by Glenn Cooper
‘Sorry I was late,’ he said. ‘There was a fight in the tent city I had to sort out,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be alcohol-free, but it’s not.’
‘I thought your men were checking vehicles at the gates,’ Sister Anika said.
‘They are, but this ranch is massive. There’s almost two hundred miles of perimeter fence. There’s a black market in people bringing beer, booze, pot, you name it to the fence lines and selling it to the good Christians who drive their trucks from the tent city and RV park.’
‘Human nature,’ the chef said.
‘You got that right,’ Carling agreed. ‘So what time in the morning you taking off, Sue?’
She smiled at him maybe for the first time ever. She didn’t like the man one bit. He was a humorless ex-lawman with a macho-bullshit swagger that utterly turned her off.
‘Many of you may have noticed how uncharacteristically limited I’ve been in my wine consumption,’ Sue said. ‘That’s because I’m leaving tonight.’
‘What time should I tell the boys at the gate you’ll be pulling out?’ Carling asked.
‘I’ve still a bit of packing to do. Sometime between one and two,’ she said.
‘Well, you know the alarm code,’ Carling said. ‘Deactivate it when you exit and reactivate it on your way out.’
‘Of course,’ she said.
The mansion was dark and quiet except for some hallway nightlights on the bedroom levels. Sue made a dry run with one of her bags, disarming the alarm and putting it inside the van she’d parked by the kitchen entrance.
She went back upstairs using the elevator and in the glow of a nightlight she saw her hands were shaking. This was the point of no return. She could tell the girls it was all a terrible idea. Or she could plunge ahead into the unknown.
She quietly entered their bedroom and saw them dressed in jeans and t-shirts, standing by their unmade beds holding their sleeping babies.
‘So ladies, you ready?’ she asked.
They were crying. Each one in turn hugged Lily. The bulldog had also stayed up late playing and was so tired in her bed that she hardly wagged her tail at them. Mary was the last. Snorting back her sadness, she made sure her note to Mrs White was sticking out from under the bed.
Heading down in the elevator, Sue whispered that they had to be extremely quiet. The elevator stopped in the downstairs hall. Sue stepped out and stared.
‘Miss Gibney,’ Anning said. ‘Sorry to startle you. I was just having a midnight feast. The chef had some nice leftovers.’
Sue reached behind her and closed the elevator grate and door.
‘Well, I’m off now,’ she said. ‘Heading home for a couple of days.’
‘Mr Carling told me. Drive safely. Lot of idiots drive drunk at night in these parts.’
‘Thank you. I will.’
‘That your camper by the kitchen?’
‘It is.’
‘I had one of them when I was young. Wish I still had it. I’ll set the alarm after you,’ he said, moving to follow her toward the kitchen.
She thought fast and patted her pockets down. ‘Oh heck,’ she said. ‘I left my keys in the bedroom. Please don’t wait for me.’
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘You take care. Back in time for Mass next week?’
‘Definitely.’
She re-entered the elevator and hit the button for the third floor.
‘I think I shit myself,’ Mary said. ‘Minion looked like she was going to puke.’
This time when the elevator opened, the ground-floor hallway was empty. Sue led the girls through the kitchen and bundled them into the back of the van and covered them with bedding. Then she noticed something she’d failed to take stock of before, a rear security camera. She didn’t care if someone reviewed the playback in the morning but if the camera was being actively monitored, the game was up.
There was nothing to do but climb in and drive off.
The ranch was so large that it took almost ten minutes to get to the main gate. The gatehouse lights glowed ominously in the distance. Sue swallowed hard and slowed to a stop at the barrier. The guard slid the window open and looked her over. Inside, she saw a bank of video screens including a view of the back of the mansion near the kitchen. The guard looked sleepy; maybe he’d been napping.
‘I’m Sue Gibney.’
‘I’ve got you. Mr Carling said you were taking off tonight.’
‘Well, bye then,’ she said.
The young man seemed to get more alert. ‘You live around here?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Maybe we could get a beer or something.’
