Abducted

by Janice Cantore

  “Will do.” In the elevator Carly pounded her forehead with her palm. I hope this isn’t a drug withdrawal–induced game he’s playing. But the story was just crazy enough to ring true.

  The homicide office was empty. Carly sat down at a computer and logged on. She shot Weaver an e-mail about the interview, asking him to use any clout he had to delay Harper’s arraignment till the last minute. Homicide would need time to check out his story.

  Finished with the computer, she picked up the phone to check in with the tip line and was told Harris was meeting with the press information office, working on a new press release. She grabbed her gun belt and put it on while she wondered how to handle this tip in the quickest way possible.

  I want to get this done. She drummed her fingers on the desk for a minute and made a decision. She could probably free someone up to take with her, but she didn’t want to take the time. Quickly she penned a note for Nelson, saying she’d call him from the apartment if anything came of this new lead, and jogged out of the office.

  • • •

  The address Harper had given Carly for Mary Ellen Barber was located in an area of Las Playas known as “tweakers alley” because of the prevalence of drugs like speed and methamphetamine and an overabundance of users. Carly parked one house down from Mary Ellen’s apartment building and did a double take at a black Lincoln Town Car parked on the other side of the street, two doors down. It looked like the kind of car you hired to take you to the airport. The windows were tinted too dark for her to see if the vehicle was occupied.

  Carly radioed dispatch with her location and told them to put her code 6 and out of the car for investigation. She hurried down the walkway and up the four stairs to the entry of the apartment building. Pausing on the top stair, she turned to study the expensive vehicle one more time, all manner of alarms going off in her head. That car is out of place here. Are they dope dealers or dope buyers? But the clock was ticking on Harper. She didn’t have time to check the car out now. She couldn’t see the Town Car’s license plate from where she was but vowed to check it before she left.

  Carly turned and continued into the apartment building to find number seven. From the layout she could see that the apartment was in the corner on the second floor.

  The enclosed hallway and stairway to the second floor smelled of a familiar mixture of garbage, unwashed bodies, and urine. It was a dope house mixture. Carly didn’t look too close because she knew she’d see cockroaches, and the thought made her itch. I pray, as much as I want to find him, that baby A.J. is not in a place like this.

  When she reached number seven, the first room on the second floor, the door was ajar.

  “Hello? Mary Ellen?” She pulled her big flashlight from her belt and whacked the doorjamb hard.

  There was no response. Slowly she pushed the door open with the flashlight. The small room in front of her was dirty and sparsely furnished, and it looked like a tornado had landed hard. Clothes were strewn about and the couch was upended, the cushions slashed and the stuffing torn out. She remembered Harper saying that Mary Ellen had been slapped around.

  Am I going to find a body in this mess?

  But there was no one in sight in the living room or kitchen, though it was obvious that someone had been here looking for something. But what? Or whom? Was Harper’s employer responsible for this, or was this the work of the people he owed money to?

  Carly stepped in farther, boots crunching on glass from a shattered coffee table, and called for Mary Ellen again. She was familiar with the floor plan; most of the older apartments in this part of the city were cookie-cutter. The kitchen was to the left and a single bedroom to the right.

  All the blinds were drawn, and the apartment was cast in semidarkness. She clicked her light on, not wanting to miss anything, and dragged the beam across the small space. Dreaded roaches skittered across the kitchen floor and caused Carly to shiver. The air in the room was stale and smelled like a combination of cigarettes and spoiled food. Carly started for the bedroom and froze.

  An edge of blue fabric caught her eye. She had to push the sofa to see more, and her heart caught in her throat. It was A.J.’s sleeper, the one he’d been wearing the night he was brought to the hospital. Blue with little badges. She’d noticed it when Joe was feeding his son.

  She stepped forward and picked up the small blue outfit. It was in one piece but dirty with what looked like food and smudges of grime. Her gaze went to the upended sofa, and she nudged aside the debris around the couch with the toe of her boot, looking for anything else that would prove A.J. had been there.

