Hostage

by Jude Hardin

  “You checked the whole place?”

  “Yeah. Looks like some addicts have been using the ham boning room for a shooting gallery. We’ll need to make sure the lock gets replaced, and we’ll have to start keeping a better eye on this part of town.”

  “Vacant buildings are always a problem,” Ashton said. “Did anyone ever come to help you out?”

  “No.”

  “I called the state police, but there was a big accident on the interstate earlier, and they said it might be a while. Anyway, two detectives showed up here a few minutes ago, along with a sketch artist and a forensics guy. They’re talking to Commander Bailey in his office right now.”

  “Good. Make sure they know I already checked the plant. I’ll stop at the hardware store and buy a lock for the gate, and I’ll tag it with a strip of crime scene tape. Maybe the addicts will leave it alone, at least for a while.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m going to keep driving around town. Vaughan’s cruiser has to be here somewhere. I don’t think the perp could have taken it very far without being noticed.”

  “You think he transferred her to another vehicle?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. If we can find the cruiser, maybe we can lift some fingerprints and get an ID on this guy.”

  “Assuming his prints are in the FBI database.”

  “Yeah. Not a sure thing.”

  “We put an alert out to the local TV and radio stations,” Ashton said. “And the detectives from the state police said there’s a helicopter on the way. If the car’s still around here anywhere, we’ll find it.”

  “Yeah. We’ll find it.”

  Retro disconnected.

  He and Ashton had avoided talking about the obvious, that Vaughan might still be with the car, that the perpetrator might have gotten away and left her incapacitated.

  Or dead.

  As Retro reached for the handle to open the driver’s side door of his cruiser, something that felt like a baseball bat came down hard on his left shoulder, just below his neck. He blacked out momentarily, dropping to one knee, balancing himself with his left palm against the gravel to keep from going down completely. He reached for his pistol, but the holster was empty.

  “Looking for this?”

  Retro turned and glanced up and saw a tall skinny man yanking the magazine out of the 9mm semi-automatic. The man tapped the cartridges loose and flicked them away one at a time like cigarette butts, and then he whizzed the gun out onto the street and tossed the empty magazine toward the gate. There were two other guys standing beside him, one to his left and the other to his right. They all wore jeans and dirty t-shirts and grimy ball caps. Like some kind of uniform.

  “You’re trespassing,” the one on the left said.

  He was holding a rusty old length of pipe or something, probably the weapon he’d used to put Retro on the ground, slapping it against his palm in an effort to look menacing. It was about fourteen inches long with a rounded end that gradually tapered down toward the handle.

  Retro’s vision was blurry, and it took him a few seconds to focus and recognize the tool. It was a wrench designed to tighten and loosen the bungs on fifty-five gallon drums. Retro had used one many times when he’d worked at the plant.

  “You guys are the ones who are trespassing,” Retro said. “I have a strong feeling that some of the discarded drug paraphernalia in there belongs to you, and now you’ve added assault on a police officer to the list of charges. You’re under arrest.”

  The three men started laughing.

  “How are we under arrest?” the one on the right said. “You think you can take all three of us with your bare hands?”

  At forty-two, Retro still wore the same size uniform as he did when he graduated from the academy. He ran three miles before breakfast every day, and he’d been working out with free weights since he was a teenager. He was strong and quick and agile, and he was an expert at exploiting the most vulnerable areas of the human anatomy. These guys were a lot younger than him, but they were thin and pale and weak. They’d ruined themselves with drugs and alcohol and bad eating habits.

  He stood and faced the men, locking eyes with the one in the middle. “Not a problem,” he said. “In about thirty seconds, you’re going to wish you’d let me take you to jail.”

  The man with the drum wrench rushed forward and swung at Retro’s face like he was trying to hit a homerun. Retro ducked, heard the heavy tool whisper by over his head, and then he whipped around and delivered a fast and crushing uppercut that probably broke a couple of the man’s ribs.

  Retro expected the guy to double over in pain and call it quits at that point. But he didn’t. He was tougher than he looked. He grunted, but he didn’t fall to the ground, and he didn’t walk away. If anything, he seemed more determined than ever. There was fire in his eyes. He was angry. Whatever drug he’d been injecting into his veins was keeping him charged up and going strong, but before he could regain his balance and go for another swing with the wrench, Retro tenderized his left knee with a ferocious side kick, forcing the joint inward at an outrageous angle. The man shouted out in agony as he collapsed to the pavement, his weapon slipping from his hand and clanging away harmlessly under the police car.

  Retro was ready for the other guys, but they never came. They just stood there with their mouths open for a few seconds, and then the one who’d taken Retro’s pistol slapped the other one on the arm and the two of them took off running.

  Retro brushed himself off, retrieved the pistol and the magazine and the bullets, reassembled everything and slid the gun into his holster. He handcuffed the drum wrench guy, climbed into his police car and radioed for an ambulance, got back out and crouched down and pulled a wallet out of the assailant’s back pocket.

  “How long have you and your friends been squatting at the plant?” Retro said.

