Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

“Let’s plot the last known reference,” he advised.

  “But unless we know where he was ahead of that,”

  she suggested, “we won’t know in what direction he was headed. You want the direction, don’t you, L.T.?”

  “We’ll be off this ferry in fifteen minutes,” Boldt 420

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  said. “I want answers by then. What if Flek’s headed back for this ferry? I need to know that! I could drive right past the guy.”

  “Understood.”

  “So have Osbourne pull some help. An officer’s life is at stake here.”

  “I’ll suggest that.”

  “Don’t suggest it, order it!”

  “Right,” Gaynes said, though she didn’t sound convinced.

  “Whatever you can do, Bobbie,” Boldt said. It was as close as he could get to an apology.

  “He has a couple guys working on another technology. We could pull them, but I don’t advise it, L.T. What they’re working on is some kind of real-time technology. It could be the ticket.”

  “She disconnected the call!” Boldt objected. “That’s not real-time, that’s waste-of-time.”

  “These guys are cell phone nerds, L.T. They think they’ve got something going. I’m reluctant to butt in on that. I will if you want, but I think we cut them some slack here and see what they can do for us. They’re pretty excited about this other possibility. Your call,” she said.

  Boldt said to LaMoia, “Osbourne’s using manpower on a long shot, and Gaynes wants me to go along with that.” Boldt never consulted LaMoia on such decisions, and the sergeant’s obvious surprise reflected that. LaMoia said, “A wise old cop once told me that the dick in the field’s in a better position to make the judg-M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E 421

  ment call than the suit back in the office.” He was quoting Boldt back to himself, though not verbatim.

  “I’m not in the office!” Boldt protested. “And I’m not a suit.” It was the ultimate slur, and Boldt wanted nothing of it.

  LaMoia’s words garbled. “You’re on a boat in the middle of nowhere, Sarge. That’s even worse.” LaMoia was looking a little green. “I think maybe I need some air.”

  Middle of nowhere, Boldt thought. To him, it summed up both his professional and private lives. It had started with the Flu, this feeling; he had no idea where or when it would end.

  Into the phone, Boldt said, “It’s up to you and Osbourne. Just get me something by the time we’re back in the car.”

  “Thanks, L.T. Back at you.” She disconnected the call.

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  “You know what a talented person can do with a color scanner and a paint program these days? And I’m talented. Yessiree. Courtesy of our corrections programs, which taught me damn near everything I know. Maybe not hundred dollar bills, but you, Lieutenant Daphne Matthews, just gave me my passport outta here. You and your ID and your badge. Before that, what choice did I have? Hide out jumping islands for six months, lift a driver’s license and give it a run at the border before it’s reported. That’s shaving it a little close for this boy. But a cop’s badge? Are you kidding me? I surrender your weapon at the border and drive right across, all official-like. Slam dunk. Gone and lost forever. The way it should be.”

  They were parked in dark woods, the air laden with the pungent smell of pine sap. Flek had propped her up to sitting in the trunk, the rain falling down on both of them. Her clotted blood began to melt and paint her blouse that eerie but familiar rose. He held a cellular in his hand, switched on. Hers or his? She wondered if he had disconnected her original call to Boldt, or if it had been transmitting all this time. She held to that hope.

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  What Bryce Abbott Flek did not know was that she had spent the last ten to fifteen minutes scrunched down into one corner of the locked trunk, the right taillight’s plastic housing pulled away, shorting out its connection in an endlessly repeating stream of three short, three long, and three short bursts. They had traveled good road for most of that ride, and she had to think that some car or truck had been back there, some Boy Scout or former Marine alert to a taillight blinking Morse code. She counted on someone having taken down the plate number, of calling it into authorities on a hunch that the SOS meant something. This, along with Boldt’s earlier call into Poulsbo for backup, a call she was also counting on having been made, seemed certain to alert authorities to her general vicinity. The psychologist in her wouldn’t succumb to the evidence at hand—the fact that Flek looked and sounded unstable, apparently the victim of another glow plug or two, that he held her weapon in the waist of his pants and had a glassy look in his eyes that forewarned her of that instability. That he was capable of violence against her, she had no doubt. She had already witnessed this firsthand. But a larger agenda loomed behind those eyes, and she wanted her chance to redirect its course. The first step was the gag. She needed the gag removed to have any chance whatsoever. She made noise for the first time, sounding like a person with no tongue. She had no idea of their location. She guessed they were somewhere on or near the Port Madison Indian Reservation because it was dark as pitch out, only a faint 424

