Bad to the Bone (39 page)

It was only seven o’clock when he got back to his apartment, but he wasn’t surprised to find Jim Tilley waiting for him. Nor was he surprised when Tilley took one look at him and asked, “What happened, Stanley? What’d you do?”

Moodrow unlocked the door and walked inside before answering. Then he recited the details of his adventure as if it had taken place years before. The future was pulling him along, all the things he had to do before Betty was free and Craddock where he belonged. He couldn’t afford to dwell on the past, even if the past involved bullets screaming by his skull.

“You mean to tell me,” Tilley said, “that you went into that room without your weapon in your hand? You’re even crazier than I thought.”

“I’m not a cop,” Moodrow explained. “At the very least, I was trespassing. And I knew Craddock wasn’t there. If I walked in with a gun in my hand and someone recognized me, the boys at the Seven would have me tied up for days.”

“Stanley, you almost got shot.”

Moodrow giggled. “Well, it was a judgment call.”

“It was almost judgment fucking
day
.”

Moodrow responded by tossing the envelope on the table. “Let’s cut the bullshit and get to work, all right?”

Fifteen minutes later they had what they wanted. Someone had made dozens of calls to the same number in the 516 area code which covered two-thirds of Long Island, including Shelter Island. Tilley called a special number, 555-4355, and reached a NYNEX supervisor. He gave her his badge number and she forwarded his request to a 516 operator. It took less than a minute to convert the number to an address. Eleven Bucks Creek Road. Moodrow thumbed quickly through the Long Island Lighting Company bills and found what he wanted. Despite the bills having been addressed to The Hanover Foundation, the address of the actual consumer was printed clearly on each bill: Eleven Bucks Creek Road.

The urge to get moving, to jump in the car and drive a hundred miles an hour all the way to Shelter Island was so powerful that Moodrow felt like he was being sucked out of the chair. Of course, he wouldn’t be going anywhere until after Craddock’s nine o’clock call. If he wasn’t there to answer the phone, Craddock was liable to do anything.

It was just eight o’clock. An hour to wait, assuming Craddock phoned on time. Moodrow dialed Leonora Higgins’ number, waiting impatiently for her to pick up, then explaining what he’d gotten and how he’d gotten it.

“I’m going with you,” she announced when he finished.

“No way.”

“I’m a lawyer, Stanley, and you may need a lawyer before you’re finished. Besides, it could be necessary to bring in the local cops. An assistant district attorney is a long way up from a retired cop and a young detective. The locals are more likely to cooperate with me than with you.”

“You can’t represent me,” Moodrow countered. “An ADA isn’t allowed to practice law outside the district attorney’s office.”

“Then I’ll be an ex-ADA. Stanley, I’m coming with you.”

“All right, Leonora. The truth is we can use your help. But remember, you invited yourself.”

After hanging up, Moodrow went to his bedroom closet and retrieved a small, stuffed suitcase. It was filled with maps, maps of every county surrounding the five boroughs of New York. Moodrow, after spending the better part of six hours running in dispatcher-directed circles, had bought them directly from Hagstrom, a company specializing in detailed street maps. He tossed the suitcase on the kitchen table, rummaging through the maps until he found the one he needed. “You want coffee, Jim?” he asked, already filling the pot.

B
Y TEN-THIRTY, BETTY’S ARM
felt like it was about to fall off. She’d been working steadily for more than an hour, but the hole in the sheetrock was minuscule. With the bureau pulled away from the wall (but not so far away that she wouldn’t be able to get it back if someone came down the hall), she had almost no leverage, no room in which to work. Originally, she’d planned to punch through the sheetrock, then lever her improvised weapon back and forth like a screwdriver, but the metal was far too soft. She would have to pick at the wall like a woodpecker chipping at a tree. And the handle she’d constructed so carefully was beginning to loosen. If her ice pick fell apart, if the metal snapped or the handle split, she would have nothing.

“Damn,” she whispered, peering into the small hole, “I can’t see anything back here.”

“I’ll get the light,” Mikey offered.

“No, you stay where you are.” She pushed herself to her feet, retrieved the lamp and plugged it into an outlet alongside the bureau. The hole in the sheetrock was so small that she had trouble seeing, even with the extra light. Still, the dull red color of the outer wall was clear enough. The house was made of brick.

She stood up and pushed the bureau against the wall, determined not to show her disappointment. “Let’s take a rest, Mikey.”

The boy, his ear glued to the door, nodded gravely, then joined her on the bed. “Is it working?” he asked.

“It’s slow, very slow. And I’m afraid I’m going to break the tool.”

“If it breaks, we won’t have anything.”

“That’s just what I was thinking. That’s why I have to be very careful.”

“Because it’s a knife, too. Right?”

Betty smiled, giving Michael a little shove. “How come you’re so smart?” She looked at his serious face and sighed. “Yes,” she said, “it
is
a weapon. More like an ice pick than a knife. But it’s a tool first and a weapon only if there’s no other way for us to get out.”

