by J W Becton
He peeled out of the garage knowing that there was no turning back now.
Twenty-eight
“What does one wear to an illegal drag race in Georgia at this time of year?”
I stared into my closet and reconsidered the question.
“What does one wear to an illegal drag race period?”
I turned to Helena with a pair of old jeans dangling from my fingertips by a belt loop. After dividing my time between helping Ted try to locate the owner of Allred Racing—and striking out—and then calling Tripp to see if the MPD had found Lacarova—another strikeout—there was little left for me to do at the DOI. So I decided that the best use of my energy was to go home and prepare for the drag race.
I didn’t have much time to accomplish that task before meeting Vincent back at the office, but I still begged Helena to come over and distract me so that I wouldn’t obsess over what was at stake in tonight’s operation.
Little Sasha Keller’s life.
I knew Vincent was already putting enough pressure on himself to rescue Sasha and that he blamed himself for her abduction. A kid in danger—it was too personal for him.
One of us had to stay even keel, and this time the job was mine. Of course, I was having a pretty hard time of it too. Three faces kept running through my mind: innocent Amber, sweet little Sasha, and the teenage daughter of Marnie Jacobs, who looked so much like my sister had at that age. I hadn’t been able to save Amber or protect my sister, and I felt desperate to do something for the other two girls. But as always, time was running out. Marnie’s daughter could already be a victim, and Sasha could be dead.
I shuddered and pushed those terrible ideas to the back of my mind.
We were about to attempt to rescue a child in a volatile situation, and I struggled to keep my head clear. That was difficult because we had precious little to go on. Ted still hadn’t managed to uncover the identity of the boss, and that meant we’d be going in completely blind.
The whole plan was one big hypothetical.
If we managed to find it, Vincent and I would enter the drag-racing venue first. Our covers were still mostly intact. We had Eddie and Mary Fallsworthy in police custody, and no one had seen us at Keller’s place. Everyone in the ring who knew of our connection with the DOI was effectively silenced, so even if we ran into someone from the staged accident scene, at least we wouldn’t immediately be identified as cops.
Once we had more information, and perhaps had identified the boss and discovered Sasha’s whereabouts, we’d call in the MPD raid on the race.
At least, that was the tenuous plan.
“You know,” Helena said, breaking into my thoughts, “I’m starting to think you are incapable of dressing yourself without me. Besides, do people even race cars in this weather? Doesn’t that seem like a summer sport?” Having made herself comfortable lounging on my bed, she propped her head on an arm and looked at me skeptically.
“Summer sport?” I asked, trying for an easy laugh. “You talk as if this were headed by a licensed athletic body or something. I’m pretty sure these guys race whenever they can, especially in this mild Georgia climate.”
“Mild?” Helena repeated. She was not a fan of winter weather and firmly believed that anything below seventy-two degrees was “freezing.” I blamed her pixie-like build. She was too delicate to retain much body heat.
I didn’t have the same problem, and I was okay with that. I liked having the mass to manhandle a suspect a bit. I liked to throw around what weight I carried. Hels was limited to throwing her metaphorical weight around, though she was quite adept at it.
I rummaged through the closet with one hand, discarding choices before I really even looked at them. I knew my wardrobe.
“It’s official,” I proclaimed. “I have nothing to wear.”
“Well, there’s a shocker,” Helena said, snorting. “According to those gear-head movies, you should be wearing something that bares your midriff and shows some serious cleavage. You don’t have anything that sexy in there.”
Unfortunately, Helena knew my wardrobe too.
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see the gesture. Not only was I uncomfortable about skimpy attire, but I was dubious of the veracity of such movies. According to them, all the street-racing men should be good looking, muscular, and wearing sleeveless shirts to show off their bulging biceps and ink.
Frankly, I didn’t think I had much chance of running into a bunch of hot, ripped guys at a street race in Middle Georgia. I might see a few sleeveless shirts, even in this cool weather, but I seriously doubted their wearers would be showing off anything other than the beer guts and wobbly triceps frequently seen on your average redneck.
