Middle Of Nowhere b-7

by Ridley Pearson

  She tried again. Grunts and groans lost on him. Swallowed by the relentless rain.

  "This is very important what I'm telling you," he said. "Just the man's phone number. That's all. Then the rag goes back on. You can nod now and let me know you understand. Anything more than the phone number right now, and I'll knock your teeth out with the butt of the gun, and then you will pay. God Almighty, how you will pay. So how 'bout it? Do I get a nod?"

  CHAPTER 55

  " Listen up," a stranger's voice demanded over Boldt's cellular phone. He had been expecting the report from Gaynes. The ferry had slowed and was nudging toward the small but well-lighted dock at Winslow. "Badge number six five six four. Your partner, Matthews. Right?"

  "I'm a lieutenant. I don't have a partner. Who is this?" Boldt said. He already had LaMoia's attention. He gestured toward the phone and pointed back into the dark of the Sound, toward the city, and LaMoia got the idea; the sergeant pulled out his own phone and made the call to Gaynes. Boldt placed his thumb over the phone's talk hole and whispered, "It could be Daffy's, it could be his."

  "Got it!" LaMoia said.

  Flek announced into Boldt's ear, "I've got her badge in my hand or I wouldn't know the number. Right? Even a dumb cop can figure that out. You want her alive, you come get her alone. That's the deal. And believe me, I'll know if you're alone or not. And if not, then not. No second chances. A hunter'll find her in a couple years."

  Boldt pushed the phone's antenna down, held the device away from his mouth and said, "You're breaking up… I can't hear you. Hang on-" He disconnected the call.

  While Boldt was still staring at the phone, secondguessing himself, LaMoia, with Gaynes on the line, said, "What's up?"

  "I hung up on him before he could give me the drop point."

  "You what!?" LaMoia hissed through his teeth loudly enough to attract attention.

  The ferry gently bumped the dock and weary passengers headed toward the exits.

  "Osbourne requires fifteen minutes to triangulate the call. I'm trying to buy Daphne some time."

  "Or get her killed."

  "I'm aware of the stakes, John."

  "Jesus, Sarge, I don't know."

  "Tell Gaynes that Osbourne has to kill all the towers over here, or at least effect a circuit busy on my line." He repeated strongly, " Circuit busy-not line busy. I don't want Flek thinking it's me. I want him blaming the system." As Boldt's phone rang again, he glared at his sergeant. "Now, John! Now!"

  LaMoia relayed the message into his phone.

  His ringing phone in hand, Boldt, already moving toward an exit, shouted back, "I'm going below decks for the interference. Handle that and hurry it up. We're out of here!"

  "And make it fast!" LaMoia said into his phone. "I don't care what he says-he's got to do it. The guy is threatening to kill Matthews. No, you heard right!" He added harshly, "Now, Bobbie. Now! And if there's any way to keep my phone working, do it!"

  CHAPTER 56

  " Shit!" Flek shouted, holding the phone at bay, his whole body shaking. For a moment he seemed ready to throw the thing, or to bust it up against the car, but some tiny string of reason fought off the agitating effects of the glow plug, and he restrained himself. "Lost him," he announced. "Second fucking time."

  Daphne tried to speak, this time with far more purpose. She leaned forward to kneeling and pleaded with him to remove the gag again.

  "No shouting!" he cautioned.

  She shook her head. Prayers were not a part of her psychologist's tools, but she prayed silently nonetheless. As long as that gag remained on, she had no way to effect change.

  Her prayers were answered. Flek stepped forward and unknotted the rag.

  For a moment she said nothing, savoring the fresh air, and not wanting to rush him. When she did speak it was gentle and soothing, almost a whisper, devoid of fear or the trembling rage that she felt inside. She said, "We may be too far away from a cell tower. Maybe if we got closer to town… Maybe then the reception would improve."

  Flek surveyed the area. Looked at her. Looked back at the sky.

