by Rick Mofina
She understood.
John flushed her note in the toilet, then returned to the TV and more beer with Del. He lit a fresh cigarette, shooting glances at her on the bed.
Ann stared blankly at the TV. Long moments passed in silence. They’d found a channel showing the movie The Getaway, the Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger version. Ann wept through much of it, watching the growing parade of empty beer cans lining the table near Del. He was engrossed by the sex scenes, loving the story line of the wife of the vet who appeared to enjoy having sex in front of him with the criminal who’d abducted both of them.
“Look at that, darlin’,” Del said to Ann between slurps of beer. “Bet your husband’s fit to be tied about now.”
“Shut up,” John told him.
After the movie ended, John collapsed in the bed next to Ann’s. Del stayed on the sofa, his snoring soon punctuated with belches and farts. Ann’s chain jingled when she turned to the wall. In the darkness her reality was crystalline.
I’m going to die. I’m wearing the clothes of a dead woman.
I’ve been kidnapped by killers who’ve revealed their faces to me. They face the death penalty. They have nothing to lose. I’ll never see Zach and Tom again.
No. Stop it. Fight back. How? Escape? How? If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now. Maybe they wanted to hold her for ransom, torture her, play some perverted game. How could she know? They were monsters. She had to get away.
Ann froze.
A large hand reeking of tobacco clamped over her mouth and pressed her head into the bed. She inhaled the stench of beer, cigarettes, and rotting teeth. She opened her eyes to Del’s, gleaming at her from the night. His other hand closed like a vise on her inner thigh.
“Shh. We can be quiet, darlin’.”
Ann shook, making the chain clink.
“You’re going to like it.”
No. Don’t. No.
Del’s free hand reached for the zipper of her jeans. She struggled as he pulled it down, then reached for her lower stomach.
No!
The click of a gun’s hammer stopped everything.
“I told you to stay away from her.” John’s gun was pressed to Del’s head.
“Take it easy.” Del withdrew his hands and got up. “Take it easy. I was just having some fun.”
“Stay away from her.”
“Hell, John. You want to go first, or what? Huh? What is your thing with her? You going to tell me, or just let her mess up everything?”
“You’ll know everything soon enough.”
Del was urinating in the bathroom with the door open.
“That’s too late, partner. Too damned late.”
He returned to the sofa. John returned to his bed. Soon both of them were snoring.
Ann sobbed into her pillow. Then, slowly so the chains wouldn’t ring, she pulled her zipper up, fastening her jeans. God, please help me. She reached into her bra for Tom’s gift and a small folded piece of paper. Her second note. Without making a sound she slipped it under the sheet, praying that the motel staff would find it when they changed the linen.
It was her only hope.
Before sleep took her, she clutched Tom’s gift until she saw his face and those of Zach and her mother.
THIRTY-SIX
Tyler Vaughn, electrician for AJRayCo, stepped from his van at the Sundowner Lodge near the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He leaned on the fender to study his work order for cabin 10. Finish off a small rewire job.
He flipped through the pages on his clipboard to calculate how much cable he’d need, when the cleaning maid’s cart squeaked to a halt beside him.
“Have you got work to do in there right now?” she said. Vaughn looked her over. “’Fraid so.”
“Well, if that don’t beat all.” Her shirt and jeans complemented her figure as she looked back at the long asphalt path she’d climbed. “I push this heavy thing up here, ’cause I always start with number ten first, and find you. All set to go in and mess it more.”
“Whoa, I won’t be long. We can work in there together.”
“You going to mess things up?”
“No, but I’ll have to cut the power; can give it to you when you need it.”
“You won’t mess it more, make me have to come back?”
“Promise.”
“All right.”
Inside, Vaughn went to the panel, figuring he could replace some of the ancient knob and tube wiring without a hitch. He’d definitely use Bx cable outside. He checked the outlets and the walls, flipped through his work sheets, then put them on the round table near the bed. It was all configured nicely. Yeah, this was a piece of cake.
The maid began in the bathroom, surprised at how clean the guests had left it. Scrubbing the sink, she enjoyed the way the electrician’s utility belt hung from his slim waist. He must have a girl.
Vaughn worked fast inside, then went outside. You definitely wanted that exposed old stuff replaced with Bx. He worked expertly with his strippers between peeks through the window at the maid tugging at the linen. She was easy on the eyes.
“Damn,” she said.
The bed-sheets had whipped over the table nearby, scattering his paperwork on the carpet. She collected everything—supply page, schematics, job order. And what was this odd one? Seemed out of place. Folded lined notepaper. Looked like a woman’s handwriting. Maybe a love note from his girlfriend? She was tempted to read it, when he re-entered.
“Sorry. I messed up your papers.” She smiled, tidied them together, including the little note, then handed them to him.
Vaughn folded them, shoved them into his jeans. “Nothing in there to worry over.” He smiled right back.
Vaughn got the maid’s name and number before he finished the cabin job. During his next job at the trendy Desert Dog restaurant to fix the stove, then the inspection at the Kennedy high school, the cooler at the corner store, and the two residential orders, she was on his mind.