So, in my view anyway, the movies didn’t offer much wardrobe help.
“I’ll bet Vincent would enjoy the look,” Helena added in a sly tone, and even though I was still staring blankly into my closet, I knew she had a wicked grin on her face.
I turned, saw the expected impishness, and gave her an overt eye roll this time.
“There is a serious flaw in your proposition, Counselor,” I said.
“You think?” she asked. “Because I don’t see any problems with you wearing a sexy little ensemble for Vincent. In fact, I recommend it. And then I recommend removing said outfit in his presence.”
“I think that may be jumping the gun a bit. I mean, Vincent and I haven’t even been on a date.”
“Oh, please,” Helena said. “When it’s right, it’s right.”
I let my jeans drop to the floor, forgotten, and laughed as Hels did a sexy little head toss.
“Besides, I’m on official DOI business tonight,” I explained. “I shouldn’t be thinking of sexy clothing removal and dating when a little girl’s life is on the line.”
“Little girl?” Helena asked, sobering.
I explained the basics of the situation, and Helena paled.
“That poor, poor baby,” she crooned. “I heard the Amber alert, but I didn’t know you were the one looking for her.”
“We’ll find her,” I said with more confidence than I felt at the moment. “We’ll bring her back safely.”
“Well,” Helena said, leaning over to pick up my fallen jeans and then handing me a black thermal knit sweater from the pile on the bed. “This is a good option, I think.”
She watched as I donned the selected outfit, adding my sturdy leather belt, concealment holster, and badge. Then I crossed to the gun safe hidden in the bedside table and extracted my M&P, keeping it pointed safely away from my friend as I slid it into the holster with a click.
I walked back to the mirror, feeling Helena’s eyes on me the whole way. I surveyed myself quickly. Yes, this outfit seemed to be a safe bet. Black worked for nighttime surveillance, it probably wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, and, as a bonus, it was slimming and would hide the M&P.
“Looks good,” Helena said as I readjusted my sweater over the holster, making sure it hid all evidence of my LEO status. “But if some psycho is threatening a child’s life, don’t you think you should bring a bigger gun?”
While I was downstairs seeing Hels out, Maxwell, my tuxedo cat, apparently decided to use the discarded outfits lying on my mattress as a makeshift cat bed. He opened his green eyes a fraction of a centimeter when I walked back into the room and spotted him there.
I plunked my hands on my hips and glared at him; he stared back, unimpressed.
“The bed wasn’t soft enough, huh?” I asked. “You had to use my clothes as well.”
He closed his eyes again, knowing that I was all bluster. I leaned over and scratched him between the ears, then turned and looked at myself in the mirror again.
Should I add more weapons to my arsenal? After all, Helena was right. Any person who used a child as leverage against another human being deserved to be shot with something that left a large hole in their anatomy.
I decided to bring along a can of pepper spray, a telescopic baton, and two sets of hand
cuffs. I laid them out on the bed beside my snoozing cat and surveyed them thoughtfully.
Helena might be satisfied, even if I didn’t have a bigger gun.
Wishing for the moment that I, too, could sleep away my days as carefree as a cat, I went back to my closet to grab a duffel bag and began filling it with the last of the necessary gear: a flashlight, spare batteries, binoculars, a digital camera, and a change of clothes.
My next order of business was to cover my black eye. Not only was it now an unattractive rainbow of colors, but it would also draw attention to me. I couldn’t have that.
I proceeded to use about a quart of concealer on my eye, knowing that powder alone would never get the job done. When I was finished, the bruise was largely unnoticeable.
I quickly tied my hair into a loose bun and then crossed back to the bed, where I looked down on the pile of cat hair on my wardrobe and stroked Maxwell’s back.
“Good thing most of your hair is black,” I said to him as I gently pushed his furry butt off my charcoal-gray coat. “Or else I’d be another hour with the lint roller.”
