by J W Becton
He found her curled up at the foot of the bed, still asleep, and he covered her with his comforter before dashing out of the house and into the frosty morning air. He had things to do.
Twenty-six
Ted’s selection of an appropriate drag-racing vehicle was waiting for me in the DOI parking lot when I arrived Friday morning.
And it was a car the likes of which I’d never seen before.
Immense, ungainly, and sporting a bright yellow paint job so roughly applied that I suspected a good stiff breeze might cause it to flake off completely, the thing looked like it had been pulled from a junkyard and sprayed with Krylon.
This was Ted’s idea of what would fit in at a drag race in Mercer, Georgia?
I ran my hand along a door panel, feeling the bumpy excuse for a paint job beneath my fingertips. Nothing flaked off.
Miracle!
I turned at the sound of Vincent’s approaching GMC and waited as he parked and joined me.
“I wonder what year this thing was made. The Paleolithic era?” I asked as I circled around the unknown vehicle, trying to figure out what I was looking at.
“1968,” Vincent responded. “And in pretty nice condition.”
I gaped at him as he studied the vast vehicle before us.
This was in “pretty nice condition”?
Vincent sounded as if he might actually like the looks of the car, but with his deadpan delivery and lack of facial expression, it was hard to tell. I watched as he circled, being careful not to touch the car as he wedged his large frame between it and its neighboring vehicle.
Why do men love such godawful cars? Maybe they have all engine stats encoded in their DNA so that they know what’s under the hood of every car ever made.
Because surely this car’s cosmetic appearance wasn’t drawing Vincent in.
“Don’t get attached,” I warned. “It’s a loaner.”
“Too bad,” he said, “because I could get used to a V-8 this size.”
Ha! My suspicion was confirmed. He did have engine stats in his DNA.
“What the heck is it?” I asked.
Before Vincent could answer, Ted’s voice rang out behind me.
“442: four on the floor, four-barrel carb, dual exhaust,” he explained as I finished my complete circle. “It’s on loan from my buddy Kyle. He’s planning to restore and auction it off, so we’ve got to be careful. It’s a valuable car.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Valuable?”
“After restoration, yeah.”
Yeesh, I thought. I need to get into the car restoration business.
“Can you drive a manual shift?” Ted asked me.
“Sure, I can drive a stick,” I said, stepping around Ted as if his presence were causing me to miss some important detail. As if I might suddenly be able to see the diamond in the rough. “But, uh, does it even run?”
Ted laughed. “Looks rough, but it runs great.”
To prove it, he pulled a key from his pocket, climbed in the driver’s seat, and started the car. The engine cranked with a loud roar and then settled into a heavy, low-pitched rumble. Even though I had only rudimentary knowledge in all things automotive—and most of that was insurance based—I knew this vehicle sounded powerful.
Ted let the loud engine echo across the parking lot for a moment before shutting it off.
“Yeah, she’s got some quirks.”
He proceeded to point out the fact that the trunk had no lock and therefore had to be opened with a screwdriver. It was carbureted, so the gas pedal had to be pumped when starting the engine cold, and then it had to be warmed up for precisely seventeen minutes.
And that didn’t even take into account the quirky interior. The dashboard and door panels were crumbling, and the upholstery was split, exposing yellow foam underneath. I would get to enjoy the feeling of metal springs under my butt for the entire night.
The drag race was sure shaping up to be fun.
“The location of the race is a bit fuzzy,” I told Ted. “Apparently, we’ll know it when we see it. Any luck on identifying the owner of Allred?”
He shook his head, tucking his hands into the pockets of his gray trousers.
“No more information for you, I’m afraid. I spent a lot of time getting the car.”
I thought of poor little Sasha, probably scared and lonely right now—if she were still alive, that is. Given what we had learned from Eddie about the boss’s cruel streak, I knew the child could already be dead.
My insides clenched at the thought.
So far, we’d discovered that Allred was owned by a company that was owned by a company etcetera, so we were no closer to finding the boss than we’d been yesterday.
We had already arrested Mary Fallsworthy, but that left us with a few females who were likely involved in the ring: Gina Cattaneo-Segretti, Paramedic Kitto, and Tammy Wynn. Any of those women could be the boss. Or none of them.
We didn’t have much to go on until I identified and located Mike from the garage.
That was my first task of the day.
Michael Lacarova: I found the name right there on the estimate he’d given me at Allred Racing, and I had a pretty good idea of the guy’s history by lunchtime.
He was a career criminal with a sheet including standard traffic violations, petty theft, vandalism, disturbing the peace, and some sealed juvie charges. If I’d had time, I would have dug deeper into his financial records, see if I couldn’t ferret out a connection to the fraud ring based on something other than Mary Fallsworthy’s testimony and Mike’s place of employment.
But time was running short, and Sasha had been away from her parents for more than twenty-four hours.
We had no idea of the little girl’s current condition. All we knew was that we needed to find her fast.
I picked up the phone to inform Tripp of what we’d uncovered so far.
“Tell me you’ve got something we can use, something besides this drag-racing fiasco,” Tripp said in lieu of a greeting. “Because we’ve got squat to go on.”
