Last Shot at Justice (A Thomas Family Novel Book 1)

by Kristi Cramer

  Nancy leaned against the desk and smiled down at him. “Well, if you do move here, Blue, you be sure to look me up, okay? I’ll show you a good time...around town.”

  “Thank you for the offer, ma’am.” Nancy didn’t move, and Blue shifted the chair a little, away from the desk. In general, he liked assertive women, but Nancy was not his type. Too much of a snob, too high-speed, too skinny, and too blonde, not to mention too fake. In his opinion, a woman with a clean face was more attractive than this one’s heavy makeup, strong musky perfume, and hairspray. “Really, ma’am, I have a schedule to meet.”

  The smile left her face and she stood abruptly. “Oh, well, excuse me. I need to get back to work helping people.”

  Before he could say anything else, which probably wouldn’t have helped matters anyway, Nancy was gone. He breathed a sigh of relief and scooted the chair closer to the desk.

  The workspace was small, and little walls shielded his neighbor on the left from seeing his screen, and him from seeing theirs. The machine to the right was not being used, but someone had rustled the chair away to use somewhere else.

  Taking the mouse in his right hand, he wiggled it back and forth, trying to find the pointer. When he found it, he stared at it for a moment, wondering just what he was supposed to be doing. Scroll, Nancy had said, but he had only a vague notion of what that meant.

  “You look perplexed,” Mitzi said, coming up behind him. After Nancy and her hairspray and hundred-mile-an-hour-talking and movements, Mitzi’s presence seemed laid back by comparison, and her crooked smile was a welcome sight.

  He returned her smile, forgetting for the moment that he was mad at her. “I confess I don’t know the first thing about computers. My school had a few, but those weren’t classes I paid much attention to. They only required one class, the rest were by choice. If I’m honest, I’d tell you that when I bothered to show up, I was thinking about getting home to the ranch for some chore or another that needed doing before I could go out riding with my friends.”

  “How did you pass the class?”

  “Low standards, Miss Mitzi. Most of the teachers cut us ranch kids some slack on those kinds of classes. The ones who were interested got educated good, but kids like me, well, we just got passed up with the bare minimum. I turned a machine on, once, and that got me a C-minus.”

  He was exaggerating a bit, but he had never been able to foster any enthusiasm for computers. The family plan had always been that his big brother, Trip, would take care of the office particulars of running the ranch. Blue was required to do only what he loved most: ride horses, rope cattle, and in general get dirty working and playing outside. Staring at a computer screen, well...he just couldn’t be bothered.

  “That’s disgraceful,” Mitzi said, sounding shocked.

  “Yeah, I don’t reckon it would fly these days. But hey, who knew I might actually need to know how to do this stuff?”

  Mitzi rolled her eyes and reached for the mouse. “I’ll teach you some basics, someday when we have time,” she said, though her voice drifted off as they both seemed to realize at the same moment that time was something they didn’t have a lot of. Once they were done here in the library, he was planning to leave her to her own troubles, move on, hopefully save a little girl, then go back to finding work....

  Mitzi cleared her throat. “What did your little friend find for you, Blue?” she asked, turning her gaze to the screen.

  Glad to change the subject away from one of his bigger weaknesses and away from the future, Blue looked at the computer with her. “She said it was a list from the Planning Office of all the projects in Englewood right now.”

  “Okay. Let’s look. We can eliminate anything that’s not housing, since you said it was an apartment complex. I’ll read them off, you write them down.”

  Blue reached for the scratch paper and pencil on the table and began to write. He appreciated how she spoke slow and clear, so that he didn’t have to keep asking her to repeat herself. He took down the names of the project, addresses, contractors, and the owners. There were four.

  “Now,” said Mitzi. “Let’s look at them on a map, and see if you recognize any of the areas.”

  She was still standing and leaning over him to use the keyboard and mouse, but her proximity was appealing to him, unlike Nancy’s. She was distracting for a whole different set of voluptuous reasons.