Maxwell huffed at the interruption to his nap, circled three times, and tucked himself into a ball on my pillow, falling almost instantly back to sleep.
I watched the whole process, and when he finally curled back up, my attention was drawn to the digital clock on the nightstand just beside his fuzzy little body. Vincent would soon arrive at the DOI, where we planned to meet before the race.
I finished my ensemble with a pair of black military-style boots and added the other weapons to my belt. Couldn’t be too careful, especially going into a large crowd. I slipped my coat over the whole shebang and examined my look from all angles. Then I took a deep breath, said goodbye to Maxwell—who was well into cat dreamland—and headed out the door.
Here we go, I thought.
Twenty-nine
The 442 lurked in the driveway, looking totally out of place in my traditional neighborhood. The bright yellow paint job appeared almost neon under my garage’s coach lights.
Shuddering at its ugliness, I slipped the key into the ignition, cringed as the engine roared to life, and once again felt the vehicle’s harnessed power in the way it vibrated and growled.
And once again, I remembered why people liked muscle cars: for the muscle.
Screw aerodynamics and just get a bigger motor.
There was something comforting in knowing that I could get down on the gas and really go somewhere if I needed to.
Ted had been right, and I supposed I could forgive a few cosmetic flaws in exchange for raw power. I backed down the driveway and barely restrained myself from taking the Mercer back streets at breakneck speed. I arrived at the DOI and checked my watch, grimacing. Maybe I didn’t restrain myself as well as I thought because I had arrived a bit ahead of schedule.
A few minutes later, Vincent’s GMC pulled into the lot, and I watched as he emerged into the cool, clear night, wearing jeans, a dark shirt, and a chocolate-brown leather coat, unzipped. Under his brown watch cap, he smiled at me, but his eyes were alert and focused as he scanned the rest of the lot. I gave him a nod when we made eye contact, and his smile widened, but I could tell he was calculating.
He slid into the passenger seat, and the clean scent of leather filled the 442.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said as he looked me over with a bit of concern lurking behind his blue eyes. “You?”
“You should see all the gear I’ve got hidden in this outfit,” I said, trying for a lighthearted tone. “I could take down a small army.”
“That so?” He looked me over again. “Under normal circumstances, that would definitely be a turn-on.”
“Only a cop would think fifteen pounds of gear hidden under fifteen ounces of cotton was sexy.”
He shrugged. “Preparation is sexy.”
“Hey, I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve seen more action at the DOI than I did when I was on the job at the MPD. Now I always try to be prepared.”
Especially tonight, I added silently.
Vincent watched me for a moment.
“We need to head south on 79,” I said, “and we should run into the group somewhere before we cross into the next county.”
After a mile of silence, Vincent began to repeat details of the plan, something he often did as a pre-operation ritual, but tonight he spoke with vigorous intensity.
I gave him a sidelong glance.
“Cranford County SD and the MPD have a dozen cars on standby,” he said. “Our primary objective is to find Michael Lacarova, identify the suspect who abducted Sasha Keller, extract the child’s location from the suspect, and retrieve the child safely.”
“Then we’ll call in the cars and clean up the drag-racing mess. After Sasha is safe, we can pick out the fraud ring participants and question them,” I continued.
It sounded so simple, but I knew it would be anything but.
If we could believe Eddie, there would be a lot of people at the race, and that meant a lot of variables to contend with, one of which was Justin. After all, he had some sort of association with the folks at Allred Racing. At the very least, our actions tonight could lead to the arrest of Justin’s pals and drive the wedge deeper between father and son.
And that’s not even mentioning the fact that rounding up the racing crew would be a difficult job, which begged the question: how did a group that size conceal itself so thoroughly? Why wasn’t this on anyone’s radar?
Soon, and again faster than I expected, we were in the flatlands south of Mercer, and the 442 tore up the road until we reached county line. I eased off the gas, and the car seemed to slow, albeit unwillingly.
I peered into the gathering dusk as far ahead as I could, checked the rear view. But I didn’t see any evidence of a street race. Or any traffic at all for that matter.
