“A tip? From who?”
“Well, from another cop. Says that you knew where Jerry was a long time ago but you were hiding it from me. So I took a sick day and found Jerry and one thing led to another. Bill, that’s how life is sometimes.”
“I didn’t know anything about this Jerry. That’s a lie. Who was this guy who gave you a tip?”
“Said his name was Ted.”
Lyons put the phone down. Ted. Goddam Ted. Ted, who could find anyone. He’d intimidated a woman to getting Leo off the hook, and it was all to get to Leo. To make him loyal. Ted was up to something, and he wanted Lyons out of the way. But that probably wasn’t the only thing. He wanted something else.
Lyons heard Lil’s mom sputtering something over the phone. She was going through her defense speech. It sounded like something she’d been rehearsing, some litany of all the petty reasons why she wanted to run away with Lil. But Lyons heard the ambulance rolling up and that gave him an opportunity. He lifted the phone to his face again and said,
“The ambulance is here to take my mom to the hospital. We need to talk about this later. Listen - you know me. I’m all talk and no action. Hell, it’s one of the things that probably drives you nuts. Am I right? I’m not going to do something that would ruin my career, like kidnap Lil. She’ll be here when you get here, and then we can talk. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“I’ve got to go now.” After hanging up, he turned to the biological father and said, “You heard all that? Why don’t you pull your car back into the driveway. You stay here and look after Lil while I make sure my mom gets checked in okay.”
The other man, clearly shaken by his misguided attempt at bravery, nodded his head and walked off to do as he was told. As the medics loaded Lyon’s mother onto the gurney, she took him by the shirt and whispered something.
“Go. If you let them take my granddaughter, I’ll never forgive you.”
Then she smiled, and the medics packed her into the ambulance. Lyons looked at Lil and they exchanged a glance. Lil gave her father a somber nod, like some commando squad leader giving the signal to launch the mission. She knew what was going on here. She was a clever little girl. Lyons took her by the hand and put her in the back seat of his car. The dent on the front would prevent her from sitting there this time. Lyons looked up the driveway, where his timid adversary was getting out of his car and turning to see them. The cop smiled and snapped on the lights and the siren. They tore off, and Lil let out a little cheer.
* * * *
“Where are we going, Daddy?”
Lil was piping with breathless excitement. Lyons was cautious because he was sure that whatever fantasy his kindergartner had, reality was going to be terrifying once it set in. On the other hand, her easy enthusiasm was a sign that she trusted him. She trusted him more than anyone, and that was something he could never regain if ever he he lost it.
His problem now was that his only mode of transportation was an unmarked police cruiser which his superiors could track at any time. If Jerry and his paramour called in a kidnapping, it might take some time for the dots to connect across districts, especially when Arbor was preoccupied with his ransom drop. That gave Lyons time but no place to go. Without thinking much about it, he pointed his car toward the underpass of the Tobin bridge where Norma’s Jag first turned up and where the drop was about to occur. Lyons had a feeling, a feeling he didn’t want to trust, but one he was going to follow anyway.
“How do feel about a stakeout baby?”
* * * *
On the way to the bridge, Lyons asked his daughter to grab her bears book, which was still in the car. He was thinking of what Ted had said about Brian and the bears in the castle. When the cop was reading the book in Lil’s room, he’d noticed that the centerfold was a panoramic cut-away of the castle interior. Kids love these kinds of pictures. They featured lots of little scenes and hidden clues. One part of the picture had bugged him at the time.
“Lil, did you see a little bear sitting in a room by himself?”
“Is this about our stakeout?”
“You bet.”
“Well, the little bear is sad because his family is playing in another room.”
“I bet they don’t let him go out. No one knows he even lives there.”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s in the room with him?”
“Nothing real.” said Lil. He’s just playing with a car.”
“Here, give it to me.”
“You shouldn’t read while you’re driving Daddy”
“I just want a quick look.”
He got his quick look. The little bear was playing with a blue Jaguar XJ 220. Talk about a message in a bottle.
He called Huss. He asked his partner to look something up for him on the Internet. When the other man asked why, Lyons said,
“I’m in trouble. But looking something up for me can’t hurt, can it?”
“In that case I have to at least ask you what kind of trouble and where you are.”
“The kind of trouble that will get you a new partner. As for where I am, this exercise will give you that information.” Lyons felt the fear rising in him. Working this way didn’t agree with him, but half the world had backed him into a corner, hadn’t it? This time his situation was someone else’s fault, but dammed if he was going to let that get him down. “Norma Stern was once Norma Hicks. She came from a wealthy family that went bust. Can you look them up?”
In a few seconds Huss replied, “The Hicks were old money. They controlled a publishing house in Cambridge. The Internet destroyed them.”
“Where was their primary residence? It should be easy to find. It was probably some estate that was in their family for years.”
“Yeah, I found a news story about them having to put a home in Nahant up for sale.”
“No address?” Said Lyons. When Huss said no, the other cop asked, “Okay, just look for big houses in Nahant that were sold recently.”
A few more seconds passed, and then, “Well here’s one that sticks out. Someone offered a lot more than the house was worth - out of the blue. No one was trying to sell it.”
“But the owner sold?”
“Hell yes.”
“That makes sense. Norma’s dad managed to save a classic car. She didn’t just marry Manuel to get his money or provide a home for her kid. She wanted to make sure she could keep the car, because it was like a gold watch. A family heirloom. Maybe she got into writing her own books to regain some of her family’s dignity too. If all that’s true, she sure as hell would try to buy back her childhood home when given the chance.”
“Bill. You sound... strange. You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I hope not. I don’t want to make this a habit.”