By the end of his day, Vaughn had forgotten that some of his installation work counted as hours toward his senior master electrician’s ticket. Judy pointed it out to him at the shop when he added all of his papers to the leafy collection she had from AJRayCo’s nine other electricians.
Judy the red-haired beauty. That’s what the guys called her. She was the shop’s sixty-four-year-old drill sergeant and den mother. Held the place together, looked after them, even went along with their elaborate practical jokes, like the time they wired Christmas lights to the switchboard to flash with each incoming call, the time they convinced a local radio station that she was Marilyn Monroe’s long-lost baby sister, and that one where they hired an Elvis impersonator to phone her on her birthday. “Baby, why’d you break my heart, baby, why?” She never let on, but she loved the Elvis call.
The gold chains on Judy’s bifocals jiggled as she flipped quickly through the work orders, pages snapping as she completed her end-of-day billing tally before the boys waiting by the garage bay door clocked out. It was business as usual, until a solitary slip of notepaper fell from somewhere in the pile.
What’s this?
Judy unfolded it. Reading the words, she gasped.
Please call the FBI now. My name is Ann Reed, I was kidnapped by two men from the San Francisco Deluxe Jewelry Store armed robbery. I saw them shoot a police officer....
Dear Lord. Judy had seen the news reports. She reached for the phone as she continued reading. Wait a minute. Her hand stopped. She turned the note over. This can’t be—
“Hold on there!” Judy marched down the hall to the garage bay to confront the men waiting to leave. “Everybody freeze!”
She came upon them, bitching or bragging about tricky jobs, sports, and weekend plans. Conversations trailed and all eyes went to Judy and the small scrap of paper she held up.
“Whose work is this?”
Judy read the note aloud:
“Please call the FBI now. My name is Ann Reed, I was kidnapped by two men
from the San Francisco Deluxe Jewelry Store armed robbery. I saw them shoot a police officer.
“We’re going east. Men are named John and Del. Two white males about six feet driving a red late-model SUV with Calif. plate starting…” It ended there.
“John and Del? Come on, Sparky, this is your style.”
Sparky Dane was a crusty old electrical man who loved to push Judy’s buttons. He knew John was her despised no-good two-timing wig-wearin’ former boyfriend and that Nat Foosey was the shop’s young joker who’d set up the Elvis call. Judy expected they’d produce the rest of the “note” to say Two white males about six feet driving a red-haired woman crazy!
Sparky shook his head, as if he hadn’t a clue.
Judy turned to young Nat.
“Foose, is this you?”
He shrugged. “No, ma’am.”
“Sounds like you better call the FBI, just to be sure, there, Judy.” Sparky sounded dead serious.
But Judy was sure she’d detected a twinkle and trace of a grin. She took stock of the others. They seemed to be watching the clock, or checking their watches. As usual they never betrayed the joke, milking it. The test was how long they could keep a straight face, as they fiddled with sunglasses, jingled keys to their cars and pickup trucks.
The buzzer sounded. Quitting time.
The men departed, leaving Judy alone in the shop shaking her head as she went to the big corkboard. Sooner or later, she’d get to the bottom of their latest trick. She grinned, posting the note with a map pin to the board.
As she walked back to her desk, it began gnawing at her that it was a strange way to make a joke. She shrugged it off. Those boys were always finding strange ways to get her going. Less than an hour later, Judy activated the twenty-four-hour on-call message, cut the lights, locked up, and left.
On the shop’s corkboard amid the clutter of labor regs, health forms, union news, and tool offers was Ann Reed’s plea for her life.
THIRTY-SEVEN
In the Star newsroom, Molly Wilson’s phone rang, breaking her concentration on the story she was writing after the latest press conference.
“Wilson.”
“It’s Tom.”
She stopped typing. “Oh, Tom. How are you holding up? Everyone here’s praying for Ann, for Zach, for you.”
“Molly, I need your help.”
“Anything.”
“I watched live coverage of the conference on Carrie Addison.”
“It’s horrible. They’ve got to catch the bastards.”
“What do you know about her?”
“Just what they said. She was a former employee of San Francisco Deluxe Jewelry. They think she’s the link.”
“But how? Inside info?”
“Seems most likely. I wish I knew. We’re working on it.”
“Molly, I need to know if any of your cop sources have told you anything more on Addison’s ties to the people who took Ann.”
“Got nothing right now, Tom. They’re scouring her apartment for prints, paper. Checking her phone records. Your sources are way better than mine.”
“What’s Addison’s address?”
“It’s an apartment in the Upper Market, 707 Short.”
“What about the jewelry store? Staff saying anything about her?”
“Nothing. They’re screening calls. Won’t come to the door. Maybe they’re blaming themselves.”
“What about Addison’s relatives?”
“Haven’t located any yet.”
“Thanks, Molly.”
“Tom.” Wilson was puzzled. “Do you know something? I mean, aren’t the police keeping you updated?”
A moment passed.
“I’m going to find her, Molly.”
“You’re going to find her? Tom, it could be risky if you jump on this.”
“Molly—”
“They’ve got a task force of a dozen agencies in two states now. I understand what you’re going through.”
“No, you don’t. Unless you’re going through it, you can’t possibly know what I’m going through.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m sorry. But maybe you should just sit tight, try to hang on?”