  There were so many places to start with a personality like his-drug-induced and filled with bloodthirsty rage and revenge. But it was a bit like those action films where the hero has to cut the right wire or the bomb explodes-to come after him from the wrong angle was to incite that rage, not defuse it. It was not something one jumped into lightly. She tried to strip away her own emotions, to work past her own agenda, and see this patient clearly. Right now, clarity of thought was everything.

  He looked back at her.

  She said, "Fresh batteries help. I have a spare battery in the bottom of my purse."

  Perhaps he had overdone the glow plugs. Or perhaps on some level he knew the kind of trouble he had just brought onto himself by making contact with Boldt, by announcing his kidnapping of a police officer. Whatever the case, the man didn't seem to hear her, his own internal voices too loud for her to overcome.

  "We could try to get closer to town," she said. "You could cuff me to the door. I don't need to ride in the trunk." If the Morse Code had been seen, then police were looking for this car. The closer to town, the better.

  If he brought her inside the car with him, then she had a real chance at freedom, cuffed to the door or not. At the right moment she might deliver a properly placed kick to the head and end this.

  "I could look for the towers while you drive." She didn't want to mention the phone's signal meter, because for all she knew the signal was perfectly fine out here. She wanted his attention on solving the problem, not assessing it.

  She opted for silence, allowing his fuzzy logic to sort out her suggestions. To push too hard was to push him away.

  "I'm going to put the gag back on, and you're going to lie back down. We'll drive closer to town."

  To beg or plead was to admit subservience, and her job was to convince him of their partnership, to make herself needed and wanted. She fought off the temptation to whine and grovel. She took a breath and said calmly, "But when you reach him, he's going to want to hear my voice. Count on that! You know he will, Abby. And what then? Stop by the side of the road and pop the trunk? What if someone drives by? But a man and a woman in the front seat of a car-what's so suspicious about that? I'm trying to help you, Abby. Obviously, I want to live. I think he'll do what you want. I really do. But he's going to want to hear my voice." She added, "You could make him release Courtney. Have her delivered somewhere. It might take a little time-"

  "Shut up!" he roared, his eyes floating in their sockets. Dizzy. Dazed. He shook the phone again, pulled it close to his face and pressed a couple buttons. He held it to his ear, yanked it away in frustration and ended the attempted call with a final stab of a finger.

  "You fuck this up," he warned her, "and you will know so much pain you will wish you were dead. You will beg me to kill you." He grinned wickedly. "And I won't. Not until I'm good and ready. Not until I've had every inch of you." He added, "You ask Courtney about that. She knows."

  He stepped forward. Daphne could taste her impending freedom.

  CHAPTER 57

  " Osbourne can't kill the system, Sarge," LaMoia reported from the passenger seat, "but they can lock a phone out from the entire network-all the carriers-and that's what he's done: He's locked out both Matthews' and the number we have for Flek. Both phones will get a circuit-busy signal."

  "Flek is known to carry more than one cloned phone," Boldt reminded. "He's got to kill the system." Samway had said he had only the one, but Boldt wasn't convinced.

  LaMoia repeated the request into his phone and then listened. "Don't work that way," LaMoia said. "AirTyme's one of three carriers. Only some of the towers are theirs. They attempt an AirTyme handshake first, but if that fails, it's rerouted, first come, first serve-the call's going to go out."

  "What about the location?"

  "A couple minutes more to pinpoint it exactly, but we know it came from off-island."

  "My phone's
good to go?" Boldt asked.

  LaMoia checked and awaited an answer. "That's affirm, Sarge."

  Boldt flipped open his phone, pulled his notepad from his jacket and dialed a number, all with one hand. LaMoia maintained the open line to Gaynes. They crossed the bridge at Agate Passage. Still on the phone, Boldt pulled the car over in a park and ride just ahead of the signage for the turn to Suquamish-Indianola.

  He listened more than he talked, and then hung up the call. "You know how I feel about coincidence," he told LaMoia.

  "What's up?"

  "Poulsbo PD never made contact at the restaurant, but they have this nine-eleven call reporting a taillight of an old Eldorado sending SOS out its right blinker."