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  amber glow to the bottoms of clouds many, many miles away. The road was gravel and mud. Though in a partial clearing, they were surrounded by tall giant cedars, ferns, and thick vegetation. She heard a stream or river nearby. If she could run to that water, she could swim it, or float it, and he’d have a hell of a time finding her. She could climb a tree and hide. Wait out the sunrise. She clung to these positive thoughts in the face of her impending execution. Did he know enough to blame her for his brother’s murder as well? On the surface, Flek seemed to be explaining why he was now going to kill her, though the psychologist knew that if that had been his intention he’d have already carried through with it. Either he was plagued by doubt, or he had something else in mind. She tried to talk at him again, the rag tasting like gasoline on her tongue.

  “When you talk,” he said, “you’ll tell me his phone number—I don’t want to hear nothing else from you, not another word. Just the phone number. This Lieutenant Louis Boldt. This one did this to Davie. A pager’s fine. His cell phone. But nothing in no office. No land lines. I call once. One call. You understand? You screw this up, and it’s on you what happens next. Maybe I fuck you. Maybe I just snuff you sitting right there like that—all wet and disgusting. Maybe you go out ugly, lady. Ugly and unlaid and dead. Not much worse than that.”

  She tried again. Grunts and groans lost on him. Swallowed by the relentless rain.

  “This is very important what I’m telling you,” he M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  said. “Just the man’s phone number. That’s all. Then the rag goes back on. You can nod now and let me know you understand. Anything more than the phone number right now, and I’ll knock your teeth out with the butt of the gun, and then you will pay. God Almighty, how you will pay. So how ’bout it? Do I get a nod?”

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  “Listen up,” a stranger’s voice demanded over Boldt’s cellular phone. He had been expecting the report from Gaynes. The ferry had slowed and was nudging toward the small but well-lighted dock at Winslow. “Badge number six five six four. Your partner, Matthews. Right?”

  “I’m a lieutenant. I don’t have a partner. Who is this?” Boldt said. He already had LaMoia’s attention. He gestured toward the phone and pointed back into the dark of the Sound, toward the city, and LaMoia got the idea; the sergeant pulled out his own phone and made the call to Gaynes. Boldt placed his thumb over the phone’s talk hole and whispered, “It could be Daffy’s, it could be his.”

  “Got it!” LaMoia said.

  Flek announced into Boldt’s ear, “I’ve got her badge in my hand or I wouldn’t know the number. Right? Even a dumb cop can figure that out. You want her alive, you come
get her alone. That’s the deal. And believe me, I’ll know if you’re alone or not. And if not, then not. No second chances. A hunter’ll find her in a couple years.”

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  Boldt pushed the phone’s antenna down, held the device away from his mouth and said, “You’re breaking up . . . I can’t hear you. Hang on—” He disconnected the call.

  While Boldt was still staring at the phone, secondguessing himself, LaMoia, with Gaynes on the line, said,

  “What’s up?”

  “I hung up on him before he could give me the drop point.”

  “You what!?” LaMoia hissed through his teeth loudly enough to attract attention.

  The ferry gently bumped the dock and weary passengers headed toward the exits.

  “Osbourne requires fifteen minutes to triangulate the call. I’m trying to buy Daphne some time.”

