by J. A. Kerley
“You’re blaming me?”
“Blame? Whatever you did must have been Oscar quality.”
Harry met Cruz’s words with a look of disgust. “We’ve got to get Rein her piece and the suitcase with the GPS.”
“You might get close enough to pass her a weapon, though it’d be hard as hell, but how to explain a different suitcase?”
“Unless the case is passed over when Rein’s between caretakers,” I said. “Caretaker number two has never seen the case.”
Cruz frowned. “That’s a tiny damn window, and anything suspicious cancels the hand-over. By suspicious, I’m referring to one of you guys crouching in the shadows with a suitcase.”
“Shut the operation down,” Harry declared. “Tell Rein to come home.”
“Whoa, cowboy,” Cruz said. “My people put a lot of thought into this op. Let’s think things through before we start freaking out.”
“Freaking out? Listen, lady, that girl out there is –”
“A professional,” Cruz said. “Your Lieutenant called her the cream’s cream of your Police Academy.”
“She’s out there with nothing to protect her,” Harry shot back.
“She’s got brains and training,” Cruz said. “And you know fuck-ups are part of the undercover biz. If this officer is as resourceful as everyone keeps saying, we’ll get things figured out.”
“This is insane,” Harry said, throwing his hands high and storming outside. Cruz looked at me, perplexed.
“Uh, just between you and me,” I said, “officer Early is Detective Nautilus’s niece.”
Disbelief. It took a few seconds for Cruz to recover.
“Personal involvement is against every rule in the freakin’ book, Ryder. How the hell did Nautilus get assigned to a case with a family member involved?”
I tried a smile. “Seems no one knows about the relationship.”
Cruz met the smile with a scowl. “Apparently someone in this room did. If Nautilus blows up the operation, we’ll have to start from scratch. That won’t sit well with my people.”
My cell rang. I looked at the caller name: Reinetta. “Get Harry in here now,” I said, hearing the crackling of a drifting connection.
“Rein?” I said. “You there, Rein?”
A buzz of interference as I pressed the speakerphone button, Rein’s words filling the room. “Gotta talk fast here, guys. I’m at a rest stop by Castle Rock. They got me up at four, in transit by five. What did you do last night, Harry … strangle someone? A woman drove me south to a rest stop. Two minutes later my new carrier was a nice lady named Lena. Grandmotherly type, but a lotta backbone. No killer here. She’s taking me to her home – whereabouts unknown– for a day or two.”
“You don’t have a weapon or your tracking device,” Harry said, as if explaining something to a kid.
“You can use my cell phone, right?” Rein said, calm as always. “To get a fix?”
“It’s only approximate to the nearest cell tower,” Cruz said. “Do you have a charger?”
“No, and my battery’s low. I’ll call when I’ve got something to report. Phones are a major no-no, so don’t – repeat, don’t – call. I’m afraid it’ll make a sound. It’s gonna be hidden anyway. I’ll call you when –”
Harry grabbed the phone from my palm. “I don’t want you out there alone, Rein. I swear I’ll –”
“I’ll be fine, Harry. Even my caution has caution.”
“I want you out, Rein. At least until we can get you the –”
“Carson,” Rein said, overriding Harry’s words. “Help me out here, willya? Gotta go.”
Rein wanted to stay in the system. Cruz wanted her there, too. So did I. Only Harry was trying to haul her out. “Rein, wait!” Harry bellowed into the dead connection in his palm. “Rein!”
I looked across the room and saw Cruz staring at me, her eyes saying, How long you gonna let this go on?
I managed to calm Harry by assuring him we could get Rein her .32 and the suitcase. Cruz was dubious, but played along. “If she can figure when the next switch happens,” Cruz speculated, “we can try and cross paths. It’ll take luck and timing.”
Harry snapped his fingers. “Wait … we don’t need to get Rein the suitcase, we can pass over a smaller GPS. Like the ones they put on dog collars.”
“Something to consider,” Cruz said without conviction, nodding at the battered yellow case intended for Rein. “But our suitcase has a built-in battery stash. The case transmits for a couple weeks at least. A tiny tracker holds a tiny battery. It works for a bit, then craps out.”