  Suddenly there was a crash of glass breaking and wood splintering from the bedroom. Carly clicked off her light, dropped the sleeper, and drew her handgun.

  “Who is it? Who’s there?” She pointed her weapon toward the bedroom and stuffed the flashlight in her back pocket. “This is the police! Who’s there?”

  She stepped quickly but cautiously to the bedroom and caught a glimpse of the back and bald head of a white man as he disappeared out the window. There was a loud thud.

  Carly hurried to the window in time to see the man straighten up after landing on the roof of an adjacent laundry room and then jump to a side walkway. When he glanced up, their eyes met briefly. Carly saw a man with several days’ growth of dark beard on his face before he turned and sprinted away. Quickly she holstered her gun and followed.

  Carly hit the top of the laundry room as the bald man rounded the corner of the building, running toward the street. Her leap to the ground wasn’t as graceful as his was. Though she absorbed the shock by bending her knees, she still fell off-balance. When she gained her feet, she heard a motor rev. She lurched toward the street, feeling every ounce of her gear holding her back.

  The Town Car sped past, burning rubber and weaving down the street.

  It seemed to take forever to reach her car. She could hear the sound of the Lincoln’s tires screeching in the distance as she jammed her key in the ignition and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal.

  All of Carly’s focus was on catching the vehicle. She headed in the direction where she last saw the car, rolling over black tire tracks in the street.

  “Thank you!” she yelled when she spotted the Lincoln’s taillights in the distance ahead of her. He was stopped behind traffic.

  Carly reached for the radio mike to call for backup. Simultaneously, a car appeared on her left. Even as she was slowing because her prey was within her grasp, the car on the left sped past and cut right.

  Carly slammed on her brakes and tried to avoid the collision. But metal hit metal, and she was jerked forward and then slammed back by the force of the deployed air bag.

  14

  “ARE YOU OKAY?”

  Carly heard the voice and wanted to answer, but the wind in her lungs had fled on impact and her face stung from the air bag. She sucked in a breath and brought a hand to her face, which was wet and sticky. When she looked at her hand, she saw blood.

  “Don’t move,” the voice ordered. “We called for paramedics.”

  Carly breathed in and tried to focus on who was talking to her. It was a man in a suit, standing at her window. She remembered the chase, the car cutting her off.

  “What . . . ?” Carly tried to speak and shifted in her seat to get a better look at the man. Her face hurt.

  “Don’t talk. Here.” He handed her a handkerchief. “I’m awfully sorry about this.”

  Carly took the piece of cloth and gingerly wiped her nose. As her eyes watered, she wondered if her nose was broken. She moved around, testing her body parts—arms, hands, legs, feet—but didn’t seem to be injured anywhere else. Sirens were fast approaching, and she was embarrassed to realize they were coming for her.

  Embarrassment quickly gave way to anger, and she turned on the man in the suit. “You—you cut me off! It was deliberate—why?” She glared at him through the open window even as she sniffed back blood.

  “Look, I said I was sorry.” He
straightened up and moved away from the car.

  Carly looked at the front of her black-and-white. It was embedded in the side of a nondescript car, but the damage didn’t seem to be too bad. She’d been wasted by the air bag. There was something familiar about the man and the car, but she was having trouble focusing.

  The sirens stopped as a black-and-white and a fire truck rolled up to the scene.

  Mike, a beat cop, walked up a second later. “Hey, Carly, are you okay?” Right behind him was a paramedic.

  “Yeah, I am. Mike, do me a favor: get ahold of Detective Harris and get him out here. I have some info for him, okay?”

  “Sure thing, but you let the medic take a look at you.” He stepped back and got on the radio.

  The paramedic occupied Carly with questions to assess her level of consciousness. It took more than a few minutes to convince him she was okay, but eventually he let her get out of the car and walk to his rig, where he had her sit on the bumper with an ice pack on her nose. From there she brooded and watched Mike work the accident scene. The Town Car was long gone.

