Snatched

by Pamela Burford

“Oh, no,” Joe scolded, “oh, stop. It’s the painkillers making you say that. Don’t listen to this big grump, Detective. He doesn’t mean it.” Joe brushed doughnut crumbs off Cullen’s jacket, pausing briefly to rub the material between his fingers. Cullen looked like a cornered rabbit. “Nice,” Joe said. “Armani?”

  “Uh . . . Penney’s had a sale.”

  Joe leaned in confidentially. “You can’t tell. With shoulders like yours, you could wear a flour sack and it’d look like it set you back a grand. Right?” This last query to Wesley, who sent him a silent communiqué: Aren’t you laying it on a bit thick? Joe knew perfectly well who Cullen was and what he’d done to the man he loved. He was just having fun with the bastard.

  Joe turned back to Cullen. “You are definitely coming to the wedding. It’s in December. Do we have your address?”

  “Wedding?” Cullen was about to ask who was getting married, Wesley could tell, but then his tiny detective brain filled in the blanks, leaving him blessedly speechless.

  Any other time, Wesley would have enjoyed the spectacle of his lover torturing the malicious prick who’d driven him out of the NYPD, but at the moment he was in too much pain. Plus, he wasn’t about to take a chance that the psycho who snatched Ricky Baines might walk.

  “Hal really incriminated himself,” Wesley said. “Did the recording come out good?”

  It took Cullen a moment to realize Wesley was addressing him. “Who?”

  “Hal? The guy that did this to me?” Wesley thumped his chest and instantly regretted it. “Your people must’ve found the voice recorder—it was in my pocket.”

  “Maybe he told you he was called Hal,” Cullen said, retrieving his buzzing cell phone from a pants pocket, “but the shooter’s name is Kitchen. Wilbur Kitchen. And there was no recorder.”

  It had to be the happy juice they’d put in Wesley’s IV. He could have sworn Cullen said “Wilbur Kitchen.” Wesley looked at Joe, whose perplexed frown told him he hadn’t misheard.

  Cullen, meanwhile, barked into his cell: “The perp’s house? Who called?”

  Why would they think Will Kitchen had shot him, unless . . . “Hal could’ve swiped Kitchen’s ID. Hey, Paulie, what color is his hair?”

  The detective shushed Wesley with a brusque wave as a nurse pushed past the curtain. She was a diminutive Hispanic woman named Carmen something, according to the nametag clipped to her scrubs. “Who tied up Kitchen’s housekeeper?” Cullen demanded. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “You can’t use that phone in here,” Carmen scolded as the detective clamped a hand over his free ear, tuning her out. “And it’s only one visitor at a time,” she said. “You have to take turns.”

  Wesley pushed up onto an elbow as pain detonated in his sternum. “Someone tied up Ming-hua? That had to be Hal. Jesus, Paulie, you arrested the wrong man.”

  “Take that outside or turn it off.” Carmen got in Cullen’s face. “The rule goes for cops, too. You.” She pointed to Joe. “Out.”

  Joe drew himself up. “I’m the fiancé.”

  Wesley struggled to sit. “You’ve got the wrong guy. Paulie. Listen to me. You’ve got the wrong guy!”

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Carmen tried to push Wesley back down. “Everyone—out.”

  Wesley brushed her off like a pesky fly. He swung his legs off the bed.

  Joe folded his arms over his chest. “You are going to hurt yourself even worse, and if you think I’m going to go back to your mother and tell her—”

  “He did the Ricky Baines kidnapping,” Wesley shouted at Cullen, still huddled with his phone. “Hal did. The guy that shot me. And Will Kitchen, the one you arrested—he is Ricky Baines.”

  “Out. Both of you.” Carmen yanked open the curtain. “Don’t make me call Security.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Cullen asked the person on the other end of the line. “The Baines case is, like, twenty years old.”

  “Twenty-five,” Joe corrected. “Oh my God. Don’t do that!” he yelped as Wesley tore the tape off his IV and yanked the catheter out of his arm. Blood spurted from the punctured vein.

  Carmen grabbed a pair of latex gloves, shouting for help to subdue her patient.

  The old woman in the next stall yelled, “What’s going on in there?” Curious eyes peeked past the curtains. Hospital workers stopped in their tracks to stare.

