by John A. Daly
From his office window, Lumbergh watched the cloak of dimness from the early winter sunset steadily drape over the row of old family-owned shops across the street. They had long been part of his view, but he couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a moment to just look at them.
Each sun-faded building had a quaint, handwritten “sale” sign inside its dusty window. Most entranceways hosted one or two decades-old gumball machines that invited young customers to nag their parents for a quarter or dime.
He watched on as Lupe Cordova, the kind, elderly owner of Winston’s only Mexican restaurant, closed up shop. She was wearing a thick purple coat, and her shoulders were tight against her body. The temperature had dropped dramatically over the past hour, a sign that the expected storm was about to roll in. Snow had already begun to fall.
Cordova’s place was more of a hole in the wall than a full-fledged restaurant, only large enough for one table inside. Most of her business came from her popular breakfast burritos that she made every morning. She wrapped them in foil and always had them ready for people to stop in and pick up at the beginning of their day.
As he watched the old woman fiddle with a ring of keys from her purse, Lumbergh was tormented with the undeniable reality that the rest of the outside world was carrying on as normal.
People were getting back to their lives following the 9/11 attacks. The horrific event had changed Lumbergh, as it had so many others who watched in terror the footage of men and women forced to leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center. It made him more protective than ever of the things most important to him, and it forced him to question the notion of bringing a child into such a world; Diana and he had discussed children often.
For many, the passing months and a presidential administration that seemed in control of the situation brought some ease and normalcy. At that very moment, however, Lumbergh felt contempt for that composed world, recalling that he was a part of it just a few days earlier when Alex Martinez had treated both he and Jefferson to a couple of Cordova’s burritos. They had had a nice conversation about their lives that morning as they sat at a small table in the police station, chowing down and drinking coffee.
Jefferson had shared the news that he and his wife were getting back together after a months-long separation. Martinez had talked about some of the classes he was taking at school and one of his teachers. It was likely another false story from a seasoned liar, but Lumbergh planned on looking into it anyway. He couldn’t remember what he himself had added to the breakfast conversation that day.
The memory was replaced with the sound of his wife crying. Her trembling voice was still fresh in his mind from the phone conversation he had just had with her. He’d delayed telling her about her brother’s disappearance all day, hoping the deputies at Sean’s place would find something useful—any sort of a lead to move on. After his spat with Redick, Lumbergh had even driven over to assist in the deputies’ search.
Their findings were insignificant, at least from a timeliness standpoint. They took a blood sample from the floor and pulled some fingerprints from the bucket. It was better than nothing, but the evidence would take time to process and no one could know if the results would be of any help.
The deputy investigating Martinez’s motel room hadn’t found much either, other than more proof of the intern’s obsession with his boss. Tape after tape of news reports and interviews were skimmed through. They all pertained, in one way or another, to the Montoya shooting. There was nothing that suggested Martinez knew anything about where Sean had been taken.
Lumbergh had placed a call to Chihuahua, Mexico, to inquire about Martinez’s mother. He discovered that she had passed away on January 5, which was probably what had brought Martinez back across the border for a few days.
His mother had died likely believing her son to be a coward, and that a police chief in Winston, Colorado, could be his saving grace. It was a belief she had apparently tortured her son with to the point that he had eventually snapped.
Lumbergh had also placed a call to check on Oldhorse and Jefferson at the Lakeland hospital up north. Jefferson was doing well. Oldhorse had a longer road ahead of him, but the doctors were confident he would make a full recovery except for some significant scarring. They’d successfully pulled a large piece of shrapnel from his thigh and he was now resting.
Martinez had completely clammed up. He’d lawyered-up, too, by the time Lumbergh had returned to the police station. Lumbergh suspected Redick had nudged him into it—either wittingly or unwittingly. Regardless, all Martinez had been doing for the past hour or two was staring up at the ceiling and making an occasional moaning noise. At times, he seemed to be trying to communicate with the overhead lights. It was as if whatever warped crusade he was on to torture Lumbergh through the threat of Lautaro Montoya for a perceived act of betrayal had been permanently derailed. Now he could no longer process his surroundings with any clarity or coherency.
At least he knew Diana was safe. With Martinez in custody and the Montoya threat turning out to be a sick hoax, she was no longer in danger. Lumbergh was looking forward to seeing her and holding her again, but with the storm rolling in, he’d told her to stay at her friend’s house. Additionally, with the whereabouts of her brother unknown, he wasn’t sure how he could face her.
The key to finding Sean was still Martinez; Lumbergh had convinced himself of that. As the police chief sat alone in mind and spirit with his shoulders hung low in the darkness of his office, he knew in his heart and gut that Martinez had seen who had taken Sean. He may have had nothing to do with the abduction, but he had seen it, and that was important.