  “Do you want to sit?” he asked abruptly, remembering his manners at last.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “The machine is checked out to you. Your little friend might object if I sat down.”

  She was focused on the machine, working to help him, and he tried to bring his attention back to the matter at hand. Her intent focus made him think perhaps she really was sorry she hadn’t told him the extent of trouble he’d let himself in for. And maybe she really did want to help out in finding the girl.

  Looking up at the screen, he realized she had opened some kind of map and was somehow putting pins in it that apparently marked the four construction sites.

  “Any of these locations look familiar?” she asked.

  Leaning forward, he peered at the street names around the pins, trying to remember which ones he had driven on to get to the job site.

  “Two of these are too close to I-25,” he said, ruling them out right away. “The sheet-rocker from the 8-Ball had me meet him off exit 201 on his lunch break, and I followed him in. I distinctly remember exiting the freeway and going quite a few blocks before turning.”

  A third site was right off Highway 85. So was the fourth one, but it butted up against a park, just around the corner from another park. “That one,” he said, pointing at the map. “By Rotolo Park. I don’t suppose we can look closer....”

  “Well, the picture won’t necessarily be current, but let me try this.” She clicked some buttons, and the screen changed to a satellite map. Then she moved a little yellow man over the streets, and suddenly the screen pulled in, swooping down to street level and coming into focus. It was just like he was standing there on Huron Street.

  “Hey, that’s nifty,” he said.

  “Old tech, Blue. Here, we can get a 360 view.” She clicked another button and the view spun a slow circle. “See anything you recognize?”

  “Yeah, that’s the park, all right. They’ve knocked down some of these houses here on this end to put in the complex. The play structures are right there for the kids. I remember thinking that was a nice bonus for renters.”

  “Well, there you are then. I’ll print up a map for you that will get you right there.” She clicked a few more buttons, then did something to make the map go away.

  “I’ve got to learn how to work one of these,” he said ruefully, though it still didn’t hold a candle to riding his horse to actually go see a place.

  “They’re a handy tool. I’ll go grab your map off the printer. Go ahead and click around. You can’t hurt anything.”

  Mitzi walked away and Blue grabbed the mouse and moved the pointer around on the screen. He saw a box that had the word “News” under it, and he moved the pointer to it and tapped the mouse like he had seen Mitzi do.

  A box opened up on the screen with headlines and small pictures, and Blue scanned through them. One caught his eye: a story about the kidnapping. He put the pointer over the picture and tapped on the mouse again, not sure what would happen.

  The screen went blank for a moment, but then came back with a bigger picture and an article. The caption on the picture said it was a family portrait from a year ago, with Leigh Ann in front and her mother, Mayor Suzanne Wharton, behind the girl’s right shoulder. Behind her on the left, with his left hand resting on the girl’s shoulder....

  “Mitzi?” he said quietly, hoping the steps he heard behind him belonged to her. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up. “Did the ring you remembered with the hypnotist look anything like that?” He pointed at the screen.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Mitzi turned her gaze slowl
y from Blue to the screen, and narrowed her eyes as she took in the photo. There, on the pinky of the hand that rested on Leigh Ann’s shoulder, was the same ring she remembered on the hand of the mystery man from that room. Her gaze traveled up the arm to the face of the man it belonged to. Calvin Cantrell, Mayor Wharton’s husband, and....

  “Blue, what’s the name of the contractor on that job site? The Huron Street job site.”

  Blue looked down at his notes. “Um. Cantrell & Associates. Why?”

  “Son of a.... Come on, Blue.”

  She closed the news window and stood up, glancing around before she headed for the door.

  “What is it?” he asked, picking up his hat and following her.

  Chapter Eleven

  “She’s dead, isn’t she? Why else haven’t they called with their demands? She must be dead.”

  Mayor Suzanne Wharton whirled on Agent Arlen Maxon, the FBI negotiator who sat on the edge of the couch, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands folded in front of him.

