Chapter 35
H e’s moving,” Mitch reported.
“Which direction?” John asked.
“West-southwest, toward us, which is good. But we conducted a raid in this vicinity a while back, and it was a nightmare. Rural. Lots of narrow roads branching off each other like freaking capillaries. Currently, though, I’m closing in on him on route thirty-four. If he stays on this road, he and I’ll meet soon.”
“How soon?” John asked.
“Maybe ten minutes.”
“I’ve been driving ninety, so we can’t be far behind you.” John gave him the state highway intersection he and Beth had just gone through.
Mitch said, “Then you’re almost to thirty-four. Start watching for it. It’ll be on your right. Badly marked, sharp turn.”
“Got it,” Beth said. She held up one of their phones where she’d pulled up GPS.
“If I meet him, do you want me to intercept?” Mitch asked.
“Negative. I hope he’s leading us to wherever he’s got Molly. Hook a U and follow him, but at a distance.”
“Don’t worry. He won’t know it, but I’ll be on him like white on rice.”
No sooner had Mitch disconnected than another of John’s phones rang. It was one of the officers who’d been assisting him. “We got a plate number on the car near the restaurant, ran it, belongs to Dr. Victor Wallace. That’s the guy, right?”
“That’s the guy. You just handed us probable cause to approach. Good work. Thank everybody for me.”
“Have you notified the sheriff’s office?”
“I was just about to.”
Beth shot him a quick look, a Really? implied in her expression.
“Good luck, Bowie,” the cop was saying. “We’re standing by if you need anything else.”
“Thanks.”
“Uh-oh,” the officer said in a low voice.
“What?”
“Barker just came in, looking thunderous.”
“Play dumb.”
“Ten four.”
As soon as they were disconnected, Beth said, “You’re not really going to notify the sheriff’s office, are you?”
“No. I don’t want a wet-behind-the-ears deputy to show up, lights flashing. This needs to be a surprise to the professor. If he senses he’s surrounded and has nothing to lose, he may—”
Beth pressed his knee. “Don’t say it. Or even think it.”
Tom stalked into the CAP unit, knowing his outrage only made his bruises more florid. It made the new goose egg on the side of his head throb. At the sight of him, people who’d been busy as bees stopped what they’d been doing. Everyone fell silent.
He walked to the center of the room, placed his hands on his hips, and pivoted in a circle, taking in every traitorous face. With deceptive calmness, he said, “I want to know. What. The. Fuck. Is going on?”
No one moved, no one said anything. Some even had the audacity to gaze back at him with defiance. “You think this little mutiny is going to intimidate me? Oh, no. All it’s going to accomplish is to get anyone who’s assisting Bowie fired. Now,” he said, hiking up his waistband, “who’s going to tell me what he’s up to this time?”
No one moved or spoke.
He went over to the rookie who had called to alert him to what was taking place in his department. Because of Bowie . The man was like a plague. Pervasive. Tenacious. Crippling. “Where is he, Clarkson?”
The young officer’s eyes darted guiltily around the room, where everyone was looking at him with hostility. “They’re saying now that his daughter didn’t run off, that she was kidnapped last night as she left the Chop House. Bowie is hot on the trail of the man he suspects of taking her.” Stammering, he told him about the license plate and the man’s name.
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
The rookie said, “I don’t think… I don’t think Detective Bowie trusted you to handle it.”
“There is no Detective Bowie,” Tom shouted. “Is that understood? This kidnapping crap is just that. His kid ran off, like she’s done before. Probably to escape him. Now, tell me where he is.” Again, he was met with silence. “I demand it!” he roared.
Clarkson swallowed hard. “I haven’t heard anyone say. I don’t think anyone knows.”
Tom surveyed the stonewalled faces. If they knew Bowie’s whereabouts, they weren’t saying, and, although it was humiliating to admit, he feared that his continued attempt to beat it out of them would be futile.
He straightened to his full height and addressed Clarkson. “Since Bowie lives outside the city’s jurisdiction, call the sheriff’s office, have them dispatch deputies to see if he’s at home.”
He stabbed the young cop in the chest with his index finger. “Remind them about the arrest warrant for assault. Also inform them that he’s currently impersonating a police officer.”
He headed toward his office but, after a few steps, stopped and turned. “Has Frank Gray come in?” The rookie shook his head. “Then see if you can get hold of him. He’s not answering his phone.”
Tom heard someone say under his breath, “Can’t blame him.”