  “Or get her killed.”

  “I’m aware of the stakes, John.”

  “Jesus, Sarge, I don’t know.”

  “Tell Gaynes that Osbourne has to kill all the towers over here, or at least effect a circuit busy on my line.”

  He repeated strongly, “Circuit busy—not line busy. I don’t want Flek thinking it’s me. I want him blaming the system.” As Boldt’s phone rang again, he glared at his sergeant. “Now, John! Now!”

  LaMoia relayed the message into his phone. His ringing phone in hand, Boldt, already moving toward an exit, shouted back, “I’m going below decks for the interference. Handle that and hurry it up. We’re out of here!”

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  “And make it fast!” LaMoia said into his phone. “I don’t care what he says—he’s got to do it. The guy is threatening to kill Matthews. No, you heard right!” He added harshly, “Now, Bobbie. Now! And if there’s any way to keep my phone working, do it!”

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  “Shit!” Flek shouted, holding the phone at bay, his whole body shaking. For a moment he seemed ready to throw the thing, or to bust it up against the car, but some tiny string of reason fought off the agitating effects of the glow plug, and he restrained himself. “Lost him,” he announced. “Second fucking time.”

  Daphne tried to speak, this time with far more purpose. She leaned forward to kneeling and pleaded with him to remove the gag again.

  “No shouting!” he cautioned.

  She shook her head. Prayers were not a part of her psychologist’s tools, but she prayed silently nonetheless. As long as that gag remained on, she had no way to effect change.

  Her prayers were answered. Flek stepped forward and unknotted the rag.

  For a moment she said nothing, savoring the fresh air, and not wanting to rush him. When she did speak it was gentle and soothing, almost a whisper, devoid of fear or the trembling rage that she felt inside. She said,

  “We may be too far away from a cell tower. Maybe if we got closer to town. . . . Maybe then the reception would improve.”

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  Flek surveyed the area. Looked at her. Looked back at the sky.

  There were so many places to start with a personality like his—drug-induced and filled with bloodthirsty rage and revenge. But it was a bit like those action films where the hero has to cut the right wire or the bomb explodes—to come after him from the wrong angle was to incite that rage, not defuse it. It was not something one jumped into lightly. She tried to strip away her own emotions, to work past her own agenda, and see this patient clearly. Right now, clarity of thought was everything. He looked back at her.

  She said, “Fresh batteries help. I have a spare battery in the bottom of my purse.”

  Perhaps he had overdone the glow plugs. Or perhaps on some level he knew the kind of trouble he had just brought onto himself by making contact with Boldt, by announcing his kidnapping of a police officer. Whatever the case, the man didn’t seem to hear her, his own internal voices too loud for her to overcome.

  “We could try to get closer to town,” she said. “You could cuff me to the door. I don’t need to ride in the trunk.” If the Morse Code had been seen, then police were looking for this car. The closer to town, the better. If he brought her inside the car with him, then she had a real chance at freedom, cuffed to the door or not. At the right moment she might deliver a properly placed kick to the head and end this.

  “I could look for the towers while you drive.” She M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  didn’t want to mention the phone’s signal meter, because for all she knew the signal was perfectly fine out here. She wanted his attention on solving the problem, not assessing it.

  She opted for silence, allowing his fuzzy logic to sort out her suggestions. To push too hard was to push him away.

  “I’m going to put the gag back on, and you’re going to lie back down. We’ll drive closer to town.”

  To beg or plead was to admit subservience, and her job was to convince him of their partnership, to make herself needed and wanted. She fought off the temptation to whine and grovel. She took a breath and said calmly, “But when you reach him, he’s going to want to hear my voice. Count on that! You know he will, Abby. And what then? Stop by the side of the road and pop the trunk? What if someone drives by? But a man and a woman in the front seat of a car—what’s so suspicious about that? I’m trying to help you, Abby. Obviously, I want to live. I think he’ll do what you want. I really do. But he’s going to want to hear my voice.” She added,

  “You could make him release Courtney. Have her delivered somewhere. It might take a little time—”

  “Shut up!” he roared, his eyes floating in their sockets. Dizzy. Dazed. He shook the phone again, pulled it close to his face and pressed a couple buttons. He held it to his ear, yanked it away in frustration and ended the attempted call with a final stab of a finger.

