“Scottie’s composite led us to a dead end, unfortunately. We’re hoping you can remember something she may have left out, a distinguishing mark like a scar or a tattoo.”
“I’m not sure I have anything to add, but I’m certainly willing to try.”
Will entered the room, slightly out of breath. “We have a lead.” He waved a piece of paper in the air. “A friend of mine, an acquaintance really, approached me after the press conference. He saw a white cargo truck, like a small U-Haul moving truck without the logo, leaving the back alley around one o’clock last night.”
Baird’s eyes grew wide. “This might be the break we need. Bring him in here. We need to talk to him.”
“You can’t. He insists on remaining anonymous. He was visiting a friend last night when he spotted the truck. A friend his wife wouldn’t necessarily approve of, if you know what I mean.” Will handed Baird the slip of paper. “This woman lives across from the entrance to the alley. My friend got a glimpse of the license plates—blue and gold, probably Pennsylvania tags, with the last four digits nine-eight-four-five.”
Baird snatched the note from Will. “Good work.” He slapped Will on the back. “We’ll get on this right away.”
When Baird darted out of the room, Guy turned to Will. “According to Baird, they are setting up the main call center in their headquarters in Washington. I’m heading back there now. Care to join me?”
30
Guy admired the ease in which Will communicated with the staffers in the call center at FBI headquarters. These people were working hard to find his sister and he wanted to show his appreciation, to make their work easier. He joked with them in a way that lightened the mood without diminishing the seriousness of the situation. He remembered their names, inquired about their health, and commented on the family photos they had pinned to their cubicles. He brought up coffee and bagels from the kiosk in the lobby, ordered in pizza for lunch, and for a sugar boost mid-afternoon, he offered Krispy Kreme doughnuts and homemade cookies from the bakery down the street. His presence in Command Central was a constant reminder of their purpose. He showed them pictures of Scottie on his iPad, and told them stories of their life growing up on the farm.
The next big break in the case came on the afternoon of the second day. Guy instructed the sketch artist to make a few minor adjustments to Scottie’s depiction of the beast—thickening the eyebrows, narrowing the jaw, and adding an angry-looking scar that crossed his forehead—which led to the positive identification of Popkov’s thug. Born and raised in Beckley, West Virginia, Felix Lightfoot never graduated from high school. His last known occupation was as a car mechanic in Texarkana, Arkansas. When the FBI issued an all points bulletin for Lightfoot and released the sketch to the national news networks, a new wave of calls flooded the call center.
The tips numbered in the thousands, and while the FBI took all of the calls seriously—aside from the ludicrous reports of alien invasions—they lacked the manpower to investigate each and every one.
Guy and Will put in eighteen-hour days, doing everything they could to help. They worked at night until eleven, and then grabbed a quick bite to eat and a beer on the way back to Guy’s apartment. Guy never heard Will complain about the few hours of sleep he managed to clock on his sofa, but the exhaustion soon became evident in the dark circles under his eyes.
On their third night together, Will received a phone call from his parents and left the restaurant so he could talk in private. Guy watched him through the front window, pacing up and down the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched and his face pinched in concentration.
At the sight of his anguished face, Guy asked, “Is everything all right?” when Will returned.
“My parents finally managed to get off the cruise ship. They are in Seattle, boarding a plane for Washington as we speak.” Will gulped down his beer. “You think I’m overprotective about Scottie. My dad is going to rattle more than one cage when he gets here.”
*
Stuart and Barbara Westport arrived at Command Central mid-morning the following day, straight from the airport judging from their rumpled clothing. Guy could’ve picked Scottie’s father out of a crowd, his resemblance to his daughter was so apparent in his sandy hair and blue eyes. Stuart wasted no time in dragging Roger Baird off to a nearby conference room, leaving Will to introduce his mother around to the staffers.
Barbara accepted Guy’s outstretched hand with the same warm smile and brown eyes as Will’s. “Guy Jordan is it? I believe I’ve heard a bit about you.”
