The voice says, We’re looking for the name of the person who owns this garage. Do you see any names on the board, anywhere?
Briefly, she wonders who we are and why anybody cares about names. But she scans the board anyway.
“No,” she says slowly. “I don’t see any names. But there’s a photo.”
She is staring at a glossy nine-by-twelve black-and-white photograph of a heavy-set, thick-necked muscular man in a sleeveless, tight-fitting black weightlifter’s costume, knees wrapped in black compression bandages. He’s crouching, bulging arms stretched in a wide V above his head, supporting a massive barbell. He has a thick, brush-like black moustache and a jagged scar on his left cheek. His features are squeezed in a fiercely contorted grimace of concentration and effort.
Her eyes are fixed on the man’s face. It is the face that loomed over her in the night. The face behind the horrors of the last long hours. She shivers. Her legs are trembling.
Name, the voice says. Is there a name on the photo?
She pulls her eyes away from the face and licks her parched lips. “Yes,” she says. She reads the caption aloud, her voice trembling. “Roger Conklin of Pecan Springs receives USA Weightlifting Federation Award in the Men’s Holiday Open.”
The voice is very quiet. Roger Conklin—is he the man who assaulted you?
She swallows. “Yes, it’s him.” Fear rises up in her like a cold, black fountain. She closes her eyes and braces herself against its chill. “Roger Conklin.”
Brave girl, the voice says approvingly. Hang on while I check for his address. A moment later: Roger Conklin, 321 Lampasas. The voice is quietly jubilant. Now go back to the bed and lie down. We’re coming to get you.
The darkness welcomes her like an open grave. We’re coming to get you is a dying whisper in her mind.
We’re coming to get you get you get you
Chapter Seventeen
When he gets the call, Ethan Connors is at his desk in the Criminal Investigations Division bullpen he shares with four other detectives and a Property and Evidence technician.
The Pecan Springs CID is much smaller than his unit with the Bexar County DA’s office, where he worked until a few months ago. But then the town of Pecan Springs is considerably smaller than the city of San Antonio. Which means that there’s less crime and the cases they work on don’t often involve high-powered gang crimes or high-dollar drug deals.
But there’s still enough to keep them busy. The other detectives—three men, one woman—are all married, with families, so they try to work eight-to-five as much as possible. Ethan long ago got into the habit of starting early and working late, six days a week, sometimes seven, depending on the load. And since he now goes home to an empty house—well, empty unless you count Einstein, who sleeps all day anyway—he’s logging even more hours.
So he is often alone in an otherwise empty CID bullpen, as he is now. He is staring into his computer monitor, scrolling through the posts on Allison Montgomery’s Facebook page, looking for clues to her disappearance. He’s especially alert to possible places where she might go to hide out or people who might know where she is. Late in the afternoon, the neighborhood canvass turned up one more person who claimed to have seen the gray van, but that doesn’t persuade Ethan that there was a real abduction, especially because none of the witnesses could identify the driver. He’s convinced himself that Wilcox was behind the wheel, that she picked up Montgomery on Harper Lane, and that both the kidnapper and the kidnapping are fake.
But if Montgomery has left a clue to her disappearance on social media, Ethan can’t find it. She doesn’t appear to have a Twitter account and there’s nothing useful on Instagram or Snapchat, so he logs off and shuts the computer down. He’s got paperwork to do before he can call it quits for the day. When that’s done, he’s decided he’ll stop at Gino’s and pick up a pizza, which he can reheat when he and Einstein get back from their evening run. That and a couple of glasses of Chianti, and he’ll be fine. Just fine.
The little frame house he rented when he moved from San Antonio a few months before isn’t far from the river trail where the fake Montgomery/Wilcox kidnapping occurred. It’s nothing special, furnished mostly from flea markets and garage sales. But Connors is handy with tools and a paint brush, and he’s made the place comfortable for himself and Einstein, an eclectic mix of three or four breeds and a very smart dog. Ethan likes having little projects to do, like the bookcase he’s building in his garage workshop. If things go right this weekend, he might even get it finished.
