Agent Daddy

by Alice Sharpe

  He’d heard rumors the department wasn’t run very well and, as he stepped up to the counter and found himself eye-to-eye with a kid wearing a slipshod uniform and reading a comic book, his expectations fell even further.

  “I want to talk to whoever is in charge of the Gina Cooke investigation,” Trip said.

  The kid looked blank. “Gina who?”

  “Is there a detective here, maybe? Your boss?”

  Now the boy looked more comfortable. “You want to talk to the Chief?”

  “Sure.”

  The boy nodded, turned around and hollered, “Chief Novak? Someone here to see you.”

  “Thomas Novak?”

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  At that moment, a ticked-off-looking man about Trip’s age strode into the front area from the back. He wore a tight green uniform, buttons straining down the front. Heavy black frames perched ponderously on the bridge of his nose. Glaring at the teenager, he said, “Damn it, Lenny, how many times have I told you come get me, don’t shout?” He looked up from the cowering Lenny, met Trip’s eyes and rocked back on his heels. “I’ll be.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Trip said. “You’re ‘Chief’?”

  “That’s right. I heard you were back out at the ranch. Sorry about your sister and her husband. Hell of a thing.”

  “Thank you,” Trip said. If Lenny hadn’t called Novak by name, Trip was pretty sure he would never have merged the skinny kid from their high school days with the corpulent man standing in front of him. “We need to talk.”

  “You here about Gina Cooke?”

  “That’s right. I have some information you might want—”

  “See that, Lenny,” Novak interrupted, as he took off his glasses and began polishing the lenses with a tissue he plucked from a box on the counter. “Mr. Tripper here is a FBI big shot but he’s going to take the time to help us out. Isn’t that nice?”

  Lenny slid Trip a glance.

  “Gina is my babysitter,” Trip said. “And I’m no longer with the Bureau.”

  “I know that.”

  “You went out to my place when you found her car—”

  “I was just following procedures. The hunt is over.”

  “You found here? Where?”

  “We haven’t found her, but we figured out what happened. She ran off with that boyfriend of hers.”

  “Peter Saks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My housekeeper said you found Gina’s car abandoned.”

  Novak folded his glasses into his shirt pocket and leaned on the counter, resting his weight on his forearms. “Her car was found outside the Quik Mart on Apple Street. She apparently stopped there every day to buy a cup of coffee before heading out to your place. What got a pedestrian to call in was she’d left the window open and the rain was pouring in. Then there were the keys in the ignition.”

  “A bad habit of hers,” Trip said.

  “That’s what I hear. We sent someone out to your place to see if she showed up for work and someone else to talk to the girl’s boyfriend and her mother. The mother said Gina always leaves her keys in the ignition and that she and the boyfriend had a fight. The boyfriend wasn’t at home, neighbors said he packed up this morning and told them he was going on vacation.” He shrugged. “That Quik Mart is right on the way to the interstate. We figure Saks ran across her, maybe even waited for her to show up there if he knew it was her habit to stop. Maybe he talked her into a little make-up trip. It looks like she decided to go with him. End of story.”

  Novak straightened and looked at Trip as though daring him to challenge these conclusions.

  “And Gina’s mother is comfortable with this supposition?” Trip asked after a long moment of debating whether to share his suspicions about Neil Roberts with the chief.

  “Says it makes perfect sense. Says her daughter was a pushover for Peter Saks.”

  “Where did Saks go, exactly?”

  “The neighbors don’t know. Camping, maybe.”

  “In this weather? In December?”

  “Maybe he went south. Hell, it’s a free country.”

  Trip stared at Novak. “I can see where you’re coming from, but the fact Gina didn’t call bothers me. It’s not like her to just leave.”

  “There you’re wrong,” Novak said. “Her mother said she ran off without a word a year or two ago.”

  Trip hadn’t known that. “Gina told me Saks had a history of domestic violence.”

  Chief Novak flipped his hand. “The boy’s a hothead, that’s all.” The big man heaved a sigh that put even greater pressure on his buttons and added, “Listen. I know you had a fancy career in the FBI. I bet it sucks to be out of the action. But this is my town, so why don’t you just go back to ranching?” Novak slapped his hands on the counter. Case closed.

  Trip left before his temper got the better of him.

  IT WAS GETTING DARK. The rain had let up, but the temperature had dropped, making the roads icy. Faith had taken the children to a big-box store where she changed Colin’s diaper and fed him some of the dry cereal and fruit she found in the diaper bag. She’d bought Noelle a banana, they’d returned to her car and now it seemed the baby had fallen asleep. By the hush in the backseat, Faith thought it likely Noelle had nodded off as well.

  How had her life gotten to this point?

  Six months before, she’d known who she was and what she wanted. It had been her friend, Olivia, who wanted out of Westerly, not Faith. And now she was driving two very small children around on a stormy night in a town she barely knew, while their uncle tried to find their babysitter. To add insult to injury, she couldn’t even take them somewhere decent, somewhere warm, somewhere safe because her landlady and her son made the Bates Hotel seem like a day spa.

  “Ms. Bishop?” Noelle said. Guess she wasn’t asleep after all.