“Usually when you need it most,” I muttered, having dealt with the things before. Nothing ever worked like in the spy movies.
“Let’s get the suitcase packed with everything Rein needs,” Harry said. “A spare phone and charger, her weapon and a few speed-loaders, maybe a spare GPS locator, a survival knife –”
“An inflatable raft,” Cruz said, rolling her eyes. “A parachute …”
“Here’s how we run it,” I interrupted, grabbing a map of Colorado. “If Rein was by Castle Rock, she’s heading south. Let’s bust ass toward Colorado Springs. Maybe between Rein and us we can dope out where she’ll make the next transfer. It’s usually a truck stop or a park, right?”
“Do you know how many parks are in this state?” Cruz said.
“Got a better idea?” I asked.
The Colorado State Police had readied us a surveillance van. It looked like a retired couples vacation-in-a-box but held several communication options, a tiny refrigerator and microwave oven, and a bit of room to stretch out when needed. I’d worked from similar units before and, while not the Ritz, it beat bagging out in the backseat of a VW Beetle.
We’d put a hundred miles under our wheels when my phone rang: Sally Hargreaves.
“We have another killing,” she said. “Last week a group of hikers were using an outhouse near Arches National Park in east Utah. One of them looked down and screamed.”
“A body,” I said.
“Female, Hispanic. Eyes removed and head shaved bald. One breast badly damaged, the other jabbed with something sharp. Vic is Tomasina Herdez, age twenty-seven, former address is Pittsburgh. Her sister filed a missing-persons report five weeks ago. The body was ID’d by dentition yesterday, the report hit the national logs an hour ago. I’ve been on the phone to Utah. The local pathologist estimates the corpse was in the muck for three days.”
“Our corpses were put on display, Sal. At the dump and in a wide-open settling tank. You sure this one belongs?”
“When the body got yanked from the shit stew, there were half-moons of closed-cell foam taped under her armpits. Get the picture?”
“No.”
“Think of life vests.”
I thought a moment, saw the physics. “She was supposed to float,” I said. “Face up.”
“Her head and shoulders were out of the muck, Carson, her face looking up as people urinated and defecated on it.”
“Jesus. Any evidence still on the body?”
“That strange mucilage on the belly – waterproof – and the ligature marks again. The Utah ME’s dating of the wounds as recent parallels the other cases.”
“You’re saying Herdez was held captive?”
“By her killer. There were older wounds and scars as well. Miz Herdez was an ongoing victim of domestic abuse in Pittsburgh. Busted nose, broken fingers, cracked cheekbone. Miz Herdez put the boyfriend in jail for the last beating. He was three days from completing a six-month sentence when she disappeared. I figure he was gunning for her and she had to get gone fast.”
“So Miz Herdez dropped into the women’s underground?”
“Confirmed by the Pittsburgh cops. There’s a women’s center in Pittsburgh and Miz Herdez was on the railroad. No one knows where she was going, of course. But the sister who reported her missing lives in Baja California.”
I studied a map of the continental US in my head. “A rough center lin
e of a Pennsylvania to Baja trip crosses the Boulder to Mobile line, Sal.”
“Exactly. It looks like Miz Herdez crossed into the perp’s territory and got killed.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Where you going with this?”
“I’ll stay in touch with the Pittsburgh cops and keep digging down here. You guys being careful with Rein?”
“Trying our best,” I said. “Gotta go.”
I relayed the ugly news to Cruz. Harry and I drove in silence, both thinking of the kind of mind that would float a woman in a latrine. My phone beeped.
“Text from Rein,” I said. “Plnes ovrhd. Sgn: Devine 5.”
Harry veered to the side of the road, Cruz ran up and I showed her the message. “Planes overhead,” Cruz translated. “And a sign reading ‘Five miles to Devine’. That would be under the approach to the Pueblo airport. We’re maybe forty-five miles north of Devine, just east of Pueblo.”
Cruz took the point with siren and flashers, pulling forty-plus miles under our tires in a half-hour. My phone tinged the arrival of another text. I tossed the phone to Harry.