But there’s another side to Connors, a second career as an outdoor writer/photographer, and a fairly successful one. The photo-essay assignment he’s currently working on for Lone Star Fishing & Hunting is about managing whitetail deer on the Texas high plains and will include some pretty damned good photos of hefty bucks with giant (for whitetails, that is) racks of antlers—photos he took himself last year. If he can get some time this weekend, maybe he’ll take his camera to Devil’s Backbone and hike a couple of trails. It’s wild out there. You never know what you might see.
But before he leaves the station this evening, he wants to wrap up his report on the afternoon’s developments in the Montgomery case. Based on what the sister said about Montgomery “disappearing” for two weeks the previous year, he has already told the chief that what they’ve got is a conspiracy. He’s wasted a full day on the investigation, so he’s recommending that Wilcox be charged with obstruction and making a false police report. They can deal with Montgomery when she surfaces, as of course she will, eventually. The chief hasn’t yet agreed, but he’s planning to include both recommendations in his wrap-up report. After that, it’s up to her.
He pulls up the file and gets started. He is still typing when his cellphone vibrates. He takes it out of his pocket, automatically checking the time: 6:59. It’s the chief.
“Meet me in the parking lot in five minutes,” she says, and rattles off the explanation.
He listens in mounting disbelief. When she’s done, he swallows, hard. “You’ve called up the hostage rescue squad?”
“That’s procedure, isn’t it?” the chief snaps. “Five minutes.”
Connors stands up, reaching for his jacket. “If this is another goddamned stunt,” he grits between his teeth, “I am throwing both their asses in jail. Tonight.”
“I’ll help,” the chief says.
• • •
At 7:05, Ruby and China are pulling up a half-block away from the small frame house at 321 Lampasas Street. According to China, Ruby has been sitting in her living room chair for the past half hour or so, unmoving, her eyes closed, answering China’s questions in a dull, uninflected monotone. If it weren’t for the cell phone recording, Ruby isn’t sure that even she would believe what actually happened. She doesn’t blame Sheila for being skeptical.
Ruby herself is drained and nearly exhausted by the effort to learn where Allison is being held. She wants nothing more than to collapse with a good, stiff drink and forget all the ugliness she has just seen and heard. And felt. Feeling Allison’s pain, that was the worst of it—the agony of brutal physical violation, the trauma of psychological invasion, the spiraling sense of helplessness. Ruby is still trembling.
But when China telephones Sheila with the name Roger Conklin, his street address, and a thirty-second recap of the past half hour’s activities, the chief says she wants Ruby on the scene, pronto. She doesn’t sound entirely happy about what they’ve done or convinced that Ruby’s intervention with Allison has turned up a solid lead to the place where she’s being held. But at least she’s willing to check it out—with backup.
“Brave lady,” China says, ending the call. “She’s bringing backup. If this doesn’t work, she’ll be out there falling on her face in front of her whole team.”
Ruby is in no shape to get behind the wheel, so China drives. Lampasas Street bisects a small subdivision built some forty years before and showing its age. Most of the frame two-bedroom,
one-bath houses need a new coat of paint or roof and window repair or just general cleanup. There are no sidewalks, and the grass in the small front yards is sun-fried and littered with toys. The garages are mostly detached, and several of the driveways are blocked with motorcycles and derelict autos.
China parks her white Toyota at the end of the three-hundred block, and she and Ruby get out to watch. The scene is one of orderly chaos. Ruby counts five police cars: two plus the chief’s car parked in front of Conklin’s house and one car parked crosswise on the street at each end of the block, closing off traffic.
The afternoon rain has moved off to the east, but the evening sky is filled with low clouds and the humidity is so high that the August air feels like a sauna. A black PSPD van with heavily tinted windows pulls to a stop and four uniformed men armed with assault rifles and wearing helmets and ballistic vests pile out—a SWAT team. Moving swiftly, they station themselves at the corners of Conklin’s house. Seconds later, an EMS ambulance arrives, jockeys around the patrol car blocking the north end of the street, and pulls up across from 321.