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Can we go home?”

  Home. “Well, I don’t want to run into those people again—”

  “My home,” Noelle said. “Mrs. Murphy makes cookies sometimes.”

  They were at the northeast edge of town. Faith knew Trip lived on a ranch with the children, she knew about where it was, as she’d passed a sign on one of her weekend drives. It was called the Triple T.

  Dare she drive to his house? Would he think she was being pushy? Did it matter what he thought?

  “What kind of cookies?” she asked as she headed out to the highway. At this point, any decision was better than no decision.

  “Sometimes chocolate with peanuts, only Uncle Trip doesn’t like peanuts, so now she leaves them out.”

  “I sure hope she made some today,” Faith said.

  “Me, too.” It was quiet for a mile or two, and then Noelle spoke again, her voice ominous this time. “Uh-oh, Ms. Bishop.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Colin is waking up.”

  IT WAS ALMOST DARK by the time Trip pulled up in front of the Quik Mart. Gina’s car was nowhere in sight. For a second, it crossed his mind she’d come back for it, or her mother had taken it or the cops had impounded it, and then he remembered the way Gina always parked on a hillside, facing down, when she came to the ranch, in case the engine wouldn’t start. There was a slope beyond the store. He topped the hill and looked down the road that bordered a ravine on one side and a few stores on the other side, and sure enough, there was Gina’s car, pointed downhill.

  Gina’s car windows were up now and the doors were locked. The car itself looked like it always did, battered and old, the tattered front seat bare, except for a fluff of something very white and purple, just visible on the passenger side, stuffed between seat and seat back. Trip hitched his hands on his waist and looked up and down the street. A gas station on the corner, a flower shop and a shoe repair directly opposite. He checked his watch and decided he could spare a few more minutes.

  The man in the shoe repair shop worked in the back and came to the front only when he heard the bell rin
g over the door. Trip asked him about the car across the street, but the repairman hadn’t even noticed the police, let alone a nineteen-year-old woman. He did say he’d seen the car there before.

  The flower shop was better staffed. The three female employees, all in their thirties and all smiling up a storm, agreed they’d seen Gina’s car parked on the hillside before, but none of them had actually seen her, not today, anyway. Since Trip didn’t have a photo to show around, there wasn’t much else to be learned.

  He went to the service station last. It was an independently owned station, with higher prices than could be found elsewhere, hence it appeared to do a neighborhood kind of business. There were no cars at the pumps, but there was a man in the garage, sitting on an overturned box, lights blazing around him. It looked as though he was in the process of dismantling an engine.

  Trip stood there for a moment, watching. Late twenties, pudgy, somehow familiar, dressed in blue coveralls, extremely focused on his job. The mechanic was picking up little pieces and wiping them with a grease rag, dropping some into some kind of solvent, arranging others in a pattern of sorts.

  The guy gave no indication he was aware of Trip. Mindful of the need for haste, Trip stepped into the light and said, “Sorry to bother you…”

  At the sound of Trip’s voice, the attendant jumped up. Sandy hair, sparse mustache over full lips, blue eyes, a couple of grease smudges on his cheek. His overalls were too big for him. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear you drive in.”

  “I didn’t drive in, I walked. I don’t need gas, I just want to ask you a couple of questions.” As the mechanic perched back atop his box, Trip added, “You look like you know what you’re doing with that engine.”

  “Been taking ’em apart since I was a little kid.”

  “You look familiar,” Trip said. “You from around here?” Too late he realized he’d fallen into interrogation mode.

  The kid didn’t seem to mind. “More or less,” he said.

  Trip introduced himself and stepped closer, hand extended.

  “Eddie Reed,” the guy replied, but raised grease-stained hands to explain why he didn’t return the shake. He added, “I know who you are, Mr. Tripper. I came to your place looking for work a few weeks ago.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Your foreman, that Mr. Plum guy, he said you just hired someone else.”

  A big clock on the wall ticked away another ten seconds before Trip added, “I’m wondering about the car across the street. The green one that’s been parked there most of today.”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you see the young woman who left it there this morning?”

  “I don’t come to work till two o’clock,” Eddie said. “What does she look like?”

  “Oh, around twenty, long red hair, tall. Pretty girl.”

  “She special to you?”

  Trip ignored the question. “Did you see anyone matching her description?”

  “No, sorry. I saw the cops nosing around, that’s all. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably not.”

  This earned Trip a long glance, until Eddie, apparently losing interest, went back to his task with a nimble-fingered finesse Trip envied. How did a man get that comfortable with engines? At his father’s knee? Trip thought of his own father, the man who had started the Triple T Ranch, the man who could fix anything, the man Trip had given up emulating two decades before.

  “Thanks anyway,” Trip said.

  “Sure. Hey, I hope it works out.”

  “You hope what works out?”

  “The girl. I hope you find her.”

  “Yeah,” Trip said. “Thanks.”

  Walking out of the garage, Trip dug from his pocket the paper on which Faith had written her number. Standing in the light shining through the gas station window, he flipped open his cell phone right as it rang.

  “Trip here.”

  “This is Faith—”

  “I was just going to call you.”

