“I’m also going to wash my face,” Kit said, going in without looking at him.
With the door shut behind her, Kit grabbed the roll of toilet paper, stripped off enough to reduce it to the proper size, and squeezed it as flat as she could before wedging it under the door, taking care that it didn’t show on the other side.
Now, the nail . . .
She reached in her pocket . . . Where was it?
Her finger’s scoured the pocket, digging at its corners. . . .
No . . .
Her fingers found a hole in the fabric.
Gone . . . it was gone.
NICK LAWSON EASED HIS car onto N. Peters and appraised the bleak landscape before him. On his right, a twenty-foot-wide strip of grass littered with blow-around led to a tall brick wall, over which he could see the superstructure of freighters tied up at the docks. To his left was a succession of dreary structures that began with a power substation and its Frankenstein movie-set clutter of high-tension electrical gizmos.
He gave the car some gas, aimed it between potholes big enough to swallow it, and went on past two men loading lettuce into an old pickup in front of a one-story wooden eyesore with the word PRODUCE fading into oblivion over the entrance.
Next was a fairly decent-looking brick building from which coffee was distributed; then came a large vacant lot that bordered Spain Street. On the other side of Spain was the place the hat vendor had told him about, a battered corrugated-metal warehouse with no windows.
He pulled onto the shoulder and studied the place, which actually seemed to be two warehouses joined at the back so that water from the peaked roofs of each would accumulate in a long trough between them. Or maybe the water was somehow directed to that little pipe he saw coming out the front on the right, where whatever had poured from it had made an orange stain on the metal. Next to the stain, in vertical lettering, he could make out S AND I FABRICATION. Access to the warehouse seemed to be through a sliding door facing the street. On the door, some moron with a can of blue spray paint had proven that he’d mastered the spelling of four-letter words.
Lawson doubted there was any place in the world that looked more abandoned. In the weedy strip bordering the warehouse and Spain Street, he saw a mop, a small pile of broken concrete, and a bunched-up piece of plastic sheeting. A little beyond the warehouse, between the old railroad tracks that ran in front of all the buildings on that side of N. Peters, was a rusting eighteen-wheeler trailer sitting like a mother hen over a clutch of old tires. Overhead, a jockstrap hung from the warehouse’s power line.
It was only a quarter of a mile from the French Market, yet the whole area was practically deserted. Back at the produce business, he’d seen the two guys loading lettuce, and far ahead, where the street seemed to end, a big truck was backing up to a loading dock, but there was no other sign of human activity. Across the vacant lot, he could see a row of small houses lining the street, but no one was around them, either.
With the top down, he could hear a foreign language being broadcast from one of the freighters, mixing with the plaintive cry of gulls wheeling through the cloudless blue sky. A crow landed on one of the major power lines in front of him and added its voice to the others.
Could Kit really be in there?
KIT SEARCHED THE BATHROOM for something else she could use to cut the paint seal, but there was nothing. Frantically, she looked under the sink for something she could pull loose and use. . . . Nothing.
Her eyes fell on the metal switch plate by the door. Its corners were very sharp and one of the screws that held it on was missing. She stepped to the switch plate, pressed her thumb against the remaining screw, and tried to back it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Nor could she turn it with her fingernail.
Her search turned to something she could use on the screw. But the room was equally unproductive for that. Without a plan in mind, she took the lid off the toilet tank and looked inside. Her eyes traveled over the contents—to the flush lever, the float, the flapper valve . . . the metal clip that held that little tube to the overflow. . . .
The metal clip . . .
She removed the clip, intending to use it as a makeshift screwdriver, then realized its corners were very sharp, too. Afraid to believe she’d found the answer, she turned on the cold-water faucet, setting the pipes vibrating. Under cover of their rattle, she began raking the edge of the clip along the paint sealing the window.
And it seemed to be working. But was it going deep enough?
By the time she’d made her way along the entire bottom of the window and had gone as high as she could reach vertically, her finger was aching from the pressure of the thin edge of the clip. To reach the upper part of the window, she got on the toilet and stepped across to the sink, praying it would hold her weight.
It was nearly impossible to use the clip in any manner but the way she’d been using it. And she couldn’t change hands. Ignoring the pain in her finger, she went back to work.
Two minutes later, with six inches of the horizontal seam still to go, the sink shifted under her, dropping slightly. Whatever was holding it to the wall was giving way.
NICK LAWSON CONSIDERED HIS options. He could drive to a phone, call the cops, and let them handle it. But there was no assurance the hat vendor knew what he was talking about. He hadn’t dealt with him before, so the guy had no track record. Considering all the cops who’d love for him to fall on his face, he couldn’t risk turning in a false alarm. Besides, backing off wasn’t the Lawson way.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t about to jump into the path of a vehicle coming up from the rear, but his view was blocked by a brown paper bag three inches away. At the same instant that he heard the sound of the gun firing, his face was speckled with hot gunpowder and a bullet ripped through his cheek, came out his neck, and penetrated the passenger seat and floorboard before skidding off the pavement into the grass.