“I have a name, someone who might be able to identify the person likely to have kidnapped Sasha or at least ordered it,” I said. “Michael Lacarova. He works at Allred Racing and has an address over in Woolfolk Fort.”
I heard the clicking of Tripp’s keyboard in the background and knew he was looking him up.
Tripp let out a long whistle.
“Nice record.”
“Mary Fallsworthy said that he sometimes served as an intermediary between her and the boss,” I explained, “but other than the fact that he works at the garage she owns, we don’t have much to tie him to the kidnapping in particular. Dr. Keller only had contact with Eddie and Mary. Not enough for a search warrant.”
“I’ll have some cars sent to his house and place of business and ask him a couple questions, see if he’ll cooperate,” Tripp said. “I’ll let you know if we find him.”
“Let’s hope you find something because I don’t like the idea of any of us going into the drag race blind.”
“I hear ya, and I’ll make contact with you or Vincent before you go in.”
I hung up the phone and ventured into Vincent’s office. He was looking over a map of Cranford County, the page folded back to expose the general area where the race would be held.
“It would sure help if we had a specific location,” Vincent said without raising his eyes from the page.
“Yeah,” I agreed, leaning over the desk to look at the map.
“Highway 79 in Cranford County is all we’ve got to go on.”
He traced the road in question with his finger, and I followed along as it cut through a narrow corner of the northeast tip of the county.
“The only thing we’ve got working in our favor is that just ten miles of highway 79 are actually in the county,” Vincent said, “but essentially, we’re going on next to nothing.”
I couldn’t disagree. After all, we were attempting to look for a woman we couldn’t ide
ntify at an illegal drag race whose location we didn’t know.
We were set up to fail before we even started.
Twenty-seven
Lacarova unlocked the front door and stepped inside, two bags—one from a local pharmacy and the other full of greasy burgers—dangling from one hand and a tray of Cokes in the other. He’d been pushing his luck by keeping the girl in his house, and now that he had a plan of escape for himself, it was time to get rid of her.
All the rest of his business had been taken care of: he’d pawned everything of value he owned except his dirt bike, which he had loaded into a pickup he’d borrowed from the shop and carefully hidden at the race site so that he could make a fast escape. Because when the action started, he had to get out fast. He’d visited his momma’s grave, said his goodbyes, made a quick stop at the pharmacy, and hit a fast-food drive-through.
Now came the hard part: setting up the boss without getting his ass caught.
Placing the bags and cardboard tray of drinks on the kitchen counter, Lacarova took out his food and then pulled a box of antihistamine pills from the pharmacy bag. As he ate, he read the medication’s directions carefully.
“Children 6 to 12 take 1 liquigel capsule every 4-6 hours. Do not exceed 6 doses in 24 hours.”
Lacarova ripped open the box and popped one capsule from the shiny silver packaging. He looked at the pill as he chewed his burger.
Sasha was only three, so maybe he should give her half a dose.
But the pill really was tiny. What if half wasn’t enough to knock her out?
What if she woke up before they got to their destination? What if she wouldn’t drink?
He’d forgotten to give her breakfast, so he figured she’d probably be thirsty as well as hungry, but if she woke up early? Well, he couldn’t risk it.
Shrugging to himself, he decided to give her a full dose, just to be safe. He figured it would be okay. After all, his mother had done the same thing to him every time he’d gotten on an airplane until he was twelve years old.
And he turned out just fine.
He set the pill on the work surface and ripped the aluminum foil lid off the child-sized cup of Coke he’d ordered. Then he scrounged around the drawers for something to use to open the gel cap. He found a reasonably clean steak knife, used the tip to pierce the capsule, and squeezed its contents into the Coke.
Satisfied, he tossed the knife onto the counter before unwrapping a straw and popping it into the small cup, using it to give the liquid a good stir, watching it bubble and fizz.
Kids liked straws and fizzy drinks, right? She wouldn’t notice the funky taste.
She’d drink it right down and then she’d be out like a light, and he could take her wherever he wanted to go. Then this would all be over.
Lacarova opened the padlock and slowly pushed open the bedroom door. Inside, the room was dark except for the flickering of the TV. He closed the door, flipped on the light, crossed the room, and stalked to the TV to turn the volume down.
As he approached the napping girl, the sound of his feet echoed heavily in the now-quiet room.
“Wake up, kid, I’ve got food,” he said to the heap of covers on the bed.
She emerged and blinked up at him.
He handed her the burger and watched as she nibbled at the edge, and then, squelching the guilt that rose in his throat, he gave her the Coke.
“Drink up.”
Her lips worked at the straw, and when she had finished half the beverage, he stepped away, looking around the room for her things. He found her shoes under the bed and her socks on the floor near the TV. He gathered them into a pile at the foot of the bed.
Sasha put the Coke on the bedside table, spilling some on the wood surface, and he mopped it with a napkin while she pulled apart her sandwich and began to scrape the cheese off the patty and lick it from her fingers.
At this rate, she’d have the sandwich finished in about twenty years, so he took it from her, reassembled it, and held it to her lips.
“Bite,” he said.
