Thrills

by K. T. Tomb

  Her heart soared. They found Cassidy! She told herself.

  As she reached the top of the stairs, tears welled up and dropped over the rims of her eyes and then streaked down her cheeks. She could barely see the carpeted stairs through her blurred vision. She thundered down the stairs, holding on to the railing and chafing the underside of her bare upper arm. The bell sounded again.

  “I’m coming!” she shrieked.

  They found Cassidy! It was becoming a mantra now. The Law of Attraction. Think it and it will happen.

  Toward the bottom of the stairway, she missed a step, stumbled forward and caught herself on the railing just in time to avoid falling. She barely felt the pain, although she winced as her forearm struck the rail. Her mind was filled with the image of Zack waiting outside her front door with Cassidy. She had been praying for every second of every day since she had disappeared, clinging to hope and trying to stay positive.

  Mary hit the landing hard, stumbled, regained her balance, and plunged forward again through the modest-sized, two-story home. Her feet padded madly over the thick green carpet, then slapped a staccato over the white-tiled foyer.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks, her neck and down into her shirt. She had assumed that she had cried all of her tears out and had become too numb to cry, but these were a different kind of tears, tears that were full of hope.

  The doorbell rang a fourth time.

  Mary threw herself at the door as if she intended to knock it forward rather than open it inward. In reality, she had lost control of herself in her mad dash and had misjudged the distance, slamming into the door.

  She rebounded and fumbled for the door lock. She didn’t bother with the peephole. Screw the peephole. Anyway, she didn’t think she was physically capable of lining her eye up with the peephole. She continued fumbling with the lock, hurrying to unlock the deadbolt, and then reached for the door handle.

  On the other side of the door, a man cleared his throat.

  Was he a police officer or another FBI agent? She was sure that he had news of Cassidy. There was no other explanation for why he would ring her doorbell four times.

  Suddenly, she froze. Oh, God, what if it’s bad news?

  As soon as the thought came, she pushed it aside. It couldn’t be bad news. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of anything but positive thoughts and good news.

  She finally finished fumbling with the lock and the handle and yanked the door open. The bottom of the door raked over her big toe, tearing some skin. She jumped back, wincing with pain and tried to keep the incredible hurt under control as she pulled the door open all the way.

  There was a man standing there in front of her. A very tall man with light-brown hair, wide shoulders, sad face, and a big, shiny, red nose looked back at her. That was all that registered with Mary. He did not look like a cop. He was certainly not one of the FBI agents either, but she was too excited to worry about asking who he was.

  “Where’s my baby?” she whispered through gritted teeth as she winced in pain from the door and fought back the sobbing which was pushing its way up through her chest. Her voice was barely discernible.

  “I don’t have her,” said the man in front of her. His eyes moved quickly over her face, and his look of sadness deepened.

  With those four words, her hope blew up and the sobbing burst out of her once more. A part of her knew she was talking to a stranger. A part of her knew she must have looked crazy to anyone standing in front of her, especially a stranger. None of those factors mattered to her in the least, she only had one thought on her mind and nothing else mattered to her.

  “You are Cassidy’s mother?”

  It was more than obvious, but the sight of her caused him to struggle with the right words to say and all he could do is state the obvious out of sheer discomfort.

  She nodded her head and she bowed her face into her hands, and then what he said hit her.

  He said Cassidy.

  Did he know her?

  He smelled of cigarettes and body odor and seemed to be double the size of most people in both breadth and depth. He was carrying a briefcase.

  He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I haven’t found her,” said the man again, “but I think I might know where to look.”

  “Then I need to call Zack.”

  “That FBI agent who was here earlier? I thought I saw him out looking for me, so after a while, I circled around back here and saw he was gone. I knew I could talk to you alone, but I didn’t stop earlier because he was here.”

  “You son of a bitch! Where is my daughter?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think my son might have her. I think I can straighten this whole thing out without involving the police or the FBI. We might be able to talk to him and get him to—”

  “I’m not going to play games with you!” Losing it, Mary cold-cocked old Ira Rabb with her clenched fist and when he went down, she dragged him into her house and shut and locked her front door.

  And then, shocked, though pleased that he was knocked out, she left him on the floor and went to her toolbox for duct tape and cable ties.

  After he was trussed up, she called Special Agent Zack Donovan.

  “Zack, I have the guy you were chasing.”

  “You what?” he said.

  “You heard me. I have the guy you were chasing. I knocked him out and tied him up. His son might have Cassidy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Hurry up and get back here.”

  “You can’t just do that to people. Hit them and tie them up.”

  “Zack, he came to my house with a gun in his briefcase. I looked.”

  “A gun? Don’t untie him yet. Don’t touch the gun.”

  “Too late, but I got it out of his briefcase with a pen so I don’t mess up the prints.”

  “Good thinking. Don’t threaten him. Don’t talk to him. And for God’s sake, don’t hit him again. I’ll be there in fifteen, twenty at the latest.”

  “We’ll be waiting. Should I call Agent Calder for backup?” she asked.

  “Oh, hell, no! Don’t call anyone. Especially not him.”