  The man was writhing in agony, tears streaming down his face, his left lower extremity crunched and mangled and pointing inward like a toppled V.

  “You broke my leg,” he said.

  “I didn’t break your leg. I tore all the tendons and ligaments in your knee. There’s a difference.”

  “It hurts. Can’t you see that I’m in pain?”

  “I gave you a chance to surrender peacefully, and you came at me with that skull buster you were holding. Not very smart. But then it looks like you’ve been making bad decisions for a long time.”

  “I need a doctor.”

  “Help is on the way, but it’s going to be a few minutes. Right now would be a good time for you to start cooperating.”

  “I need something for pain. You hear me? I need something for pain!”

  Retro stood and looked at the man’s ID card, which was clearly a fake.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Did you see another police car stop here earlier today? This morning between seven-thirty and eight?”

  The man went into a laughing fit that terminated with a wet gurgling cough.

  “I don’t know what time it was,” he said. “But yeah. There was a lady cop out here. It was pretty funny.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I get some medicine.”

  “I don’t have any medicine to give you,” Retro said. “Tell me now.”

  The man started laughing again.

  Retro couldn’t stand it anymore. This guy had seen Vaughan being attacked, and now he was treating it like some kind of joke.

  Wrong answer.

  Retro stepped forward and pressed the toe of his shiny black shoe against the man’s injured knee.

  The man screamed. His face turned purple.

  “Stop! You’re hurting me!”

  “I’m going to hurt you a lot more if you don’t start talking. My friend’s in trouble and I don’t have time for any of your—”

  “All right! Just get your foot off my leg and I’ll tell you everything I kn
ow.”

  Retro took his foot off the man’s leg.

  And the man told Retro everything he knew.

  12

  Vaughan stopped and looked down at the puddle of blood forming beneath her left foot. At first she thought she’d been shot, but then she realized that she must have stepped on one of the stray slivers of porcelain from the broken toilet tank lid. Amped on adrenaline, she hadn’t noticed the pain or the blood until now.

  She knew that she couldn’t take the time to stop and tend to her injury. Concussion or no concussion, Sozinho would be coming as soon as he realized she’d left the room. She knew this, but when she tried to take a step forward, a white hot jolt of electric agony shot up through her left leg and terminated at the tip of her scalp. She tried limping along on her heel, but it was no good. Every step felt as though someone was jabbing an ice pick through the bottom of her foot.

  She hobbled over to the swimming pool area and sat on the concrete deck, easing herself down as gently as possible without the use of her hands. She rested her left foot on her right thigh and examined the cut. It was about an inch long, running lengthwise along her arch, a little closer to her toes than to her heel.

  Running barefoot on the hard surface had driven the porcelain shard deep into the tissue. Vaughan wiped away some of the blood, but she still couldn’t see it. With tears streaming down her face from the excruciating pain, she reached into the wound with her thumb and forefinger and dug the foreign object out. It was long and crescent shaped, like a miniature Samurai sword, and there was a gelatinous chunk of raw meat dangling from one end.

  Vaughan turned to the side and retched, allowing herself a few seconds for the nausea to pass, and then she went to work with the sliver of porcelain that had been in her foot, slicing out a patch of the filthy vinyl swimming pool cover to use as a dressing. She cut a section about the size of placemat, folded it into a triangle, wrapped it around her foot and tied it tightly.

  Then she heard footsteps.

  Sozinho.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he shouted from across the courtyard.

  He was about a hundred feet away, shambling toward her like some kind of grotesque character from a horror movie. As he got closer, Vaughan could see some of the damage she’d done. There was a meaty flap where the left side of his face used to be. It jiggled with every step. His hair was matted and the front of his shirt was covered with blood.

  He aimed the pistol and fired once.

  The bullet whistled past Vaughan’s left ear. She got up and started running toward the archway. Her foot didn’t hurt anymore. It was numb now, the makeshift bandage slapping awkwardly against the rough Spanish tiles like a snorkeling flipper. She ran as fast as she could, her lungs on fire, a prizefighter working the speed bag deep in the center of her chest.

  Just a few more feet to go.

  She made it to the arch, heard the rumble of an engine approaching, turned the corner and trotted toward the highway that ran in front of the motel, shouting and waving her cuffed hands in the air.

  It was a man on a motorcycle. He slowed and looked over at Vaughan, shook his head and kept going.

  Vaughan screamed and shouted and motioned for him to come back.

  “Please! He’s going to kill me!”

  The rider eased off the throttle about a quarter of a mile down the road. His brake lights came on, and then he made a U-turn. Maybe he’d heard Vaughan’s frantic plea for help, or maybe he’d seen her uniform and figured she might make trouble for him, or maybe he just decided it was the right thing to do. He sped back toward the motel, pulled into the parking lot, stopped a few feet from where Vaughan was standing and lifted the plastic shield on the front of his helmet.

  “What happened to you?” he said.

  “There’s no time to explain. Just get me out of here.”

  “What are all these signs for?”

  Vaughan looked back at the motel. All the doors and windows in front had been boarded up, and there were large rectangular DANGER signs nailed to the sheets of plywood.