Guy’s face beamed red. “Considering the situation, I don’t imagine any of it was good.”
“No one is casting any blame on you.” Barbara’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my daughter dearly, and I’m terrified for her safety, but she would have gotten herself into this mess with or without your help.”
“I’m concerned for her safety as well, Mrs. Westport. I haven’t known Scottie long, but she means a great deal to me. She’s an original.”
“Thank heavens for small favors.” Barbara tugged on her son’s arm. “Don’t you go getting yourself kidnapped. There’s not enough mahogany hair color to cover my gray roots as it is.”
Will wrapped his arms around his mother. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m perfectly fine sitting behind a desk all day managing other people’s money.”
He turned his mother loose, and before long she’d taken his place on the call center floor, asking questions and listening in on the calls.
Later on in the afternoon, Will pulled Guy aside. “Let’s duck out of here for a while. I could really use a drink.”
They snuck out of the office to an establishment across the street, a tavern with wood-paneled walls and red leather booths that had been around since the Kennedy era. They found empty seats at the bar and ordered Scotch on the rocks from the surly bartender.
“I can’t do this anymore, dude,” Will said. “Now that my father is here to herd the cattle, I’m cutting out.”
Guy nearly choked on his drink.
“Easy there, man,” Will said, smacking Guy on the back. “I mean that figuratively, you know? I hope you don’t think I’m referring to the staffers as cattle.”
“You don’t say?” Guy wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I found it funny, because I used to be a cattle farmer. I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.”
“Well, I’ll be damn,” Will said, shaking his head in amazement. “My sister done found herself a cowboy.” He leaned back in his seat and crossed his legs. He squinted his eyes as he studied Guy, as though seeing him in a whole new light. “I knew there was something different about you. You’re not the run-of-the-mill, cut-from-pinstripe-cloth politician.”
“Ha-ha.” Guy drained the rest of his Scotch. “So now that you’ve had your laugh, big guy, where are you going?”
“To find my sister, because no one else seems to be capable of handling the job.”
“How in the hell will you know where to look?”
Will removed a folded sheaf of papers from his back pocket and placed it on the bar in front of them. “I’m convinced they are hiding her somewhere in the Poconos.” They studied the traffic-camera surveillance reports. “The cargo truck entered Pennsylvania, but there is no sign of it ever leaving. And,”—he flipped to a map he’d printed from the Internet—”there are two separate sightings, both from convenience store clerks, of a man matching Lightfoot’s description, only five miles from one another. Here and here.” He jabbed his finger at the two red Xs he’d marked on the map.
“When do we leave?” Guy asked.
Will looked up from the map, surprised. “Don’t you have a campaign to manage or something? I’m pretty sure you’re going to get fired soon if you don’t go back to work.”
“I don’t care if they do fire me. Nothing else matters to me right now, except finding Scottie.”
Will signaled the bartender for another round. “Then grab your pistol and saddle up your
horse, partner. We’ve got ourselves a manhunt.”
31
Time stretched ahead of Scottie like the Sahara Desert, long and bleak and desolate. Without windows to offer sunlight and darkness, with only the dim glow from the ceiling bulb to cast shadows over her concrete prison, Scottie had no way of differentiating between daytime and night. Even though the meals Popkov brought her were all the same—sandwiches made from processed cheese on stale bread—the timing of the delivery offered the only structure to her existence. The shortest period in between sandwiches was from breakfast to lunch, followed by a slightly longer stretch before dinner. Nighttime was the hardest. The hunger pangs she experienced between dinner and breakfast kept her tossing and turning throughout the night.
Loneliness played tricks on her mind. She heard voices—her parents’ and Will’s and Brad’s—taunting her, reminding her of all the bad decisions she’d made. She vacillated between clawing at the walls in rage and sobbing for long hours in self-pity. She was supposed to be at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Instead, she was being held hostage by a lunatic who planned to torture her to death. Hadn’t she suffered enough during the past two years with three miscarriages and a failed marriage?