  Mary heard tires screeching and pictured Zack making a U-turn somewhere.

  Hopefully, not on the freeway.

  Chapter Nine

  The knock on the door of his temporary office in the law enforcement complex made Eric Calder straighten up in his chair. He’d stayed in his office the whole night running through the information that he had gathered. He had attempted to absorb every fact into his brain. He had finally placed his arms on the desk and rested his pounding forehead on them and started to doze.

  “Agent Calder?” the young man said as he entered the room. “I’ve got the information you requested.”

  “Great.” His attempt to appear bright and on top of things had failed miserably. He had trouble lifting his head from the desk.

  “You look like hell. When’s the last time you slept?”

  “A lot of people have been asking me that. What have you got?”

  “Well, sir, the caller who hung up on you had attempted to block the number, but I have a name for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A man named Dr. Ira Rabb. He’s a retired professor of economics.”

  “So far, I’m not impressed. What else can you tell me?”

  “Well, he was a suspect in a kidnapping case several years ago.”

  “Okay, now, I’m listening. Give me the case in a nutshell,” Calder said.

  “The little girl was running off of his property and into the street when she was hit by a car and killed. Dr. Rabb stayed with her until authorities and the ambulance arrived and was trying to console the kid who had hit her. Sixteen years old, and he’d just gotten his license. He said the little girl came out of nowhere. Rabb was questioned, but his alibi checked out. He had been teaching a class about the time that the little girl went missing. He claimed that he saw the little girl in his yard and had opened the door t
o find out if she was lost and she got spooked and ran. He said he saw everything start to happen, but he was completely helpless to stop it. Shook the old guy up pretty badly.”

  “I imagine it did. But why would he call here last night, tell me he had information, and then hang up?”

  “Well, there is a little bit more to the Dr. Ira Rabb story. It seems his son, Robert Rabb, had been living with him when the younger Rabb abducted his own son—he was the noncustodial parent—and took him camping in Idaho. The old man thought Robert had a visitation with the kid and had no idea what was going on until after the police arrested his son at a hospital near Boise, where he had brought in his dead son. The kid had died from an epileptic seizure while they were camping. Anyway, his son Robert did some time for the kidnapping, but since he was one of the biological parents, and his son died of natural causes, it was a pretty short-term sentence.”

  Calder made a connection to Robert Rabb almost immediately.

  “Hold on a second. Do you have anything concerning Robert Rabb in connection with the kidnapping of the girl that was hit by the car in old man Rabb’s front yard?”

  “Not much. He was considered a suspect initially because of the previous kidnapping, but it was ruled out because he had never been any kind of a troublemaker before and the first kidnapping was his own son. He never tried to hide the fact that he’d kidnapped the boy. He had cooperated with the authorities, did his time without a fuss. An academic type like his old man, not really your kidnapping type.”

  “Not the kidnapping type, and yet, he did time for kidnapping and a second kidnap victim shows up at his old man’s house. I realize that it probably didn’t seem to connect before, but now that the old man called the FBI and hung up, I’m beginning to wonder.”

  “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire?”

  “Something like that,” Calder replied absently. “Is Agent Graves in yet?”

  “I think I saw Emily headed down the hall to the break room. Oh, wait, here she is now.”

  She looks stunning. Eric just smiled at her and watched her walk in with that little wiggle-walk that had grabbed him the first time he ever saw her. Not that he had done anything about it. Yet.

  “Good morning, Agent Calder. You look worse than you did last night.” She placed a steaming cup of coffee on the desk in front of him. “Did you sleep here?”

  “Not much.”

  “That’s what I thought. What you got going on this morning? Did you ever get the call back from the mystery caller last night?”

  “No, but Rivera was just filling me in.”

  Calder took a sip of the coffee and then stood. He pulled the suit coat from the rack, slipped it on, and then picked up the coffee.

  “Come on, there is someone that we need to have a conversation with. Rivera, do you have an address?”

  “Right here with all of the other stuff I just told you about.” He extended several sheets of paper toward Calder.

  “Give them to Graves. Let’s get going, Graves. You’re with me. Thanks, Rivera.”

  Rivera stood in the hallway, shocked that he was blown off by Calder, who sauntered away with Graves. They strolled down the hall at a space-eating stride.

  When they got to the car, Calder slipped in behind the wheel and fastened his seat belt.

  “You read up on what’s there and look for anything that looks fishy to you.”

  He turned the ignition, put the car in reverse, and backed out of the parking space.

  “Dr. Ira Rabb?”

  “That’s who called me last night.”

  “You said it was another case, Eric.”

  “So, I lied, Em. I hope you’re well rested, because I’m running on fumes.”

  The coffee helped Calder wake up some, but he was still feeling a little out of gas by the time they arrived at the home of Dr. Ira Rabb.

  “Sort of modest for a retired university professor, don’t you think?” Graves commented.

  “What did he teach?”

  “Economics.”

  “There you have it. What are you going to do with an economics degree except teach economics?” Calder remarked.

  “You’re kind of a judgmental jerk sometimes,” Graves said.

  “And yet, it seems to work for me,” Calder said.