That worked, so he did the same until the burger and drink were mostly gone.
“Bathroom,” he said.
The girl whined as if she didn’t want to go to the trouble, but he nudged her shoulder.
“Go, now. I don’t want to stop later.”
Jesus, he sounded like his mother.
He waited for her to finish, which seemed to take forever, and by the time she had climbed back onto the bed and he had figured out how to make his fingers work the tiny buckles on her shoes, the kid was already in a drug-induced sleep. The pill had worked fast, and, if he was lucky, she’d be out for the rest of the night. Of course, he had more pills if she needed them.
Lacarova grabbed the sandwich wrapper and drink container and stowed them in the paper bag. Then he zipped the kid into her coat, bundled her in his arms, and headed for the car.
It was after five when Lacarova arrived at Allred Racing, so the place had already emptied out. Quickly, he opened a garage bay door and drove straight inside, sliding the large door shut behind him so that the interior of the garage grew too dim to see much of anything. Now that the sound of the city had dissipated, it was also far too quiet. The faint breathing of the child sleeping on the bench seat beside him seemed loud in the overwhelming silence.
He didn’t have much time to move her to the boss’s waiting car, so he yanked open the driver’s door and got busy. He had the kid in one arm and was halfway to the adjacent bay where the boss’s work vehicle sat waiting when he heard the metal security gate on the office door slide open.
Shit, he thought. Someone was here.
He half ran, half stumbled toward the car, pulling the keys from the nearby Peg-Board with his free hand and jamming them toward the trunk lock. Quickly dropping the girl inside, he slammed it and crossed to the workbench beside the car, trying to appear casual.
“Lacarova,” a low voice said from close behind him, causing him to jump and squeak in a particularly unmanly way.
He spun around to find Tammy Wynn regarding him with a little sideways smirk twisting her lips.
“Tammy,” Lacarova said, “what the hell are you doing here?”
Tammy didn’t answer his question. She put a hand to her hip and cocked it sideways.
“What are you doing here?”
“The boss asked me to drive her work car to the race site,” he lied. “She’s getting a ride with someone else, I guess.”
His plan seemed a little shaky now that he said it out loud. The boss would be at the race in one of her personal vehicles, and he had planned to leave the kid in her work car in order to make sure she went down for the kidnapping. The cops would question why she had two vehicles at the race, but he didn’t care about that. He’d be long gone by then.
Tammy narrowed her eyes at him, clearly skeptical of his explanation.
“The cops were here today, looking for Eddie,” she said. “They think he kidnapped that girl.”
“Huh?” he asked stupidly, feeling panic rush into his body.
“The boss told me to watch you, said you were a big enough fool that you’d lead me right to the girl. And looky here,” she said, sidestepping him and running her manicured nails across the trunk of the boss’s car. “What have you got here? Her body?”
Lacarova’s mind worked, but he couldn’t find the words to talk his way out of this.
“What are you up to?” Tammy asked. “Trying to frame the boss?”
When Tammy laughed manically and held her hand out for the trunk keys, as if he’d just hand them over, Lacarova knew his time was up. He wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this; he had to do something. Had to stop Tammy before she could jeopardize his escape.
Feeling behind him on the surface of the workbench, he managed to grasp what felt like a large wrench. Without another logical thought, he raised his arm and sent the wrench arcing down at Tammy’s vulnerable skull. His arm vibrated with the power of t
he strike, and Tammy dropped to the floor with a yelp of pain.
Eyes wide in surprise at what he’d done, Lacarova reached down, grabbed the unconscious bitch by the ankles, and dragged her out of the garage bay, hoping the blood would blend in with the grease stains on the floor.
Unconcerned about her comfort, Lacarova dragged Tammy across the dirty concrete, letting her head slam into whatever obstacles got in his way as he tugged her toward the supply closet.
“Gee, I’m sorry about this, Tammy,” he said over his shoulder. “I really am, but I want to get out of this while I still can. And you were going to screw that up.”
He pulled open the heavy metal door of the storage room and jerked her inside.
“You’re going to be pretty pissed when you wake up,” he said as he positioned her on her side. “But you need to remember that this is your fault. You are making me do this. I just wanted out is all. I’m not a bad guy.”
He pulled a hank of yellow nylon rope from the back of a nearby shelf and quickly bound Tammy’s wrists and ankles. Then he stepped back to check his work. He leaned down and tugged on the binds, finding them tight and strong.
He felt his jaw clench as he considered what he had just done. This was not him. He didn’t want to have a kid drugged and locked in a trunk and a woman tied up and bleeding in the closet. He just wanted to be free of it all. He really wasn’t a bad guy.
But circumstances were making it awfully difficult to be a good one.
People kept pushing and pushing him, and now he was forced to push back, to regain control.
He gave Tammy a kick to the gut and was immediately disgusted with himself.
“That was your fault,” he told her, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “You bitches are turning me into a violent man.”
Lacarova was temporarily out of danger, but he had a lot to do before the race, and the boss was obviously looking for him. Her minions were out, so he’d have to be careful. And fast. He opened the garage bay, hurried to the boss’s car, and started the engine as quickly as he could.
