by Dave Conifer
“Can I hold her hand?” Jane asked. Without answering, Creedmoor let go. They walked past the elevators and toward the casinos on the ocean side of the resort. “Where are we going?”
“The garage. We’re going for our little drive,” he answered. “It’s time.”
~~~
“Go ahead,” Rockingham said. “Call them. But first let me tell you what will happen. You’ll blurt out some cockamamie story. At least that’s what they’ll think. They’ll all roll their eyes and pass you on to somebody else. After a couple of hours they’ll realize you’re not going away and they’ll send somebody out to interview you. It’ll be lunchtime by then. Maybe they’ll start looking for your wife sometime this afternoon. Or, they’ll spend all their time running every report and check they can on you instead of your wife or Creedmoor, because they’ll think you’re nuts, or that it was you that did any kidnapping. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll talk them into this by sundown. Think that’s soon enough?”
“You bastard! If all that’s true we should have called them as soon as we got here! They’d be out looking for them by now!” Steve yelled. But he snapped the phone shut and joined them in scanning the streets for any sign of his wife and daughter.
~~~
Creedmoor guided Jane and her daughter through a mall area lined with clothing stores and boutiques. She considered grabbing Allie and bolting, the way she’d done the night before at the Tropicana, but decided it was too early for that kind of desperation. It didn’t work then. Why would it work now? And it could make things a lot worse, she thought. He’ll use that gun if I force him to. I just know it. And Allie still has a chance.
“Allie, would you like a muffin for breakfast?” Creedmoor asked sweetly when they came to a neon-festooned bakery at the edge of a food court. Allie wiped her nose and looked at her feet without answering.
“I think she would,” Jane said, nodding. It made no sense to stop, but not everything he did made sense. If he wasn’t in a rush, neither was she. The more time before they left, the better.
“Okay,” he agreed. “But I’ll do the talking. Not a word from you. Don’t forget what’s in my pocket.”
They joined the line, which was comprised of only three other people. Ten minutes later only one of them had been served and Creedmoor lost his patience. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s go,” he said, jerking his head away from the counter. “Maybe later.”
~~~
Rockingham knew how angry Steve was. He could see it in the way he was gripping the phone in his white-knuckled hands, so tightly that Rockingham wondered how long the phone could survive the beating it was taking. It was time to tell him. Maybe that would help. But before he could open his mouth the cell phone in his own pocket erupted.
“Duane? This is Joe Boone. Duane? You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, Joe,” Rockingham said. “What’s up?”
“Are you still in AC?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Something really weird just came across about your girl. I’m talking sixty seconds ago. She’s in Caesars. I caught it on the scanner on Atlantic City’s freq.”
“Hold on, Joe. Eddie!” Rockingham barked. “Get us to Caesars. Now! Somebody spotted them!” He pulled the phone back to his ear. “Tell me everything. We’re on our way there.”
“There isn’t much yet. A security guard saw them come past. It was your lady with a little girl and a man. At first he didn’t think anything of it. But she dropped something. It was her driver’s license wrapped in a piece of toilet paper. There was a note written on the paper. More like a list. In lipstick. I jotted it down. They said it twice. ‘We are kidnapped. Help. Gun. 911. SHHHHH.’ It sounded like the guard took a look at her and figured that the man she was with was the one doing the kidnapping. He told his boss and they called it into the police. Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Perfect sense! We’re on our way over there now!”
“That’s Caesars right there!” Steve yelled, as if the two-story red letters on the side of the building weren’t evidence enough. “Where do we go?”
“Pull in there like you’re checking in,” Rockingham told Eddie before turning his attention back to the phone.
“How long ago did the guard see them?” he demanded of Boone.
“Don’t know but I heard it less than two minutes ago. It’s fresh. It’s definitely her, Duane. They have her driver’s license. She’s a smart woman. That was good thinking.”
“Where in Caesars? The place is huge. Can we talk to the guard? Was his name in there?” Rockingham asked.
