Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  He coughed out a sputter of disgust, turned his attention back to the road and floored the accelerator, fishtailing back out onto the pavement. Daphne felt a penetrating calm. She was inside him now. They both knew it.

  “What do you know about it?” he said.

  “Do you think you’re the only person to experience grief and guilt? What you’re going through is a process. But you’re handling it wrong. Tell me about the guilt you feel.”

  He waited a moment and said, “Pass the Gold.”

  “No, I’m not going to. I don’t feel comfortable with that.” She wanted control. If he accepted her refusal then she had him right where she needed him.

  “Yeah?” he said a little tentatively, “well, this is my car. Fuck you!” He stretched for the glove box, and 406

  R I D L E Y P E A R S O N

  Daphne blocked his effort. She could sense his fencesitting; he was debating opening up to her.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not the answer.”

  They wrestled, though she didn’t put up much resistance. She wasn’t about to control him physically and didn’t want to start down that road. If he turned to physical violence, she had only the weapon to stop him. He tripped the glove box and grabbed for the bottle. She said, “Talk to me, Abby. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

  Force of habit: Bring the subject closer by establishing rapport. Seek permission to use the subject’s first name. Befriend, don’t belittle. But she had slipped—

  there had been no introduction, no reason for her to know his name. She had trapped herself in an amateurish mistake, and she reeled with self-loathing. On hearing his nickname, his head turned mechanically toward her, the road and the traffic there a distant thought. Daphne kept one eye trained out the windshield, her attention divided between her purse at her feet and the murderous rage in the driver’s eyes. He looked her over through dazed eyes, a mind stunned by what he heard. She thought that perhaps there were gears spinning in there, perhaps only the violently loud rush of blood pulsing past his ears. He looked numb. Bewildered.

  It all happened at once. His words disconnected as his mind sought to fill in the blanks. “Who . . . the fuck . . . are you?” His right hand dropped the bottle, M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  his left took the wheel, and with one lunge, his fingers were locked around her throat and pressing her head against the door’s window. He was halfway across the seat, fingers twisting painfully in her hair and turning her head toward the dash, the car losing its track, the rear wheels yipping.

  She saw her salvation lying in the bottom of the glove box. But she could not reach it, could not speak. His strength consumed her. She reached forward, fingers wavering for purchase, but he’d stuffed her into the seat against the door and she couldn’t make it. Suddenly his knee was bracing the wheel, his left hand gone from it, and her window came down electronically, and her head thrust through the opening until fully out in the stinging dark rain. He let go her hair, grabbed hold of her left breast, squeezed and twisted until she screamed, turning with the pain. Just as he wanted. The window moved up electronically, now choking her throat.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he screamed. The window nudged up another fraction of an inch. Her windpipe would be crushed. She couldn’t manage more than a grunt. Her fingers danced closer to the glove box. He must have been halfway across the seat and steering with his left hand, but he’d lost the accelerator in order to hold her there. The car slowed noticeably, and he headed for the side of the road. Finally, she felt the soft plastic between her fingers. She hoisted the cool cup that she’d seen inside the glove box. It was blue. It was used to keep single cans 408

  R I D L E Y P E A R S O N

  of beer cold. She turned it, because she didn’t know if she had the lettering facing him.

  She spun it, and shook it, and tried to grab his attention. The window came down and he pulled her inside. She sucked for air, grabbed for her neck and massaged her throat.

  On the cup was printed in white a single word:

  A B B Y

  M

  The car was pulled off the road, engine running. It smelled of exhaust and human sweat and tequila. Flek panted, glancing over at her and wondering what came next. Daphne’s face and hair were soaking wet, her neck a scarlet bruise. The windshield fogged as they sat there. Flek reached out and gently picked up the cool cup.

  He said dreamily, as if nothing had happened between them. “He bought it for me at a truck stop. This trip we took once. David. My brother—”

  She said nothing, knowing it best to allow him to calm. Her breast burned. Her weapon beckoned, but she dared not move. She glanced down quickly only to see her purse had fallen on its side, the knurled handle of the handgun showing. She extended her knee and placed her foot over the weapon, covering it. She knew now what he would do to her if he found out who she M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  was. All she wanted was out of that car—but she also knew he could not feel threatened by her departure, could not feel she would go running to police, or he would never let her go. One slip of the tongue had brought her here to this moment; she guarded her words carefully. She had a role to play. Her voice rasped dryly as she spoke, requiring deep breaths to get any sound out at all. “You could have killed me,” she said.

  Flek had left. The adrenaline had kicked the drugs in ahead of schedule. He ground his teeth so hard she could hear them—like a rock scratching slate. “Out there in eastern Colorado. Might as well be Kansas, it’s so damn flat. There was a ‘T’ on the cup when Davie bought it—TABBY—but he scratched it off with his penknife and handed it to me, saying it was my birthday present.”

  “I’m going to get out of the car now,” she announced, having no trouble playing the terrified and wounded stranger. “You’re going to drive off and leave me.” With her foot, she tried to stuff the handle of the gun back inside, but it wouldn’t go, so she covered it again.

