A Killing Rain

by P J Parrish

  Wainwright spoke first. “I would’ve bet my career this wasn’t a kidnaping for ransom.”

  Susan looked up at Wainwright. “Me, too, but now that it is, we can deal with it. If they want money, then Ben is still alive. We give them the money and they let him go.”

  “Mrs. Outlaw,” Wainwright said, “you’re a lawyer, you -- ”

  Susan jumped up. “Yes, I know. I know the odds are against it. But it’s something!”

  “Wait a minute, guys,” Joe said. “We got other problems here. First, we got FBI issues.”

  “No,” Susan said. “I don’t want them. I don’t want any more cops. We’ll just pay it.”

  Austin’s gaze slipped to Susan and Wainwright. When he looked back, he found Louis staring at him. He looked away, bringing the glass of water up to his lips. When he took a drink, the water trickled down his chin and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  “Susan, Susan. Hold up, listen,” Joe said. “Do you even have that kind of money?” She motioned toward Austin. “Do either of you?”

  Susan collapsed in her chair. “We need time,” she said. “God, we need more time.”

  Louis was still watching Austin. Someone had just offered to give him back his son for money and he was just sitting there with nothing to say.

  The killers knew Austin had cash. Was it just because of the designer clothes, the Rolex, and the BMW? Or did they know something more? And if Austin had that much cash, where the hell was it?

  Louis had seen Austin’s black alligator wallet earlier in the day. He had seen his luggage in the trunk of the BMW. What he hadn’t seen was that damn Vuitton purse Austin had at dinner that first night, the purse he had gone into to dig out that hundred dollar bill for Ben.

  It had to be here in the house somewhere. Louis turned in his chair, his eyes sweeping over the house. They stopped on the closed door to Ben’s bedroom.

  He was remembering what Susan had told Austin that first night: You can stay but you’ll sleep in Ben’s room.

  Austin suddenly stood up. “Excuse me,” he said, starting to the back of the house. For a moment, Louis suspected he might actually be going to Ben’s room. But Austin went straight down the hall for the bathroom. Louis got up and followed.

  When Austin moved to close the bathroom door, Louis stuck his hand against it, shoving it back open. He slipped inside the small bathroom, closing the door.

  “What the fuck?” Austin said.

  Louis grabbed the collar of Austin’s shirt and slammed him up against the tile wall.

  “You sorry sonofabitch,” Louis said. “Where’s the money?”

  “What money?”

  Louis clenched the shirt tighter. “The money these guys know you have.”

  Austin swallowed hard, his breath quickening.

  “Where is it?” Louis hissed.

  Austin tried to struggle out of Louis’s grasp. Louis brought a fist up in front of his face. “Where is it, damn it?”

  “All right, all right. It’s in Ben’s room. I hid it in an old backpack under his bed.”

  Louis pulled him closer, wanting to slam him harder into the tile. Instead he slung him to the side. Austin tumbled into the tub, grabbing at the shower curtain and pulling the rod and curtain down with him.

  “Jesus, man,” Louis said. “How do you live with yourself?”

  Austin looked up at him, his eyes teary. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand you don’t give a damn about your son.”

  “He’s already dead!”

  Louis drew back, but held his hand in the air, unable to hit him. He was pathetic. A sorry, pathetic coward.

  Louis dropped his arm and jerked open the door. “Go get the money and give it to Susan. Now.”

  Austin struggled to get up. He pulled at his shirt and tried to even out his breathing, but it wasn’t working. Louis gave him a shove out the door.

  He watched from the hallway as Austin retrieved the backpack from under Ben’s bed. Austin emerged from the bedroom with the black purse and headed to the kitchen.

  Louis turned and picked up the shower rod. It was spring loaded and would easily go back up. Thank God. He didn’t want to have to explain any of this to Susan. He stood on the toilet and started to wedge it back into place.

  “How did you know?”

  Louis turned to see Joe in the doorway. He went back to working the pole tight between the walls.

  “He had a purse the first day I met him,” Louis said. “I haven’t seen it since. How much did he have?”

