21 Hours

by Dustin Stevens

  "I pulled the reports from this afternoon, there was no reporting of any accidents involving an O'Connor," Watts fired back.

  "Well then, you had a busy day," I said. "I wonder, did any of that work actually pertain to finding my niece?"

  My voice was flinty. I was not in the mood for this back-and-forth. I'd done nothing to provoke Watts, yet she was treating me like I was the kidnapper. One day I would have to thank Lex for putting me in this situation.

  Watts pulled my truck to a stop along the curb. Less than a block away I could see the darkened neon road sign announcing Applebee's to the world. A few blocks ahead I could see a single car sitting on the opposite side of the road. Another slowly drove by. I assumed they were both with us, but had no way of knowing for sure.

  Watts kept both hands on the wheel, gripping it so tight her knuckles showed beneath her skin. I could tell she wanted nothing more than to reach out and slap me, the feeling quite mutual at the moment. "Unfortunately, there are no cameras on the backside of the building. I have a team in a van three blocks away monitoring the traffic cameras a block over in either direction, but it's doubtful they'll see anything."

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  "There are teams hidden in the area. I don't know how close they were able to get and if they'll have a direct sight line on you. Odds are you'll walk through an empty parking lot, make the drop, and walk back. Whoever is waiting for the money will watch for a few hours to make sure the coast is clear before retrieving it."

  "And if they don't?" I asked.

  "Yell like hell. Somebody will be there fast. I can't promise it'll be me, but somebody will be." A slid my eyes across to her and for a second thought I saw the faintest outline of a smile.

  A bullet travels at several hundred feet per second. If something went down, they'd be responding to a possible homicide, not me yelling. "Comforting."

  "Hey, you're the one that volunteered for this," Watts said.

  I opened the passenger side door and stepped out into the night. I grabbed my jean jacket from behind the seat and slid it on. My eyes leveled on Watts as I hefted the bag up from the seat in front of me. "Is that what you seriously think?"

  The sound of the truck door slamming followed me down the sidewalk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I left the scene in the truck behind me. Make no mistake, I was still plenty pissed at Watts and the audacity she had in assuming she knew anything about me, but that wasn't important at the moment. Again, this was about Annie. I could not afford a misstep.

  My breath came in even gasps as I walked forward. My heart rate increased to a steady hammer and a thin film of sweat encased my entire body. The numbness was beginning to recede in my hand and I could feel my pounding pulse first passing through my swollen hand, again as it reached my head.

  The sidewalk receded to driveway as I hooked a turn and walked around the edge of the building. I could feel the lump of the switchblade still wedged in my sock. I desperately wished I could have brought the Luger along out of the truck, but there would have been no way to get to it with Watts sitting there. I could only hope she didn't get bored and start snooping while I was gone.

  With each passing second, I wished more and more that Lex hadn't bothered to involve the cops at all. I was unarmed, carrying fifty thousand dollars, and had no visible backup. The best I could hope for was shouting range.

  Great.

  My heart raced even harder as I walked around the side of the building and swung a wide turn. I held my breath as I peered around the corner and spied a dumpster with a pile of empty wooden pallets stacked beside it. A single security light threw a hazy yellow sheen down over everything and a waist-high hedge ran behind it.

  There wasn't a sign of life anywhere.

  Slowly my breath evened out as I cut a direct path across the asphalt to the dumpster. Yellow lines passed diagonally beneath my feet as I walked on, gaze swinging from side to side. Ahead of me the dumpster loomed, a plastic flip-top resting down atop it.

  For a moment I considered fishing the knife out from my boot before opening the lid, but decided against it. If someone were foolish enough to be waiting in it, they were either armed or they weren't. If they had a gun, there wasn't much a switchblade could do to stop them. If they didn't, there wasn't much they could do to stop me.

  Just as fast as it had receded, my heart began to pound again. I switched the bag into my left hand and jerked up the lid with my right, gaze swinging about to inspect the contents of the dumpster. There wasn't a single thing in it. The garbage collection had already ran for the night, leaving behind only a thin layer of congealing sauces and creams. A handful of napkins and small paper items remained stuck to it, but otherwise there was nothing else inside.

  Somewhat disappointed, I tossed the bag in and dropped the lid over it. The sound of it slamming echoed through the night as I turned on my heel and walked away. I jammed my fingers into the pockets of my jacket and moved fast, making no attempt to hide the disdain on my face.

  I could see Watts behind the truck windshield as I strode from the parking lot and headed towards her. She lifted her hand to her face as I approached, no doubt speaking to her men positioned nearby. I still had yet to see a single one anywhere around, though another car did roll by.

  Across the street, the lone parked car was gone.

  The truck door creaked as I jerked it open and climbed inside. My hands were still jammed deep into my pockets and my face wore an open scowl.

  "What happened?" Watts prompted. Her voice was tense, more professional than confrontational.

  "Nothing," I spat.

  Watts lowered the handheld phone from her face and dropped it against her leg. "Look, I know we don't like each other, but right now-"

  I cut her off. She was right, I didn't like her, but that wasn't the point. "No, I mean nothing happened. The dumpster was completely empty. Not a car in the lot or a soul to be seen."

