24 Hours (10 page)

“There’s no floor button lit.”

“Oh. I forgot to hit it. Still nervous, I guess. Twenty-eight, please.”

“You’ve got a Cypress suite? So do I.” She half-turned to him and smiled. “Your program was great, by the way. I can’t believe you were nervous.”

“Are you a physician?” he asked. He didn’t like to think he believed in stereotypes, but he’d never met a woman doctor who looked like this.

“No. I’m with the casino company.”

“Oh. I see. Hey, what’s your floor? There’s no button lit but twenty-eight.”

“I’m twenty-eight, too. Most of the Cypress suites are up there.”

He nodded and smiled politely, but when the woman turned away he gave her a hard look.
A hooker?
he wondered. The desk manager had told him Saul Stein said to give him the red carpet treatment. Did that include a beautiful call girl?

The elevator opened on twenty-eight.

“Bye,” the woman said. She got off and walked briskly down the hallway to the left. Will got off and watched her seductive motion, then turned left and counted the numbers down to suite 28021. He was inserting his credit card key when a female voice called, “Dr. Jennings?”

He looked up the long corridor. The blonde in the black dress was walking hesitantly toward him, gripping her small handbag in front of her.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

She fidgeted with her bag, then stopped as a door opened opposite Will. A heavyset man wearing a plaid sport coat came out and hurried toward the elevators.

“My key doesn’t work,” the woman said, after he’d passed. “Could you try it for me?”

“I doubt I can do any better than you. I’ll give it a shot, though.”

“No pun intended?”

Will laughed, then put his computer case inside his room and followed her past the heavyset man waiting for the elevators.

The elevator bell dinged as Will inserted her card key and watched for green LED lights. But when he removed the key, only one LED flashed—red—and there was no click of tumblers. He tried again, seating the card squarely and firmly, but no matter what he did, the lock refused to open.

“I think you’re out of luck,” he told her.

“Looks like it. Would you mind if I used your phone to call the desk?”

He started to say he didn’t mind, but something stopped him. A sense of something out of place, not quite logical. “I think there’s a house phone by the VIP elevators. I’ll be glad to wait with you.”

She looked momentarily confused, but after a moment she smiled. “That’s right. I appreciate you waiting with me. You never know who’s creeping around the casino. My name’s Cheryl, by the way.”

Will accepted her proffered hand, which was cool, almost to the point of coldness. It felt like the hand of an anxious patient, someone terrified of needles. He dropped her hand and escorted her back toward the elevators, walking a little ahead.

The heavyset man was gone. Will glanced into the waiting area and saw what he was looking for: a cream-colored house telephone.

“Here it is,” he said, turning back to her. “They’ll have a new key up here in no—”

The words died in his throat. Cheryl was pointing an automatic pistol at his chest. She must have taken it from her handbag. Her eyes were resolute, but there was something else in them. Fear.

“What is this?” he asked. “I’ve only got a few bucks on me, but you’re welcome to it. Credit cards, whatever.”

“I don’t want your money,” she said, looking anxiously at the elevators. “I want you to go in your room.”

“What for?”

“You’ll find out. Just hurry up.”

Something in Will’s mind hardened to resistance. He wasn’t going to start blindly obeying orders. If you did that, the next thing you knew, you were lying facedown on some dirty bathroom floor while they shot you in the back of the head.

“I’m not going anywhere. Not until you tell me what’s going on. In fact”—he stepped toward the phone—“I’m going to call the front desk and have them call the police.”

“Don’t touch that.”

“You’re not going to shoot me, Cheryl.” He picked up the telephone.

“If you call the police, Abby is going to die. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

His arm froze. “What did you say?”

“Your daughter was kidnapped two hours ago, Doctor. If you want her to live, take me into your room right now. If you call the police, she’ll die. I’m serious as a heart attack.”

A paralyzing numbness was spreading from deep within Will’s chest. It was disbelief, or perhaps the brain’s attempt at disbelief in the face of knowledge too terrible to accept.

“What are you talking about?”

Cheryl glanced at the elevator again. He sensed the fear inside her metamorphosing into panic.

