Chapter 31
I’d emerged into a gully of some sort.
It was night.
A steady rain was falling.
A lone sodium-vapor streetlamp high on one bank bathed the depression around me in sparkly peach tones.
Crickets did their cricket thing, undisturbed by the falling drops or by my sudden and less-than-graceful appearance. Now and then, something larger added a throaty croak to the rhythmic cheeping.
High above at street level, a lone horn honked.
My stint underground had pre-adapted my eyes to the darkness. A quick scan revealed a hairline path winding upward on the gully’s far end. Backhanding moisture from my face, I jogged that way and followed the graveled trail up the embankment.
The path ended on a slight promontory. The city spread below like an ill-formed amoeba, windows glowing yellow, neon signs twinkling multicolored like the lights in a child’s toy village.
I took a moment to get my bearings.
Off to my right, in the far distance, loomed the cavernous concrete shell that was the Bank of America Stadium. Beyond the stadium, the Truist Center, the BofA Corporate Center, the monolith on South Tryon whose name I didn’t know.
My hair was winging medusa wild around my head. My tank and shorts were sodden and filthy and molded to my goose-bumped skin.
I felt myself simultaneously trembling and perspiring. Fever? Shock?
Either way, I needed help. Fast.
I had no phone.
No money.
No way to secure an Uber.
Looking around, I spotted a thin strip of gravel off to my left. Guessed it was another trail and that I was in a park of some sort. With no other option, I followed it, running as fast as I dared.
For what seemed forever, I pounded blindly through the dark, breath burning in my chest, feet splashing through invisible puddles dotting the path. Ignoring the drops pummeling my face and the twigs and vegetation clawing my limbs.
When I could run no farther, I dropped back to a panting jog, lungs in spasm and muscles burning, then to a limping walk.
Eventually, I came upon benches. All empty.
Of course they were empty. A fingernail moon peeking fitfully through the bloated clouds suggested an hour hovering around midnight.
A brief panting break, then I resumed running.
Within minutes I spotted, and heard, a couple coming toward me on the path. Arm-draping each other and belting out “Margaritaville,” the pair appeared to be in their twenties. And quite drunk.
I waved and shouted, adrenaline still charging like a locomotive through my body.
“Yo! Yo!”
“Ohmygod!” Startled, the woman grabbed the man’s arm.
“What the fuck, bro?” The man drew his girlfriend close.
“Don’t be alarmed,” I said, in the least alarming voice I could muster.
“I’m warning you! Stay back!”
Suspecting the guy was packing—isn’t everyone in America?— I stopped and raised both hands high above my head.
“I had an accident. I’ve lost my phone.”
“That isn’t our problem, lady.”
“Of course not. But it would be helpful if I could use your phone to make one quick call.”
“Right. I lend you my cell and you haul ass.”
“It’s not a scam. I need help.”
“How do I know you won’t bolt with it?”
“Fair enough.” I tried another tactic. “Will you place a call for me? Tell my friends where I am?”
“Why the fu—”
“Do it,” the woman said, her face invisible beneath the raised hood of her Windbreaker.
“Seriously?”
“My gut says she’s on the level, Arty.”
“Your gut. That’s—”
“Don’t be a dick.”
Muttering words not meant to reassure a stranger, Arty asked me, “What’s the number?”
I told him that and my first name.
After punching digits, he brusquely informed the person on the other end of the line where they could collect me.
Slidell arrived with siren screaming, lights blazing. Ryan was riding shotgun.
Any energy I still possessed was spent on resisting their efforts to take me to a hospital. On insisting that they instead check on Katy.
When I shared my captor’s comment about my fear of losing loved ones, they eagerly agreed to locate my daughter. The ER issue was a two-on-one battle, with Ryan and Slidell united in their opinion that I needed medical attention.
I repeatedly assured them that I was fine. At Ryan’s insistence, I passed a pupil check and performed a straight-line walk. Tests I felt were more appropriate for a suspected DUI than a concussion.
In the end, I won. After I promised to file an official report the next day, Slidell drove me home.
Now I didn’t care that Skinny and Ryan were waiting in my parlor. Though relieved that the cat had returned home safely, I ignored Birdie’s scratching at the bathroom door. I showered until the water turned cold.
