Will nodded, hoping that didn’t end up being their consolation prize.
“I don’t see how you managed to sit across from the smug prick without beating him senseless.”
“It’s what he wants,” Will realized. That was why Jenner kept antagonizing them. Part of it was the lawyer’s sense of superiority, but a greater part was the satisfaction he got from seeing the police so out of control.
Faith said, “It’s the only crime I don’t understand.” She handed back the shoe. “Robbery, murder, even rape I can sort of get. But a kid?” She shook her head. “It’s disgusting. Something is seriously wrong with a person who would do that.”
Will didn’t know what to say. It seemed pointless to agree with her.
He sat back on the bench and stared at the underground parking garage. He’d spent the last thirty minutes going through each step he’d taken after he followed Jenner outside. He did it again now: The cop. The Cowboy in the red truck. Running into the garage. Jenner had changed his appearance. How long did that take? Removing the wig and glasses would take two, three seconds, tops. Reversing the jacket and zipping off the bottom part of his pants while still holding on to the girl would be another matter.
Abigail wouldn’t have just stood there while he changed. She would’ve run. Will was certain of that.
Regardless, they hadn’t found the wig or any of Jenner’s disguise in the many trashcans that were placed around the garage. The stairwells were empty. The spaces between cars absent his stash. Maybe Jenner’s hand-off partner had taken everything, but the question remained: how did he or she escape? Every single departing car had been checked. Every exit had been sealed off.
Logic dictated there had to be something they were missing.
Vanessa Livingston had sent a team of men to run the license plate of every vehicle inside the parking structure. According to his driver’s license, Jenner had a black Bentley Continental registered in his name. A quick call to the parking attendant at the Ritz-Carlton verified the Bentley was in the residents’ area of the garage.
Abigail wasn’t secreted away in a vehicle. She wasn’t taken out in a service vehicle. She wasn’t inside the airport. Was she locked in the trunk of a car? Did Jenner have another automobile hidden in the parking structure? Was his backup plan to simply let the girl suffocate?
Will’s throat worked. He felt overwhelmed with the uselessness of it all. The fuzzy picture of mother and child was being replaced with a darker possibility. Will had seen dead children before. The image was hard to get out of your mind. It was the sort of thing you saw when you went to bed at night. It was the sort of thing that popped back into your brain for the rest of your life. Especially times like now.
Abigail.
Why hadn’t Will taken her from Jenner? Why hadn’t he at least talked to her in the restroom? So what if Jenner had ended up being her father or stepfather or grandfather or uncle. If Will had been on the other side of the situation, if Will had a daughter and some cop stopped him to ask what was going on, he might be mad at first, but then he’d have to appreciate someone looking out for his kid.
Faith, as usual, read his thoughts. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I should’ve talked to her.”
“If I was in the airport and you leaned down to talk to my kid, I’d kick you in the face so hard your eyes would be spinning before you hit the ground.”
“That’s different,” Will said. Women were more cautious around children. Especially women like Faith Mitchell, who ran a background check on her mailman because she thought he was too friendly.
“It’s not different,” Faith said. “You did everything you could, Will. We’re all doing everything we can.”
He hated the defeated sound in her voice, mostly because it mirrored his own feelings.
“I want to run through it again,” Will said. Faith nodded, and he started back from the beginning, telling her about sitting in the toilet stall, peeling off the Band-Aid so that the flusher would go off. When he got to the part about waving his arms for the camera in the pedestrian tunnel, he stood up. He told her about finding the shoe, heading out to where they now stood in front of the exit doors.
Will took her down the sidewalk, continuing the story: The red truck. The Cowboy. The cop pulling up in his cruiser. Will’s attention was diverted for a few seconds. He lost sight of Jenner and the girl.
Will turned to Faith, remembering, “There was a silver Prius.”
“Four door?”
Will nodded. “I heard it pull up behind me.”
