBI, Houston.”

  “Tom, I’m Jay Sander, Texas Rangers.” Sander took Reed’s small bag. “Y’all come this way. We’ve got a DPS plane waiting.”

  A quick round of handshakes. The group strode through the airport, exited to the tarmac. The temperature was in the mid-nineties, huge gulf clouds sailed northwest like frigates in an azure sky.

  The officers and agents climbed into a van. It whisked across the busy airport to a small hangar where they stepped back into the humid air. It roared from passing jets and the twin props of the DPS plane. Reed saw a cluster of news-people on the other side of a chain-link fence. Pictures of him boarding the small plane with police were being broadcast live across the nation.

  “I’m afraid we have little that’s new to report,” Doyle said through the headset intercom as the aircraft taxied.

  “In all, we’ve got at least one hundred people moving on this already,” Sander said. “We’re flying directly to Lufkin.”

  Reed nodded as they lifted off, glimpsing Houston’s skyscrapers rising through the hazy distance as they banked over webs of expressways and headed northeast.

  When they landed at Lufkin’s airport, more police vehicles and press were waiting. Bud Tarpell, with the Angelina County Sheriff’s office, took Reed and most of the others with him in the lead van that rushed off to the Big Timber Mobile Home Park.

  “We’ve got every available officer from every nearby jurisdiction that can spare them on this.” Tarpell recited them: “FBI, Texas Rangers, DPS troopers, sheriffs’ deputies from half a dozen counties, county constables, game wardens, TDC people, national parks people, off-duty police officers, and volunteers. We got dogs, we got aircraft. Ain’t no place these fellas can hide. We’ve got a dragnet set up reaching into every county within several hundred miles of Lufkin. From Dallas to the gulf and to Louisiana.”

  Reed nodded because that was all he could do. He was a crime reporter, a veteran of many big stories. Fugitives were difficult to catch. The dumb ones, the dope addicts, the desperate ones, made it easy. But smart ones and lucky ones were another story. Engler was smart. Despite Tarpell’s assurances, Reed took nothing for granted.

  They came upon the park where scores of satellite trucks and news vans lined the road to the entrance. Their call signs were from Dallas, Houston, Tulsa, Tyler, Longview, Lufkin, Huntsville, Nacogdoches, Shreveport. Nearly one hundred other vehicles jammed the area. Police and news helicopters rumbled overhead.

  “We’ll take you right to where you want to go, Tom.”

  Tarpell dropped his window to show his face to the deputy at the checkpoint, who waved them in. They parked near yellow crime scene tape, which was lifted for Reed and the others as Tarpell took them to the white double-wide unit with the American f
lags. A pregnant woman in a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt was sitting on a chair on the rear deck talking to two women, an FBI agent and a Texas Ranger. Everyone had been alerted in advance of Reed’s arrival. After quick introductions the FBI agent said, “Tom, this is Gloria Pickett, the woman who spoke to your wife.”

  “The woman who spoke to your wife.”

  Reed was at a loss. He watched as Gloria, who’d now told her story several times, twisted the little gold heart necklace that hung around her neck, and recounted it for him. When she finished, Reed removed his glasses.

  “Did she look like she’d—” Reed cleared his throat. “Was she hurt? How’d she look?”

  “She looked okay.” Gloria nodded, trying to be precise because she wanted to help Reed. “She was panicked, looked like she’d been through a lot, considering everything. The detectives showed me her picture. Her hair was dyed. A few scrapes. Her clothes were wet like she’d come through the creek. Scared, frightened, but she looked okay.”

  A helicopter thumped above, then faded.

  “May I go inside to see?” Tom asked Gloria, who deflected his request to the investigators.

  “Forensic people are done. They’re just going over a few things but it should be fine,” one of the officers said.

  Gloria struggled from her chair and led Reed inside. The others followed as she walked Reed through everything, narrating.