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  will beg me to kill you.” He grinned wickedly. “And I won’t. Not until I’m good and ready. Not until I’ve had every inch of you.” He added, “You ask Courtney about that. She knows.”

  He stepped forward. Daphne could taste her impending freedom.

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  “Osbourne can’t kill the system, Sarge,” LaMoia reported from the passenger seat, “but they can lock a phone out from the entire network—all the carriers—and that’s what he’s done: He’s locked out both Matthews’ and the number we have for Flek. Both phones will get a circuit-busy signal.”

  “Flek is known to carry more than one cloned phone,” Boldt reminded. “He’s got to kill the system.”

  Samway had said he had only the one, but Boldt wasn’t convinced.

  LaMoia repeated the request into his phone and then listened. “Don’t work that way,” LaMoia said.

  “AirTyme’s one of three carriers. Only some of the towers are theirs. They attempt an AirTyme handshake first, but if that fails, it’s rerouted, first come, first serve—the call’s going to go out.”

  “What about the location?”

  “A couple minutes more to pinpoint it exactly, but we know it came from off-island.”

  “My phone’s good to go?” Boldt asked. LaMoia checked and awaited an answer. “That’s affirm, Sarge.”

  Boldt flipped open his phone, pulled his notepad 434

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  from his jacket and dialed a number, all with one hand. LaMoia maintained the open line to Gaynes. They crossed the bridge at Agate Passage. Still on the phone, Boldt pulled the car over in a park and ride just ahead of the signage for the turn to Suquamish—Indianola. He listened more than he talked, and then hung up the call. “You know how I feel about coincidence,” he told LaMoia.

  “What’s up?”

  “Poulsbo PD never made c
ontact at the restaurant, but they have this nine-eleven call reporting a taillight of an old Eldorado sending SOS out its right blinker.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “They observed our request for radio silence, but still alerted their cars via their MDTs,” mobile data terminals. “Nobody caught sight of the Eldorado. But the caller reported that it turned off three-oh-five here,” he said, pointing to the intersection not a hundred yards down the road. “North, toward Suquamish.” Boldt added, “I say we trust this one. If it’s right, it buys us a hell of a lot of time over running out to Poulsbo and back.” Boldt looked out at the dark road. “If it’s wrong information, or if it’s Flek trying to mislead us, then we lose any possibility of a jump on him.”

  “Old Indian saying,” LaMoia replied, his jaw wired, his words sounding drunken. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

  “That certainly helps a lot,” Boldt said sarcastically. But it did help; it briefly lightened the moment. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “I can see her doing that, Sarge. The SOS. You know? Who else but Matthews? You know her better than anyone. What do you think?”

  Boldt pushed down the accelerator and turned right at the intersection. North, toward Suquamish.

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  “This thing is out of hand. Does it feel that way to you?” Daphne asked. He didn’t know handcuffs. He’d clamped the left cuff way too tightly to her wrist so that her hand felt cold and her wrist felt broken. She winced with pain every time the car bumped, which on the dirt road was every few yards.

  “No talking.” He said this, but lacked the authority of his earlier insistence. She knew he wanted to talk, needed to talk. It was the only way for him to build his confidence.

  “Have you thought about why we’ve pursued you?”

  she asked.

  “To fry my ass,” the driver answered.

  “You see? It is out of hand. That’s not it at all.”

  “Right,” he snapped. He reached for a beer. It was his fourth.

  “Have you thought about how Davie would play this?”

  “Don’t you talk about him!”