  “He says it’s a hundred grand less about six hundred. All one hundred dollar bills.”

  Louis had the pole in place and jumped down. “Does she know I had to force him into it?”

  “I don’t think she’s had time to figure it out.” Joe paused. “Helluva good call.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I know a weasel when I see one.”

  “You speak from experience?” '

  Louis looked at her. The light was bright in the bathroom, accentuating the fine lines around her mouth. Her lipstick was faded, leaving only a thin red line around the edge of her lips. Under her right eye he could see a faint smudge of mascara that looked almost like a tear had caused it.

  “Yeah, I do,” Louis said, turning to smooth the shower curtain back down into place.

  “Father?”

  Louis nodded.

  “Is that why you hate Austin so much?”

  “No,” Louis said. “Austin disgusts me because he’s a coward.”

  Joe waited, and Louis knew she was allowing him to fill the silence like she always did when she was trying to get someone to open up. And he didn’t want to let her in. Not this far. Not this soon. But the words came anyway.

  “He never went back,” Louis said. “He never went back to get Ben in the park. And what do you think that kid was thinking? How do you think he must have felt when no one came?”

  For a few seconds, neither of them moved. Joe’s hand started to come up, maybe to touch him, maybe not, he wasn’t sure. But she paused in midair then brought it to her head, raking back her hair. She glanced at the big watch dangling on her wrist.

  “C’mon, Wainwright wants to talk to you.”

  Louis followed Joe back to the kitchen. Before he even reached the kitchen door, he heard Susan’s voice, tight, angry.

  “How can you even ask who’s going to deliver the money?” she said, her face in Austin’s. “You're delivering it!”

  “Mrs. Outlaw,” Wainwright started. “I’m not sure we should deliver anything to these guys. This whole ransom thing could be a ruse just to lure your husband out there to kill him.”

  “What if it isn’t? What if you’re wrong?”

  “I can’t stop any of you from making this delivery,” Wainwright said. “But sending an untrained civilian out there is only going to get him or the boy killed.”

  “Maybe we should ask the man himself,” Joe said. “What about it Mr. Outlaw? You still want to be a hero?”

  The kitchen fell quiet as Austin’s eyes shot to her. His lips parted, but nothing was coming out, and Louis could see the humiliation in his eyes.

  “I’ll go,” Louis said.

  Susan looked at him, stunned. “No, they’ll know. Your hair is shorter, your skin is lighter, your features...” Her voice fell to a whisper. “It won’t work.”

  Louis turned and left the kitchen.

  “Susan,” Joe said. “They mistook Louis for Austin once.”

  “That was in a porch light,” Susan said. “In the rain, from five houses away. They also saw Austin in the park in broad daylight —-”

  Susan stopped suddenly, her eyes flicking up to the kitchen doorway.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  Louis stood in the door wearing the butterscotch coat, black scarf, and fedora.

  “I’ll go,” Louis said again.

  CHAPTER 22

  They wired him. Louis stood in the kitchen, bare-ches
ted, arms outstretched. Joe was taping the thin wire to his back, smoothing it against his skin with the tips of her fingers. Then he felt her clip the recorder to the back of his belt, next to his holster. In front of him, Wainwright was securing the wire to his chest, running it over his shoulder.

  Less than thirty minutes ago, the killer had placed a second phone call. After Louis had given him the number to the mobile phone, he had been given instructions.

  Come alone in a regular car. No cop cars. No helicopters. No questions.

  Wainwright had been the one to suggest the wire. At first Louis had wondered why. Kidnappers didn’t usually exchange pleasantries during a drop. In fact, they were seldom seen at all. But this didn’t feel like an ordinary kidnapping for ransom, and if these guys wanted something besides money then maybe there was a chance for some discussion.

  “How does this work?” Louis asked.

  “You’ll have to turn on the recorder yourself,” Wainwright said. “Feel for the switch.”

  He found the button at the small of his back and turned it on and off a couple of times.