Then, head towel-wrapped and wearing sweats, I barefooted downstairs.
One of the two had made a Starbucks run. A collection of plastic-lidded cups covered the coffee table, each featuring the green siren logo. Each a size Grande. All but one empty.
Great. In addition to Skinny’s normal hair-trigger temper, I’d be dealing with two guys wired on caffeine.
Though hardly in the mood, and committed to giving a full statement the next day, I’d provided a summary before heading upstairs, including everything I felt could possibly be germane.
The bee sting. The tunnels. The constantly changing voice during the strange underground conversation with my captor.
My sprint through the rain. Arty and his grudging phone call.
“Any idea who might have snatched you and why?” Slidell had asked when I’d finished.
While lying helpless underground I’d given these questions serious thought. Twisted and turned them and considered every possible explanation. My probing had yielded only two oddities in the recent past that seemed remotely relevant.
The first was Lester Meloy’s dinnertime comment on the use of humans as test subjects. Had I been a player in one of his sick experiments?
The second was Danielle Hall’s familiarity with the city’s infrastructure. Had she used her knowledge of the underground network of storm tunnels to imprison me?
“It could be a huge coincidence,” I’d said. “But Meloy and Hall?”
I mentioned both names, concluding with the strange fact that my captor had tossed me the knife.
Slidell had taken it all in, face reddening to the point I feared a cardiac episode. Then, predictably, he’d stormed out the door and roared off in his Trailblazer.
In his typical hotheaded fashion, Skinny ordered the arrest of Meloy and Hall. I’d barely finished my soap-and-suds cathartic when he was back at the Annex with news that both were en route to Mecklenburg County Jail Central.
“Charged with what?” I asked.
“We’re working on that,” Slidell said.
“Did you speak to Katy or Ruthie?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve tried twice but neither answers her phone.”
“I’ll send a unit by the kid’s town house,” Slidell said.
For a moment no one spoke.
“Can you positively ID Hall or Meloy as the person who took you down into the tunnels?” Ryan asked, a variation on the question Slidell had posed before racing off in his Trailblazer earlier.
“No.” I’d thought about it. A lot.
“Shit,” Slidell said. Again. With feeling.
“Try to remember,” Ryan said gently. “Even the smallest detail could be helpful.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Recognizing that my response was rhetorical, its sharpness born of my recent ordeal, neither man answered the question.
“He or she was probably a smoker,” I said after a full minute of internal probing. “When we were close, I smelled cigarettes.”
“Yeah?” Perking up at that minimally useful tidbit, Slidell dug a pencil stub and small spiral tablet from a shirt pocket. “What else?”
“He or she wore boots.”
“What kind of boots?”
“Leather. With rubber soles and laces.”
Slidell scribbled, then looked at me, brows raised.
“The laces were yellow. And there was some sort of logo burned into the heel.”
“What sort of logo?”
“It was too dark to make out detail.”
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?” he asked in a tone suggesting frustration.
“I was drugged and unconscious,” I said with a defensive edge.
“They probably jabbed you with a hypodermic full of Rohypnol,” Ryan said after shooting Skinny a warning glance.
“The date-rape drug.” I recalled the burning sensation in my upper arm. My assumption that I’d been stung by a bee.
“Yeah.” Skinny did that snorty thing he does with his nose. “Only the bastard wasn’t lookin’ to score no nukkie at the movies. Any idea who mighta done it?” Intentionally or unintentionally Skinny repeated himself.
“I already answered that.”
“Okay. Any idea why?”
“If I knew why, wouldn’t I most likely know who?” Curt.
Ryan gave Slidell a look. “Detective, how long does the law allow you to hold these two?”
“Forty-eight hours. Then it’s charge ’em or kick ’em.”
I had a sudden thought.
“Could this have to do with the Quaashi Brown murder investigation? Could abducting me be a warning to back off?”
“I heard you was working that.” Slidell’s response wasn’t exactly an answer.
“I identified the remains,” I added. “But that makes no sense. Why send me the thumb drive with the video if you want me to disengage?”
Slidell said nothing.
“Did you question Meloy and Hall about Brown?” I asked Skinny.
“Eeyuh.”