  "Son of a bitch."

  "They observed our request for radio silence, but still alerted their cars via their MDTs," mobile data terminals. "Nobody caught sight of the Eldorado. But the caller reported that it turned off three-oh-five here," he said, pointing to the intersection not a hundred yards down the road. "North, toward Suquamish." Boldt added, "I say we trust this one. If it's right, it buys us a hell of a lot of time over running out to Poulsbo and back." Boldt looked out at the dark road. "If it's wrong information, or if it's Flek trying to mislead us, then we lose any possibility of a jump on him."

  "Old Indian saying," LaMoia replied, his jaw wired, his words sounding drunken. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

  "That certainly helps a lot," Boldt said sarcastically. But it did help; it briefly lightened the moment.

  "I can see her doing that, Sarge. The SOS. You know? Who else but Matthews? You know her better than anyone. What do you think?"

  Boldt pushed down the accelerator and turned right at the intersection. North, toward Suquamish.

  CHAPTER 58

  " This thing is out of hand. Does it feel that way to you?" Daphne asked. He didn't know handcuffs. He'd clamped the left cuff way too tightly to her wrist so that her hand felt cold and her wrist felt broken. She winced with pain every time the car bumped, which on the dirt road was every few yards.

  "No talking." He said this, but lacked the authority of his earlier insistence. She knew he wanted to talk, needed to talk. It was the only way for him to build his confidence.

  "Have you thought about why we've pursued you?" she asked.

  "To fry my ass," the driver answered.

  "You see? It is out of hand. That's not it at all."

  "Right," he snapped. He reached for a beer. It was his fourth.

  "Have you thought about how Davie would play this?"

  "Don't you talk about him!"

  "He wouldn't know how to play it, would he, Abby? Because Davie wasn't like you. Davie took the straight road. Davie was doing fine until you talked him into letting you hit that delivery."

  "Shut up!"

  "There's a tower," she said, pointing through the windshield. Sweet and sour-she needed to be both for him, play both roles herself, one moment the accuser, one moment the accomplice.

  Flek slowed, but kept driving. He tried the phone and once again nearly lost his patience. He reached over the backseat and fished in her purse and came out with her phone. Same reaction to his attempt with it.

  Daphne didn't believe in coincidence-Boldt had trained her not to, along with every other detective with whom he'd worked over the years. If the circuit was busy, then that was Boldt's doing. And if that was Boldt's doing, then she still had hope.

  "What the fuck am I thinking?" Flek said. He sped up the car. It had finally occurred to him, she realized, to use a pay phone. She had wondered how long it might take him to see this. Get him into town-Boldt was on the same page as she.

  The clock continued running in her head. Osbourne had said triangulation took time. Did they have a location on her? Was there a radio car waiting around the next corner, and three more coming up their tailpipe?

  "My guess is Davie would encourage you to work it out, not get yourself killed."

  "I told you to shut up!" He shoved the beer can onto the dash so that it wedged tightly between glass and vinyl. He tugged the gun from his waist and extended his trembling arm toward the floor of the car.

  "No!" she hollered.

  But Flek pulled the trigger, shooting her left foot. The bullet traveled through her and out the floor of the car. "That's one!" he shouted madly, saliva spraying from his wet

  lips. "I got eight more in here, and I'll use every damn one before I bother to finish you. NOW YOU SHUT UP!"

  For a moment she felt no pain whatsoever, her brain frozen with shock. But then the burning began. It raced up her leg, through her gut, and she vomited.

  "You disgusting bitch!" he screamed at close range, beating her with the butt of the gun, directly on the wound he'd caused with the bottle.

  Her head swooned, but she struggled for consciousness and managed to sit herself upright and turn her head slowly to face him. The burning in her left foot was now an inferno. She could barely hear her own voice as she spoke. "What now, Abby?"

  "Shut the fuck up!"