“I gave you everything I have,” Boone answered. “I’m sure there’ll be more. They probably wanted to get it out on the air fast.”
Then it was Steve’s phone that rang. Steve stared at it as if he was unsure what to do. Rockingham reached into the back seat and smacked him on the shoulder without missing a word in his conversation with Boone. “Answer that!” he mouthed, pointing furiously at the phone in Steve’s hand.
“Alright,” Rockingham said into his own phone. “We’re pulling up at the curb at Caesars right now and we’re going in. Call me whenever something comes up. I really need to talk to that security guard. If you can track him down, try to get his name and tell him to call me.”
“Will do, Duane. Hey, be careful down there. I don’t know how you saw this coming but all of a sudden it got dangerous. Keep your head down.”
“Better tell that to the other guy. I’ll talk to you,” Rockingham said before closing his phone. “Who was that?” he yelled over his shoulder.
“It was Creedmoor,” Steve answered slowly, as if he still didn’t believe it. “He said they’re getting ready to leave for a ride on the Garden State Parkway.”
“North or South?”
“He didn’t tell me. That’s all he said. Except something about wrecking me.”
“Whose phone did he call from?”
“I didn’t recognize the number.”
“He’s playing with us. He wants us nearby whenever he does whatever he’s planning, but he thinks he can stay ahead of us. I think they’re still in this building, but not for long,” Rockingham declared as they scrambled out of the vehicle. “If they get out we’re in trouble. Jane was right. The guy’s sick in the head. Nobody’s coming back from this joy ride he’s got planned.”
“We need help!” Steve said. “We can’t cover the whole city! We can’t even cover this building!”
“The AC police know about it now,” Rockingham answered. “It’s time to bring them up to speed. But first—“
“You can’t park there, sir,” interrupted a uniformed porter when it was clear that the three men intended to abandon the minivan in the check-in lanes. “I need somebody to stay with the car.”
Rockingham fished out his badge and waved it at him. “Police business. This is an emergency. Where’s the security office? I need to see whoever’s in charge of security.”
“Uh, lemme’ see. You should go to the front desk. Right inside here and up the stairs. They have a little room right by the front desk. I’ve never been in there.”
Led by Rockingham, they charged through a set of automatic doors and ran up the stairs. Without taking time to read the words stenciled on the window they burst through an open door nearby. A middle-aged man behind a desk and a nervous security guard in front of it looked up, the former with his mouth open as though he’d stopped speaking in mid-sentence.
“Hotel security?” Rockingham asked.
“Yes,” the man at the desk answered. “Can I help you?”
“No, but I can help you. I’m Sergeant Rockingham from the Hammonton Police Department. There’s no time to explain but I know all about the kidnapping note you just got. I chased that guy down here last night but the trail got cold.”
“Hammonton?” he asked. “I’m Dan Coburn. We’re working with the local police. You have no jurisdiction here. I think we can handle it.”
“He’s right,” Rockingham said. “And you don’t have time to learn. I need to see all your surveillance camera footage from the last hour and I need to see it now,” Rockingham said. “Are you the guard who found the note?” he asked the young man in uniform.
“Yes,” he answered. “It was right out there.”
“Tell me everything you saw,” Rockingham ordered.
“Now hold on just a minute!” Coburn said. “What part of ‘we can handle it’ don’t you understand?” He looked at Eddie and Steve as if he was noticing them for the first time. “Are these Hammonton police too?”
“Something like that. Can you roll those tapes right in here?” Rockingham asked.
“Yes we can, and when the ACPD task force arrives in about two minutes that’s what we’re going to do. My guards are already out on the floor searching. You boys will be my first call next time anybody steals a crate of blueberries. But leave the serious cases for us. Now if you gentleman will excuse us, we have a kidnapping to solve. I’m going to have to ask you to leave my hotel. We don’t need a bunch of farmers getting in our way.”
