by Ken Fite
Burnett looked me over before turning away. Just the confirmation I was looking for, so I continued down that path.
“You gave him privileged access to some of your biggest stories after he was fired from the Tribune to keep the friendship. But you were really using him, weren’t you? Now that he’s dead, you’re on your own.”
Burnett pressed his lips together, like he was keeping himself from speaking. I looked at Jami and she nodded, telling me she thought I was onto something and I should keep going. “Why do you live all the way out here, Mr. Burnett? Why have a house in the suburbs instead of living in the city?”
That got a reaction and he didn’t hesitate to respond.
“There’s too much violence in the city,” he said. He was quick to answer that question—but why didn’t he answer my other questions? Why this one?
“Yet you thought we were here to kill you. That’s what you said.”
Burnett didn’t respond. I noticed that he kept glancing at the clock in the kitchen. He seemed to be getting more nervous by the minute. “Why do you keep checking the time? Are you expecting someone?”
“Just running late for work,” he said, and his eye twitched when he said it. I knew he was worried about something else.
I walked to the window by the front door and looked outside. Nobody was there.
“Here’s the deal, Mr. Burnett. I know you’re not telling me everything you know about Senator Keller’s kidnapping. The man who murdered David Mitchell, I believe it’s the same man who took Keller. He’s proved that he won’t hesitate to silence anyone who has information about what he’s doing. I believe you have that same information. You don’t have to tell me what you know. Agent Davis and I can leave. But when we do, understand that you’re going to be on your own again. But if you tell me what you know, then I can get this son of a bitch and you won’t have to worry about your own safety,” I said and stood over Burnett, waiting for him to give us his decision.
“I’m not saying another word without my lawyer,” he said.
I drew my gun and rested the barrel on his leg.
“Blake, stop!” Jami said and grabbed my arm and tried to pull it away.
“Tell me what you know!” I yelled in Burnett’s face, and he winced and looked away, fully expecting me to pull the trigger. I never would have. At least I hoped I’d never do that. For being a by-the-book kind of guy, the lines between right and wrong were starting to blur. I didn’t expect to react this way and I was shaking just as much as Burnett.
But the clock was ticking and my patience was wearing thin. Jami kept pulling at me and I left the gun resting on Burnett’s leg. “Tell me now!” I yelled again.
Suddenly, I heard a voice coming from the stairs.
“Daddy?” a little girl said, and she slowly walked down the steps, dragging a teddy bear behind her.
FORTY-ONE
THE TEENAGER STOOD and walked cautiously toward the kidnapper’s room. The light from the TV flickered against the adjacent walls as the kid walked as slowly as he could to make sure he didn’t make any noise. Once he got to the kidnapper’s room, he turned around and looked back at the senator, who gave the kid a nod and a thumbs-up. But then the kid looked inside the room for a moment and turned back around. He was terrified and slowly walked back to the senator.
“He’s not asleep!” he said as quietly as he could, distraught at the situation, and realizing he was trapped with no way out.
“What makes you think that? Did you see him moving?”
The kid shook his head.
“Then how do you know that he’s awake?”
“The TV is on. I think he’s watching it. When I walk past him, he’s going to grab me and kill me.”
There was a series of small rectangular windows in the wall above the area where the senator was sitting, which he hadn’t noticed before. “Look,” Keller said, pointing at the row of windows the best he could with his wrists handcuffed. “The sun is coming up. The man in the next room will wake up soon. And when he does and this entire room is lit, you’re not going to be able to hide here much longer.”
The kid shook his head again. “I can’t do it.”
“You can do it. You signaled to me earlier with your cell phone to let me know you were there, watching. You were brave and you let me know that I wasn’t alone, that you were going to help me.”
Tre pulled out his cell phone again, reminded of it by the senator’s words. “I still have no reception in here. I wanted to call 911 so bad. I couldn’t. We’re trapped.”
“No. I’m trapped. You can escape. Be brave, son.”
Tre slowly shook his head and turned away.
“I know you’re scared, but you can do this. It’s getting brighter in here. He’s going to wake up soon, and if you don’t leave now, you’re going to miss your only chance.”
“Alright,” the kid said.
“Do you remember what I told you? What to say after you tell them where I am?”
The kid nodded. “I remember,” he said and stood to walk back toward the kidnapper’s room that he’d have to pass in order to escape. He got to the door and once again looked inside. After he got a glimpse of the kidnapper, the kid turned around to look at the senator, who smiled.
He walked past the room and over to a large door that was cracked open far enough for the cords from the generator in the bay area to bring electricity into the two rooms the kidnapper was using, but the kid couldn’t squeeze through without opening the door farther. He placed two hands on the door and pulled.
The door’s rusty hinges made a creaking sound. He stopped and turned around and saw the kidnapper stir in his bed. He’s asleep, the kid thought to himself. He knew that if he kept trying to pull the door open slowly, it would make the same sound. He decided to yank it open instead, hoping it might not make any sound at all if he opened it with more force.
The kid could feel his heart pounding as he stood there, in plain sight of the kidnapper, his two hands still gripping the door, knowing that pulling it hard might not work, that it might still make a sound.