* * * *
Lyons pulled onto a shoulder just before an on-ramp to the bridge. From here he could see that the Jag was already in position. He also spotted where the other cop cars were laying in wait. After about ten minutes, Manuel Stern showed up on the sidewalk, carrying a hard-backed suitcase. The ransom note must’ve asked for him to delivery the money personally. He slipped his key into the lock and opened the trunk. When the lid snapped up, Manuel looked startled. He stared into the trunk, frozen for several seconds.
Three shots rang. Stern bent over and dropped to the pavement. Lil screamed.
Leo appeared from nowhere and slipped another key into the passenger’s side door. This must’ve been Norma’s key, the one that had been missing. Leo climbed from the passenger side to the driver’s side and put his key in the ignition. Lyons figured that he went in that way because his figure was obscured by the body of the car itself. He was trying to avoid exposing himself on the street side.
The Jag tore off and two cruisers screamed after him. They were slow on the draw, however. Leo, the Jag, and the gunman in the trunk disappeared into a tunnel that took them onto I-93 and a massive tangle of tunnels under the city. Two interstate freeways intersected
beneath the earth. At that point, several other subterranean corridors flung cars off onto surface roads and minor state routes. With Leo’s head start, the location was ideal. He could escape in almost any direction.
Lyons took his car into the tunnels.
“Daddy, what’s going on?”
“This is gonna sound crazy, baby, but at least you’ll know. There’s this man who’s like the poor bear, but he’s very smart. And there’s a man who’s like a little kid, and he’s also like the sad little bear who sits alone in his castle room. The poor bear want to help the lonely rich bear and the mama bear escape. The only problem is that the poor bear sometimes forgets things. So the mama bear leaves him with a thought she knows he won’t forget, a thought that will tell him that there’s something he’s supposed to remember.”
Ted was a message in a bottle, just like he said he was. Norma faked her abduction and left him in the Jag with a single message to himself. Lyons wondered if somewhere in all those little pages of Bible verses that Ted kept in his pocket were hidden the rest of the details. Perhaps a phone number or an address - maybe even the whole plan.
“It makes sense to me.” said Lil.
* * * *
Even without a tracking device, a blue Jag wouldn’t get far without someone spotting it. Lucky for Leo and the gunman in the trunk - who of course had to be Ted Hicks - they didn’t have to go far. One of the ways out of the tunnel was route 1A, which skirted past the airport and then along the North Shore. In about five miles they could be in Nahant, a posh island connected to the coast by a causeway.
Lyons didn’t have to find the car. He had the address from Huss. When he made it to the house, it was dark and the gates were closing. He gunned for the gap, just scraping the gates as he made it through. As he jumped from his car, ordering Lil to stay put, he flashed his gun in Leo’s direction.
“Don’t worry about me, man.” said Leo. “I’m unarmed. It’s Ted you gotta worry about.”
The trunk opened and there was Ted, with his pistol and a clear plastic case full of labelled video recordings. He had the weapon trained on Lyons. He looked as though he’d done this before.
“Are you inspector Lyons?” said a woman’s voice.
Lyons didn’t turn. He kept his eyes on Ted. The woman came up to his side, so that he could see her. She was with another man who was in his late twenties and clutching a teddy bear.
“Norma.” said Lyons. “Tell Ted to put the gun away. Then he can get out of the car.”
“Ted.” said Norma. Ted tossed the pistol on the ground and climbed from the back seat. He brought the videos with him and handed them to his cousin. Then she said, “You should take a look at these.”
“I’m a little busy.” said Lyons.
“Ted always suspected that Manuel would cause me trouble.” said Norma. “He worked on it and he found out the truth. Manuel was a sexual predator. I don’t mean that he slapped the occasional ass at the office party or even that he fondled little girls. He broke women. And like any powerful fool who thinks he can get away with anything, he recorded every minute. Ted found out where Manuel kept his stash, but he had no one to get into the house. He hid that information with Brian. When Manuel found out - do I need to go on?”
“And what about your daughter?”
Norma sighed, on the verge of tears. “I’ve been planning this for a long time. I was going to bring the videos to the police. But when Manuel found out, I didn’t have time. So we went to plan B.”
“Murder.”
“Isn’t that always plan B?”
* * * *
When Lyons’ colleagues pulled up to the estate, it wasn’t because they’d tracked down the Jag. They’d finally gotten the report that he’d stolen Lil and they followed his cruiser’s GPS mayday. By the time the cops arrived, Norma, Leo and Brian were all gone. Ted stayed behind. The story was that Ted had learned that Norma had bought this estate. He found his way here because he was obsessed with the woman, just as Jillian Duval had said he was. As for Lyons, he ended up here because he was obsessed with Ted and wouldn’t let it go. In the end he’d caught his man, but it wasn’t enough to save his job or retain custody of Lil. Her mom and Jerry moved to western Massachusetts. Ted went to prison.
* * * *
Along the Esplanade, on the banks of the Charles river, two people sat on a bench. The first one, an ex-cop, said,
“How does Ally feel about everything? It seems like she was attached to her dad.”
The woman smiled. “Ally’s not a dumb girl. She knew what was going on before I did. But she knew when to play along. How about Lil?”
“She’s still with her mom. Jerry’s not in the picture anymore though. Here, I’ve got some details on Ted.”
The ex-cop handed over a page showing prison transfer records.
“And I’ve found a lawyer.” said the woman. “We’ve got to get down to business. We’ve both lost people we love and it’s high time we get them back.”
Lyons nodded, and the two watched the sun set over Cambridge without saying another word.
* * * *
* * * *
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eBooks by Peter Sargent
Unhaunting The Hours
Divide The Sea
The Dead Reckoner Volume One: Absolution and Desolation
Average Joe
Sleeping Sickness
Lanterns In The Morning
Lethe's Cipher Page 3