“There’s no time for a turf battle, Coburn,” Rockingham said before turning to his partners. “Steve, you find the garage. I’ll take the casino and walk through to the boardwalk side. Eddie, you wander through the hotel lobby. Keep your phones turned on.”
“Cell phones?” Coburn said with a crooked smile. “You guys use cell phones?”
Rockingham glared at Coburn. “You’re going to have blood on your hands if you get in my way.” He stomped out. Steve and Eddie looked at each other before following. All three ignored the phalanx of detectives and uniformed officers that were converging on the security office.
“Creedmoor will be halfway across the country before those dummies get their coffee orders straight,” Eddie said. “They don’t get it.”
“Except Creedmoor ain’t going across the country,” Rockingham answered back. “The window is closing fast. We’ll know where he is for about ten minutes. Fifteen, tops. If we haven’t spotted him by then we’re out of luck. You still got your gun?” he asked Steve.
He patted his jacket pocket. “Right here.”
“How about you?” Rockingham asked Eddie. “I’ve got an extra one, loaded and ready to go if you want it. It’s your choice.”
“Yeah, I’ll take it,” Eddie said.
Rockingham looked around before reaching into the bag for the other Glock. “Just point and shoot,” he said as Eddie hid the gun without even looking at it. Rockingham tossed the empty bag behind a row of unoccupied slot machines. “Let’s go.” The three headed off in different directions.
The casino was still mostly empty as Rockingham wandered through. Nobody was at any of the tables and there were only a few diehards scattered through the rows of slot machines. It wasn’t difficult to determine that there was nobody there that he was looking for. That didn’t surprise him. The exits were where he thought he might encounter something that would matter. For him that meant the boardwalk entrances. Now that he had time to think it through, he realized that he should have taken the parking garage himself instead of assigning it to Steve. That’s where Creedmoor’s heading, if he isn’t there already. He’s looking to escape. Steve won’t even know what to do if he finds them, he scolded himself.
The glint of the sun through an expanse of glass as it hovered above the Atlantic signaled that he’d was getting close to the boardwalk doors. A nervous ache seeped into his gut. If they were still in the building, chances are one of them – Steve, Eddie or himself – was going to catch up with them in the next few minutes. But the chance of success was dropping fast. The lack of cooperation from Coburn hadn’t helped, but there was still hope. He walked faster.
The first thing that occurred to him when he heard the pounding footsteps was that he’d accidentally caught up with Creedmoor. He looked back and immediately recognized the onrushing, uniformed man as Hector, the security guard from Coburn’s office. Grimacing, he braced himself for bad news.
“They found them!” Hector yelled as soon as he was close enough. “On the live feed! They’re getting away!”
“What?” Rockingham asked, dumbfounded. “There must be fifty cops up there!”
“Come on!” Hector urged. “I’ll tell you while we run!” He took off through the casino. By the time he looked back Rockingham was running, too. “They’re in the tunnel to Bally’s. They have a whole different set of cameras over there. Mr. Coburn ordered the tapes but it’ll be too late by the time they come up, so I took off!” They were past the aisles of slot machines now. “Downstairs!” he shouted when they reached a set of escalators.
“You just walked out? Did Coburn know where you were headed?” Rockingham asked, sucking air as he followed the twenty-something security guard.
“I’ll probably lose my job. It’s over here,” Hector said when they emerged in a reception area on the lower floor. “See that walkway? That goes to the next casino over. That’s where they were. Come on!”
Rockingham struggled to keep up as they dodged people streaming from a breakfast buffet. “So where are Coburn’s men?” he panted, sure that Hector wouldn’t hear him.
“They’ll be here soon,” Hector yelled over his shoulder. “But it’ll be too late.” They reached the end of the passage and they weren’t in the Roman Empire anymore. There were cowboys, dusty trails, saloons and an occasional cactus in every direction, along with the usual rows of slot machines and gaming tables. They’d arrived in the American West. “That lady looked so scared, man,” Hector told him. “I couldn’t sit around waiting for tapes.”