  “No, no, no . . .” he said, suddenly aware of his predicament. The car idled on the side of the road.

  “This was a mistake on my part,” she said. “I should have taken the taxi.”

  “A little late for that.”

  “You’re upset over the loss of your brother. You’re 410

  R I D L E Y P E A R S O N

  lucky I’m a professional, because I understand that. I’ve seen men in your condition before. Another woman would report you to the police—”

  He said sarcastically, “And you’re not going to!”

  “No, I’m not. That would hardly be fair. It would only further aggravate your mental condition.”

  “I do not have no ‘mental condition’!” he objected.

  “I am not no mental case!”

  “Your grief,” she said calmly. “I’m referring to your grief over your brother’s loss.” She would have to turn her back on him to try manually for the door lock, and the car was one of those where the nub of the lock barely protruded when in the locked position, so it was not going to be an easy feat. There wasn’t a mastercontrol-lock in her door panel—there was only the one window toggle and it was once again child-locked and inoperable.

  “We got ourselves a situation here,” he said, rubbing his sweaty face with an open hand.

  “I’m going to unlock the door,” she informed him,

  “and I’m going to get out of the car. All you have to do is drive away and there is no situation.”

  He seemed to be talking to himself more than her.

  “The thing is, you look so familiar to me, and I been trying to sort that out. And then you go and speak my name like that, and I’m thinking you are a cop, that that’s where I seen you. Something to do with Davie. And now you say you won’t tell no one, but that’s bullshit and we both know it.” He hit the accelerator. The rear wheels shot out plumes of mud and the car M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  slowly squirreled back out into the lane
nearly hitting a passing car that swerved to avoid them. Daphne turned and went for the lock, deciding she could jump at this slow speed. It accelerated quickly. She only had a moment. . . .

  She heard the breaking glass and felt the blow simultaneously. The nauseating smell of cheap tequila engulfed her. One moment she was struggling with that damn door lock. The next, there was only pain, and the dark, blue, penetrating swirl of unconsciousness.

  C H A P T E R

  51

  Waiting for the 9:10 ferry to Bainbridge in the enormous State Ferry parking lot, his cellular voyeuristically held to his ear, Boldt agonized as he overheard the events that led up to the struggle between Daphne and Flek, Daphne’s calm pleading that followed and the final crashing of glass that had silenced all discussion. Only the faint groan of the car engine told him the line was still active. He couldn’t be sure if the car had been wrecked or if Flek was still driving. Movement in his rearview mirror attracted him, or perhaps it was the magnetism of the man he saw there, walking with a limp through the light rain. The passenger door came open and a bruised and battered John LaMoia climbed into the car painfully. He glanced over at his lieutenant—everything below his eyebrows and above his chin a mass of swollen black and purple and yellow-orange skin—and said through a wired-shut jaw,

  “Couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

  “Now you’ve screwed up everything,” Boldt said,

  “because now I’ve got to drive you back to the hospital instead of boarding this ferry.”

  “No way,” the man mumbled, his words barely discernable. “Haven’t been on a ferry in years.” He added, M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “Don’t worry—I’m not feeling any pain, Sarge. Matter of fact, I feel pretty great.”

  Boldt’s ear adapted to the odd speech impediment brought on by the man’s wired jaw. He sounded halfsouthern, half-drunk. Medicated to the hilt. Boldt handed him the phone and said, “No talking into it, but what do you hear?”

  LaMoia pressed his other ear shut, though the move was clearly painful. “Eight cylinder. Twin barrel maybe. Bad pipes.”

  Boldt was not thinking in terms of a gear head. He had wanted a straight answer. “But it’s a car. Right?”

  “You tell me.”

  “A car engine. Idling or running?”

  “This baby’s on the road, Sarge. Three thousand RPM and cruising.” LaMoia added, “What channel is this anyway? SportTrax?”

  “She left her cell phone on.”

  “You told me,” LaMoia reminded him.

  “But it’s still on. There was a struggle, and no one’s doing any talking.” Boldt spoke frantically. “I made the call to Poulsbo PD from a pay phone. Told them they couldn’t use any radios because this guy’s a scanner. They have one plainclothes detective over there. He was going to sit on the Liberty Bay Grill with some radio cars nearby as backup. Maybe we’ve still got a shot at him.”

  The ferry lights approached.

  “Finally,” Boldt said.

  “No chopper, I take it,” LaMoia surmised. 414

  R I D L E Y P E A R S O N

  “All tied down for the night. One pilot was available, and he said with drive time and prep it would be an hour and a half before he’d be off the ground. Ferry’s thirty-five minutes. I opted to have the car once I’m over there.”

  “Hang on a second, Sarge. We got some action here. This guy’s pulling off the road—some place bumpy.” LaMoia handed the cell phone back to Boldt who listened intently.

  “He’s pulling over,” Boldt told his sergeant. “Stopping. . . . Oh, thank God!” he said with a little too much emotion.

  “What?” LaMoia begged.