Ignoring the snickers that followed, he slammed his office door. The original crack in the window sprouted an offshoot.
Since John was concentrating on driving, Beth answered an incoming call from Mitch. Without preamble, he said, “Our target just sped past me. I could tell he was coming right at me, so I’d pulled into the ditch, opened my hood, and was bent over it as he went by. The license plate was his.”
“Any sign of Molly in his car?” John asked.
“No, but we have him in a hot box now. He’s between us, still traveling on thirty-four. Where I am, it’s so narrow it doesn’t even have a stripe. Isolated area.”
“Are you turning around?”
“Already have.”
“Don’t get too close.”
“I’m following his pings, not his car, which is a gray Honda. Have you got to the turnoff yet?”
“Beth says we’re close. But, damn it! Not close enough. If he stops at a place that looks dodgy, don’t wait for me to go in.”
“Roger that,” Mitch said. “His kidnapping days will be history.”
Just as they disconnected, Beth exclaimed, “There’s the road!”
She braced herself as John turned the car sharply to the right, toward the east… and straight into a blinding sunrise.
“Damn!” Reflexively he turned his head away from the disk of eye-piercing light.
Otherwise, he might have missed it.
He slammed on the brakes and swerved to the side of the road.
Beth cried out, “ What? ”
“Tin roof. The sun hit it just right. There’s no car there. Get Mitch.”
She had him on the phone in under three seconds. John shouted, “Spotted a dodgy place. Gonna check it out. How far away is he from us?”
Mitch said, “About to close on you.”
“Shit! Stay on the line.” John put the car in park and chambered a bullet in his pistol. Talking to Beth, he said, “I want to be there when he arrives. Back up the car. Back onto the highway. Out of sight. Hurry. And call 911. Ask for sheriff and medical. Mitch?”
“Here.”
“If he doesn’t stop here, keep following him; we’ll catch up. But this feels right.”
“I have your back.”
John got out of the car as Beth ran around the hood to the driver’s side. She clambered in, put it in reverse, and stomped on the accelerator.
John ran along a weedy path up to the structure he’d seen thanks to one benevolent sunbeam that had found its way through a thick vine, making a beacon of a patch of tin.
The keypad lock on the door was too sophisticated to bother with; he’d never get it open in time. Instead, he ran along the far side of the building around to the rear, where he wouldn’t be seen if Wallace arrived.
He knocked on the corrugated tin wall with the butt of his pistol. “Molly! Molly! It’s Dad. Are you in there?”
It seemed that an entire lifetime slowly unspooled in the seconds between his shout and her feeble answer. “Dad?”
His knees went weak. His head thumped against the wall in relief. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m waiting on the son of a bitch who took you, and he’s due to arrive any second, so listen up. First, did he hurt you? Are you injured?”
“He hit me in the head. I think I have a concussion.”
“Okay, okay, Beth is calling 911. Are you tied up?”
“Yes. Hands and feet. How’d you find me?”
“Later, sweetheart. Listen. Are you sitting or lying?”
“Lying on the floor.”
“Don’t move. I’m going to try to surprise him when he opens the door. Did he have a weapon? What did he hit you with?”
“A purse.”
A purse? “You didn’t see a gun?”
“No.”
“Okay, good. I’m gonna get you out of here. Just stay down on the floor, low as you can, don’t—” He broke off, listened. “Molly, I hear his car coming. I can’t talk anymore and don’t you say anything else and give us away. Got it? Not another word.”
She didn’t answer, minding him without an argument for once in her life.
John’s heart was in his throat as he heard the car come to a stop and the engine die. The car door closed. Footsteps led up to the bolted door. He knew he had to time this just right, to catch him between opening the door and shutting it behind himself. He couldn’t spring either too soon or too late.
He was out of sight of the door as he crept along the side of the building toward the front. He got close enough to hear metal sliding against metal as the bolts were worked, then the swish of the door as it was pushed open.
“Hello, Molly. Ready for your big day?”
John rounded the corner and launched himself at the figure standing in the open doorway. He knocked him facedown to the floor and put the muzzle of his .45 against the back of his neck. “Don’t move or you are dead.”
“Detective Bowie,” he said pleasantly. “Surely you wouldn’t kill me in front of your daughter.”
“I wouldn’t count on that if I were you, Professor.” Mitch came up beside them. “I’ve known John for a long time. He gets pissed easily. I have to talk him down all the time.” He knelt and cuffed the man behind his back. “I’ll take over here, bro. See to Molly. Ambulance is coming down the road.”