“And?” I pressed, a bit too sharply.
“Neither knows nothing about you being snatched or Brown being capped.”
“What’s your plan going forward?” Ryan asked.
“A night behind bars to allow Meloy and Hall enough time for some real dark thoughts. Then a couple of cozy chats at dawn.”
“Play the lady and gent off against each other.” Ryan knew the drill.
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Suppose neither cracks?” I asked.
“They always crack. But in the meantime, no more of your goddam middle of the night walkabouts.”
Ryan got a call on his mobile at eight the next morning. He listened, replied with a series of brusque ouis, then agreed to something. His face told me that the something was not to his liking.
I asked no questions, allowing him to share at his preferred pace.
He imparted some details while at the stove cooking us breakfast. Omelets made of ingredients miraculously dredged from my fridge.
“Do you remember Pierre Giguère?” he began.
I had to think a moment.
“Your last boss before you retired from the SQ. Nice guy, bad toupee. Right?”
“It looks okay when he wears a hat.”
No, I thought. It doesn’t.
“That was Giguère on the phone earlier?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you were pals.”
“We’re not, really.”
I didn’t pose the obvious question.
“Pierre only calls in a professional capacity,” Ryan said.
I felt a prickle of unease, suspecting where this was going.
Ryan plated the omelets and put one on each of the mats I’d set out. Circled the table and took the chair opposite mine.
“This smells delicious,” I said. Wanting to delay the inevitable?
“I went heavy with the olives and capers.”
I had olives and capers in the house?
We ate in silence for several seconds. A silence strained by the knowledge of bad news in the offing.
Ryan broke it.
“I’ll give you the condensed version of Giguère’s message. In the last two months there have been three stabbing deaths in the southern part of the city, two in Petite-Bourgogne, one in Saint-Henri. The vics were all men in their twenties. Yesterday, there was another in Ville-émard.”
“That’s awful. Same perp?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Gang related?”
“Two were patched in. The other two were known hang-arounds.”
I made the unwelcome link.
“You worked the gang unit for years.”
“I did.”
“You know the players.”
“Most.”
“They want your help shutting it down.”
“They do.”
“What’s the word on the street?”
“Surprisingly, there is none.”
“Could the assailant be a lone wolf?”
“Nothing’s off the table.”
I thought about that. “You say this is the fourth murder in two months. Why come to you now?”
“The latest vic was fifteen years old.”
“Sonofabitch.”
“Well put.”
“Giguère wants you back in Montreal,” I guessed.
“He does.”
“When?”
“He’s booked me on a flight through Philly this evening.”
Shit.
“More coffee?” I asked, trusting that those simple words wouldn’t reveal my disappointment.
“Please.”
I got up, refilled our mugs, and sat back down.
Ryan took my hand, intertwined his fingers with mine, and leaned close.
“Say the word and I won’t go.”
“Of course you should go.”
“I wouldn’t consider leaving if I thought you might still be in danger.”
“I’m a big girl, Ryan. Besides, Meloy and Hall are in jail and Berkowitz’s latest parole request was denied.”
Ryan just looked at me.
“David Berkowitz? Son of Sam?” My laugh cracked into something too loud and too sharp. “Never mind. It was a joke.”
“I can fly back to Charlotte in a few days.”
“Of course. It’s probably for the best. Slidell wants me to spend the next week eyeballing every mug shot ever taken in the tri-state area. And listening to a billion audio recordings to try to ID the mastermind of this unfortunate little incident.” Trying to keep it light.
“Unfortunate little incident? Christ, you were kidnapped.”
“And released unharmed.”
“Some lunatic sent you video proof that he’d broken into your home. You need to take this unfortunate little incident more serious—”
“I’ll be fine. I have Nguyen’s overdue reports to keep me busy, which means I probably won’t leave the Annex. Slidell has ordered surveillance, so it’s likely a unit will pass by every five seconds,” I added, wanting to lighten the mood.
Knowing further discussion was pointless, Ryan shook his head slowly while exhaling through his nose.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said.
“Not necessary.” I smiled, hoping to mask my frustration.
“Still. We have all day today,” said Ryan, flicking his brows, Groucho style.
I flicked mine back.
My stomach performed its wee somersault act.