  Wesley glanced around the little space. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

  “Police took them. Evidence.” Joe swung toward the gawkers. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stand there with your mouths hanging open?” He wagged them away like the kids he dealt with every day at the middle school. “Shoo.”

  “What’s that name again?” Cullen scribbled in a little notebook, cradling the phone against his shoulder. “Lynch, Harold.”

  “This Lynch guy. Paulie, listen.” Wesley came unsteadily to his feet, heedless of the blood dribbling down his arm. “I know the man—he’s one dangerous SOB.” Cullen ignored him, having turned his back to focus on his call.

  Carmen cursed in Spanish as she applied pressure to Wesley’s arm. His hospital gown was liberally streaked with blood; he looked like the runner-up in a chain-saw fight. A pair of burly orderlies materialized, took one look at the patient, and started gloving up.

  Cullen spoke into his phone, pen at the ready. “What’s the address? I’ll meet you there. Hey!” he snapped as Wesley grabbed the phone out of his hand and broke the connection.

  “I know a shortcut,” Wesley said. “Let’s go.”

  Joe tried to bar his way. “Wesley, if you walk out of this hospital, so help me God, I will not be there when you get home. If you get home.”

  “Sure you will.” Wesley gave him a quick peck on the mouth. The orderlies, who’d been about to pounce, exchanged a look and backpedaled to the glove dispenser to double up. Carmen tossed her own gloves onto the blood-spattered tiles and followed Wesley’s exposed heinie through the ER and waiting room, out the doors to Cullen’s gray Impala, ranting all the while about “liability” and “against medical advice” and foolhardy payasos who think they’re indestructible.

  Chapter 28

  AS USUAL, TOM’S comforter lay puddled on the floor, the top sheet heaped in the curve of one skinny, pajama-clad leg. The bottom sheet had come untucked, and the pillow had somehow landed several feet from the bed.

  Will smiled and tilted his head to match the angle of Tom’s in the near dark of the boy’s bedroom. Tom lay sprawled on his side, mouth parted, a shadowy spot of drool soaking into the mattress pad. At moments like this, Will could detect a softer version of his own features in his son. He also saw Hope’s influence and wondered for the thousandth time how any mother could willingly, even matter-of-factly, relinquish the child of her womb. For money.

  He shook out the wadded top sheet and carefully smoothed it and the comforter over his sleeping son. All of which was wasted effort, but habit was hard to break, and tonight he didn’t even try. His relief at finding Tom here, safe in bed where he belonged, was so intense it hurt. The surge of paternal love swelled Will’s heart and spilled over into his brain; he was drunk on it.

  As long as his boy was safe, nothing else mattered.

  He let himself out of the room, feeling both weighted by exhaustion and buoyed by relief. Detective Cullen had released him a short while before, with no explanation aside from a gruff command to phone him immediately if he heard from one Harold Lynch, a.k.a. Keith Kitchen. Furthermore, Cullen was withholding the real shooter’s name, as well as news of Will’s release, from the media so as not to drive Lynch deeper into hiding. So Will had better keep a low profile. All of which meant Lynch was still at large, but at least now the cops were on the right track. More important, they knew Will wasn’t the one who’d killed the PI.

  Will hadn’t lingered to press for details. The instant they let him go, he’d raced home to check on Tom, practically knocking over Gabby and Cuba in his haste as they greeted him on the porch.


  Now, as he silently closed his son’s bedroom door, the sound of muted conversation drew him to the kitchen. That and the need to pour himself a double Scotch. Or a triple. Seated around the tiled kitchen table were Gabby, Cuba, and Friar Tuck.

  Will stopped and stared. The friar wore a brown, hooded, rope-belted robe Will recognized from his own costume collection. He leaned back in his chair, draining a bottle of beer, cradling an ice pack to his chest, and looking an awful lot like the late Wesley McIntyre.

  “You’re dead,” Will said.

  “Damn. If I knew being dead felt like this, I’d have tried harder to stay alive.” Wesley wagged the beer bottle at Gabby. “You got another one of these?”

  “No more for you.” She plucked the empty from his fingers.

  “Aw, have a heart.”

  Cuba looked up from stroking Hasenpfeffer. “It’s that Vicadin she scrounged up for you. She’s afraid you’ll, like, stop breathing if you get loaded on top of it.”