“Doctor, if somebody gets out of that elevator and sees me with this gun, the whole thing’s going to come apart. Abby’s going to die, okay? And I don’t want that to happen. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but you’d better get me into your goddamn room right now.”

Will heard a squawk and realized the phone was still in his right hand. He brought it slowly to his mouth.

“Talk, and you put a bullet in Abby’s brain.”

He hung up.

“Hurry,” she said. “If I don’t make a phone call soon, she’s going to die anyway.”

He stared at her for another few seconds, looking for options. He had none. He walked down to his door, unlocked it, and held it open for her.

Cheryl walked past him, holding the gun close against her, as though she expected Will to try to take it. Once inside, she walked all the way across the sitting room and into the bedroom. He closed the door and followed her.

Cheryl put the bed between herself and Will. She was still pointing the gun at him, but he walked to the edge of the bed anyway. His fear for Abby was burgeoning into an anger that would brook no delay.

“Get back!” she cried. “Stay back until I explain!”

“Tell me about my little girl!”

“This is a kidnapping-for-ransom,” she said, like a grammar-school girl reciting from memory. “Right now my partner is with your wife, at your house in Madison County. Someone else is holding Abby at a third location. This is what’s going to happen from this point on. . . .”

Will listened like a man being given a clinical description of a disease that would shortly kill him. His disbelief quickly gave way to horror at the way his family’s lives had been studied and deconstructed, all in preparation for a plan designed to separate him from two hundred thousand dollars.

“Listen to me,” he interrupted. “We don’t have to wait twenty-four hours. I’ll get you the money right now—”

“The banks are closed.”

“I’ll find a way.” He tried to keep panic out of his voice. “I can make it happen. The casino has money. I’ll call down—”

“No. It doesn’t work that way. It has to be tomorrow. Now, let me finish.”

He shut up and listened, his brain working frantically. Whoever was behind this plan knew his business. He—or she—had turned the normal mechanics of a kidnapping inside out, creating a situation in which any aggressive response was impossible. Cheryl’s gun was only there to control Will’s initial panic. The real coercion was Abby. He could pick up the telephone and call the police right now. But if they came and arrested Cheryl, and she didn’t call her partner on their thirty-minute schedule, Abby would die.

“If I do what you want,” he said, “what guarantee do I have that we’ll get Abby back?”

“No guarantee. You have to trust us.”

“That’s not good enough. How are we supposed to get her back? Tell me the details. Don’t think! Tell me right this second.”

Cheryl nodded. “Abby and your wife will be driven to a public place and set free within sight of each other.”

She sounded like she believed it. And she’d told him they’d carried out the same plan five times before. He thought back over the past few years’ headlines in Mississippi. He didn’t remember hearing about any kidnapped children who were found murdered. Not kidnappings-for-ransom, anyway. And that would definitely have made headlines across the state.

“What’s to keep me from going to the police after you let Abby go?” he asked.

“The fact that two hundred thousand dollars is nothing to you. And because if the police start looking for us, we’ll know. We’ll know, and my partner will come back and kill Abby. In the playhouse in your backyard, at her school, after church . . . anywhere. Believe me, he’ll do it. We’ve done this to five other doctors just like you, and none of them have reported it. Not one. You won’t, either.”

He turned away from her in frustration. Through the bedroom’s picture window, he saw the lights of a freighter out on the darkening gulf, plying its way westward. He had never felt so impotent in his life. One simple dictum had carried him through many life-or-death situations:
There’s always a way. Another option. Drastic, maybe, but there.
But this time there didn’t seem to be one. The trapped feeling made him crazy with rage. He whirled back to Cheryl.

“I’m supposed to just sit here all night while some stranger holds my little girl prisoner? Scared out of her mind? Lady, I will rip your head off before I let that happen.”

She jerked the gun back up. “Stay back!”

“What kind of woman are you? Don’t you have any maternal feelings?”

“Don’t you say anything about my feelings!” Cheryl’s face reddened. “You don’t know anything about me!”

“I know you’re making a child suffer pure terror.”

“That can’t be helped.”