Lumbergh felt some pain returning to his shoulder and reached into his desk drawer for his prescription bottle. When he opened its lid and found only a few capsules left inside, he realized for the first time just how quickly he had been going through the supply.
“What am I doing?” he whispered to himself.
He shook his head, and then replaced the lid and shoved the bottle back inside his desk. He decided at that moment that keeping his head clear was worth dealing with the physical pain.
When he slowly swiveled in his chair to turn to the front of his office, he took notice of the missing glass inside the door. He recalled the details of his confrontation with Sean from that day. Sean had been looking for information on the Andrew Carson case and had managed to see the prime suspect’s name and mug shot on Lumbergh’s computer screen.
Though Lumbergh initially resisted it, the notion that Sean’s disappearance could be tied to his interest in that case began to mull within his mind. He pondered the possibility that Sean had gone looking for the prime suspect, Norman Booth. Could he have somehow managed to actually find him? The chances seemed small, but Lumbergh had learned in the past not to underestimate his brother-in-law when he was set on doing something, even if it was something stupid.
The premise had holes in it—big ones. There was no plausible scenario that Lumbergh could formulate that would lead to a confrontation between the two taking place inside Sean’s home. Suspects on the lam typically didn’t go looking for their pursuers.
The longer Lumbergh mulled over the angle, however, the more he felt that it at least deserved consideration. If anything, pursuing the lead would help pin down Sean’s whe
reabouts earlier in the day.
He recalled Sean saying that he was interested in the Carson case because he knew a relative of the victim. It was a good place to start.
The last sheriff ’s deputy from Sean’s house returned to the police station. Lumbergh, the deputy, and Redick removed Martinez from his cell and cuffed his hands behind his back. Martinez refused to stand on his feet, so they dragged him with his knees rubbing against the tile floor all the way to the front door.
“One more chance, Martinez,” Lumbergh said, hovering over them like a watchful hawk. “Tell me what you saw at Sean’s house!”
Redick flashed Lumbergh a disapproving glance.
Martinez paid Lumbergh no mind. He just hummed and moaned with his eyes glued to the ceiling.
Redick turned his head to the chief. “I’m sorry, Gary.”
His eyes looked sincere, though Lumbergh had his doubts as to whether he really was.
“Listen,” he added. “We’ve got a public defender meeting us at the station. I’m sure she’ll persuade him, if anyone can, to talk.”
Lumbergh shook his head in dismissal. When everyone had left his station, he retreated to his office and flipped on the overhead light.
He pulled his desk chair in front of his computer and began tapping away at his keyboard with his good hand. After a moment, he recalled the user login and password information he’d been given by his Greeley counterpart the other day. He logged into the P.D.’s mainframe and was soon looking at the Andrew Carson file again.
Carson’s daughter Katelyn was listed as the primary contact in the case, so Lumbergh picked up his phone and quickly dialed her number. There was trepidation in the young woman’s voice when he introduced himself, but her tone quickly changed to one of befuddlement when he explained that he wasn’t involved in the search for her father.
He told her that he was looking for a man named Sean Coleman. To Lumbergh’s relief, she immediately recognized the name. After some prompting, she explained how she had met Sean for the first time after he had joined one of her search parties. She said that he seemed helpful enough at first, but then became erratic when he realized that a woman he believed to be her cousin was of no relation to the Carson family.
“He didn’t seem to believe us,” she added.
Lumbergh asked her if she knew who the woman was. She didn’t, but said that she vaguely recognized her from an earlier search party in a picture Sean had shown her.
“Picture?” asked Lumbergh. “What picture?”
She told him that she believed the picture was from an article, but she wasn’t sure of the newspaper. “He said her name was Jess. No . . . Jessica!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know her last name?”
“If he did, he didn’t say it.”
When he asked her if she could describe what Jessica looked like, she did. “The picture was small, and I had only taken a passing glance of her when she helped us. I just remember that she had long red hair.”
He nodded, writing down “Jessica long red hair” on a notepad. His eyes widened and his pencil stopped dead on the paper when Katelyn further described Jessica as “attractive-looking.”
He swallowed, letting the gears in his head grind together for a moment before erratically writing under his description “THE RED FOX.”
He didn’t remember thanking Katelyn or fielding any questions she had about his inquiry, but he guessed he had done both as he hurriedly reached for his jacket moments later. He slid it on over his good arm and was halfway out the front door when a phrase he had heard Alex Martinez use earlier echoed through his head: The red fox has him now, Chief. She brought him back to her den.