  She laughed and trailed along behind Calder as he strode toward the door, also trying to catch up with his last comment.

  Shit! Even running on fumes, he’s still a sharp bastard, she thought as she watched him press the doorbell and step back to wait for Dr. Rabb to answer the door. The pair waited for someone to answer the door after several rings, but no one ever came.

  “It appears the good doctor is not at home,” he commented.

  “Should we have a look around?” Graves asked.

  “Only if you happen to find an open door.”

  Graves watched Calder stroll around the corner of the garage while she peeped in several windows. It looked as though no one had lived there for a long time. It was filthy. It reminded her of some of the houses they showed on the TV show Hoarders, but not so much a collection of junk as it was piles of trash, empty takeout boxes and junk food wrappers. The good doctor didn’t keep a tidy home.

  She heard a loud thud from around the corner of the garage. She pulled her Berretta from the shoulder holster under her blazer and slipped around the corner. The walk-in door to the garage was wide open. It looked as though it had been forced. Holding her weapon in a ready position, she slipped inside the door. When she saw Calder rummaging through something over in the corner, she holstered her weapon and moved toward him.

  “I found an open door,” he said, looking up into her questioning eyes.

  “I see,” she replied. “What did you find?”

  “It appears that there is a pretty substantial collection of camping gear here and the car is gone.”

  “The good doctor doesn’t strike me as the camping type,” she said.

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “I would venture to guess he’s a little too lazy to be out beating a path through the woods. He hasn’t cleaned the house in months, maybe years.”

  “Yet, we know that mini-Rabb enjoys camping.”

  “Robert Rabb was an Eagle Scout and fairly well known. Environmentalist type with an environmental science degree from Berkeley or somewhere like that. He’s been fairly active in a lot of local causes and works as a consultant for some environmental companies. I think he played football for Berkeley, too.”

  “Nice workup on the son. Thanks. Well, I would still like to have a visit with Dr. Rabb. I’d like to know why he called and then hung up on me last night.”

  The two agents exited the garage, pulling the broken door closed behind them. Calder struggled with the latch until it finally caught enough to hold the door shut.

  “I’ll see if I can find somebody to come fix that,” Graves commented as they started back around the corner of the garage and got back into the FBI-issue black sedan.

  “Yeah, and see if you can get a local unit to wait and pick up Dr. Rabb when he comes home. I want to question him.”

  “I’m on it,” Emily answered as she pulled out her cell phone.

  Chapter Ten

  The man in front of her was big.

  He filled up the entire recliner chair and overflowed the sides. He wore lots of layers of clothing, much more than was necessary for Southern California in early spring. The layers seemed endless, piled on top of each other. A light jacket, a leather jacket, a flannel shirt, a T-shirt, a thermal shirt. Something was wrong with him. He shouldn’t be that cold. Not here, not in Los Angeles. Anyway, the man looked as if he had decided to wear every item of clothing in his closet, like that old Friends joke.

  “Mary, let me do the talking,” Zack said.

  She nodded as Zack snipped the cable ties with which Mary had trussed him up.

  “Oh, ouch, thank you,” he said in relief, rubbing his wrists and ankles.

&nbs
p; “Sit at the table, old man,” Zack said and when he did, Zack snapped handcuffs on one wrist and snapped the other end on the dining room table leg closest to Ira’s leg.

  “Hey, you can’t just hold me here like this,” old Ira Rabb complained and rattled the handcuffs that were locked to the heavy table leg. “It’s kidnapping!”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Zack said.

  “I know my rights. This is completely illegal.”

  “Sir, do you want to talk about things that are completely illegal? How about failing to stop for an FBI agent in hot pursuit and running a few red lights, and going the wrong way down a busy one-way street in Santa Monica to give me the slip.”

  “I went the wrong way?” Ira said. “Oops.”

  “Yes! You almost hit a pedestrian on Third, at the Promenade crosswalk. That’s where I lost you.”

  “I didn’t really know you were chasing me until I recognized the vehicle when I stopped at a drive-thru and saw you going the other way. Or I would have stopped and waved you down. Anyway, I wanted to talk to Mary, not you. But she hit me in the face! And tied me up.”

  “Mary, Mary,” Zack said and clucking his tongue, playing good cop.

  “She’s quite contrary, I assure you,” Ira Rabb said.

  Mary spewed, “I’m contrary? You avoid telling the FBI that you think your son has kidnapped my daughter? And then, you wait until the coast is clear and you come to my house with a gun and tell me we are going to handle this without law enforcement?” Mary said angrily. “I’m sure I have the right to hit you, drag you into my house and tie you up. The only reason I didn’t kill you was because I need you alive to tell me where she is.”

  “Mary, be quiet,” Zack said. “Now! If you can’t, I’ll make you leave the room during my questioning.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “What’s your full name?” Zack asked.

  “Dr. Ira Rabb. I’m a retired economics professor.”

  “Here’s the deal, Dr. Ira Rabb. You can be an ass about getting assaulted and kidnapped by sweet little Mary here, and get her in big trouble, but if you do, then I promise you will be considered an accessory after the fact of your son kidnapping Cassidy Gordon.”