Thorne thought about this for a moment.
Blake wouldn’t want a long drive to wherever he’d hidden Kate, probably less than five miles. Assuming she was being kept in the same building as the one in the video, this narrowed his field of search still further. With no local knowledge of the area, however, it remained a lot of ground for him to cover, with little time to do it. He opened Facebook and Sara Dawson’s profile appeared, confirming his assessment of the tablet’s owner. Her feed was old, she hadn’t posted anything or checked in anywhere in almost two months. Her posts before that time were exclusively pictures of herself, her motorcycle, and of leather boots with large zips and buckles.
He poked around on the tablet for a couple more minutes. Sara and Blake communicated at length using WhatsApp, but their messages were of a pornographic nature and he gave up skimming them for clues very quickly. He sighed. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. A text or an email, he could never tell the difference when his cell was on vibrate. Since he had seemingly hit a dead end, he pulled his phone out and glanced at the lock screen.
Two texts, one from Lauren, the other from Coop. It probably meant he’d lost service and had received both messages together now his connection had been restored. He could read the entirety of Lauren’s message without unlocking his phone, it said Everything OK? She was worried about him. Coop’s message was longer and had been clipped. Hi, Chris. I have a bit of news that I thought you'd want to hear. My source inside the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office has revealed that Lieutenant Cabot has now been… He decided to read the rest later and slid the phone back into his pocket. A buzz was building inside him.
He’d had an idea.
Sara had three screens’ worth of apps and he found what he wanted on the second. The app was called Find My iPhone. To his dismay, he was prompted to sign in, a feature he didn’t remember from Kate’s device. He swore. He had to get going, he’d been here too long already. Next to it on the screen was another app. Find My Friends. This app had no login feature and a list of people appeared before him. It shocked him to see his own email address on the list. He couldn’t believe it, he’d never given Blake his personal cell number or email address, they’d always used the burner phones.
This is how they’ve been tracking me.
He remembered catching Sara holding his cell phone in the Culver City bungalow before the failed heist. She’d looked up at him, a flirty look on her face. Sorry, is this yours? I thought it was Aidan’s. They all look the same, don’t they? You’re even on the same network. But it was no accident, he could see that now. She’d added him on this app and needed to authenticate it on his device. He hadn’t questioned her story, not even after she handed his iPhone back unlocked, the home screen lit up. The flirty look had taken care of that. He recalled something else she’d said to him, way back at the beginning. You’re a lot like him you know. And as much as he hated it, he knew it was true. His lock code was his date of birth, which was also Blake’s. He’d made it impossibly easy for them, it disgusted him.
Judging from the list, every member of the gang had been tracked with the exception of Stockton who, presumably, was on Android. Being on the list would be impossible to explain, so he deleted his address. Until that moment, he’d done nothing during his search that Sara or Blake would notice, but he couldn’t leave something this incriminating behind.
He clicked on Blake’s entry and a map appeared with two dots on it. One of them marked his current position, the second, Blake’s. The two dots were less than a mile apart, he’d driven within a hundred yards of it on the way to the motel. He smiled. He’d planned to leave the tablet behind, but this changed things. He could use this app to track Blake right up to the last moment. If he left the tablet behind and Blake was gone when he arrived, he’d be right back to square one. He closed the cover and unplugged the charging cord, then set the device on his knee. It no longer mattered about hiding his visit from Blake, because now that Thorne knew where he was, he wouldn’t be coming back. Eventually police would come here, but they’d find little to concern him.
He took a look at his watch. A little over an hour before Blake’s deadline. He’d be able to get to the location well before midnight, it just wasn’t clear to him what would happen once he got there. He didn’t have the Picasso, there was only one play left. Thorne pulled out his cell phone again and opened Gmail. He’d saved an email to Mancuso in the drafts folder with the video of Kate already attached. He deleted a confession he’d started to write and instead entered only Blake’s location. Thorne paused for a moment, uncertain, then tapped send. It was a long shot at best, the old man was probably asleep. He took one last look around the room, then stepped out into the night.
In the parking lot, somebody had parked a rusty pickup truck across the end of his Maserati, preventing him from leaving. There were only three other cars in the lot, all spaced out. The driver was not in the cab, or anywhere in sight. Thorne turned back to the motel’s reception and saw a figure come out of the darkness, a gun in his hand.
Cabot.
“I follow a lead on the gang and find you. Interesting.” An ugly smile broke out on the lieutenant’s face. “Latex gloves, that’s a nice touch.”
Thorne said nothing. There was something off about the whole scene, beyond the gun that was pointing at him. For a start, Cabot was wearing street clothes. If he was investigating the gang, why the change of clothes? They weren't new either. 80s-era light blue jeans, plaid shirt, and heavy construction boots. He wished he'd taken the time to read Coop’s message about Cabot. They stared at each other for a moment with open hostility. The lieutenant’s smile had gone, but the face that had replaced it was no better.
“Get in the truck, sunshine. We’re going for a little ride, you and me.”