  Agent Maxon projected cool assurance by design, an air helped along by the de rigueur black suit, starched white shirt, and faultless grooming habits encouraged by the Bureau. For Maxon, everything about his demeanor was calculated to foster calm without speaking, since speaking often had less than desirable effects. As the Mayor’s husband proceeded to prove.

  “Calm down,” Calvin Cantrell said, trying to capture his wife to bring her into his arms. She threw off his hands and stalked away from him, pacing the length of their huge game room where the FBI had set up shop.

  The antique pool table, centerpiece to all the gaming features—foosball, English darts, elaborate video game setup, board game nook, wet bar—in the thousand-square-foot room, was a frustration to the Mayor as she couldn’t pace in a straight line. She had to weave around the table, slowing her progress in the one activity that should have helped her feel productive.

  “Calm down? That’s my baby girl out there, alone! It’s been forty-eight hours and counting, and they still haven’t called.” She turned back to the FBI agent. “Agent Maxon?”

  Maxon watched the couple’s interactions closely, following the time-honored tradition of not ruling anyone out as a suspect when it came to high-profile kidnappings.

  They were a good looking couple.

  She possessed a severe beauty with tragic undertones—not surprising, given her history—graced by impeccable business attire over a thin frame that spoke of too much work and not enough time for exercising and healthy eating. All indicators reflected that rarest of all rarities: an honest politician.

  At least ten years her junior, Cantrell had been captain of his college football team, the one all the coeds wanted to “land.” Strong, good-looking, and successful. His crisp business suit attested to the prosperity of his construction company. Maxon had uncovered no skeletons in Cantrell’s closet.

  The Mayor was the perfect example of a powerful person rendered powerless by this outrageous act of violence against her family. She was fatalistic, bordering on despair or panic. Caged and frustrated by the lack of anything constructive to do. Unwilling to concede that the only thing to do was wait.

  The husband...Maxon hadn’t figured him out yet. It was obvious he cared about his wife; he adored her. He watched her with nothing but care and devotion in his eyes.

  But something was giving Maxon a fuzzy feeling. Cantrell was sending all the right signals, but something just fell a little flat. And the Mayor had yet to direct any anger toward the criminals. Fear and frustration, yes. Anger...not yet.

  Maxon knew there was no such thing as a formula for how people might react in a kidnapping situation, but his gut was telling him there was more here than met the eye.

  “Agent Maxon?” Suzanne repeated.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, it’s not unheard of for kidnappers to wait extended lengths of time before first contact, Ms. Wharton. They want the parents to be as desperate as they can make them in the hopes of gaining leverage. Full cooperation. Some kidnappers figure that they can’t beat us to the punch, can’t get to you before you can get help. Some of them play waiting games. The good news is your daughter should be perfectly safe during this waiting period.”

  “Should be?”

  Maxon shook his head slightly. “There’s always the possibility that this isn’t a ransom situation, Ms. Wharton.”

  The Mayor stared at him for a moment, then reached out and picked up a framed photograph of her daughter. She held the photo to her breast. “Then how do we draw him out? If it is a ransom, how do we draw the bastard out?”

  Agent Maxon looked at her husband when he spoke next. “We start beating the bushes, so to speak. Start looking for a body. We call off the ransom and rescue, and start calling it a recovery mission. Make them think we’re giving up.”

  “What will that accomplish?” she asked, skeptical.

  “In my experience, Ms. Wharton, a kidnapper has a well-defined window in which to act. If the family isn’t scared enough, they won’t pay. If they think the victim is dead, they will be angry and won’t pay. The family has to be desperate, but still believe their child is alive. That is the time to make the phone call. The kidnappers may begin to panic if you go on television to mourn the loss of your daughter.”

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Mitzi and Blue were almost out the door of the library when they passed the coffee shop where a television—silenced but with closed captions running—caught her eye. It was a picture of her in front of the ATM, taken at the Circle K as she looked up at a security camera. She paused to read the captions.