“It says, ‘Styng sf h nr Rck Frd.’”
“She’s going to a safe house near something. Call Cruz. Put it on speaker.”
Harry relayed the message. I watched her on the phone in my rear-view; not hard, she was fifty feet from my bumper.
“Rocky Ford, ahead about twenty miles. I dunno about a hand-over at a truck stop or park on this one, guys.”
“Why?” Harry said.
“Any back road would work as a transfer site. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of the desert.”
Reinetta Early ran to the Hyundai Sonata from behind a tumble of rocks and sagebrush, her phone in her underwear. They were in a flatland nowhere, baked dirt with scruffy undergrowth, rocky mounds, and the occasional house. The roads were signless, barely roads to begin with.
“Better, dear?” the woman at the wheel asked.
“Yes, thank you, Lena,” Rein said, pulling her seat belt back on. “I guess it’s the tension. My insides are kind of acting up.”
“We’re near my house,” Lena said. “I’ll get some Imodium in you. Then we’ll have an easy-on-the-digestion supper and you can relax.”
“There’s a Rocky Ford near where I’m from, Lena,” Rein lied, never having heard of a Rocky Ford until now. “Very green, and surrounded by hills and meadows.”
Lena chuckled. “That’s not mine. All I see looking out the window is desert and sky. And that damned cell tower.”
Rein laughed, improvising as fast as possible. “A friend of mine had a house on the beach with a beautiful sunrise view. Then a cell tower went up. Now the sun throws a shadow of the tower into his yard.”
“I fought the blamed tower,” Lena said. “But there it is today, eight hundred feet away.”
“Not in your sun, I hope.”
“Off to the west. Something to be thankful for, I suppose.”
“I hope there are some trees or hills between you and the tower, Lena. So you don’t just see the thing.”
The woman sighed. “Nothing. Just my little white ranch house and that big blinking tower.”
Rein made a grunting noise and put her hand over her belly. “Uh, Lena …”
“Sure, dear, I’ll pull over just ahead. See? There’s a little place behind the sagebrush where you can relieve yourself.”
Two minutes later a message appeared on Carson Ryder’s phone:
Whte rnch hse 800’ SE cll twr otsd RF.
Lve 32, smll stff @ ct crnr CR bndna mrk
“I gotta learn this stuff,” Harry said. “What’s she saying?”
“She’s at or will be at a white ranch house eight hundred feet southeast of a cell tower outside of Rocky Ford,” I translated, going silent to read ahead. I said, “Holy shit, Harry …”
“What? What’s it say?”
“She wants us to leave her .32 and any small stuff we might have at a corner of the cell tower and to mark it with one of my bandanas.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Rein had not only sent along her position, she had arranged a drop. I felt like pulling the van over and dancing: the girl had magic.
Chapter 32
Cruz called the cell company for tower locations – one in the area, thankfully – and pulled some weight. Ninety minutes later Harry and I were in a Southwest Communications truck and raising dust. In Harry’s pocket was a double-zip bag holding Rein’s gun, extra rounds, charger to fit her phone and a tiny GPS locator that would do until we could work out how to get the suitcase to her.
We came in from the north, not passing the house, pulling down the slender dirt road running to the communications tower and building. The base and building stood inside a square barricade of hurricane fence.
Figuring Rein didn’t want to be seen grubbing in the dirt from the house – and would know I’d surmise the same – I knelt at a back corner of the fence and dug a small hole in the pebbled dirt. I wrapped the baggie in a red bandana and buried it, leaving a corner of cloth exposed, a tiny bright pennant yelling Look here! Our “work” over, we drove away, passing by the house where Rein was hiding.
“She’s a hundred feet away,” Harry whispered, so low I could barely make it out. “All we do is knock on the door and pull her out of this.”
I pressed down the accelerator.
“I’m stepping outside for a bit, Lena,” Rein called over her shoulder, watching from the window as the work vehicle left the tower. She would have loved to have texted Harry and Carson – Hot out there guys? – but her dwindling battery couldn’t afford flippancy.