  Now she knew where they were.

  “Please,” she shouted. “We need to go.”

  The man glanced down at her badge.

  “Climb on,” he said.

  Vaughan started crying and laughing at the same time. She was giddy with excitement. What were the odds of a conscientious citizen riding by this abandoned motel on this desolate stretch of Route 37 at just the right time? A million to one? Maybe a billion to one, but it had happened, and now she was going to live to see another day.

  She was already thinking about what she was going to do when she got back to Hope, about helping to coordinate the manhunt with the state police and the FBI. She would probably have to do it from a hospital room, but that was okay. Everything was going to be all right now.

  For the first time in hours, Vaughan was optimistic about her chances of making it out of this predicament in one piece. All she had to do was get on that bike and she would be home free. But as she started to mount the rear part of the vinyl seat, a shot rang out and a hole the size of a nickel suddenly appeared on the left side of the biker’s helmet. His body went slack. He slumped forward and then tilted sideways, his weight carrying Vaughan and the motorcycle to the pavement.

  Vaughan tried to scoot away, but her right leg was pinned under the fender.

  She looked up and saw Sozinho standing over her.

  He aimed the pistol at her face and cocked the hammer.

  13

  The drum wrench guy told Retro everything he knew, but it didn’t turn out to be much. He’d seen everything from a distance, from the second floor of the old brick building. He saw Vaughan go down, and then he saw a man with a sleeveless shirt put her in the back seat of the police car and drive away. And that was about it. Not much help. He did say that the car continued in the direction it was pointed, east toward the station. Which meant that it might be in Missouri by now, or hundreds of miles in some other direction, but Retro didn’t think so. The car had to be somewhere nearby. Vaughan was either still with it, or she had been transferred to another vehicle. If she was still with it, she was probably dead. If she had been transferred, there might still be a chance. Either way, the man who’d carjacked the cruiser couldn’t have driven it far. If he’d taken it out on the highway somewhere, it would have been spotted by now.

  After escorting the ambulance to the hospital and getting all the paperwork squared away, Retro rode by Vaughan’s house, just to make sure the car wasn’t there in the driveway.

  It wasn’t.

  Retro knew it wouldn’t be, but he had to check. He parked at the curb and got out and peeked in the garage window and knocked on the front door.

  Nothing.

  He thought about the times he’d been to Vaughan’s house as a guest. The parties, the barbecues. Vaughan liked to laugh and have a good time, although there always seemed to be some sort of intense emotional pain just beyond the facade. Because of what had happened to her husband, Retro supposed. It was the same underlying sadness he saw in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror. It was a bond he and Vaughan shared. The life-shattering finality of irretrievable loss. They’d never talked about it, but maybe they would some day. Maybe on the phone after Retro moved to Florida. Maybe time and distance would allow them to open up to each other.

  As Retro turned to walk back to his car, the woman living in the house next door stepped out to her porch and asked him if everything was all right.

  “Have you seen Ms. Vaughan today?” Retro said.

  “No. I haven’t seen her since she left for work yesterday evening. I was carrying some groceries into the house as she was backing out of the driveway. She waved, but I couldn’t wave back because my hands were full. I smiled, though, and then I saw her smile back at me. I think it’s good for neighbors to be friendly with each other, don’t you?”

  “Yes ma’am. Give us a call if you happen to see Ms. Vaughan.”

  “Is sh
e missing?”

  “Yes. Since early this morning. We’ve put the word out on radio and TV, hoping we might be able to get some help from the community.”

  “We’ve been neighbors for a long time, and I’ve always worried about her doing that kind of work.”

  “Let us know if you see or hear anything.”

  “I certainly will, officer. I certainly will.”

  Retro tipped his hat, walked back to his car and climbed in and drove to the diner. This time he walked past the counter and took a seat in the booth reserved for the department. The place was starting to fill up with the early dinner crowd.

  The same waitress Retro had spoken to earlier brought him a glass of water and a menu. He handed the menu back without looking at it and ordered a fish sandwich with fries and a cup of coffee.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Mira.”

  “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “Sure. Let me just go ahead and put your order in real quick.”

  “Okay.”

  She disappeared behind the partition that divided the dining area from the kitchen, came back a couple of minutes later carrying the coffee Retro had ordered and a humungous plastic tumbler filled with some kind of soft drink for herself.

  She slid into the booth across from Retro.

  “Have you found that female officer yet?” she said.

  “Officer Vaughan. Not yet. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “We have a TV in back. They were talking about it on the news a while ago. It’s kind of freaking me out, if you want to know the truth. I have two little kids, and the low crime rate was one of the reasons I moved here. I thought Hope was just a nice little town where nothing like this ever happened.”

  “It is a nice little town,” Retro said. “And nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “I guess it just goes to show that bad things can happen anywhere.”

  Retro nodded, took a sip from his coffee cup. “You said you saw Officer Vaughan arresting the man who’d defaced the sidewalk and the fire hydrant out there. Did you get a good look at the guy?”