  Harris pulled up a short time later. “What happened to you?” he asked.

  Nick was beside him, and Carly felt her heart rate quicken. Oh, Lord, she prayed, I don’t want to deal with him right now.

  “This guy cut me off.” She pointed to the man in the suit. “But that’s not important. I know who took A.J.” Carly stood and ignored the headache that started, the sharp pain causing her eyes to water. She told Pete about Harper, Mary Ellen, and the elusive black Town Car. He jerked his phone off his belt and called Nelson with the information.

  “Nelson is sending a team over there,” he said as he ended the call. “I’ll join them after I’m finished here.”

  “I want to go back there and check the place out carefully. I would’ve caught the limo if this jerk hadn’t cut me off.”

  “And I want to talk to this clown. Excuse me.” Pete strode toward the other driver, leaving Carly to face Nick.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” He leaned on his cane and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read. “Except maybe to the hospital.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve just got a bloody nose from the air bag.”

  “It might be broken.”

  “It’s not broken. I’m going to help find A.J.” She moved to go around Nick, but he grabbed her arm.

  “No, you’re going to the hospital and getting x-rayed. Do I have to make it an order?”

  “You wouldn’t.” She jerked her arm away and glared. He was a sergeant, so he could order her, but never in their relationship had he chosen such a course.

  “In a heartbeat I would. You’re bleeding. Go get yourself taken care of. I’ll have Nelson call you with what he finds.” His firm tone assured Carly he meant business.

  She was almost angry and hurt enough to force his hand; part of her wanted to dare him. In the end, she relented and let the paramedics help her into the ambulance.

  • • •

  The blood from her nose soaked through her polo shirt to the cover of her ballistic vest but didn’t make it to the undershirt beneath. Carly stripped the sodden items off and submitted to an exam followed by countless questions posed by the day patrol sergeant who stopped in to complete the injury-on-duty paperwork and talk to her about why she crashed. Crashing a police car ate up about as much paperwork as a shooting. The sergeant made sure Carly understood he wasn’t very happy with the added workload. He finished up about the time the doctor was ready to have her x-rayed. She was given instructions to report to Nelson as soon as the doctor released her.

  Carly gratefully turned herself over to the care of the physician, the pain in her nose paralleling the pain in her heart. The thought of her ex-husband pulling rank hurt almost as much as losing the limousine. Nick was going to order me. I can’t think about this now. I’ll choke up, and it hurts to sniffle. After the X-ray, she was handed another ice bag. She closed her eyes, lay back in the exam room with the ice covering her face, and tried to focus on anything other than Sergeant Nick Anderson.

  “Hey, if it isn’t my favorite police officer.”

  Carly pulled the ice away from her nose and opened her eyes to see Trejo in the doorway.

  “Where did you come from?” Her voice now possessed a nasal quality, as if she were suffering from a bad head cold.

  “I heard the commotion on my scanner.” He walked to her bedside. “You gave me a scare. My heart dropped to my feet when I heard you were hurt.” Alex reached out and touched her chin with a forefinger. “I’ve never said this to a woman I wanted to date, but you look horrible. You’re going to have two nice shiners.”

  Carly turned away from his touch. “I’m not gonna die. The crash wasn’t even that bad. It was the stupid air bag that did this.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Officer Edwards?”

  Alex and Carly turned to face the doctor.

  “The films are negative; there’s no break. You’re going to be black and blue for a couple of days. A nurse will be in to give you some instructions, and then you’ll be released.”

  “Thank you very much.” Carly moved to sit up and didn’t protest when Alex took her arm to help her. The ice had helped her face; it wasn’t throbbing as much as when she’d come in. But she’d left her kit with her phone in the black-and-white. “I’ve got to find a phone.”

  “Whoa. Your friendly neighborhood reporter to the rescue.” Trejo produced a phone from his back pocket and smiled.