“Wohl must have gotten the road wrong,” Vincent said. “Or he sent us on a wild goose chase.”
I shrugged, hoping for the former but fearing the latter.
“Let’s go a few more miles. Maybe he got the county wrong. We might run across something just over the line,” I suggested, though I doubted we would.
After traveling five miles, we turned around to backtrack through Cranford County. I was getting really annoyed. How the hell does a group of rednecks conceal a drag race of this scale?
I glanced at my watch. Every minute we wasted was another minute when Sasha was in jeopardy, maybe injured or dying for all we knew.
“Maybe Wohl was screwing with us,” I said, slamming my fist onto the dashboard, making some of the cracks in the faded, dusty plastic spread.
“Hey,” Vincent said, suddenly defensive of the land barge, “don’t take it out on the car. It’s a loaner, remember. Ted will have to pay for additional damages to the vehicle, and we wouldn’t want that.”
“Yes, wouldn’t want that,” I said, rubbing my hand across the dash as if to erase my aggression.
I pulled to the shoulder of the road and swung the 442 back in the opposite direction again.
“Maybe they moved it to a side street or left some sort of marker to direct people,” I suggested. “Let’s take one more pass.”
The 442 covered the next few miles slowly, and we peeked down every dark, pine-lined driveway we passed in the hopes that they might conceal a group of car enthusiasts. That’s when Vincent saw the sign for an old kaolin plant partially obscured from view by bare, brown kudzu vines.
“There,” he said, his voice hopeful as he pointed to it.
“The old kaolin quarry is back there,” I said, suddenly hopeful too. “I forgot all about it, but it’s the perfect place to race. There are tons of roads, parking lots, and abandoned buildings back there.”
Situated well off the main road, the plant was invisible, and the overgrown branches and vines narrowed the gravel road to the size of a residential driveway.
The first half-mile of the gravel driveway wound through woods and t
hen passed through a mining area, whose terrain had been transformed from virgin pine forest to clear-cut. The land—now leveled with topsoil and sprouting scrubby shrubs and young sweet gums—had once featured large pits dug for extracting white, chalky kaolin, which was used in everything from toothpaste to glossy paper.
Of the original mine, only three retention ponds remained, and even in the growing dimness of the evening, the water shimmered a clear, Caribbean blue, like little tropical ponds in the center of Middle Georgia.
The gravel road wound away from the mining area, past a crumbling brick house, which was likely used for the plant manager years before, and then spilled into a large paved parking lot.
The racers had indeed gathered there, in front of what used to be the main office building, a sprawling brick structure with boarded windows. Cars of all shapes and colors, their headlights aglow, now lined the lot, casting bright beams into the deepening shadows.
As we passed the old house, Vincent picked up his cell, called the MPD, and informed them of the location of the race. They’d be checking out aerial photographs of the area and planning the best way to enter the site and arrest as many people as efficiently and safely as possible.
In the meantime, Vincent and I would have no chance of laying low and observing at a distance for any length of time. With this setup, the 442 was already visible, and we wouldn’t be able to conceal ourselves at all while we looked for Lacarova, so I took the next best approach: I drove into the lot as if I owned the place and parked in a vacant spot near the exit in case we needed to get out fast.
Everyone appeared to be busy drinking and ogling cars—not to mention people of the opposite sex—but they noticed the 442. Yes, she was quite a looker.
We sat for a moment, just taking in the scene.
“Jesus,” Vincent said half under his breath as he looked out the window, “I feel like a chaperone at make-out hill.”
I laughed, but Vincent was right. Most of the crowd appeared to consist of college kids, probably from Central Georgia College, out for a Friday night adventure, but I also saw a sizable contingent of gear-head rednecks, just as I’d predicted. The first group was there for a bit of underage drinking and a harmless good time, and the second for the cars. But there, concealed among the college boys and gear-heads, was a third—albeit smaller—group composed of the miscreants who had organized the event, and we’d probably find the boss among them.