Thorne sighed. He had no time for more of Cabot’s questioning, Blake was expecting to hear from him about the painting. Too long a delay would make him suspicious and the man had no shortage of reasons to distrust him. The only way would be to disable Cabot in some manner, and the distance between them was currently too great. Once they were inside the truck it would be a simple matter to overpower the cop with a choke hold and be back underway. He turned and walked toward the truck, already thinking through his moves. He still had Sara's iPad in his left hand, he’d have to be careful it didn’t get damaged as he and Cabot fought. It occurred to him that once he was sitting in the passenger seat he’d be unable to draw Ashcroft’s battered 1911 pistol that was tucked into the back of his pants. At that point, he’d be limited to what he could do with his hands and body.
The thought of taking action against a cop didn’t sit right with him, but Kate Bloom was all he cared about now. Whatever the lieutenant had coming, he’d brought it on himself. As Cabot worked his way around the hood, Thorne dropped the computer tablet gently onto the floor of the truck to free up both hands. Cabot got in next to him, his gun still aimed at Thorne’s chest. For the first time, he registered that the weapon was a revolver, not an automatic. It was a detail he found troubling and unlocked the true meaning of their ride. The gun would be untraceable, confiscated long ago from some street punk and kept for an occasion just like this. The barrel was enormous. He thought again about what Cabot was wearing.
Old clothes, the kind you might keep for painting projects around the house when you didn’t want your regular clothes ruined.
“You going to kill me now, that it?”
Cabot fed a stick of gum into his mouth before answering.
“That’s what I was thinking, yeah.”
He found it hard to believe the lieutenant would really kill him, but the man’s face was grim. It was a look he’d seen before, the look of someone who had an unpleasant task ahead of them, with no way out. Cabot started the truck and pulled away fast, his head flicking back and forth between Thorne and the windshield.
“I know what you’re thinking, Thorne. You think you can grab the gun off me while I drive, but you’re mistak
en. At this range I don’t have to aim, just squeeze the trigger.”
Thorne turned and faced front, hoping to relax Cabot.
“Probably just as well,” he said. “I’m guessing you have to sit down to pee.”
Cabot laughed. It sounded like he hadn’t laughed in a while and had forgotten how to do it. Hack, hack, hack. There was a desperate edge to it that Thorne found less than reassuring, like the man was about to lose control.
“I'll say this for you Thorne, you’re pretty calm for a guy on the wrong end of a gun.”
“This isn’t the first time, doubt it’ll be the last.”
A silence fell between them. He regretted his comment, it had made both of them think ahead to what increasingly appeared to be his death. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the revolver rock from side to side in the lieutenant's fist as it rested on his fat thigh. One bad pothole, and Cabot would be hosing his kidneys out the bottom of his truck. To distract himself, he thought about Kate and the mess he'd gotten them into. If they survived, would she be able to forgive him? Could their relationship be repaired? He thought again of the look she’d directed into Blake’s camera, the intense love he believed he had seen in her eyes. Whatever that was, it was worth saving.
Worth fighting for.
Cabot began to slow and pulled his truck over so that it bumped up off the asphalt onto the rough ground next to the highway. They’d been driving no more than ten minutes and were somewhere outside Watsonville. Thorne glanced around, but there was nothing to see. They were in the middle of nowhere. The truck headlights illuminated trees that came right up to the edge of the road. He turned back toward Cabot who had twisted around in his seat to face him directly. Watching him. The light in the truck was low, but he could see enough. The opportunity to overpower Cabot had not presented itself, and now it looked like his time had run out. He’d convinced himself the whole thing was a bluff by the lieutenant, but he’d driven here. This was a destination for Cabot, this wasn’t nowhere. The only place it could be, was where he planned to shoot him and dispose of his body.
If this was a bluff by the lieutenant, he was taking it all the way to the end. Cabot twitched the revolver to the right.
“Out.”
FIFTY-NINE
The revolver was getting heavy. Even resting it on his leg during the drive hadn’t been enough to take the weight of it off his arm. It was a Colt Python with an eight inch barrel and it weighed almost 50 ounces. Cabot had carried a gun similar to this on his hip for close to thirty years, but when he’d changed to automatics there was no going back. His Glock 17 had a four and a half inch barrel, was just over 20 ounces and held fifty percent more ammunition. Freshly drawn, the Python had a pleasant weight, but that was fifteen minutes ago now and he could feel every inch of that eight inch barrel in the muscles on top of his arm. He smiled and again motioned the gun twice to the side.
Thorne reached behind his back and searched for the door catch. Their eyes locked together. The actor assumed it would make it harder to shoot him while he was making eye contact, but he was wrong about that. He was here to do a job, and that didn’t stop because the man was looking at him. Finally, Thorne found the lever and pulled it, reversing out into the dark. Rather than go around the front of the truck, Cabot slid along the seat and followed Thorne out through the same door. He couldn’t risk losing sight of him for a second.