  The murder suspect was last seen with a companion who appears to be an accomplice. Local hypnotherapist Doctor James Smith encountered the suspect outside his office in Westminster.

  The screen cut to the scene outside the hypnotherapist’s office, with Doctor Smith surrounded by a gaggle of reporters and a couple of uniformed police officers. The captions went on:

  “No, she and her companion were not violent in any way. She asked me to help her remember something, but I’m not that kind of hypnotist. I help people quit smoking or get over phobias. After I told her that, she drove away.”

  “Did you know the danger you were in?” one reporter asked.

  “I don’t believe I was in any danger whatsoever.”

  The image cut back to the news anchors, and the closed captioning continued.

  Doctor Smith told police he would help in any way he could, but could only tell investigators that the car was old and white, and her companion was a tall white male in blue jeans and a dark t-shirt.

  He described the suspect as wearing a black jacket and blue shirt. When pressed for a better description, he joked that he was bad about details, and that perhaps he needed a forensic hypnotist as well.

  “Bless you, Doctor Smith,” Mitzi murmured. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Blue had been watching the people on the sidewalks. “What did he say?” he asked when Mitzi turned away from the TV, but she just motioned him outside.

  Once they were out on the street, Mitzi grabbed Blue’s hand and pulled him to walk close to her. “Doc Smith is an angel. He only gave the barest description of us. What’s more important is that the contractor on that job site of yours is Calvin Cantrell, the Mayor’s husband. The ring on his finger in that picture is custom made. Most CU alumni rings are white gold, not yellow gold and white gold. The ring I saw in that room that night was two-toned. I bet you dollars to doughnuts that Chief Hatfield paid off Calvin Cantrell to kidnap his own stepdaughter.”

  “But why?”

  “That, my friend, is the million-dollar question.”

  They were waiting at the corner for the light to change so they could cross Broadway when Mitzi spotted a uniformed policeman coming up 13th Avenue, directly in their path.

  Switching her grip from Blue’s hand to a more affectionate clasp around his arm, she turned to face him. “Don’t look now, but we have a man in blue at our twelv
e o’clock. Let’s cross this way.” She urged him across 13th, then they strolled down the sidewalk that angled in through a broad lawn toward the Civic Center Cultural Complex.

  Casting a glance over Blue’s shoulder, Mitzi saw the policeman looking their way and speaking into the radio mic on his shoulder. She recognized him as a beat cop in her district. Gary Neil. Prick extraordinaire. Great.

  “Hurry up,” she urged, pulling Blue faster down the sidewalk, facing him so she could keep her eye on the cop. “He’s coming this way.”

  They walked past the stone sculptures and into the courtyard, and Mitzi looked around, trying to decide which way to go. On the left side were a café and coffee shop; on the other was the Art Museum.

  Cutting through the museum might put more people between them and the police, but that was no guarantee. She hadn’t seen the current exhibits, so she didn’t know what to expect inside. She imagined wading through gaggles of schoolchildren while armed police and guards chased them. Not an option.

  The café would just be another box to get trapped in, but running in her wretched shoes meant risking a fall or, worse, a broken bone.

  “This way, hurry,” she said, pushing Blue toward the café and out of the sight line of the officer coming down the sidewalk after them. They turned right before they reached the cafe door, and, running outright now, they reached the corner of the building and turned left.

  Seeing a break in traffic, Mitzi pulled Blue across the street and then down the alley between the Broadway Plaza Hotel and a parking lot, keeping close to the cars as they ran. She didn’t dare look back over her shoulder for fear of tripping.

  With luck, the buildings on either side of the alley would soon obscure them from the uniform, who would have had to pause and check the café.

  “The car is back that way!” Blue protested, pointing behind them.

  “We’ll get back to it once we lose them.”

  “You think we can lose them on foot?”

  “Now that we’re out of the HALO, we have a better chance on foot than we do in a car in this traffic,” she said.