“If you heard it, then it wasn’t going slow,” Faith pointed out. The car was virtually silent at speeds under fifteen miles per hour. “Anything else?”
“Black interior. White female driver. I saw through to the trunk. The car was empty.” Will tried to remember what the woman looked like. It had all happened so fast. He’d wrenched open the door and scanned the interior of the car. “I scared the shit out of her,” he said. “She drove off like a bat out of hell.”
“Drove up there?” Faith indicated the steep turn at the end of the breezeway. The four-lane road narrowed to two as it merged into traffic from upstairs. The road then turned back into a six-lane stretch that allowed drivers to either loop back around to the South or North Terminal or jump onto the interstate.
Will said, “Call it in.”
Faith already had the radio to her mouth. “Mitchell to Livingston?”
Vanessa Livingston’s voice came back immediately. “Ten-four?”
“I need exit tape on a silver Prius leaving the South Terminal breezeway at approximate time of disappearance.”
“Roger.”
Faith dropped the radio to her side. “Where was the Prius parked when you opened the door?”
Will walked a few more feet and gauged his position. “Right here.” He pointed toward the parking garage. “When I saw Jenner again, he was over there.”
“Was that when you called me on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, back up,” Faith said. “You saw the Prius. You ran up to it?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “I opened the door and checked it. No one was inside. Just a woman. Dark hair, I think. She put her hands to her face. Like I said, she was scared. Surprised.” He shook his head. There was a reason cops hated eyewitness testimony. Nine times out of ten, it was wrong. So much had been going on when Will was chasing Jenner that he wasn’t even sure the Prius was silver anymore. “Like I said, the car was empty. I could see straight through to …” His voice trailed off. He looked up the road. He could see cars from the upstairs lanes.
Faith asked, “What is it?”
Will didn’t answer. Instead, he jogged up the road, taking the same path toward the exit as the Prius.
There was a bend in the lower road as it rose to meet traffic exiting the main terminal entrance. To discourage pedestrians from walking up the road and possibly getting hit by a car, the garden crew had planted a bunch of black locusts, a pollution-resistant bush that produces a creamy white flower and tiny, razor-sharp thorns at the base of each leaf.
Will pushed his way into the dense bushes, not caring that his hands were getting torn up. His jacket got caught on a long branch. The material stuck to the thorns like Velcro.
“What are you doing?”
Will ripped away his jacket so he could go farther into the bushes. “The TSA agent told me it takes fifteen minutes to completely lock down the airport. We were still inside that window when I caught Jenner. The Prius could’ve left just under the wire.”
“But you said the car was empty.”
“It was when I searched it.” Will stepped onto a branch, pushing down the barbs with his foot. “They both panicked. The Prius took off. Jenner ran into the garage.” He glanced at Faith to see if she was following his logic. “The road curves up right here. I was back inside the breezeway talking to you on the phone. This is the only place they could’ve handed Abigail off wit
hout me seeing Jenner or the car.”
“Or the security cameras seeing them.” Faith put her hands on her hips. “The next camera would pick up the Prius at the split that takes you onto the interstate.”
Will’s finger was bleeding. He wiped his hand on his pants, stepping deeper into the bushes.
And then he found it.
A cheap brown wig, a pair of black plastic glasses, two legs from a pair of zippered cargo pants and—worst of all—a little girl’s flowery dress with pink trim.
CHAPTER FIVE
“It’s my fault,” Will told Amanda. “I took my eye off Jenner. I gave him the opportunity to make the hand-off.”
“We’ll deal with your mistakes later,” she said. “Tell me again about the woman in the car.”
He shook his head. Each time he tried to summon up the memory, it was lost. “I think she had dark hair.”
“Was she white? Black? Green?”
“White.”
“Eye color?”
“She had on sunglasses. Maybe a hat?” Will didn’t know if his brain was filling in blanks or not. “I don’t know what she was wearing. I didn’t see any tattoos or birthmarks. I think the car’s interior was black. I don’t know anything else. I was looking for the girl, and she wasn’t there. That’s all that mattered at that point.”