‘Unfortunately I live in New Mexico.’
He was leaning out the window now, making time. ‘That’s a cool van. You got a bed in there?’
‘Tell you what? Why don’t I give you my number. You can call me if you’re ever in New Mexico.’
‘Well, I’ll have an excuse to go there now. I’ll take that number, Sue Gibney.’
She was five miles away before she spoke again.
‘Oh my fucking God, we made it,’ she said. She had wanted to scream it out but she remembered the sleeping babies.
Mary threw off her blanket and imitated the young man. ‘You got a bed in there?’ Then she dissolved into laughter. ‘Pretty smooth, girlie. Why don’t I give you my number? Was that your real number?’
‘What do you think?’ Sue said.
Sue hadn’t told the girls the next part of the plan in case they were caught. She didn’t want anyone else to get into trouble. At the small town of Quanah she took Highway 6 north toward the Red River and the Oklahoma border and, just after a bridge over the Groesbeck Creek, she pulled the van over on to the verge.
‘We stop?’ Maria Aquino said.
‘Sue’s got to pee-pee in a bush-bush,’ Mary said, sending the girls into a paroxysm of sniggering.
‘Not exactly,’ Sue said. ‘We’re meeting a friend.’
There was a flash of headlights from a vehicle parked on the opposite verge a hundred yards away. Sue flashed it back. The vehicle slowly approached and did a U-turn to pull alongside.
‘Come on girls, out you go,’ Sue said.
‘Pedro!’ Maria Mollo cried, running into his outstretched arms.
She began to chatter in Spanish but the stable man warned her to keep it down so as not to wake JJ.
He dangled a set of keys at Sue. ‘Your camper is really nice, a real classic. You sure you want to swap? My friend’s van is a junker.’
‘As long as it runs.’
‘It runs fine. I put mattresses inside to make it more comfortable for the ladies. The shocks kind of suck too, to be honest.’
‘Tell your friend not to drive the camper for a while. Until things settle down.’
‘I’ll tell him. Sure thing. Where you going to go?’
‘It’s best if you don’t know. And Pedro, thank you.’
She gave him a hug and a peck on the cheek.
‘OK, Sue. No problem. Just be safe, OK? I don’t want to see you or the girls get hurt. Señor Anning’s a tough guy. He’s going to be pissed. You know how to shoot?’
‘A gun?’
‘Yeah, a gun. I put a pistol in the glove box for you. It’s old but it works. Like the van.’
‘I don’t know how to shoot a gun.’
‘It’s a revolver. You pull the trigger, it fires.’
Pedro’s friend’s van was, in fact, a piece of junk. It rode rough, it smelled of oil, and the speedometer was pegged at 30 mph even in park. But the AC worked and so did the radio. They’d survive. Before long, the Marys were curled up, spooning the babies, and Sue was putting miles between them and the ranch.
Sister Anika was knocking on Torres’s bedroom door. ‘Mrs Torres? Mrs Torres? Do you know where the girls are?’
Torres answered in her nightgown. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘I looked in after morning prayers and they weren’t in their bedroom.’
‘Did you …?’ She was about to ask if she checked with Sue, then remembered that the Sue era was over. ‘Are the babies sleeping?’ she asked.
‘They’re not in the room either. Only the dog seems to be there.’
Torres ran up the flight of stairs and did a frenzied inspection of the floor, including Sue’s empty room, before calling down to the dining room and even the stables. Then in a panic, she literally pressed the panic button on the alarm panel and all hell broke loose on the ranch.
Anning and Pole were too agitated to sit. They both paced Anning’s library, coffee cups in hand, waiting for Clay Carling to give them an update.
‘Right under my goddamn nose, George. The girls must’ve been in the elevator when I saw her last night.’
Pole chose not to admonish Anning for calling him George.
‘I will make sure she spends the rest of her life in jail for kidnapping. She fucked with the wrong man.’
Pole had a registered letter he suddenly produced.
‘Look what they sent me, Randy. I’ve been excommunicated! The bastard excommunicated me. My priests and bishops got letters too.’