He was about to respond when a thought burst into his mind like a starshell. “Oh Jesus. What about Abby’s insulin?”

Cheryl’s face was blank. “What?”

“Abby’s a juvenile diabetic. You didn’t know that? You didn’t
plan
for that?”

“Calm down.”

“You’ve got to call your partner. I’ve got to talk to him right now. Right now!”

The telephone beside the bed rang loudly.

They stared at it. Then Cheryl walked to the phone and laid her free hand on the receiver.

“You want to talk?” she said. “Here’s your chance. But be cool, Doctor. Very cool.”

FIVE

Will took the phone from Cheryl and held it to his ear.

“This is Will Jennings.”

“
Doctor
Will Jennings?” said a male voice.

“That’s right.”

“You got some unexpected company down there, Doctor?”

Will looked over at Cheryl, who was watching intently. “Yes.”

“She looks hot in that black dress, doesn’t she?”

“Listen, I need to explain something to you.”

“You don’t explain anything, college boy.
I’m
in charge tonight. You got that?”

“I’ve got it, but—”

“But nothing. I’m going to ask you a question, Doc. Kind of like the
Match Game.
Remember that one? That freakin’ Richard Dawson—what a fruitcake.”

Will heard eerie laughter.

“Anyway, we’re going to see if your answer matches your wife’s. This is really more like the
Newlywed Game,
I guess.
Uhh . . . that would be the butt, Bob.
” The man broke up again.

Will breathed deeply, his entire being concentrated on understanding whom he was dealing with.

“The question is . . . does your child have any serious medical condition?”

A trickle of hope flowed into his veins. “She has juvenile diabetes.”

“That’s a match! You just won the all-expense paid trip to
beautiful
Puerto Vallarta!”

The man sounded like Wink Martindale on speed. Will shook his head at the surreal horror of the situation. “Abby needs that insulin, sir. Immediately.”

“Sir?” The man laughed darkly. “Oh, I like that. This is probably the only time you’d ever call me ‘sir.’ Unless you had to tell me I was dying or something.
Sir,
I’m afraid you’ve got terminal pecker cancer. Stand two steps back please.”

“I’m an anesthesiologist. I don’t handle things like that.”

“No? You never told anybody they were dying?”

Will hesitated. “When I was an OB/GYN, I did.”

“Ahh. So, no means yes. You ever kill anybody, Doc?”

“Of course not.”

“Really? Nobody ever died on the table while you were passing the gas?”

“Well, of course. But not as a result of my actions.”

“No? I’ve got to wonder how honest you’re being about that. I really do.”

“Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Joe Hickey, Doc. You can call me Joe.”

“All right, Joe. Are you a former patient of mine? Or a relative of a patient?”

“Why would you ask that? I mean, you never killed anybody, right?”

“It’s just that you seem to have a lot of animosity toward me personally.”

“You feel that? Huh. Could be, I guess. Well, let’s leave that for now. ’Cause I’m about to show you what a nice guy I am. I’m about to set it up so your little princess gets her insulin.”

“Thank God.”

“God’s got nothing to do with this. Let me talk to my partner.”

“Joe, could I speak with my wife for a moment?”

“Put Cheryl on, Doc.”

Will held out the phone.

“Get in the bathroom while I’m talking,” she said.

“Your partner didn’t tell me to go in the bathroom.”

She shook the automatic at him. “Get in the goddamn bathroom!”

Will held up his hands and backed into the spacious cubicle of white marble and gold fixtures. He kept the knob turned as he closed the door, and after he heard Cheryl’s voice resume, opened it a couple of inches and put his ear to the crack.

“Why didn’t we know about this medicine thing?” she asked. “Well, I don’t like it. Getting on the road with her is dangerous. What if a cop stops you? . . . Okay...I’m all right, I guess. But this guy isn’t like the others, Joey...I don’t know how. His eyes are on me every second. He’s like a wolf, waiting for his chance...I know. I
know.
Okay. Thirty minutes.”

Will put his eye to the crack and saw Cheryl grimace as she hung up.

“All clear?” he asked, pushing open the door.

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”