AT LAST, THE PAINT seal was fully scored. Kit reached down, disengaged the latch, and yanked on the handle. The window didn’t budge. She yanked again, nearly pulling her arms out of the socket, but the window remained stuck.
Gathering her strength, she gave another mighty tug. The seal broke with a loud crack and the window swung open, so unpredictably, she nearly went over backward off the sink.
Looking out the window, her heart sank. She’d assumed the meal they’d had was breakfast, but there was no sunlight beyond the window. To the contrary, it was so dark, she could see nothing.
Suddenly, through the bathroom door, she heard Roy’s voice.
“Get her out of there. We’re leaving . . . for good.”
As Larry tried to open the door against the toilet-paper roll wedged under it, Kit went through the window.
21
Kit landed in a crouch on a cement floor thick with dust, which went up her nose in clouds. Stifling a sneeze, she heard a grunt and the heavy thump of a shoulder being thrown against the bathroom door.
The small square of light spilling through the open window left the limits of the room in darkness, so she could tell very little about her surroundings. As the bathroom door took another hit, she spotted, to her left and about ten feet ahead, a grid pattern glowing weakly near the floor.
Remaining in a crouch, she scuttled in that direction. Reaching the spot, she looked through the grid and saw the back of the white panel truck.
“She got out the window,” Larry yelled from the bathroom.
Realizing the grid was a ventilator panel in a door, Kit jumped up and twisted the doorknob.
Locked.
Instinctively, she kicked at the panel, but it was made of a stout material that hardly rang with the blow. The bathroom window closed and she heard the latch being thrown. The room now was in utter darkness.
Were they just going to leave her here? Highly unlikely. They were probably coming around to get her.
She fumbled for the light switch, praying there was one, and even while that prayer was sti
ll on her lips, she found it. But when the light came on, she was stunned and sickened to find herself in a room that, except for a wall of metal shelving, was bare.
She dashed to the shelves and pulled on the framework, hoping to find a loose member she could use as a club, but everything was securely welded together. Her mind raced, escape now appeared hopeless.
Her thoughts locked on what she’d heard Roy say: “Get her out of there. We’re leaving . . . for good.”
Something was obviously about to happen. Maybe help coming . . . But they all might be gone when it arrived . . . or Roy and Larry would be gone and she and Teddy . . .
She ran to the door, dropped to one knee, and looked again at the truck. Returning to the shelves, she wrote her name in the dust on one of them and added, HELP WHITE TRUCK and the truck’s license number, which she’d seen through the vent.
Footsteps coming . . .
She looked at the floor and could clearly see her footprints going to the door and then to where she stood. In the last seconds before Roy and Larry reached her, she crisscrossed the room, obscuring the path to the message she’d left.
The door flew open and Roy and Larry came for her.
“THERE’S NO ONE HERE, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Tapp, head of the NOPD Tac Unit said.
Gatlin turned from the cages holding what he estimated as two hundred screeching parrots. “I was afraid of that. Not much doubt it was that reporter Lawson who spooked them. Never did like that guy.”
Tapp lifted his eyebrows in surprise at his comment, their movement causing the overhead lights to reflect off a fleck of glitter he’d picked up in his search.
“Awright, I’m not happy he took one in the face. But he’s why we’re standing here looking stupid.” The discomfort of his own mask and the short crotch on the jumpsuit he was wearing over his clothes did nothing to help Gatlin’s foul mood. “The medics say how it looks?”
“Not good, but he was still alive when they left with him. You want us to stick around?”
“No. These bottom-feeders won’t be back. I’m gonna take a quick tour of the place. Then I’ll probably check on Lawson, see if he can tell us anything.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. Least, not right away.”
“Why don’t you go over to the orphanage and tell all the kids there’s no Santa Claus.”
“I think they already know.”
“Go on, beat it. Make sure you all check yourselves for ticks before you leave. If you find any, don’t touch them with your bare hands. And incinerate them with a cigarette lighter.”
Tapp left and Gatlin returned to the room with the desk and the refrigerator. He strolled over to the two mattresses on the floor and threw their pillows aside. He then picked up the end of one mattress and looked under it. Seeing only the floor, he let it drop, producing a whoosh of flophouse air. He did the same to the other mattress.
He approached the fridge and opened the door. Seeing no kidnapper’s itinerary inside, he closed it and went to the desk, where he briefly examined a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, then ran all the desk drawers. This phase of his investigation produced some thumbtacks, three paper clips, and a cardboard cylinder of dried roach bait. Near the desk, he knelt and examined some small pieces of twine. Moving into the adjacent room, he found more pieces of twine, more pillows, and another mattress, which he also lifted.
It didn’t take a twenty-year man to figure out this was where they’d kept Kit and, most likely, Teddy, if they were both still alive. And he believed they were, because the kidnappers had made no effort to hide the body of the strangulation victim, suggesting that if Kit and Teddy were dead, their bodies would probably have already been found. The Franklyns had still received no ransom request, so the reason for Kit’s abduction remained unexplained.
He stood for a few seconds, absorbing the room, then left and went to examine the bathroom.