Popkov appeared alone when he brought her meals, but she sensed Felix lurking in the shadows at the top of the stairs. The Russian mobster didn’t care to get his manicured hands dirty. He left the stabbing and shooting and bone breaking to his thug.
She asked for things—a blanket, a toothbrush, something to tie her hair back with—but Popkov refused her requests. It creeped her out the way his eyes roamed her body, the way he brushed her hair off her face and ran his finger down her cheek. She didn’t dare think about what he had in store for her.
On her second day in the basement, during one of her many searches for an escape route, she discovered a trapdoor in the concrete, painted the same drab gray as the floor and walls. Beneath the hatch, she found human bone—skulls and femurs and humeri.
Scottie gasped. I sure as shit do not want to end up like these poor women, forgotten forever, my bones buried in some dank basement. I need a plan and fast. If I don’t fight my way free, these maniacs will make sure I suffer.
When Popkov delivered her sandwich that night, she begged him once again to set her free. “Just let me go. I’ll never say a word to the authorities. I promise.”
He tucked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “Stop torturing yourself, my little one. The sooner you accept your fate, the better off you’ll be. You belong to me now. A lot depends on your behavior, of course. But the choice is mine whether you live or die.”
Scottie took a step back from him. “You might as well kill me now and get it over with, because I have no intention of making nice to a loser like you.”
His jaw tightened. “You need to learn to control that fiery temper of yours. If you don’t obey, I’ll be forced to make your loved ones pay.” He held his cell phone up for Scottie to see the photograph of her brother and Guy standing together in what appeared to be her front yard. When she grabbed at the phone, Popkov jerked it away from her.
“Leave them alone, you bastard. They have nothing to do with any of this.” Scottie sank to the floor. She was no match for this lunatic. If she didn’t obey, Popkov would kill Guy and Will, all because of her.
She couldn’t let that happen.
To keep up her strength, Scottie ate every crumb of the stale cheese sandwiches he brought her. She did jumping jacks and push-ups and planks—hardcore workouts she’d learned in her exercise class at home. She contemplated the crippling blows she’d learned in her self-defense class and practiced the few karate moves she remembered from the lessons she and Will took when they were young. She worked up a sweat, and with no clothes to change into or soap to wash her body, she could barely tolerate living in her own skin. But that only made her work harder.
She took to spending long hours sitting at the top of the stairs eavesdropping on her captors on the other side of the door. Over time, she learned their habits. The house was mostly quiet aside from the constant drone of sports anchors commentating on one baseball game after another. She suspected Popkov lived somewhere else, somewhere close by, and she began to anticipate his visits by the sound of his car in the driveway, followed by the opening and closing of the front door. After his arrival, a hushed exchange took place between the two men for several minutes before Popkov’s visit to the basement. On most mornings after breakfast, she heard the sound of a louder engine in the driveway—the sound of Felix leaving in the truck—and the reporting on the television switched from sports to news. With her ear pressed to the door, Scottie listened intently for any information regarding her disappearance. But she heard nothing. As far as she could tell, no one even knew she was missing.
At night, as soon as Popkov left after the evening sandwich delivery, Felix made frequent runs to the back of the house, to the room beside the basement staircase—a kitchen judging by the sound of the refrigerator door opening and beer tops popping. After ten or twelve of these trips, the stairs above her groaned under the pressure of Felix’s enormous body as he lumbered up to bed. How easy it would’ve been for her to slip out at night while Felix was asleep. She tried everything, prying the hinges and picking at the lock and throwing her weight against it, but the door wouldn’t budge.