  “Try not to move around if they’re talking to you,” Wainwright said. “We won’t be able to hear them.”

  Susan came to the kitchen doorway, arms crossed. “Why isn’t he transmitting to a receiver?” she asked. “Why can’t you listen to what is happening?”

  Joe glanced at her. “He’ll probably get out of range of any standard receiver. We’ll never be able to pick him up if we can’t stay close.”

  “Then why record at all?” Susan asked.

  ‘To get solid evidence,” Joe said. “If they’re dumb enough to talk to him.”

  Louis met Wainwright’s eyes. There was another reason, he knew. If he got killed out there tonight, and the killers just left him there as they had all their victims so far, at least the cops could listen to his murder afterward.

  Louis looked into Susan’s eyes and he suspected she somehow had come to the same conclusion herself. She turned away, heading toward the bedroom.

  Wainwright held out a bulletproof vest. “You know we can’t protect you under these conditions,” he said.

  He looked eighty years old right now, his white hair limp and uncombed, fatigue and fear clouding the blue eyes. Wainwright was ex-FBI, and like Joe he was willing to invent new rules when the game got tough. He had once killed a child abuser in cold blood. But he knew risking Louis’s life was beyond any boundaries.

  Louis took the vest and strapped it on. He grabbed a long-sleeved T-shirt off the chair and pulled it on. He saw Jewell coming toward him with Austin’s fedora and butterscotch coat.

  “Wait,” Susan said, coming back from her bedroom. She walked to Louis, holding a small purple bag.

  “Sit down, please,” she said.

  Louis started to protest, but then she unzipped the bag and pulled out a small bottle of dark brown make-up. He realized she wanted to darken his skin. Austin’s face was dark brown, his own more the color of sand. She was halfway between, a rich medium brown.

  Louis sat down and she poured a few drops of makeup on her fingers and rubbed it onto his face. His eyes flicked up to Joe, halfway expecting to see a smile, but he didn’t. She was watching intently.

  He closed his eyes, listening to Susan’s shortened breaths, smelling the faintly medicinal scent of the makeup, feeling the desperation in her touch.

  “Susan, please hurry,” he whispered.

  He felt her paint something on his eye brows, then she backed away, looking at him.

  “That’s as dark as you’re going to get, I’m afraid,” Susan said.

  He stood up and Jewell held out the hat and coat. He pulled on the coat and walked to the mirror near the door to put on the hat.

  His hands stopped midway as his reflection came into view. The thought was bizarre, so out of place for the moment.

  Jesus...he looked like his mother.

  “Thought you might need these, too,” Jewell said.

  Jewell was holding out a pair of night vision glasses.

  “Good idea,” Louis said, throwing the strap over his shoulder.

  “Chief,” someone called from the door. “Phone’s installed in Mr. Kincaid’s car.”

  “You know how to use one of those phones?” Joe asked.

  “How hard can they be?” Louis asked.

  “It can get complicated. Especially when you’ve got other things on your mind.”

  “I’ll figure it out. Can you trace the caller?”

  “Yes, but it takes a long time,” Joe said. “Especially if they’re using a mobile phone, too. Our systems haven’t caught up to the technology.”

  “Can you tell where I am from it?” Louis asked.

  “Only generally, and that’s if you have a signal.”

  “There’s a chance I won’t have one?”

  Joe nodded. “Yes, if they take you too far out of the city, which we’re pretty sure they’ll do.”

  Wainwright held out a police radio. “Take this. It’s on the sheriff’s office frequency. They have the widest range. As long as you stay in or around the county, they’ll be able to pick you up on this. But don’t use it unless everything goes to shit. They might have one just like it.”

  “I don’t know if I agree with that, Chief,” Joe said. “Use your secure frequency. Let Louis tell us where he’s headed.”

  “If they’ve got one of these, then they can listen to anything,” Wainwright said. “They’re smart.”

  “Ellis is a high school dropout,” Joe said.

  Louis grabbed the radio from Wainwright and stuck it inside his coat.

  “Stop. Both of you.”