Anning looked at him askance. ‘George, we’ve got a six-alarm fire going on and you’re talking to me about getting a mean letter from the Vatican?’
‘I’m sorry. I knew Celestine would do it but when it actually happens – well, it’s still a shock, that’s all.’
‘Wear it like a badge of honor, damn it. And don’t be bitching about that nonsense now.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Pole said, dabbing at a spot of coffee that had slid from his lips on to the cassock he’d hastily thrown on. ‘Let’s just pray the babies are safe.’
Carling came in looking deathly, followed by Torres who didn’t look any better.
‘The man on the main gate missed it,’ he said. ‘There they were, plain as day on the kitchen-rear security cam at one eighteen a.m.’
‘Fire his ass,’ Anning said.
‘He’s already gone. He got Sue’s number as she was leaving. He wanted to ask her out. I checked it. It’s bogus. We have her home address in Santa Fe. I’ve got a team on the way to stake it out.’
‘She won’t go there,’ Anning said.
‘Probably not, but we’ve got to cover all the bases. I’ve already notified the State Police. They’ve got Gibney’s plate number.’
Pole said, ‘You didn’t mention the Marys and the babies, did you?’
‘Of course not, George,’ Anning said. ‘We’ve got to keep this quiet or we’ll have a scandal on our hands. This needs to be done quietly and efficiently.’
‘But an amber alert could help,’ Torres said.
‘I said quietly!’ Anning said.
‘I told the police she stole sensitive documents from the ranch,’ Carling said. ‘They all know who you are, Mr Anning. If they spot her, they’ll call us first. We’ll get one of our judges to issue a warrant for them to monitor her credit-card use. She buys gas or a Snickers bar and we’ve got her. And one more thing. I don’t know Gibney all that well but she doesn’t strike me as a criminal mastermind. She knows she’s going to need help if she’s going to elude us.’
‘Who would help her?’ Anning said.
‘Pedro Alvarado might,’ Torres said.
‘Who’s he?’ Anning asked.
‘The ranch hand you fired the other day,’ she said. ‘He lives in the county.’
‘I’ll personally pay him a visit,’ Carling said. ‘Anyone else?’
Torres thought. ‘When that professor came here – Donovan – Sue and he seemed to hit it off.’
‘Check the ranch phone logs,’ Anning said.
‘She never once used the ranch lines,’ Mrs Torres said. ‘If she called outside she used her cell phone.’
‘You know our policy. No personal mobile phones on the premises.’
Torres seemed ready for a tongue-lashing. ‘I searched her room. She had one in her medical bag. She must have smuggled it in.’
Anning didn’t pounce or swear. He calmly asked Torres if she knew the phone number. She had anticipated the question and gave him a slip of paper.
‘OK, clear the room,’ Anning said. ‘Let me make a call.’
In five minutes, Anning had made his connection.
‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a bit of a problem over here. Is this a secure line? Good. What’s the chance we can get the FBI or some other agency to check on the cell-phone calls of one of my former employees? Hell, yes, it’s important.’
TWENTY-NINE
‘Circle the airport and pick me up in ten minutes,’ the man said to his partner.
They had been following an Uber driver’s Volvo as it made its way from Cambridge to Logan airport. Inside the terminal, the private detective kept Cal on a tight leash. Surveillance in an airport was a piece of cake. There was usually enough of a crush that you could get close to a mark without getting made. So when Cal made his way to an automated ticked kiosk to get his boarding pass, the detective joined the line right behind him.
He looked over Cal’s shoulder and picked up the flight numbers. When Cal took off for the boarding gate, a check on the departure board showed that Flight 193 was bound for Dallas.
He placed a call. ‘Mr Carling, he’s going to land in Dallas in about five hours.’
When Cal left the terminal and stepped into the Dallas heat, another pair of men was waiting, and watching him approach a taxi stand.
‘That’s him,’ one of them said, checking the photo on his phone. ‘I’ll grab a cab so we don’t lose him. Get the car and follow. Call if you lose contact.’