“Her den,” Lumbergh whispered.
He hustled back inside and snatched Martinez’s timesheet. He looked at the odometer reading that the intern had recorded on the previous day. It was a number they kept track of so the police station could reimburse Martinez for any gas he used while running errands in his own car. It was the only form of compensation that Martinez ever received from the office—usually paid out from the station’s petty cash drawer.
The chief repeated the mileage reading over and over again in his head while he raced down the front steps of the police station. He trampled through the snow to the side of the building where Martinez’s car had been towed following its collision with the tree. It was scheduled for impound but hadn’t been picked up yet.
He opened the driver side door, knelt along the front seat, and looked at the odometer. There was a discrepancy of over fifty miles. Martinez’s trips back and forth to Lakeland and out to Oldhorse’s cabin would have accounted for some of the distance, but nowhere near fifty miles. The intern had done a good amount of additional driving.
Lumbergh reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a stick of gum, and popped it into his mouth, chewing ravenously.
The siren of his police cruiser was blaring loudly as he tore off in pursuit of the sheriff ’s car. He bit out obscenities when his tires wouldn’t gain the same traction that his mind had. The snowfall was beginning to stick and the wind whistled through the bullet holes in his windshield, chilling the car’s interior. He grabbed his radio and held it beside his jaw.
“Hughes. Roy Hughes. This is Chief Lumbergh. I know you’re listening in on a police scanner somewhere. I need you to get back to me on channel 14,” he said crisply. “Repeat. Roy Hughes of The Windsor Beacon. Get back to me on channel 14.”
He had seen Hughes dancing around the crime scene at Sean’s house when he had gone back there. The reporter looked like a kid on Christmas morning, wearing a gleeful smile and snapping pictures left and right. He was treating Sean Coleman’s disappearance as his own private Watergate.
Lumbergh flipped a dial on his radio and tapped his hand on his steering wheel until a voice broke through the silence.
“Chief?” it came, riddled with a sense of puzzlement.
Lumbergh wasted no time, instructing Hughes to scour the state and local newspapers looking for a photograph from an article on the Andrew Carson disappearance.
“Andrew Carson?” Hughes asked in astonishment.
“Yes. I’m looking for a picture of people searching for his body—one with a woman with long red hair. Look closely. It’s important.”
Hughes asked if it had something to do with Alex Martinez and Sean, the story he was apparently already feverishly working away on for the morning edition.
“Roy, if this pans out, you’ll have yourself an even bigger story. And I’ll give you an exclusive. I promise,” Lumbergh clipped. “Right now, I just need you to do this for me.”
“Okay. When I find the picture, do you want me to bring it over to the station?”
“No. I won’t be there. Just fax it to the sheriff ’s office.”
“Where will you be?”
“Getting Sean.”
Chapter 22
Sean wondered what his captors could believe a man like him was capable of doing. They don’t know me. If they bothered to do any research on the man they dragged from his home in the middle of the nig
ht, all they would have found would have been humiliating Beacon stories about a town drunk who never missed an opportunity to screw up his life, he realized. They could have killed me at any time, but they didn’t. They left me with food, and offered assurances that I’d be fine. If Jessica was right, and what had happened to Andrew Carson wasn’t intended, maybe they would be desperate not to let it happen again.
He stood up from his seat against the freezer door, tossing an empty water bottle into the cardboard box he felt in the dark next to his foot. It made a hollow clunk when it landed on top of the other empty bottles.
Blindly, he paced back and forth in the dark, his shoes shuffling in uncertainty along the concrete floor. He scratched an itch at the back of his head, one that used to be persistent but hadn’t bothered him in months. He was less than confident about the plan that was stewing in his head, but he’d convinced himself that it was at least worth the risk of trying. He relaxed his pace, slowing his stride. Walking to the back wall, he stood there for a moment beside it, outside of the eye of the camera. He then returned to the center of the freezer so he’d be visible again.
He repeated the routine a few more times, each time taking a longer break near the back wall, underneath the evaporator. On the fifth sweep, he reached the wall and felt his open hands along it until he found the electrical cord he had stripped loose earlier. He wrapped his hands around the end still plugged into the wall and savagely yanked on it until it tore loose. A few sparks flew as a result. He hoped the camera wasn’t able to pick up the bright flickers.
The cord was longer than he remembered. Some of it must have been pulled out from behind the wall. This was good. The longer, the better.
As quickly as he could, he wound the cord up in a ball and shoved it in his front pants pocket. He then casually strolled out to the center of the room again, hoping the time lapse hadn’t provoked any suspicion from “Big Brother.”