  The room fell quiet. Louis saw Susan watching them. She was leaning against the wall, the sleeves of her red sweater hanging down over her hands. She looked exhausted, scared. And grateful.

  “Louis,” Wainwright said, “I’m asking you one more time to wait for the FBI. I can have them here in an hour.”

  Louis looked up at the clock on the mantel. He had to be at the corner of Main and Seventeenth in nineteen minutes. “We don’t have time. Where’s the money?”

  Jewell thrust out Austin’s purse. Louis took it and went to Susan.

  “I promise you,” he said, “if it’s possible, I’ll bring him home.”

  She put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close, holding him tight for only a few seconds. Then she drew back.

  “Be careful,” she said hoarsely.

  Louis’s gaze moved to Austin, who was waiting near the front door. He had the urge to say something, but now wasn’t the time. And what was the point? Everyone here knew Austin should be the one heading out into the night to make the trade for his son.

  “Louis,” Wainwright said suddenly. “I want you to take someone with you.”

  “I can’t. They said alone.”

  “In the trunk, Louis. Or the back. I want someone there if the shit hits the fan.”

  Louis glanced around the room. His eyes stopped on Jewell.

  “You game?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wainwright nodded. Jewell hustled into his coat and started toward Ben’s room to gather his things. Louis walked out the door.

  The street was dark, all street lights and porch lights turned off at police request. The cops had cleared the area of extra patrol cars and reporters. The street was empty, eerie in the mist.

  Louis stood on the porch while Jewell crept to the driver’s side of the Mustang.

  “Louis.”

  He turned to see Joe behind him.

  “I didn’t want to say it inside but I think Chief Wainwright is right. This isn’t a normal kidnapping.”

  “I know.”

  “Take this,” she said, holding out a small gun, snug in an ankle holster.

  “I already have two,” Louis said. “Mine and Susan’s.”

  “You can never have enough.”

  Louis took the gun, taking one last look up and down the street. He w
alked to the car.

  Jewell slipped into the backseat as Louis got in. He told Jewell he could pull down the backseats and crawl into the trunk if and when he needed to. Jewell didn’t reply, but Louis could hear him messing with the seats as he started the car and backed out of the driveway.

  A few miles down the road, he saw headlights in the rearview mirror and he knew it was cops, and that they would follow him as long as they could. A few blocks after that, those lights disappeared, replaced by two more. It went on like that as Louis crossed the causeway onto the mainland and reached Main and Seventeenth. Then all the headlights disappeared, but Louis knew the cops were still close.

  He parked away from the streetlights, and turned off the headlights. He looked up at a clock on a nearby bank. He was two minutes early.

  Louis pulled the goggles from his pocket and held them to his eyes. He turned toward a street light. The lens filled with a sharp greenish glow and he pulled them quickly away.

  “You’re not supposed to look at the street lights with them, sir. They’re for total darkness,” Jewell said quietly from somewhere in the back.

  Louis put them down on the seat. Another minute passed. Louis glanced at the phone then picked it up. A light went on. He put it back in the cradle.

  The clock on the bank now read 11:32.

  “Sir,” Jewell whispered from the back.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any heat in this car?”

  Louis rested his elbow on the window, his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. It’s dead.”

  “Going to be a long cold night,” Jewell said softly.

  CHAPTER 23

  They were far from Fort Myers now, long ago leaving behind the strip-mall neon of 41 South, moving down past Naples, making the turn eastward where the road took on its old Indian name of Tamiami Trail. They had lost their police tail miles ago, the cops backing off when Louis steered the Mustang onto a deserted stretch of highway. They were moving away from civilization now and heading into the vast empty gut of the Everglades.

  Louis had seen a sign for Collier Seminole State Park, so he had a vague sense of where they were. Somewhere way south, where the bottom of the state spread out into the islands of Florida Bay like a tattered flag. Where the reassuring lights of the pretty, pricey retirement towns blinked out. Where the night sky grew huge and dark and the only thing between you and the end of the world were a few fishing outposts and thousands of mangrove islands.