They stopped abruptly in front of a faux canyon wall. There were two different directions that Creedmoor could have gone. “There’s the camera they caught him on,” Hector said, pointing above Rockingham’s head. “They could have gone that way to the boardwalk,” he said, looking toward the sun. “Or maybe they worked their way through this casino to the garage.”
“Or anywhere else, really,” Rockingham said. “Should we split up?”
“Yes. I’ll head back to the garage. And I’ll fill Coburn’s guys in,” he said, tapping the walkie-talkie microphone clipped to his shoulder.
“Okay,” agreed Rockingham. He slid a business card out of his wallet. “My cell phone number’s on there. Call me if you have any luck.”
Hector took off for the garage without answering. Rockingham pulled out his phone and dialed as he moved along the storefronts of a pseudo western town toward the boardwalk doors. “Steve! This is Duane!” he shouted into his phone when somebody answered. “Get over to Bally’s! They were spotted on a surveillance camera! And call Eddie, tell him to come too!”
“Holy shit!”
“Wait a minute!” Rockingham yelled into his phone. “I see them! They just popped up out of nowhere!”
“Holy shit! I gotta’ get over there!”
“Perfect! They’re heading back through the casino! Hector and Coburn ought to be there any second. I just hope—wait! Damnit! I think they saw me!”
“He won’t know you’re a cop!”
“Yup, they saw me, all right. Looks like they’re going out on the boardwalk,” Rockingham reported. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll follow them. Get a hold of Eddie, get over here, and try to find Coburn’s swarm of cops. We need them on the boardwalk! Over!”
Chapter 23
Something just happened, Jane knew immediately. They were following the signs and obviously heading for the parking garage when Creedmoor halted, stared briefly back in the direction they’d just come from, and then changed direction. Now it appeared that they were going toward the boardwalk exits. What did he see? This has to be a good thing, she told herself. But what did he see? Whatever it was, it had to have something to do with Steve, the only person out there who had any idea where she and Allie were. Practically the last thing she’
d said to him was not to call the police. Had he done it anyway?
Creedmoor gestured at a set of heavy-looking windowless doors. Without letting go of Allie’s hand Jane walked as slowly as she could, until he caught on. “Move it,” he said, placing a hand in the small of her back and pushing her along. She looked directly at the security camera above the door as they passed under it and onto the boardwalk.
A November fall Jersey Shore day was waiting for them. The typical morning pedestrian traffic of joggers, bicyclists and early bird shoppers passed in both directions as Jane’s eyes adjusted to the sunlight. The screech of seagulls looking for scraps of food surrounded them as Creedmoor’s eyes darted up and down the boardwalk. Something was afoot. Jane would have given anything to know what he’d seen to cause the change in plans. “This way,” he said quietly, pointing South toward the glitzy Caesars shopping mall that arched over the boardwalk and projected across the beach all the way out over the surf. “And keep moving. Understand?”
They walked briskly past Caesars and the Rainforest Café. Jane was afraid to turn around but she watched carefully as Creedmoor looked over his shoulder over and over again. Normally she would have steered Allie away from the mumbling panhandler who was crumpled against the façade of Boardwalk Hall with a paper cup between his feet. This time she’d have welcomed the intrusion but Creedmoor was having none of it. When they reached Boardwalk Hall Jane wondered if Allie remembered attending a circus performance there just a few months earlier. If she did, she didn’t show it. “Over here,” Creedmoor directed, pointing at the line of Greek columns at the edge of the boardwalk directly across from the arena.
He led them down a set of wooden steps and into the sea oats that flourished on the small dune ridge. “Get down.” Jane went down on a knee and pulled Allie into a seated position in the sand. From there she watched the population of stray cats that shared living space beneath the boardwalk along with a smattering of homeless people. Creedmoor, crouched at eye level with the surface of the boardwalk, watched the foot traffic carefully. Jane considered asking him what was going on but decided that the answer might not be what Allie needed to hear. Instead she pulled Allie close and stroked her hair, waiting for Creedmoor’s next move.