“This isn’t a job for an army,” Ruby protests, as a pair of officers behind black ballistic shields venture cautiously up to the front door of Conklin’s house. “And Allison is in the garage, for crying out loud, not the house.” She can see the chief, standing beside her police car in front of the house. Ethan Connors stands beside her, shoulders slouched, hands in his pockets. “Why don’t they just break down the garage door and go in and get her?”
China takes out her cell and phones Sheila to let her know that Ruby is available if she’s needed. Sheila turns and waves. Ruby and China wave back. Ethan Connors doesn’t look in their direction.
Pushing her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, China answers Ruby’s question. “Sheila says they’re treating this as a hostage situation. They’re starting with the assumption that the kidnapper could be in the garage with her, and armed. Or he might have gone into the house and taken her with him. They’re calling the landline number for the house, but nobody’s answering. Sheila has also put out an alert for the vehicle registered to him. It’s that gray panel van he parked on Harper. An older model Ford.”
“But he’s not in the garage,” Ruby protests. “I don’t know where he is, but he’s not there. They could get her out of the garage right now, without a problem.”
“According to you,” China says with a crooked smile. “But you’re just the psychic, remember?”
“I am not a—” Ruby starts to protest, and then stops.
She is a psychic. They are watching a half-dozen or more cops preparing to storm a house and rescue a kidnap victim because she is a psychic. She might as well own up to it, for better or worse.
“I still think they should just go in and get her,” she says stubbornly.
China folds her arms and leans against the car. “Look at it from Sheila’s point of view, Ruby. She’s got a tip—which she’s treating as anonymous—that a kidnap victim is being held in that garage. That gives them the ‘exigent circumstances’ they need to break into the place without a warrant. But what if the tipster is wrong? What if you misidentified the photo you saw on that bulletin board? What if this is the wrong address, wrong garage, and there’s no Allison?” She gestures at the cop cars and waiting hostage rescue team. “Sheila’s on the spot in a big, big way. So are you. And so is Allison. If she’s not here, that’s the end of it. Sheila won’t be able to call up the hostage squad again.”
China is right and Ruby knows it. Her mistake could mean the end of Allison’s life and the end of Sheila’s career. She watches nervously. A kid on a bicycle attempts to ride around the squad car at the end of the block, and the cop stops him. A mom with twin toddlers in a double stroller stands at the corner for a moment, hesitating, then turns and pushes the stroller in the opposite direction, fast. A small knot of neighbors has gathered across the street from 321—men and women, kids and dogs. They’re quietly apprehensive, watching the hostage rescue team, armed with their shields, bang on the front door and shout, “Police! Open up!”
And then, quite suddenly, Ruby feels a tingle across her shoulders and down her arms, and at the back of her mind, a rising darkness. Eyes closed, she turns away from China and leans her forehead against the car. Through Allison’s eyes, she had seen Roger Conklin’s face in the photograph in the garage. She is seeing his face again.
But this time, she is seeing it as a reflection, as Conklin glances into the mirror-like sliding window at a fast-food drive-through. She sees his brush-like black mustache and the jagged scar on his left cheek. She sees the window slide open and his beefy left arm reach out and take a cardboard tray holding a large white bag and two lidded drink containers. Sam’s Best Burgers is printed in red letters on the bag and the drink containers. He puts his order on the passenger seat, drops his change into a cup in the center console, and begins to pull out of the lot.
Ruby turns back to China and clutches her arm. “Call Sheila,” she says urgently. “Tell her that Conklin just picked up a double order of burgers at Sam’s. He’s on his way here, right now. Hurry! Sam’s is less than a mile away!”
For the space of several heartbeats, China stares at her, then makes the call. Sheila puts her cell to her ear, turns and stares at China and Ruby as China repeats what Ruby has said. Then she lowers the phone and turns to Connors with an order.