Amanda seldom cursed, but she did now, saying, “Dammit, these people have been one step ahead of us all day.”
Vanessa Livingston came out of the Cold Room. She said, “The camera loses the Prius once it turns out of the breezeway. It’s picked up again on the merge. Whoever the driver was, she beat the shutdown by about two minutes. The Prius went 75 North, but that’s all we know.”
“Did you get the license plate?”
“Partial. Mud covered all but two numbers—three and nine, nonsequential. We’re running it through the system. There are eleven hundred Priuses in the metro area. Half of them are silver. It’s a popular color. We’re drilling them down to the number registered to women so we have a starting point.”
“Great,” Amanda said. “Like we don’t have enough walls to bang our heads against.”
Will asked, “Did any of the cameras catch her face? Maybe we can compare it to passengers on the Seattle plane.”
“No,” Vanessa answered. “If she’d gone into one of the parking decks, or used the upper floor, that would be a different matter.”
Will said, “What if it’s Eleanor Fielding?”
Instead of shooting him down, Amanda said, “Go on.”
“Her Mercedes left the airport. Maybe she looped back around, parked the Mercedes in a different lot, picked up the Prius, and came back to pick up the girl.” Will remembered Jenner looking over his shoulder as he walked up the breezeway. The man was looking at oncoming traffic.
Amanda said, “Jenner could hand off the girl downstairs, change into his outfit, then—”
Will finished for her, “Walk back upstairs, go into the main terminal, then take a taxi home.”
“Covers them both,” Vanessa said. “Except for Will spotting them, we wouldn’t even know it had happened.”
Amanda looked at her watch. “Will, it’s time for you to go back in with Jenner. Add another half hour to your watch.”
Will didn’t immediately follow orders. “That’s a big leap.”
“Do as I say,” she told him. “It might be the difference between finding the girl and finding her body.”
Will sat across the table from Jenner with his hands clasped in front of him. His watch was on full display, the hands set ahead by an hour and twenty minutes. It was a big jump, but Jenner had been in the room for almost four hours. He’d spent most of the time either staring blankly at the two-way mirror or napping. There were no magazines. No TV. No distractions. His sense of time would be infinite.
At least they hoped it would be.
Will looked at his watch. He knew that Jenner hadn’t had lunch. “It’s way past dinnertime.”
Jenner shrugged.
“I can get you a hot dog, chicken sandwich.”
Jenner didn’t answer. He was turned sideways in his chair. One leg was crossed over the other. Jenner’s mouth had stopped bleeding, but he looked bad. Bruises were starting to form around his eyes and nose where his face had met concrete. Dried blood speckled his chin. A crease was down the side of his face where he’d fallen asleep with his cheek on his arm.
He didn’t seem scared or anxious. If anything, he seemed bored.
Will forced out a heavy sigh. He sat back in his chair. “You wanna know why I was in the bathroom?”
Jenner’s chin lifted. He gazed at Will out of the corner of his eye.
“It’s part of a sting operation to catch men cruising for sex.”
Jenner snorted a laugh, then seemed to think better of it when the pain shot through his busted nose. “I suppose the police don’t have anything better to do.”
Will ignored the observation. “I arrested a minister last week.”
“Hmm,” Jenner said.
Will didn’t add how awful he’d felt parading the man out in handcuffs. There was a reason Amanda had assigned the job as a punishment. Every day, Will felt like he needed to go home and scrape the filth off of him.
Then again, it was nothing compared to how disgusting he felt sitting across from the likes of Joe Jenner.
Will said, “You really should make a deal.”
Jenner cleared his throat. “I’ve advised my client that it’s best not to take legal counsel from the man who’s trying to send him to prison.”
“You were so easy to track.” Will amended, “Your client was, I mean.”