  "Oh," Watts said. She lifted the phone back to her lips and said, "The drop has been made. Be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior or persons attempting to enter the parking lot."

  There was a few muted responses back. Watts didn't respond to any of them.

  "What do we do now?" I asked. The sound of my breathing filled the cab. I was fuming, pushing it out through my nose in heavy bursts.

  "Now we wait a while," Watts said. "You'd be amazed how many people circle back within the first half hour."

  The clock in my head was already counting again. Another half hour would put us at almost two o’clock returning to the hospital, eleven hours before the artificial deadline expired. "And if they don't?"

  "Then I'll take you back to the hospital and my men will wait as long as it takes."

  I nodded. My heart and breathing slowed, but were both still racing. This entire situation wasn't sitting well with me, waiting in the dark even less so.

  "So you're still pissed at me?" Watts asked. Her tone was even, her eyes aimed straight ahead.

  "What?" Confusion crossed my face. The question seemed far from left field, even for her. "No...I mean, yeah, I'm plenty mad at you...but that's not what I'm thinking about right now."

  "So what are you thinking?"

  I turned to glance at Watts. I couldn't tell if she cared what I thought, or was just amused and wanted to tear it to pieces. "I'm thinking none of this adds up. We don't hear a word for thirty-some hours, then we get one out of the blue?"

  "Hmm," Watts said. "I've seen calls come in over a week later before. Kidnappers think the longer they hold the kid the more paranoid the parents will get, more they'll pay."

  "Okay, so then why ask for fifty grand? Yeah, that's a lot of money, but that's not ransom money. That's more like student loan or new car money."

  Watts weighed it. "I wondered that too. Maybe that's all they thought they could get in cash on short notice?"

  "So then why grab her on a Friday afternoon? Why not do it on a Monday? Or why not
wait to make a ransom demand until Monday?"

  "Maybe they hadn't planned on Mr. Borden going into a coma. That changed their plans."

  "Yeah, but how do they even know that?" I countered.

  We paused and looked at one another. We were both playing devil's advocate and we knew it. Not one word uttered between us wasn't something the other hadn't already considered. We were basically testing each other, a battle of wits to see just how much the other knew.

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked.

  Watts opened her mouth to answer, then closed it, visibly wrestling with how to proceed. "Maybe there was a kernel of truth in what you said earlier. The whole criminals helping catch other criminals thing."

  "If you've seen my files you know I didn't have anything to do with children, kidnappings, ransoms, nothing," I said. As we spoke, we both continued to watch the deserted street.

  "No, but how's the old saying go? Prison is the best education a criminal ever receives?" Watts countered, raising her eyes and rolling her head towards me. I matched the glance, surprised at her sudden candor. Maybe it was the late hour or the current situation, but she was close to being downgraded from Heinous Bitch to Moody-As-Hell.

  I smirked in response. "You have no idea. I saw and heard things that would make your head spin. Incarceration isn't only a massive expenditure of government funding, it creates super criminals."

  "Is that what it did to you?" Watts asked.

  We both knew she was pressing. It's not like she was even attempting to hide it. I decided to play along anyway. I was tired of her riding my ass all night, and if this played out the way I thought it would, I was going to need a little separation from her. "Prison pushes people one of two ways. It either scares them straight or makes them even worse."

  Watts nodded in the darkness, her gaze locked forward. "A friend of mine used to work counseling inmates. She swore that nobody ever left jail the same as when they arrived."

  "Not even close," I agreed, shaking my head. "I always tell people every person sent to jail should be re-evaluated after a week. That's all it takes to sort through the pile. After that, you send the ones that have learned their lesson home. No need to worry about them again."

  "And you would have fallen into this group?" Watts asked.

  I paused before answering. A handful of answers came to mind, none of which felt right. I was still an ex-con and she was still a detective. One civil conversation wasn't changing that. "I did my time. No need to dredge it back up."

  Watts nodded again as silence settled in. It was still uneasy in the cab, but there was much less tension than just a short time before. We weren't friends, but we weren't about to come to blows anymore either.

  "And one more thing," I said.

  "Hmm?"

  "Whoever named this as the drop point knew when that dumpster gets emptied. That's why they picked one o'clock and not midnight."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Watts pulled my truck to a stop in the front row of the parking lot. The crowd had thinned in the time since we'd been gone, a couple handfuls of cars scattered around the lot were all that remained. What the difference was between midnight and two a.m. on a Saturday night I didn't know, but it must have been substantial.

  She twisted the keys to off, pulled them from the ignition and dropped them into my lap in one movement. Neither one of us looked at the other as we sat there, the truck engine ticking.

  "What happens now?" I asked. The keys rested in a tangle on my left thigh, but I left them there.

  "Now, we wait," Watts said. "My men are in position and will continue monitoring everything. The minute they hear something, I'll pass it on."

  "And what are you going to do?" I asked.

  Watts sighed and looked out over the lot. She dropped her gaze towards her lap, then lifted it to look at me. "Did you know a child goes missing every forty seconds in this country?"

  I matched her gaze, but said nothing. Already I didn't like where this was going.