  “She’s groaning. It’s her! She’s alive!” A loud scratching. The line went dead. Boldt knew it was not just silence on the other end, but a full disconnect. “Oh, no . . .” he moaned. He passed the phone to LaMoia, who jerked it to his ear.

  “She may be alive,” LaMoia said, “but this baby’s dead.”

  “He disconnected the call.”

  “Or the battery went dead,” LaMoia suggested.

  “How long has that thing been on anyway?” He added angrily, “And how the fuck did she find this skel ahead of you anyway, Sarge? What the hell’s that about?”

  “I found him,” Boldt answered. “She just took the call. Flek’s cell phone records,” he said, the words catching in his throat like chicken bones. “I . . . had . . . them . . . work . . . their . . . call . . . logs.”

  “Sarge?” LaMoia knew that tone of voice in his boss. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “That’s why she left the call open, John. It wasn’t so I could listen in, it was so I could find her.”

  “Sarge?” LaMoia repeated.

  “Get Gaynes over to AirTyme Cellular in the Columbia Building. A guy named Osbourne. Wake him up if we have to. Escort him, I don’t care. Just get him downtown. Now!” He added in dry whisper, “Now, before her battery dies . . . and she along with it.”

  C H A P T E R

  52

  She awakened in a dark, confined space, foul smelling and warm. It took her a moment to identify it as the Eldorado’s trunk. By now Flek had found her weapon and her ID wallet. By now he understood that to kill her—a cop—meant the death penalty, if caught. By now he was plotting what to do, this man wired on a glow plug cocktail. Whatever the stakes previously, for Bryce Abbott Flek they had just escalated. Her wrists were handcuffed, her ankles tied together with white plastic ties. Sight of the ties stirred memories of Sanchez and Kawamoto, and stole her breath. Her mouth was gagged with an oily rag. Pulled tightly around her sore head, it was knotted in the back. She felt a strange sensation on her neck and decided it was damp blood: whatever injury she had sustained, it was not life threatening. The man behind the wheel was another story.

  The car rattled and bounced and she blamed the pounding headache as much on the seeping fumes as the blow to her head. A pinkish-red light from the taillights seeped through the car fixtures. Her blouse, soaked in tequila, radiated a sickening smell of her own fear, perfume, and the alcohol. She had no idea where M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  they were, no idea where they were headed, though by the sound of oncoming traffic passing quickly, she knew they were traveling fast, and with so few roads in this area, it meant either toward or away from Poulsbo. If headed away, then her message to Boldt had failed. Only the open phone line presented any ray of hope—

  however faint—and only then, if Boldt figured it out. She credited her training—her ability to transcend the moment, to rise above a patient’s despair and think clearly—for the steadiness of thought she experienced. She did not wallow in self-pity or succumb to fear. Instead, after a quick flirtation with the latter, she began to reposition herself in the trunk, knowing what had to be done.

  She had been inside a trunk once before in her life. A different life, it felt like. A different woman. She had no intention of this experience resulting in the same outcome. This time someone would die. And she wasn’t going to allow that person to be her.

  C H A P T E R

  53

  The ferry steamed on through the dark, churning waters interminably. Wind and rain frothed the waters into sharp, angular chop, unique to the Sound, but the ferry plowed down the peaks and beat them out its wake as a subdued, white, rolling foam. Boldt and LaMoia sat off by themselves on a mostly empty deck. A few tired businessmen occupied the other seats, and a couple of kids with backpacks. On these milk-run legs, the ferry definitely lost money.

  “You shouldn’t have come along,” Boldt said.

  “True

  story,”

  LaMoia

  answered

  through

  his

  clenched jaw.

  “What do we feed you?”

  “Ensure, through a straw. If I puke, I die. Nice thought, isn’t it?”

  “Then why?
”

  “The last time this happened, she got cut bad, and you . . . you beat yourself up pretty hard over that. I hear you been beating yourself up over my little accident. It ain’t worth it, Sarge. My gig. My choice. My bad,” he said. “I’m slow, but I’m not useless. Besides, I knew you could use the company.”

  Boldt’s cellular rang. It was Gaynes. She said, “Os-M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E 419

  bourne provided Daphne with a location for Flek that probably pretty well matches where you are right now—

  in the middle of the Sound.”

  “And she went off of that?” Boldt asked.

  “She had a time to work with: the eight-thirty ferry to Bainbridge.”

  “So we’re at least an hour behind her.”

  “You’re right about Osbourne. He has the capability of pretty much pinpointing a call’s location, the only bummer being that none of it is real-time. It’s taking him about fifteen minutes per transmission signal, which ain’t bad, but ain’t great.”

  “Transmission signal?” he asked.

  “The phone, being on an open circuit, was constantly transmitting. So he asked me to pick various times of the call for him to reference. I chose three different times, each several minutes apart. Her call originated less than a mile from Sandy Hook—west, northwest of there. When you get near the Agate Passage Bridge, you should call me. I’ll help direct you.”

  “And a few minutes later?” Boldt asked. “Where was she then?”

  “He’s still processing. Says it’s west of there, probably near Lemolo. He’ll have an exact in a few more minutes. Maybe five more minutes, he says.”