Rein started toward the cell tower, two dozen feet gone when the door opened at her back. “You can’t go out there, dear,” Lena called. “It’s too open.”
Rein turned, pressing her hand to her belly. “I think a walk would do me good. Get my guts back in order.”
“We can’t take the chance.”
“Please, Lena? It would really make me –”
The woman was out the door, taking Rein’s hand and leading her back to the house. “Let’s not argue, Marla,” Lena said, using the name Rein had been assigned. “You were told to always listen to the caretakers, right? We know how to keep you safe. Walking in a big open area isn’t smart.”
The evening passed slowly, Rein taking refuge in the provided bedroom as she figured most women would do. Now and then she glanced through the window at the tower, a vertical line bejeweled with red lights and crowned with a pulsing white strobe.
At ten p.m. Lena knocked tentatively at Rein’s door. “I’m preparing for bed, dear. Is there anything you need?”
For you to go to sleep, Rein thought. She could get to the tower and back in a half-hour. Tiptoe for fifty silent feet, then walk quickly to the tower over flat hardpan. The moon would light the way.
“No thanks, Lena. I’m fine.”
If Rein got caught she’d say she felt sad and wanted to be alone to cry, afraid of disturbing Lena. Since it was dark, it was safe to be outside, surely? Rein could improvise something.
“That’s good, dear,” Lena said. “If you’re up in the night, I’ve set out some herbal teas on the kitchen counter. Don’t worry about waking me, I sleep like a log.”
Yes! Rein thought. Sleep on, girlfriend.
“Thanks again, Lena. You’re very brave to help people like me.”
“You’re the brave one, dear. Oh, and if you do get up, don’t open the doors or windows, please.”
“Why’s that, Lena?”
“Since I’m out here all by my lonesome, I’ve got alarms. Touch a door or window and the alarm howls like a banshee and the system dials the police. Can’t be too careful these days.”
I stared at the line of text from our undercover operative:
Fk! Cldnt gt 2 ct. Tght cntrl. Wll try agn ltr
“Fuck! Couldn’t get to cell tower. Tight control. Will try again later.”
I rendered the translation to Harry
and Cruz and watched Harry frown at Rein’s expletive. We’d parked behind a rocky uplift a mile from the house. The sky was grapeshot with stars, the brightest originating atop the distant tower where we’d stashed Rein’s necessaries.
“What does tight control mean?” Harry said.
“I expect it means her caretaker ordered officer Early to stay inside,” Cruz said, stretching her arms in the back seat and yawning. She nodded toward her cruiser, a dark shadow beside us. “I’m heading to that crummy little motel back on the outskirts. I need my beauty sleep. You guys checking in?”
I was about to agree to a real bed when Harry shook his head. “We’re staying here,” he said, staring at the blinking tower in the distance. “All night.”
I looked at Cruz and shrugged.
2 Members online
PROMALE: Who’s there?
HPDRIFTER: Good timing, I was just checking in and hoping to see you. I received and read the abstract of your article.
PROMALE: I thought I’d send the abstract first. I didn’t want to send you the whole freaking piece if it sounded boring to you. The full piece is 345 pages.
HPDRIFTER: It’s in manuscript form?
PROMALE: Yes. Would you like me to send it along?
HPDRIFTER: ‘The Women’s Movement as a History of Lies?’ The title alone makes me NEED to read it.
PROMALE: On its way when I get a chance.
Sinclair turned off his desktop computer and leaned back in his chair, thinking, Manuscript form?
Chapter 33
This must be what an alien abduction feels like, Treeka Flood thought, staring at the saucer-shaped shadow looming ten stories above, red lights glinting from its edges. She clutched her suitcase tighter.
The shape was a municipal water tower and Treeka stood beside the pumping station, a brick building with cables running inside. The road was a hundred feet away, a dark country lane leading to the tower. The red taillights of her former rescuer had disappeared a minute ago. The night sizzled with the sound of insects and Treeka felt sweat dripping from beneath her arms in the humid night. She spun to the sound of motion through dry grass, seeing nothing. From the other side of the building came a clattering of rock, feet racing over gravel. There and gone.