  "You're going to have to bandage that, or pull a tourniquet, or I'm going to bleed out on you. And then what? Then I'm a dead cop, and Boldt isn't going to deal with you. You're damned if I die, Abby." She needed to speak but could barely find the strength. "You… know.. that, don't you?" Her words were long strings of stretched taffy, her mouth disconnected from her brain. The purple goo loomed at the edges of her eyes, pulsing with each tick of her heart. She pushed it back, but it consumed her, determined to shield her from this pain. For a moment she maintained consciousness. She thought she saw a phone booth up ahead. A streetlight in the rain. But then the black hood of unconsciousness slipped over her head, and all hope was lost.

  CHAPTER 59

  The fix on the transmission point for Flek's first call came only moments after Boldt turned right off 305 and onto Suquamish Way NE, a minute or two after Daphne had been shot.

  Reading from the back of his hand where he'd scribbled notes, LaMoia said, "The exact fix is North 47 degrees 45.45 minutes, West 122, 36.2 minutes. Give or take forty feet."

  "In English," Boldt requested.

  "A couple hundred yards east of something called Stottlemeyer Road NE. It's in the north end of the Indian Reservation." LaMoia fished the official SPD road atlas from the glove box where it was required to reside, and leafed through the nearly three inches of pages at a blistering speed. "You know what, Sarge?"

  "It isn't in there."

  "Correctomundo," LaMoia answered.

  "Dispatch!" they said, nearly in unison.

  "What do you want to bet they can track us from there?" Each and every SDP vehicle now carried a GPS location transmitter, enabling Dispatch computers to monitor location. On radio cars that carried MDT terminals, this same technology allowed patrol officers to monitor their GPS position on a moving map, and follow computer-generated directions for the fastest possible route, taking into account reported traffic delays. Boldt's unmarked car lacked the MDT, but still possessed a GPS transmitter in the trunk.

  "The system goes out wireless," Boldt instructed his sergeant. LaMoia never paid any attention to in-house memos. "As long as our phones are working, so's the GPS."

  "It's ringing," LaMoia said. Less than a minute later Boldt turned left on Totten Road, following LaMoia's instruction. Precise directions followed, as a woman twenty-three miles away, on the other side of Puget Sound, stared at a computer screen tracking Boldt's car to within a margin of error of forty feet.

  Right on Widme Road, and straight through the dark woods, Boldt driving twenty miles an hour over the posted limit and nearly rolling the car on a sharp right that appeared out of nowhere. The road bent immediately left and continued to its conclusion at Lincoln, where LaMoia pointed left and the driver followed.

  The darkness combined with the rain to lower visibility to a matter of yards, not miles. Two cars passed them on Lincoln, both Boldt and LaMoia straining and turning to get the best possible loo
k.

  "I don't think so," LaMoia said after the first. "That ain't no Eldorado," he declared of the second.

  "You're the gear head," Boldt said, his driving strained by the divided attention. "Tell Dispatch we want a 'Lights Out' a quarter mile from our last turn. We'll leave the car there and go on foot."

  "Affirm," LaMoia answered.

  Stottlemeyer was the fourth right.

  "Three tenths of a mile, Sarge," LaMoia announced.

  Boldt pulled the car over into muddy gravel, less than two hundred yards from where Flek had phoned him. The moment his hands left the wheel, they grabbed for the vest in the backseat. He announced, "One vest, one field operative." LaMoia looked ready to object. "You'll stay here, monitor the Poulsbo channel, and keep with Gaynes at AirTyme." He fiddled with his own phone. "Mine is set to vibrate. You call if anything breaks. I call if I spot them."

  "And when you do?" LaMoia said optimistically.

  "I'll try to direct you in around back. Then we ad lib. If I can't get close, then I'll make myself a target and lure him to where you get a shot."

  "Oh, yeah. There's a brilliant plan. There's a good match: my nine-millimeter on him; his German scope on you."

  "We ad lib," Boldt repeated. "We're not going to know 'til we see the situation. Maybe there's an old farmhouse or something. Maybe we wait for backup."

  "You'll pardon my rank, Lieutenant, but you're full of shit at the moment. You're not making any sense."

  "My orders are for you to stay in the car," Boldt said.