Jenner rolled his eyes at the game.
“And the hand-off in the parking lot. Pretty smooth. You know we found your disguise.”
Jenner didn’t move, which was evidence enough that Will had hit on something.
Will tried another lie. “Eleanor told us where it was. We’ve got her in the other room.”
Jenner pursed his lips.
Will said, “My boss is talking to her right now.”
“Is that so.” Not a question, but Will could tell that Jenner wasn’t so sure of himself now.
“You’re a lawyer, Joe. You know that the first person who makes the deal always serves the least amount of time.” He pressed a little harder. “Eleanor’s already served time. She knows the system. She’s going to flip on you. You know that. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Time?” Jenner looked down at Will’s watch, then back at the two-way mirror. “I have plenty of time.”
“Is that right?”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.”
“Ever? Or just for now?”
Jenner’s eyes met his, then went back to the mirror. Will had no idea who was behind the glass. They’d been playing this cat-and-mouse game for a while now. It was tantamount to watching paint dry.
Jenner cleared his throat. He crossed his other leg over his knee. His fingers tapped the table.
Will stared at the man. On the surface, he seemed as normal as any other fifty-year-old. Gray hair. A bit of a paunch in the stomach. Some wattle around the chin. That was the thing about these monsters—they looked just like everybody else. They took jobs that brought them into contact with kids. They developed covers that helped them elude capture. They spent every day of their lives working to bury their tracks, which was why it took so long to unravel the truth when you finally caught them.
Joe Jenner was a pro. He’d worked all of this out ahead of time, exploring the angles, running through the various scenarios. He wasn’t alone in this. He had a team. Maybe it was just Eleanor Fielding. Maybe it was more. Whatever their numbers, these people were sophisticated. Coordinated. They hadn’t just started doing this on a whim. They had a well-timed plan. They had a backup plan. They had accounted for every variable except for Will being in that bathroom.
And that still might not stop them.
Was that wh
y Jenner seemed so smug? You didn’t get to live in the Ritz-Carlton and drive a Bentley by being unsure of yourself, but the man seemed to have a preternatural sense of superiority.
And why wouldn’t he? Eleanor Fielding’s name was on everything—the flights, the hotel room. She was the one who boarded the flight with Abigail in her arms. There was grainy footage of Jenner with the girl, but he could argue against that. Then there was the fact that Will had jumped him in the parking lot. Jenner’s lawyer could easily claim that the police were conspiring to protect their own.
All they had was Will’s testimony and some grainy footage. Jenner hadn’t harmed the girl—at least not that anyone could say. He’d taken her hand when she got off the plane, led her to the bathroom, then led her to the parking lot. With a sympathetic jury, he might get two or three years. If they never found Abigail—never found the body—he might get less than that.
But then there was the question of time.
Jenner was obviously waiting something out. Was Jenner waiting until he was certain his accomplice had driven Abigail across state lines? Or was the man letting another abuser have his fun while Jenner ran out the clock?
There was a knock on the door that startled both of them.
Faith motioned Will out of the room.
“They found the mother,” she said, walking down the hall. “Rebecca Brannon. Lives just outside of Post Falls, Idaho. Father was KIA in Iraq five years ago. Girl’s name is Abigail Brannon. Seven years old.”
A uniformed patrolman buzzed them into the Cold Room. The main monitor showed a television feed from CNN. A woman with blonde hair and pale white skin stood in front of a bank of microphones with various news logos on them. Both of her eyes were black. Her lip was busted open.
Will blurred his eyes, saw past the damage to the woman’s face. He’d been right about one thing, at least. Abigail looked like her mother.
Faith explained, “The mom was beaten and tied up in her basement for two days. Said the attacker was wearing a mask, didn’t talk, didn’t do anything but knock her out and take the kid. Her boyfriend found her when he got home from a business trip this afternoon.”
Snatched: A Novella (Kindle Single) Page 5