  “Listen to me,” she pleaded. Her voice sounded anxious and in the background, he heard Colin screaming.

  “What—”

  “I’m on the road to your house with your kids. Someone is following really close behind me, so close his lights blind me and I’ve tried to get away from him, but he speeds up when I do.”

  “Where are you exactly?” he yelled as he ran to his truck. None of this made any sense. Why was she driving the kids out to the ranch?

  “I don’t know where I am, not exactly, but there are hardly any cars out here. I passed something called Tyrone Gardens a few minutes ago.”

  “I’m coming,” he said, estimating time in his head. “Don’t stop, whatever you do, and don’t speed up if you can help it. I’ll call ahead to the ranch. I know where you are…I’ll be there.”

  “Okay,” she said, almost drowned out by a high-pitched scream that had to be Noelle. His gut tightened as she whispered, “Oh, please hurry.”

  Chapter Three

  Noelle screamed again, “It’s closer!”

  “Noelle, sit down! Make sure your seat belt is tight.”

  Colin suddenly grew very quiet. While it was a tremendous relief, it was also a concern. Faith dare not turn to make sure the child was okay. “Check Colin, Noelle. Is he all right?”

  “I—I think he’s scared,” Noelle managed.

  “Hold his hand, okay?”

  “Okay,” Noelle said, and Faith could hear the tears in her voice.

  In the next instant, the lights inside grew even brighter, Faith’s car seemed to pause and the abandoned road seemed to hum.

  A premonition gripped Faith. He was going to ram her. She knew it. “Noelle, hang on—”

  The words had barely left her lips when the impact came. Her car lurched forward, the tires spinning as she hit the verge on the side of the road. Trying to drown out the unsettling sounds of the children shrieking, Faith fought the wheel as the tires drifted over icy weeds until they ran up against a berm, sending the car bouncing back toward the road. The truck had dropped back a few feet, but Faith knew what would happen next, she knew it would advance again.

  “Talk to me, Noelle. Are you and Colin still okay?”

  “I think so,” Noelle sputtered.

  “Keep your head down, sing to Colin, we’re almost home.”

  The cat-and-mouse game had started after she turned off the main highway. According to the sign, she had five miles to endure before they reached the ranch. Time was passing in a frenzy. She wasn’t even sure how long ago she’d called Trip, just that she’d tossed her purse back to Noelle and directed the little girl to find the flashlight and her uncle’s card buried in the front pocket.

  Considering how afraid Noelle had to be, Faith thought it pretty amazing she could so calmly read the right set of numbers to her, so she could punch them into the phone. Now the tiny beam of the pocket flashlight flickered on and off as Noelle apparently used it to check on Colin.

  But even if Trip showed up right now, what could he do…how could he stop this?

  Who was back there? It had to be a madman, and the only madman she knew was David Lee. Had he followed her, had he waited while she and the kids went into the store, then tracked her again, hanging back in traffic and biding his time until she turned onto a desolate stretch of highway?

  Why would he do something like this? She was almost positive the pursuing vehicle was a truck, as the headlights were higher off the ground than her own. Did David drive a truck? She didn’t know. She’d never actually seen him come and go from his mother’s place. He must park on the street.

  The lights were once again coming closer. She instinctively pressed down on the accelerator pedal. She heard Trip’s voice warning her not to speed up, but the thought of being bumped again terrified her. The lights swerved off to the lane beside her and for one glorious moment, she thought her pursuer was giving up, that maybe he was getting ahead of her so he could speed away.

  Sh
e could see now: it was a truck, a dark truck, though she couldn’t see the driver. It pulled up parallel to her and she eased up on the gas, falling back, willing him to keep on going. It looked like it was working, when suddenly the truck swerved into her car, hitting the front bumper.

  She held on to the wheel and yelled at the children to cover their heads, or at least that was her intention, but words were lost in the screams that bounced around the interior of the car. Her vehicle flew off the road and straight up a steep bank until it breasted the top and became airborne. It landed a second later with a crash, spinning until it came to a clattering halt.

  TRIP TURNED HIS LIGHTS on high beam. As he raced out of town, he’d called the ranch foreman, George Plum, and the two men had agreed to drive toward one another until they either found Faith and her pursuer or met on the road.

  Trip saw the approaching headlights a half-mile away. As it was a straight stretch of highway, he could see there was no one behind him, so he slowed down. George Plum pulled his ranch truck up beside him and the two men rolled down their windows.

  “Anything?” Trip said, his breath condensing.

  George shook his graying head. The seriousness of the situation was manifested by the fact that George, for once, wasn’t puffing on a pipe. “You didn’t see nothing, either?”

  “No. She described a chase of some kind, but it’s obviously over. Did you run across anyone else between here and the ranch?”

  George shook his head. “Not a thing. But if you know the area, there are any number of little roads to use to get back to Highway 67 before you get to the ranch.”

  “Yeah. Okay, I’ll head to the ranch, keeping an eye out in case he ran her off the road. You go toward the Tyrone Gardens exit. We’ll meet back at the Triple T.”

  “You got it,” George said, and rolling up his window, he drove off.