He yanked the door hard, and it made a terribly loud noise, like metal rubbing against metal. Tre ran.
As the kid entered the bay area of the warehouse, Keller saw the kidnapper run out of his room and look at the senator before he continued to run toward the bay where the kid was.
“He’s awake! He’s coming for you! Run!” Keller yelled to the kid.
The boy ran past the generator and the van and saw there was a single door to the left of the closed retractable bay door. He pushed the door open and ran into the deserted streets of the industrial park. Seconds later, the kidnapper followed the boy outside, determined to hunt him down and kill him.
FORTY-TWO
BURNETT TURNED TO his daughter. “Everything’s okay, baby girl. Daddy’s fine. Just stay in your room,” he said, but his daughter continued walking down the stairs. When her father saw she wasn’t going back to her room, he sat up in the chair and changed his demeanor to keep her from being frightened. I tucked my gun inside the belt behind my back.
“I heard yelling, Daddy,” she said as she got to the last step and Jami walked over to greet her. “Who are these people?”
“Friends,” Burnett said as Jami crouched down to talk to the little girl at her level once she reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Hi, my name’s Jami. What’s your name?”
The little girl looked at me and then her father, who smiled. “Maggie,” she said.
“Maggie—what a beautiful name. And who’s this?” Jami asked, pointing at the teddy bear that Burnett’s daughter was still holding in her hand.
“Teddy,” she said, and Jami giggled while Maggie hugged the teddy bear and started to smile.
“Are you and Teddy hungry?” Jami asked.
“Mmm-hmm.”
Jami stood and extended her hand. “Come on, Maggie. Let’s get you and Teddy some breakfast.”
Magg
ie grabbed Jami’s hand and gave her father a huge smile as they walked past him and into the kitchen together.
In that moment, as Jami held Maggie’s hand and put the little girl at ease, she looked like she could have been her mother. It was a completely different side of Jami than I had seen before. She was a natural.
As Burnett and I watched Jami pour little Maggie a bowl of cereal, the man’s smile disappeared. “Tell me what you know. Give me the information I need to get this guy,” I pressed.
He shook his head. “Not without my lawyer. I can’t go to jail, I’m all she has,” he replied, referring to Maggie. We heard laughter coming from the kitchen, a stark contrast to the conversation Burnett and I were having.
“You’re not going to jail. But I need to know everything while I still have time to catch the man who kidnapped Senator Keller and killed Mitchell. Either I go after him right now so you and Maggie can be safe, or you can call your lawyer to protect you.”
We heard more laughter coming from the kitchen, and Burnett sighed. “I called David last night. He said he’d have to call me back; I could hear him driving on his motorcycle. The senator was delayed, and I was hoping David might know why. When he called me back later, I found out why. Jim Keller had been kidnapped and Mitchell saw it happen. He followed the kidnapper from a safe distance. David even walked up to the warehouse where he believed Keller had been taken to. He said he heard sounds coming from inside and the entire industrial park was abandoned, so it had to be him.”
“Then what happened?”
“I tried to call him again after he broke the news about the kidnapping on his website, but he didn’t pick up. I wanted to know when he was going to release all of the information. He finally called me back an hour later and he sounded scared. He said the FBI had just come to his apartment to question him. I pleaded with him to release the information. He promised he would.”
Burnett looked back in the direction of the kitchen before he continued. “He gave me the address. Said he wanted someone else to have it just in case something happened to him. The FBI must have really shaken him up. He told me that they had taken his old laptop and cell phone. He wasn’t sure how much time it would buy him. He said he was tired and hungry. Then we hung up. I told myself that if he didn’t release the information by this morning, then I’d do it when I got to work today.”
“You have the address?” I asked.
“I wrote it down on a legal pad. First drawer on the right when you walk into the kitchen.”
I went into the room and Jami and Maggie turned to me. “What’s your name?” the little girl asked.
“Blake,” I said and smiled as I pulled the drawer open, picked up the legal pad and read the address: 6176 South Sayre Avenue.
FORTY-THREE
I FLIPPED THE legal pad around and showed it to Jami. “Got the address,” I told her, and she smiled. It was a huge relief to know that I finally had the senator’s location.
I walked back into the next room and helped Burnett stand; then I removed the handcuffs.
“We’re going to go now,” I heard Jami tell Maggie in the kitchen.
“Why do you have to go?”
“We just do, sweetie,” Jami answered.
“Do you have a safe place to go? Somewhere you and your daughter can stay until we can take this guy down?” I asked Burnett.
“Do you think he might come here?”
I nodded. “He was able to figure out that Mitchell knew where he was keeping the senator. I don’t know what his background is, but he was able to track him down and take him out. He seems more than capable of finding and silencing anyone he wants.”
Burnett thought for a second. “Her mom’s not in the picture. We can stay at my friend’s place for a while.” He picked up his daughter and held her with his left arm. Then he did something unexpected. He extended his right hand. “Please get him.”
I reached my hand out to join his. “Count on it,” I said, and Jami and I walked out, got into my car, and left.