  Carly regarded him warily. “Suppose what I have to say is off limits to the press?”

  Trejo laughed. “Always the cop. I don’t know what I have to do to convince you that the majority of my interest is personal. But if you want, I’ll stand in the hall.” He pointed with his thumb to the hallway and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  Carly managed a smile in spite of the soreness in her face. “Always the reporter. I notice you said ‘majority.’ What’s the minority interest percent?”

  He held up a thumb and forefinger and grinned. “Minuscule, minuscule. If you don’t want it in print, it won’t be in print. Scout’s honor.” The grin faded, and the expression on his face was appropriately solemn.

  “Okay, okay.” Carly took the phone. Alex went out to the hall as she dialed Sergeant Nelson, who answered immediately.

  “I’m glad you called. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine. Nothing’s broken. Did you find anything else in the apartment? And were you able to get a line on the Town Car?” Carly was careful not to look down. When she looked down, her nose throbbed.

  “I’ll get to the apartment search in a minute, but first I have to tell you that you stumbled into the middle of an FBI surveillance.”

  “FBI?” She gaped, realizing Nelson was saying a government car had cut her off. Deliberately. “I was in hot pursuit of a suspect in the kidnapping of a cop’s kid and an FBI agent stopped me?” The headache lurking in the background slithered forward and seized Carly’s temples in a vise grip.

  “The guy that caused your crash is an FBI agent, albeit not a very good one. He was a tail on the Lincoln. The good news is, Agent Wiley has been a big help, and he connected some dots we might never have connected. The guy you chased is a mug named Isaac Grant. He works for the suspect the FBI is watching, and the kicker is, so does Stanley Harper.”

  “What!” Carly slid off the bed and began to pace. She needed to move, walk, run—anything to digest this news. “But Harper’s boss is the one who wanted the baby! The FBI is supposed to be helping us with A.J. Did they just help the kidnappers get away?”

  “Calm down. They say that neither their suspect nor Grant has the baby. Because of their surveillance they were able to clarify some things. Grant was sent to the apartment for some keys.”

  “Keys? What kind of keys?”

  “Well, apparently Harper had some in his possession that belong
to their employer. When Wiley saw what we had and compared it to the surveillance he was able to review, it was clear that the keys were what Caswell wanted as well, since he also works for the same man. The feds have pages of transcribed surveillance and assure me that their suspect does not want a kidnapped baby.”

  Carly thought back to the night she arrested Harper. “Harper didn’t have any keys on him when I booked him. But if he did have keys, they are likely in the car that Mary Ellen drove away.”

  “Already on it. You had the license plate in your report of Harper’s car. It’s been entered in the system now as a wanted vehicle.” Nelson paused, and Carly heard papers shuffling in the background. He added, “Also, to be on the safe side, we are releasing Mary Ellen Barber’s information to the media since she’s a runaway from county custody and now a person of interest in our investigation.”

  “That’s great—the more information we have out there, the better. But it bugs me that Harper said nothing about keys.” She chewed on a thumbnail. “Who is under surveillance? Who is Harper’s boss?”

  “Here the feds clam up. According to Wiley, the main subject of their investigation and the location where they’ve set up surveillance are not in Las Playas and have nothing to do with Las Playas, so we have no need to know.”

  “But why did their agent make me crash?”

  “If it’s any consolation, they apologize. The agent who hit you is green, and he’ll probably be suspended. You surprised him; he didn’t expect you would catch the car. The only thing he could think to do was cut you off.”

  Oh, they’re sorry. That makes everything better, Carly thought bitterly. “What about Mary Ellen? Do the feds have anything on her?”

  “Wiley admits that they know nothing about Mary Ellen. She’s a wild card and someone they’ve never had reason to suspect was involved in any illegal activity. Wiley is on his way to talk to Harper now, trying to clarify this crazy story about selling a baby. The feds insist that A.J.’s disappearance is not in any way connected to the guy they’re after.”