John went over to where she was lying just as he’d instructed her to. He pulled her into a sitting position, then gathered her into his arms and hugged her against his chest. Due to the tightness in his throat, he managed to speak only her name, but he said it repeatedly.
“Stop rocking me, Dad,” she whispered. “I may throw up on you.”
He stopped the rocking motion, laughing softly. “I wouldn’t care.”
“Can you take these things off my hands?”
“Right away.” He pulled the knife from his boot and cut the zip ties. The raw marks on her wrists made him see red. He looked around and saw that Wallace had already been hauled away. Which was fortunate. He might have killed him bare-handed.
As he was freeing Molly’s feet, a pair of EMTs hurried in. They began asking Molly questions. She said, “I’m thirsty, but I’m afraid if I drink, I’ll throw up.”
“We’ll get an IV going. What’s your favorite flavor?” the young man teased.
“I’m riding to the hospital with you, sweetheart,” John said. He looked the female EMT straight in the eye, daring her to contradict him. She didn’t. Maybe because she’d watched him slide his knife back into his boot. “Meet you at the ambulance,” he said to Molly.
“Okay, Dad. Is Mom totally freaking out?”
“Totally. But so was I. I’ll call her.” He kissed her on the forehead, then reluctantly moved away so the EMTs could do their job.
He wandered over to a workbench and looked at the surgical instruments laid out as though a butler had aligned them using a yardstick. On a shelf above the array was the tattoo kit Beth had spied in the professor’s bookcase.
His stomach roiled when he thought of the torture that psycho would have put Molly through, what Crissy Mellin and the others girls had been put through at the hands of these twisted, moon-gazing motherfuckers.
He looked over at Molly, where one of the EMTs was checking her eyes while the other was starting the IV. John steeled himself against an onslaught of unmanly emotion and stepped outside.
Mitch was talking to a detective from the sheriff’s office, with whom they’d both worked on cases before. On his way over to them, he saw Beth arguing with two deputies who were trying to keep her outside the tape they were stringing around the building.
“I’m with Crisis Point . There’s a camera crew on their way. Do you want to be seen on TV—” Then she caught sight of John. “I’m with him.” When they turned their heads to see who she was pointing toward, she ducked beneath the tape, ran to him, and, when she reached him, clasped his hands and searched his eyes.
“She’ll be all right,” he said, “but we got here just in time.”
She wilted against him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Oh, John. Thank God.”
“Yes, but also thank you. If you hadn’t seen that damn tattoo kit in the video…”
“I got lucky.”
“Lucky? I don’t think it was luck. We’ll talk about that later.”
He noticed that the professor was being ungently packed into the back seat of a squad car. As it moved past Beth and him, he smiled at them beatifically through the car window.
Beth shuddered. “He makes my skin crawl.”
A savage compulsion surged through John. He might very well have acted on it if Mitch and the SO’s detective hadn’t approached him and Beth just then.
The detective’s name was Glen Derby. He and John shook hands. “Derby, this is Beth Collins. She’s—”
“I know. Mitch filled me in. Ms. Collins,” he said, brushing the brim of his hat. Then he said to John, “How’s your daughter?”
“Shaken, but looks like she’s gonna be okay.”
“That’s good. Glad you got here in time.”
“Me too.”
When John realized that the man was having a hard time looking him in the eye, he looked quizzically at Mitch. He raised his eyebrows, but if he had one of his usual quips at the ready, he didn’t say it aloud. John said, “What’s going on?”
Derby exhaled. “I hate to heap this on you, but…” He exhaled again. “That warrant for your arrest?”
“You’re gonna serve it now ?”
“No. This is something else.”
“Okay.”
“A couple of deputies went out to your place with the intention of serving the warrant. You weren’t there. They looked around.”
The gurney was being wheeled out of the building. “Get to it please, Derby. They’re about to take my girl to the hospital, and I’m riding along.”
“That shed out back of your house?”
John looked at Mitch, who was stroking that wretched mustache and looking uneasy. John went back to the detective. “What about it?”
“Those deputies found Frank Gray in there. Dead. GSW to the back of his head. Point-blank range. He’d been dead for a while.”
John didn’t gasp as Beth did, but he shared her shock. He looked at Mitch, who said, “Wait for it. It gets better.”
Clearly uncomfortable, Derby shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “The deputies called it in. Crime scene unit arrived. They found a pistol in the brambles about twenty yards from the shed. Recently fired. They ran the serial number. It’s your service weapon, John.”