She was desperate for an escape plan, but with only her bare hands as a weapon, all her ideas seemed futile. Then, during one of Popkov’s sandwich deliveries, when he knelt down beside her to caress her arm, she caught a glimpse of a revolver strapped to his ankle. She knew how to handle guns. She’d learned to fire a pistol when she was a little girl. She’d blown countless Coke cans off tree stumps, and visited the local firing range many times. She’d been on bird hunting trips with her father—shooting doves, ducks, and geese. Hell, she’d even killed an eight-point buck with her bow and arrow. But whether she could take another human’s life—even if it meant saving her own—remained to be seen.
She only hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.
32
“Is your dad pissed at you for leaving Washington?” Guy asked when he and Will were headed up Interstate 95 in Will’s pickup truck.
“Hell no. Not my dad.” Will aimed his thumb at his chest. “My dad shoved a wad of twenty-dollar bills at me, gave me a big hug, and told me to kill the bastards if I got the chance.”
Guy snickered. “Sounds like my kind of man. What about your mom? What did she say?”
“She told me to bring Scottie home as soon as I could so she could turn her over her knee.” They both laughed, then Will’s face turned somber. “I’ve only seen my mom cry a handful of times in my life, but she hasn’t stopped crying since she got off the plane yesterday morning.”
“I didn’t see Baird before we left the office, did you?” Guy asked.
“No, and I wasn’t looking for him either. I honestly doubt he would be in support of our vigilante manhunt.”
When Will opened his center console for his sunglasses, Guy caught a glimpse of a pistol. “Dude, seriously? I can’t believe you are packing heat.”
“Damn right. I’m prepared for when we come face to face with Popkov,” Will said, his voice full of hatred.
Guy lifted the holster out of the console. “This is a sweet piece,” he said, admiring the stainless steel Ruger. “How long have you had it?”
“I bought it last year, when it first came on the market. It’s lightweight and easy to fire.”
Releasing the magazine, Guy noted that the pistol was fully loaded. “How many rounds does it hold?”
“Fifteen per magazine.” Will felt around inside the console. “There’s another magazine in here somewhere.” He found the cartridge chamber and handed it to Guy.
“You’re not messing around now, are you?”
“Damn straight. I won’t think twice about putting a bullet between Popkov’s eyes, if it means saving my sister’s life.”
Will and Guy rode for most of the four-hour trip in silence, each lost in thoughts of what-ifs and what-if-nots. When they arrived in the Poconos close to midnight, they checked in at the two convenience stores—the Minute Market and the Country Store—where Felix Lightfoot had been spotted. The night clerks at both establishments instructed them to return at seven to speak to the morning attendants. Too tired to keep their eyes open, they checked into a nearby roadside motel where they grabbed a few hours sleep—fully clothed on top of the tattered bedspreads. When Guy’s alarm sounded just before six, they brushed their teeth, pulled baseball caps down low over their uncombed hair, and returned to the trail.
The morning clerk, a fleshy woman in desperate need of dental work, was already behind the counter when they arrived at the Minute Market. Her name tag, Bobby Sue, confirmed that she was the employee they needed to speak with.
“Good morning, ma’am,” Guy said. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to have a word with you about this man.” He produced a copy of the character sketch of Felix Lightfoot.
She raised a penciled-on eyebrow. “You with the FBI?”
“Not exactly, but we’re helping the FBI with their investigation,” Guy said, and Will added, “My sister is the missing journalist they’ve been talking about on the news.”
She eyed Will up and down. “Ain’t that a pity. Pretty thing, your sister. She should learn where not to point her camera.”
Will’s jaw tightened. “Fu—”
“What can you tell us about this man?” Guy waved the sketch in front of the woman’s face before Will could finish.
“I ain’t seen him today. He usually comes in around ten thirty or eleven.”
Will’s body tensed. “You mean he has come in more than once?”
“Yep. Nearly every other day for as long as I’ve worked here.”
“So he lives in the area, as far as you know?” Guy asked.
She shrugged. “Only thing that makes any sense to me.”
Breaking the Story Page 18