“We’ll go back to DDC, stock up at the arsenal, and head out with a tactical team,” I said as I saw my cell phone light up on its own for no reason at all. I picked it up and stared at it, trying to figure out why it had lit up, and the phone started to ring.
“Blake?” my dad asked after I picked up.
“Hey, I got the address. I know Jim’s location.”
My dad was excited but worried about me. “Blake, you can’t do this alone. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I won’t go in alone. My partner’s with me, and we’ll have backup. We need to move now.” After I said those words, the call dropped. “Dad?” I said but heard no response.
I looked at my phone and saw that it had shut down by itself. I kept driving while it restarted, and when it did, I saw that the battery was almost completely drained. I thought it was strange because I’d had a full charge right before I left for Burnett’s.
Then I realized what was going on.
I knew what signs to look for, and the odd behavior was a dead giveaway. “My cell phone’s being monitored,” I said to Jami.
“What?” Jami pulled out her phone and saw she had a text message. “Morgan texted me,” she said as she slid her thumb over the message to read it. “Shapiro. That’s all it says. What does that mean?”
I pulled the car to the side of the road and she handed her phone to me. “Roger Shapiro. He’s the CIA regional director for the Midwest. Morgan’s trying to warn us.”
Jami looked confused. She was too new to the agency to understand the politics and how things worked. “Warn us about what?” she asked as I handed the phone back to her.
“We can’t go back to DDC. Shapiro’s there to remove me from my position as special agent in charge because of the Keller screwup.”
“Is that all he’d do to you?”
“After everything I’ve done today to get answers, probably not.” I turned my phone off and removed the battery. I told Jami to do the same. I wasn’t sure who was trying to listen to my phone conversations and track my movements or why. Is it the kidnapper? The FBI? Or my own agency? I wasn’t sure, but I knew I didn’t have time to figure it out because the clock was ticking.
“We’re going to have to go straight to the senator’s location,” I said as I found the piece of paper with the address on it that I’d ripped out of Burnett’s legal pad. I accessed the car’s navigation system and typed in the address. I knew the FBI and DDC could track my government-issued car, but they couldn’t track the GPS, so they wouldn’t know where we were going. We could stay one step ahead of them, but it would be a very small step, and there wouldn’t be room for any mistakes. And we’d have to move fast.
“We won’t have much time after we get there before the FBI or DDC shows up if they’re tracking us. Under five minutes,” I said. I took Harlem Avenue south and drove faster than I ever had in my life.
FORTY-FOUR
A FEW MINUTES after Victor Perez ran after the teenager, Keller heard him return to the warehouse. Did he escape? Or did the kidnapper kill him?
The senator prayed that the kid had somehow made it out of there and was on his way to find help. He wasn’t sure where he was, but decided he was being held somewhere in south Chicago. When he was elected to the Senate, he had traveled to every county in the state, so he knew that there were only a handful of run-down industrial areas in the city. Almost all of them were on the south side of the city. He figured he was either at Harlem Industrial Park or at West Pullman.
If he was right, then the kid wouldn’t have to run far to find help. Both were next to residential areas. And the kid had told him he and his friends came to the warehouse when they skipped school, so as long as he got away, he’d be able to call the authorities in no time. But not if the kidnapper had killed him first.
When the kidnapper appeared, he was holding an object in his hand that, from where Keller sat, looked like a police officer’s club. Is this guy a
n ex-cop? Or maybe ex-military? Keller thought to himself.
He could see the kidnapper dripping with sweat and breathing heavily. He was absolutely livid, and as he held onto the club with one hand, he tapped it into the open palm of his other hand before he spoke.
“What did you think you were going to accomplish, Mr. Keller? Did you think you’d be able to get out of here that easily?” he asked as the senator looked away, unsure if this meant that the kid got away or not. “Tell me who that was and how you got him to come here,” he said, and Keller realized that the kidnapper didn’t know that the boy had been in the warehouse the entire time, watching everything that had taken place from the moment Keller had arrived at the building. “Tell me now!” he yelled, and Keller winced.
“It doesn’t matter who he is, what matters is that right now he’s calling the authorities. They’ll be here any minute now, and your insane plan, whatever it is you’re trying to do here, will be over,” Keller said.
“You’re gonna have to pay for that,” the kidnapper said and started walking toward the senator, who realized he was about to receive another beating from the man holding the club. Victor Perez stopped tapping the club on his palm and held it at his side. Keller looked up as the man slowly approached and realized that something was different, something he hadn’t noticed before now.
The kidnapper isn’t wearing his mask.
Beams of light shot across the room from the rising sun, entering through the row of small windows that lined the top of the wall that Keller had his back up against. The kidnapper cut through the light as he walked closer, and when he did, one of the beams lit his face. Keller’s eyes grew wide as this happened.
“You’ve left me no choice,” the man said as he raised the club above his head, and the senator braced himself for the beating. The afterimage from the bright light on the kidnapper’s face stayed vivid and present in Keller’s mind as the man beat him violently, much like the headlights of an oncoming car that can be seen by closing the eyes long after the car has passed. The image troubled Keller.