Two cars approached and shot past them, almost as one. He had time only to step back against the truck, hiding his outline against the metal. A couple of kids racing each other, he thought. If they saw anything at all, they probably assumed Thorne had pulled over at the side of the road to take a leak or change a tire. All the same, he needed to get out of sight before there was any more traffic. With his left hand he fished around in his pocket and pulled out his personal flashlight, a Led Lenser unit capable of 1,000 lumen. He switched it on and Thorne flinched like he’d been hit in the face.
“Straight ahead. Into the trees.”
“There’s no path, Cabot.”
“You’ll manage. They’re just branches.”
They moved forward. Thorne was right, there was no path and without one it was slow going. The branches were wet and heavy, resisting every attempt for them to push through them. He wanted to rush things along, but he couldn’t afford to get too close to the man in front. Another downside of an eight inch barrel, was that at close range it became easier for the other person to knock it aside and he didn’t fancy his odds against the actor without it.
Thorne stopped and turned, unwilling to go any farther.
“Come off it Cabot, you can’t expect me to believe you’re a killer. I bet you’ve never fired a weapon at anyone before. It’s not like shooting a target at the range.”
“You’re not the only one with military service, Thorne. I was in Nam. We got our hands pretty dirty, you know what I mean?”
Thorne looked around at where they were standing, as if seeing it fully for the first time. Wind whipped at his thin suit jacket and the bottom of his pants. It pleased Cabot to note that Thorne had lost his swagger and self confidence. Without a gun, he was no different to any other man.
The eye contact was back, Thorne looking wilder than ever.
“Look, if you were going to shoot me you’d have done it already, right? So how about you cut to the chase and tell me what you really want then take me back to my car, I got places to be. I don’t have time for this cat and mouse bullshit.”
He fired the revolver. The sound of the .357 cartridge was brutal in the silence and a flame seemed to follow the bullet out the end of the barrel as it disappeared over Thorne’s head.
“Do I have your attention now? I haven’t shot you yet because I want questions answered. If you answer them right, maybe I find a reason to keep you alive.”
“I didn’t kill your friend, man. I don’t know how many times I have to say it or why it’s so important to you that it was me that did it. You think I’m going to tell you a different story because you’re pointing a gun at my head? Good luck.”
“You think this is still about Ashcroft?”
“What else is there?”
“You framed me, Thorne. I’m on suspension and under investigation. I don’t know how you did it, but somehow you planted your blood on my firearm. I can’t lose my job because of you, I won’t. Fortunately, there are any number of ways blood can get transferred and without your testimony, all this will go away. They’ll have no choice but to reinstate me.”
“Jesus Christ, Cabot. Your job? Are you kidding me? They’re going to cut off my girlfriend’s head with a chainsaw and you’re worried about your goddamn job?”
His breath caught in his throat.
“What did you say?”
“They have Kate. The gang have been blackmailing me, trying to make me do what they want. They sent me a video. From the beginning I’ve known more than I was letting on, you were right about that, but not for the reason you thought. I couldn’t risk her life by telling you the truth. They’re going to kill her at midnight if I don’t take them Ashcroft’s painting, but I can't do that because you guys have that in lockup.”
Cabot lowered the revolver.
He grudgingly admitted to himself that Thorne’s story had the ring of truth to it and tied in with the mystery surrounding Kate Bloom. He could never square her disappearance with his investigation. For something to happen to her so close to the shoot-out and the death of Ashcroft was beyond coincidence.
“Jimmy saw this video, of Kate?”
“That’s why he was there that night. He wanted to help.”
The story was fitting together.
“Why you? What’s your link to these people?”
Thorne sighed.
“I’ve known the leader since I was a kid, we grew up together in Los Angeles. We saw the National Guard on the streets during the riots in ’92 and I guess it made an impression on us. We were ten years old and it was like a movie we could
n’t stop talking about. They looked badass, and we wanted in on it. We signed up a couple of months before 9/11 and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But something happened to him over there, he became someone I didn’t want to know. We fell out of touch until about a month ago, when he showed up recruiting old buddies from the Corps for some big score. When I heard what he had in mind I said no, but I ended up getting sucked in anyway. I knew what he was capable of and I thought that if I didn’t stop him no one else would. It was like you said, I hoped to talk him around at that mall but I was tired and fell asleep in the rental. By the time I arrived there was no stopping it, only of changing the outcome.”
Cabot nodded in satisfaction. This was what he wanted to hear. He’d been so close to the truth all along that it restored his faith in his abilities as an investigator. His mind moved on.
“How many of the gang are left?”
“Him and his crazy-ass girlfriend, the rest are dead.”
The two from the hospital.
“What are their names?”
Thorne hesitated. It was the final betrayal, giving up his old friend.
“Aidan Blake and Sara Dawson.”
Cabot ran their names though his brain, getting used to the flavor of them. It was always this way when he’d been using one of Barnes’ aliases for any length of time. The names had a power, a way of sticking and becoming real for him in a way the actual names did not.
“And this man Blake, he’s the one that killed Jimmy?”
“Yes.”
That was enough for Cabot, he’d heard all he needed to know.
Night Passenger Page 48