  “It’s tempting,” he said, “considering how much it hurts to breathe.”

  “Seriously.” Will pulled open cabinets, producing a bottle of The Macallan and a plastic Star Wars drinking cup. “I thought I was looking at a corpse back there in the park.”

  “Kevlar is cool stuff,” Wesley said, “but a .45 auto is one serious weapon. The vest kept the bullet from penetrating, but it was kinda like getting kicked in the chest by a mule. Not that I remember the getting-shot part, but that’s what it felt like when I came to.” He shifted, wincing. “Still does. Lemme guess. Cullen didn’t let on that I survived. No, of course he didn’t.”

  “He let me believe I was going to be tried for murder.” Will settled into a chair and filled the cup with Scotch. “After being caught standing over your lifeless body, holding—literally—the smoking gun.”

  “What a kidder, that Detective Cullen.” Wesley’s chuckle turned into a growl of pain. Gabby was on her feet in an instant, fussing over him, checking the ice pack, uncapping that second beer with a muttered “Merde.”

  He took a long pull from the bottle. “That ‘smoking gun’ was my own nine-mil. Hasn’t been used since I took it to the range six, seven weeks ago. Lynch shot me with a .45. That’s the reason they let you go,” he told Will. “The ballistics. Oh yeah, and? Me telling ’em you were nowhere in the vicinity when one Harold Lynch, a.k.a. Keith Kitchen, pulled the trigger.”

  Gabby, Cuba, and Wesley brought Will up to speed on the goings-on at home while he’d been lazing around the slammer. They told him about Hal and Mick’s confrontation with Ming-hua and the redoubtable Quint. He learned that Cullen and others from the NCPD had been all over the house, the Goo, and Gabby’s Viper. They’d interviewed everyone about Hal Lynch and Mick. No one had any idea where the two were now or what vehicle they’d driven away in.

  “Did anyone call Judith in Bermuda?” Will asked. “Does she know Mick is mixed up with this wacko?”

  “Aunt Judy got back today,” Cuba said. “The cops, like, interrogated her for a long time. About Mick, I guess. She’s real upset.”

  “Can you blame her?” Will asked. “Did Fergus come back with her?”

  Cuba nodded. “They’re around here somewhere. She wants to talk to you. I don’t know about what.”

  But Wesley did, Will sensed. It was something in the way the PI suddenly found the Pete’s Wicked label of absorbing interest. “Wesley, what were you investigating that made you meet Lynch in that park,” Will asked, “and pretend to be Archie Esterhaus so you could snoop around here?”

  Wesley pushed away his beer bottle. He looked Will in the eye. “The Ricky Baines kidnapping.”

  Will was about to ask who would hire a PI to dredge up that old case when Wesley raised a forefinger and added, “Actually? When I came here in disguise that day, I didn’t know you were Ricky. Not at first.” He explained his hiring by Frank Narby. Yes, he and Joe were indeed the inept would-be kidnappers Will sent running from Lucy’s kitchen that night. Wesley admitted scheming to extract a hefty service charge from Narby in exchange for keeping mum about the bigamy. He told how one greedy impulse led to another until ultimately it all became about closing an old, cold case that had eaten at him for the past two and a half decades.

  Cuba lifted the bunny’s floppy ears. “You following all this, Hasenpfeffer?”

  “Mon dieu!” Gabby cried. “I knew you looked familiar, Wesley. You were a cop back then. You came to the hospital to see me. I was so worried for Ricky. You were very kind.”

  Even mentally exhausted and half-stewed, Will knew Wesley had danced around the most crucial detail. It was a detail Gabby and Cuba already knew, he was certain. A roiling sensation deep in his gut told him he knew it too, though a part of him wished he could remain in ignorance.

  Will looked at Wesley. He could swear the man was reading his thoughts. “So Hal Lynch came here looking for the ransom money.”

  “That’s right.”

  Will nodded, slowly. “Because it wasn’t where he’d left it.”

  For a few moments no one said a thing. Will forced himself to think about it, forced himself to acknowledge the truth of it. This man, Hal Lynch. This man who had kidnapped, terrorized, and mutilated Will’s nine-year-old self. This was the man Will had invited into his home, into his family. The maker of nightmares.

  Gabby started to reach for him. Abruptly he stood and headed for the back door. “I need air.”