“I’ve got to try to find Ann. I have to go, Molly. Call me if you get anything.”
Reed collected his thoughts, shaping them into his next step as if he were covering the story.
Carrie Dawn Addison was the link to the suspects. Somehow, in some way, Addison had to have known them, or the people who knew them. He had to get inside her life and he had to do it fast.
Reed began flipping through previous editions of the Chronicle, the Star, the Merc, looking for names of jewelry store staff members, scanning the first reports on the case, searching for their names in stories or photo outlines until one leaped out at him.
Vanessa Jordan.
The clerk who still had Ann’s receipt in her hand when he’d talked to her. She was the one who’d told him. Vanessa was distraught at the scene. She’d used his cell phone to call her boyfriend. Reed dug through the papers on his desk for his cell phone and notebook.
He began punching the phone’s keypad. It beeped, calling up the menu, beeping as he scrolled through the call history. That’s right, she’d called her boyfriend. The numbers were swimming on the phone’s small screen. He confirmed it with date and time. There it was, 415-555-3312.
Reed wrote it down in his notebook so he wouldn’t lose it. Then he called the number. What was her boyfriend’s name? The call clicked through. What was his name? Reed tried to remember that day. Tried resurrecting the memory of Vanessa in the alley behind the store, police everywhere.
“I need to call Stephen, my boyfriend. I need him.”
It continued ringing.
Stephen.
It was picked up between the third and fourth ring.
“Hello.” Male voice. Early twenties.
“Stephen?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“I’m a friend of Vanessa’s.”
“Friend of Vanessa’s? Which friend? I don’t know your voice, man.”
“Look, Steve—”
“Don’t call me Steve. I don’t know you and this isn’t a good time.”
“Who is it, Stephen?”
Reed could hear Vanessa’s voice in the background. She was there. Next to Stephen. Reed had to talk to her, he couldn’t lose her.
“Stephen, tell her it’s Tom Reed. I need to talk to her.
“My wife, Ann, was the lady she was helping at the store when the robbery happened. Tell her, please. Please. Tell her I have to talk to her, that I’m sorry about everything. But it’s critical, please.”
Reed overheard Vanessa, distraught, saying something about the police, the press, that they should hang up. Then Stephen was talking to her about Ann Reed.
“Hang on man,” Stephen said to Reed. His heart nearly burst as he squeezed the phone. “Are you Tom Reed, that guy from the Star?” Stephen said.
“Yes. Ann’s my wife.”
“The one they took?”
“Yes. I met Vanessa at the store, that’s how I got your number. She used my phone to call you that day.”
“Hang on.”
Reed heard more muffled conversation. It went on for several moments, only he couldn’t make out any of the words until Stephen came back.
“Look, man, Vanessa says she’s sorry for you but she can’t talk to nobody about nothing.”
“Stephen, it’s my wife’s life. Please.”
“Man, I’m sorry but she’s scared to death. Look what happened to Carrie. Three people dead. The FBI’s all over this. The SFPD robbery is looking at her. Man, she’s waiting on a call from a lawyer. She is scared to death.”
“Meet me. Just meet me for five minutes. You come too, Stephen.”
“Hang on.”
A long agonizing minute passed; then Stephen returned with a location. “You know it? It’s in the Haight.”
“Yes.” Reed knew i
t.
“Meet us there in ninety minutes. No cameras, no cops. Just you.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Eighty minutes later Reed was in the Haight, pacing in front of a boutique displaying lava lamps. No sign of Vanessa Jordan or her boyfriend.
Reed checked his watch again and the location they’d given him. The stretch between the Upper and Lower Haight, next to Masonic, on the side near an exotic carpet store with a bank of newspaper boxes out front. This was the place.
The air carried the smell of incense, herbs, and the sudden earsplitting bass from a passing car that made him jump, pounding on the fact the clock was ticking.
“You Reed?”
He shot his head around, finding himself toe-to-toe with a white guy in his mid-twenties. Fullback proportions. Short sandy hair. Stone faced.
“I’m Stephen,” he said, angling his head to see under Reed’s ball cap and dark glasses.
But no Vanessa.
“Where is she?”
“Not here,” Stephen said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Not far. You came alone, right? No cameras or stuff?”
Stephen stopped to invade Reed’s space. “Because this is so far off the record. There is no record.”
“I just want to find my wife.”
After two blocks they came to a pickup truck. Vanessa stepped from it and came to them. Her face was raw. Her eyes were red. She was gripping a crumpled tissue in her fist.
“Take it easy.” Stephen grabbed her shoulders. “Let’s go over here.”
They went to an alcove that offered some privacy from the street.
“Vanessa, do you have any idea where they might have taken my wife?”
She shook her head.
“But police think Carrie Addison’s the link to the robbery,” Reed said.
“I swear,” Vanessa said, “I don’t know who those creeps are, but I think it’s related to Carrie’s problems with drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“She was my friend from grade school. She had a hard life. Her dad walked out when she was, like, twelve. Then her mother married some guy who had three little kids and moved to Boston. Carrie’s been on her own since she was sixteen.”