The taxi dropped Cal off at a recreational vehicle sales and service center midway between Dallas and Fort Worth.
‘Hi there,’ Cal said to the woman behind the counter. ‘I called yesterday to book an RV rental. My name’s Donovan.’
She checked her computer. ‘Oh yeah, we got it all fueled and prepped. It’s the 2010 Damon Sport thirty-two-footer. Sleeps six. It’s a nice vehicle.’ She gave him an obvious once-over. He was looking on the preppie-side with tight jeans, Oxford shirt, and blazer. ‘You know how to handle a vehicle this size?’
Cal grinned back. ‘Is the pope Catholic?’
She squinted at him. ‘Which pope you referring to?’
Clay Carling brought two of his men with him in case Pedro had company. It hadn’t been necessary. The young man was alone in his small house, his wife at work, his kids at school. Pedro knew Carling by sight, but if he was scared, he didn’t show it. He stood at his front door defiantly upright.
‘You know who I am, right?’ Carling said.
‘I know who you are, señor.’
‘You on your lonesome here?’
‘Yeah. What do you want?’
‘I just want to talk.’
Pedro looked at the other fellow standing in the front yard, one of the security men he’d frequently seen at the main ranch gate. He had spotted three men getting out of the pickup. The third must have gone around to the back.
‘About what?’
‘Can we go inside? Hotter than hell out here.’
A table fan was running inside. Children’s toys littered the floor. Carling had a peek into the kitchen.
‘See you got a pot of coffee on.’
‘Want some?’ Pedro said.
‘How’d you know?’ Carling said, showing some teeth.
Pedro gave it to him in a chipped cup.
Carling helped himself to an armchair. It was Pedro’s. No one else in the family was allowed to use it. The small man said nothing.
‘You find new work yet?’ Carling asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Too bad you got cross-wise with Mr Anning.’
‘These things happen, I guess.’
‘Sure they do. Say, did you hear what happened at the ranch yesterday?’
‘I didn’t hear nothing.’
‘Oh yeah? You know Sue, right?’
‘I know her.’
‘Well, for some damned reason, Sue decided to kidnap the girls and their babies. Can you imagine?’
‘I don’t know nothing about that, señor.’
‘Well, I think you’re lying, Pedro.’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘You talk to Sue since getting fired?’
‘No, señor.’
‘See, that’s another lie. We checked her phone records. She called your cell phone day before yesterday. That call was really short, probably only long enough to leave a voice message. Well, you called her back not two hours later. That call lasted six whole minutes. Remembering now?’
Pedro was eyeing the closet where he kept a hunting rifle on a shelf out of reach of his small kids.
‘Oh yeah, I forgot. She offered to give me a reference for a new job. We talked about that.’
Carling put his cup down. ‘That’s not what you talked about.’
‘Yeah it was. She’s a nice person. She’s going to write me something.’
Carling stood up and towered over Pedro. ‘I think you helped her, maybe swapped a vehicle with her so she could evade detection. Know that camper of hers?’
‘The VW? Sure, I’ve seen it.’
‘I see you’ve got a lock-up garage. That VW’s not in there, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Mind if I take a look-see?’
‘This is private property, señor.’
‘Well, I respect that, but what we have here is an extraordinary situation. What that means is, your private property ain’t shit to me. Let’s go have a look inside, all right?’
Outside, Pedro looked for the right key on his keychain. Carling and the two security guys looked on.
‘Haven’t got all day,’ Carling said.
Pedro unlocked it and gave the door a tug. The garage had some tools, kids’ bikes, a bunch of junk.
‘See, señor, I told you I didn’t have a camper.’
‘OK, then,’ Carling said. ‘You’ve gone a little bitty way in gaining my trust. Let’s go the rest of the way. Let’s go inside here and finish our talk.’
Pedro made a quick dash toward the road. The nearest house was a hundred yards away. Maybe he hoped to flag down a car but it didn’t matter. Carling’s men blocked his way and grabbed him, pulling him inside the garage.