The first thing he noticed was the immobile door, stuck in a half-open position. Sucking in his gut, he squeezed inside and saw the toilet paper jammed between the door and the floor. He turned and his eyes locked on the window and the paint chips on the sill. He opened the window and looked into the next room, whose light was on. Getting a distinct picture, he turned to the toilet, whose tank top was sitting on the seat. It took no more than a few seconds for him to notice that the clip for the overflow pipe was missing.
He turned and looked on the floor under the window— more paint chips . . . and . . . there was the missing clip. Someone had gone out that window.
He left the bathroom, crossed the room with the desk, and went into the garage portion of the building, where he found the door he’d seen from the bathroom. Opening it, he stood on the threshold and looked at all the footprints in the dust. Paying careful attention, he saw three sets. Those in greatest number were also the smallest.
“Lieutenant?”
Gatlin turned, to see one of the uniforms assigned to the operation.
“We just got word there was a murder committed in the French Market that sounds like it happened about the same time the reporter was shot.”
“Who was killed?”
“Some guy that ran a hat concession. His throat was cut.”
“Thanks. I’ll check it out. Now get out of here.”
The French Market, in broad daylight . . . an unlikely place and time for a murder. This new connection called to him and he was eager to learn the details and question the vendors whose stalls bordered the victim’s. Someone had to have seen the killer.
He left the warehouse, pulled off his mask, and walked over to where the uniform who’d told him about the hat vendor was sitting in his patrol car.
“I’m going to the French Market. How about keeping an eye on this place until I can get someone over here to take care of things?”
“Be glad to.”
He warned him about going inside again and had him get out of the car. After checking each other for ticks, Gatlin suggested that the uniform give the patrol car’s interior a thorough search to be sure he hadn’t brought one into it from the warehouse. They discussed what he should do if he found one; then Gatlin went to his own car and shucked the jumpsuit and his rubber gloves before heading to the French Market.
As he passed the coffee dealership, he thought about how the small footprints in the dusty room were most likely Kit’s. Opposite the produce business, he remembered how resourceful Kit had been in other situations. At the electrical substation, he turned the car around.
“MY FACE HURTS,” LARRY said, gently touching the fiery chevron where Kit had scratched him during the scuffle in the dusty room.
“She got you pretty good,” Roy said from the passenger seat. “Now slow down. I don’t want to get stopped for a traffic violation.”
On the floor between them, the police scanner provided background noise for the drive. In the back, bound, gagged, and blindfolded, Kit and Teddy lay in their usual positions. They’d been under way for perhaps ten minutes.
“What are we gonna do for money?” Larry asked.
“The Lord will provide,” Roy told him.
“What hurts even more than my face is what we left behind,” Larry said. “All that work for nothing.”
“Look at all the experience you got.”
“And I’m tired of hauling those two around.”
“Won’t be necessary for much longer.”
Then, from the scanner came, “All cars . . . Be on the lookout for a white truck, make and model unknown, license, Sierra, two, two, five, eight, eight. Occupants believed armed and dangerous and may have hostages. Number and sex of suspects are unknown. Hostages may be one male and one female.”
Kit’s spirits practically lifted her off the truck floor. Gatlin had found her message.
“That’s us,” Larry whined. “How’d they know?”
“Secrets, it seems, are difficult to keep here,” Roy replied, opening the glove compartment.
Kit heard the rustle of paper and assu
med Roy was unfolding a map.
“We’ve got to get off the road and hide out for a while,” Roy said. “Fortunately, Jack was prepared for this. And so was I. That’s why we came this way. If we can make it another twenty miles or so, we’ll be fine.”
For the next twenty minutes, Kit listened hard for the sound of a siren, but apart from Roy occasionally telling Larry where to turn, there was only the low hum of the tires against the pavement when it was on solid ground, the change in pitch when they passed over water, and the constant cop chatter on the scanner.
Finally, Roy said, “There . . . that’s it. That’s what we want.”
The truck slowed and Kit felt it make a right turn. The road became bumpy. One second, she was rolling against Teddy; the next, he was being thrown against her.
This went on for quite a long time. Finally, Roy told Larry to stop the truck and get out.
Kit heard the doors open, and the truck rocked as both men left their seats. Kit was well aware what this could mean. A bumpy road was certainly an unpaved one, and that meant they were now somewhere in the boondocks. She thought about crime-scene photos she’d seen of abduction victims who’d been driven to remote areas and murdered. And when Larry had complained about hauling them around, Roy said it wouldn’t be necessary much longer.
Thinking it might be the last time she’d be able to feel his touch, she shifted her body so she lay against Teddy and then waited for whatever was about to happen.
And waited . . . and waited.
What were they doing?
She pictured them digging . . . a shallow grave big enough for two. The cruelty of it was that she and Teddy would die without being able to say anything to each other. There was also cruelty in the waiting, lying there with her heart pushing on the headband in her mouth.
Then the rear doors opened and the truck rocked as one of them got in. Hands grabbed at her shoulders and her ankles and she was slid from the truck.
Outside, she was stood on her feet. One of them put his shoulder against her middle and lifted her like a big sack of dog food, which made her think of Lucky and wonder if Bubba would keep him when she was gone.
Louisiana Fever Page 22