  Will welcomed the night chill. He needed to clear his head, to sort his thoughts. Harold Lynch. Keith Kitchen. Insinuating himself into Will’s family. Sleeping in the same house as his son.

  The backyard was shrouded in darkness except for a faint silvering of moonlight. Will shuffled across the grass, letting his eyes adjust. The cool breeze carried the scents of new growth, of renewal. Clean, green smells. Even the bare soil of the vegetable garden smelled clean in its way. Will tried to feel the sense of hope he’d always associated with this time of year, the sense of a fresh start, a clean slate.

  Perhaps when the cops had caught up to Lynch and put him behind bars. Then it would be spring.

  He paused at the empty rabbit hutch, ran his fingers over the new chicken wire recently installed by Hal Lynch. A movement drew his gaze to the small, fenced playground, a relic of the property’s church days. He squinted and two pale figures materialized. Judith sat on a strap swing, her fingers wrapped around the chains. Fergus stood in front of her, his head tucked near hers, his arms draped protectively over her bowed back.

  They didn’t know Will was there. He stood watching them for a few moments. Despite everything, a smile tugged at his mouth. It had taken long enough for those two to connect.

  Will approached the couple, who looked up in unison as he passed through the open gate.

  Judith straightened. “Will. Are you all right?”

  He took her outstretched hand, helped her rise—she felt boneless, worn down—and wrapped her in his arms. She trembled. “Of course I’m all right,” he said. He knew what had to worry her the most, of course. Her son was mixed up in the park shooting and whatever other misery Lynch was perpetrating. “The cops are looking for them, Jude. Mick’ll turn up soon.”

  She took a deep breath and said shakily, “I know.”

  “Did they tell you about Lynch?” he asked, and felt her stiffen.

  She pulled away. “Yes.” It was a whisper.

  “What a gullible idiot I was.” Will strode to the steel jungle gym and slammed it with his fist. The pain felt good; he deserved much worse. “Our cousin, he said. Marguerite’s son. I let him bullshit his way into our lives.”

  Fergus spoke up. “Will, you can’t blame your—”

  “He’s the one.” Will held up his left hand, the stump of a finger. “All those shrink sessions with you? It’s all in the past, you said, you’ll never have to see him again, the nightmare’s over. You remember saying those things?”

  Fergus gave a single nod. Judith stood hugging herself, as
if trying to hold herself together.

  Will propped his butt on the jungle gym. He raked his fingers through his hair, then turned his face up to the night sky. It was a clear night, but he couldn’t make out many stars. He never could around here: too much ambient light. He forced a long, slow breath, then another. “Okay. All right. The cops’ll find him this time. This time it will be over.”

  “It will for certain,” Fergus said. “Lynch left his DNA at the scene all those years ago. A bloody towel, according to Wesley. He sent it to the lab. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Will offered a weak smile. “You were right. Thanks.” He turned to Judith. “Cuba said you wanted to talk to me.”

  She looked at Fergus, who put his arm around her. Her voice was barely audible as she told him, “Maybe you should wait inside.”

  Fergus searched her face in the gloom. “Are you sure?” She nodded. He seemed about to say something to Will, before changing his mind and walking back to the house.

  Will gestured for Judith to join him, scooting over to make room next to him on the jungle gym. They sat in silence for several minutes. Finally she said, “This is hard, Will.”

  He stared at her shadowy profile, then enclosed her icy hand in both of his. “Jude. I’ve already figured out Lynch is Mick’s father.” She looked at him. He offered a tired smile. “Why do you think I bought his bullshit about being our cousin? He looks like family.”

  Judith said nothing. She did not appear reassured.

  “Does Mick know?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I assume so, now that they’ve met. I never told Hal about Mick. He was . . . I never wanted him to find out. But one look at each other . . .” Her words trailed off.

  No wonder Judith seemed half in shock. Today she’d learned that one of her former lovers, or one-night stands or whatever, was the monster who’d kidnapped and brutalized her kid brother.

  Will squeezed her hand. “So. You had a fling with this guy—no one warned you he was a psycho—and when he found out you came from money, he cooked up a kidnapping scheme. It’s not your fault, Jude. You had no way of knowing Lynch’s true nature. If he hadn’t met you, he might’ve gotten the idea any number of other ways.”