  "That's over two thousand per day, almost eight hundred thousand per year," Watts continued.

  I had never stopped to consider the numbers. There was only one child I cared about, and she was missing. "So you're telling me this is futile?"

  Her brown hair twisted against her shoulders as she turned her head. "No. I'm just saying, when you stop and think about the sheer vastness of it, it seems rather daunting."

  I considered responding with some bit of encouragement, but opted against it. She needed her head clear on finding my niece, she didn't need a pep talk. "So what are you going to do?"

  I knew the point she was getting at, and it was a valid one to make. I just also needed her to know that while I respected it, my chief concern was on Annie and nothing else.

  She turned her head back to the front windshield, almost a silent acceptance of our half spoken conversation. "I'm going to go back in there and get another cup of coffee, then I'm going to climb into my car and go be one more set of eyes at Applebee's."

  "Hmm," I said, mulling her response.

  "Like I said before, I still think this guy shows up soon. This feels amateur, for all the reasons we discussed earlier."

  "Agreed," I said without pause. "I don't suppose there's any chance I can get a half hour alone with him when you do grab him?"

  Watts coughed out a laugh and swung free from the truck. "That's assuming he actually has your niece."

  I climbed from the truck across from her, weighing the response. "Not really. If he does, Heaven help him. If he doesn't, he just wasted a lot of time for everybody."

  We walked side-by-side through the main entrance. Our shoes beat out a steady two-man chorus against the tile floor as we went, the halls still dark and empty. We went as far as the main desk before parting to go our respective directions.

  "What are you going to do now?" Watts asked, turning to face me while walking backwards towards the cafeteria.

  I matched the pose, my pace staying even as I headed towards the intensive care unit. "I'm going to go check on my sister," I said.

  It was true, if only a small fraction of the truth. Already my mind was running the numbers on a trip to Cincinnati and how much time I could afford to wait for someone to show up at Applebee's.

  Watts nodded. "I'll be in touch if I hear anything," she said before disappearing into the cafeteria.

  I started to respond, but let it go. She was already gone. Instead I turned on a heel and continued towards the ICU, my stride never breaking.

  The clock above the department front desk said it was a few minutes after two, putting me at eleven hours and counting. After the intensity of my early evening, the last few hours had slowed tremendously. I knew in my mind that this was the best route for Annie, though I was having a hard time convincing my heart of that.

  I don't do well with idle time. Never have.

  The desk was unmanned as I swung past it. The halls were still only a third-illuminated and aside from my boots, the only sounds were the muted intonations of monitors and breathing machines. A young nurse with bloodshot eyes and a ponytail of straw-like hair stared at me as I walked by and opened her mouth as if contemplating stopping me, but said nothing.

  Either she recognized me from earlier or decided it wasn't worth the effort. Which one, I can't be sure.

  The sound of my approach had already pulled Lex into the hall as I rounded the final corner. She wasn't slouched in a chair or continuing her frenetic pacing, but instead stood with her arms in front of her staring my way. "Well?"

  I held my hands out by my side, palms up. Behind her my mother lifted herself from a chair and stood at her shoulder, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  "I made the drop. That's all I know."

  Lex pressed her lips tight and closed her eyes. I was proud of how well she'd handled the last thirty-six hours, but the strain was beginning to show. She was cracking, little by little, before us.

  "Was anybody there?" my mother asked.

&nbs
p; "No," I said, shaking my head. I could see Jim Borden nudge his head out from the room to listen, though it was clear he had no intention of joining the conversation. Sue was nowhere to be seen, nor was Ricky's sister, who's name I still wasn't sure about. "There wasn't a soul anywhere. I walked through a desolate parking lot, dropped the bag in an empty dumpster, and walked back."

  "You were gone a long time for all that," Lex whispered.

  "Watts and I waited a half hour to see if they would show up. After that, she brought me back here and left her men to watch the area."

  "And where is she now?" my mother asked.

  "She's headed back there," I said. I omitted her stopping for coffee, which felt a little strange. I had no reason to be protecting her, but still felt the need not to mention that part. Lex needed to believe every available person was looking for her daughter. "Any change here?"

  Jim disappeared back into the room as Lex resumed her pacing. She was up to round two on her right ring finger, the skin around it as raw and bloody as her thumbs. My mother looked at me with tired eyes and said, "No change here."

  The three of us stood in silence for a moment, all unsure what to say. There was no new information any one of us could offer and nothing anybody could do. It was a feeling we all despised, none more than me.

  My mother retreated back into her chair while Lex continued to pace. I could hear the heart rate monitor pinging from inside Ricky's room and could hear his breathing machine rising and falling. Otherwise the entire scene was silent.

  I made it three minutes, a full two minutes longer than I anticipated.

  "I'll be back," I said and turned down the way I'd just come. I heard a pair of mumbled responses from behind me, but neither tried to stop me. They sensed the way I felt. I'm sure in their own way they wished they could move about as well.

  The nurse was gone as I rounded through the ICU and towards the front desk, my feet taking me towards the cafeteria. I had eaten almost nothing the last couple of days and each successive cup of coffee had a diminished effect on me. It was already time for a caffeine refill.