A moment later, the two squad cars that were blocking the street peel off and disappear. At the same time, there is a rush of activity on the driveway. Three cops, guns drawn, run up to the garage. More shouts—“Police, open up!”—and a loud banging, and the sound of a door being kicked open. Pushing a gurney, a pair of emergency medical responders hurry up the driveway.
Ruby and China wait in tense silence for what seems like a very long time. Ethan Connors is on his phone, then he says something to Sheila. Then, with her cell phone at her ear, Sheila faces China and points. China’s phone rings and she clicks on and listens, then turns to Ruby.
“Great news!” she exclaims. “They got Conklin. They stopped him three blocks from here, with his takeout order from Sam’s. They have him cuffed, in custody.”
And then the garage door opens and the EMS team runs down the driveway, with a woman strapped to the gurney. They hustle her into the ambulance and are gone, siren wailing, lights flashing.
Standing beside the chief’s car, Sheila sends Ruby and China a big thumbs up. Beside her, Ethan Connors turns. He shakes his head and raises his hands to shoulder level, palms out.
Ruby doesn’t need to be psychic to read that gesture. It is surrender.
A mock surrender, but surrender just the same.
Chapter Eighteen
“Tell me,” Sophia says. “I want to hear all about it.”
It is the week after Allison was released from the hospital. Conklin has been arraigned and is still in jail, waiting for a bond hearing—although China says he will likely be denied bail. Sophia and Ruby are sitting with glasses of lemonade on Sophia’s front porch, looking across a field of sunflowers and goldenrod to the darker trees along Cypress Creek. Evening is falling and the hummingbird feeder at the far end of the porch is hosting a bevy of brilliant little birds, winged jewels hovering in the early September air under the watchful eye of Pyewacket, stretched to his full length on the porch railing. At the other end of the porch, a sweet autumn clematis vine attracts a cloud of diligent bees. A light breeze lifts Sophia’s gray hair.
Ruby has the feeling that Sophia already knows the story, even though only the bare bones of it appeared in the newspaper—without the word “psychic” or a single mention of her name. But she tells Sophia the whole thing anyway. When she is finished, Sophia asks just one question.
“Does Allison remember anything of the time you spent with her?”
Ruby shakes her head. “I haven’t talked to her myself, but I understand that she doesn’t. Sheila won’t accept China’s cellphone recording. The story is
that the cops were acting on an anonymous tip when they showed up at Conklin’s house. And that they caught up with Conklin when an officer spotted his vehicle coming out of Sam’s drive-through.”
“That’s best.” Sophia’s voice is soft. “Allison will have a hard enough time dealing with the trauma of the kidnapping and the assault—and then there will be the trial. It will be good if she’s able to put the whole thing past her and get on with her life.” She waves away a curious bee. “Do the police know why Conklin targeted her?”
“He told Ethan Connors that he first saw her at Body Matters, where he was doing weightlifting training. He asked her out—not just once, but repeatedly. At first she said no nicely, but when he kept pestering her, she told him to stop bothering her. The rejection infuriated him, he said.”
“Ethan Connors.” Sophia smiles. “The detective who refused to believe you when you first reported the kidnapping.”
“That’s the guy.” Ruby sips her lemonade. “Apparently, what really threw him was when they picked Conklin up with those takeout burgers. He had to admit that I couldn’t have known where the man was, not by any ordinary means. As to whether or not Connors actually believes me—well, the jury’s still out on that.”
Pyewacket leaps lightly from the railing into his mistress’ lap. Sophia regards Ruby for a moment, absently stroking the cat. At last she says, “There’s more to come, you know.”
“More to come?” Ruby is surprised. “Not on this case, I hope.”
“Not on this matter,” Sophia agrees, “at least as far as you’re concerned. But you can’t stop here, Ruby. You know who you are now. You have a better sense of what you can do.” Her eyes are warm. “And you can already do more than you know.”
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