The boy took a moment to absorb the information. “Do you think my daddy’s gonna hurt us?” he asked.

“He might, Mikey. I think he might.”

“
I
think he
will
.” He moved closer to Betty. “Why does he want to hurt me? I’m his child. He’s supposed to care about me.”

“It’s hard to explain that.”

“Try,” the boy insisted.

“You know, you’re a pretty tough guy.”

“Please
try
,” he repeated.

“Mikey, have you ever hurt anyone?”

“I once hurt Brian. I got mad at him and I hit him with a baseball.”

“How did you feel about it?”

“I said I was sorry, but he didn’t talk to me for three whole days.”

“Were you really sorry?”

“Of course.”

“All right, Mikey. The simplest way to understand your father is that, when he hurts someone, he
isn’t
sorry. He’s not like ordinary people. If he wants something, he takes it. It doesn’t matter who gets hurt. He just doesn’t care. It’s a kind of sickness.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes while Michael tried to put it all together. He had no illusions about the purpose of Betty’s ice pick. It was going to be used on his father. As a child, however, he’d never been asked to approve decisions made by an adult. Betty, if she had to, would stab Davis Craddock. But only if he, Michael, said it was okay.

“Maybe we could make another tool. A real tool. For digging,” the boy said quietly.

Michael’s reluctance to deal with his father came as no surprise. It would take time before the boy would be ready to accept what they might have to do. But Michael was clearly aware of the stakes. He wasn’t running away from his father’s savagery.

“Okay, Mikey,” Betty said, “let’s see if we can find a way out of here. We need something that we can use to dig through the wall. Something we don’t care about breaking.” Something, she didn’t add, strong enough to scrape away the mortar that held the bricks together.

“Should we look in the bed again?”

“Yeah. You get the lamp and I’ll pull the bed away from the wall.”

The boy, his relief at not having to make a decision evident, ran over to the bureau, ran back to Betty with the lamp, then ran to the door and put his ear against the wood. Betty, smiling, bent to her work.

The interior of the box spring was a maze of metal, wood and twine. Betty stared at it, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, and after several minutes the simple construction began to come clear. The outer springs were attached to a metal rail with clips. The rail was attached to the wooden frame with nails. The nails had been driven into the frame alongside the rail, then bent over the rail and driven into the wood on the other side. The rail appeared to be a single piece of metal. It was thick, but she suspected that it was hollow inside, a tube. In any event, the nails, only a few inches apart, had been driven in tightly. If she had a screwdriver, she’d probably be able to dig the nails out, but she didn’t have a screwdriver. She had a nail file.

The bed springs were more promising. They were probably designed to move a little bit. That’s why they were tied down with twine instead of being nailed to the frame. If she cut through the twine, she might be able to twist one of the springs back and forth until the clips worked loose. The springs, if straightened, would be eight or nine inches long. Betty, propped on one arm, began to saw at the twine with the nail file.

“Someone’s coming.”

Michael’s stage whisper had Betty jumping despite her aching back. She switched off the lamp, shoved it under the bed, then pushed the bed against the wall. She was barely erect when the door opened and Blossom Nol, apparently alone, walked quietly into the room.

“You must leave now,” she announced. “Quickly.”

“Leave to go where?” Betty, despite her efforts to subvert Blossom Nol, was instantly suspicious.

“I’ll show you how to get out, but we must do it before Davis misses me. We only have a few minutes.”

Betty glanced at Michael. Like her, he seemed confused. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“If you stay, he’ll kill you.”

Betty willed herself to be calm, to sort out her thoughts. The message was simple, but the girl had delivered it with her eyes fixed to the floor. On one level, Blossom seemed little more than a robot. A robot controlled by Davis Craddock. What if she’d gone back to Craddock and told him what Betty was trying to do? What if Craddock was simply enjoying a little joke, a moment of high drama before he did what he was going to do anyway? On the other hand, Craddock had no reason to kill them before he’d finished his project. Betty’s kidnapping had taken place two days ago. If forty-eight hours had been enough, Craddock would never have gone to the trouble of snatching her. Still, the man was utterly unpredictable.

“Michael, look in the hallway. Very carefully. See if anyone’s out there.”

Michael stuck his head out the door. “I don’t see anybody,” he announced.

“All right, Blossom. Tell us what you want us to do.” Betty’s voice was unyielding.

“You must come quickly.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what your plan is.” Betty took Michael’s hand and pulled him close to her.

“The next room,” Blossom explained. “It’s empty. You can go out the window.”

“We’re on the second floor, Blossom. If I twist my ankle jumping, we’re both dead.”

“There’s a porch attached to the back of the house. You can crawl along the porch roof and jump down behind a tree where it’s dark. But you must come now. I can’t stay here. Davis will find out what I’m doing.”

“Are you coming with us?”

“I can’t.”

“Why, Blossom? Davis is going to blame you anyway.”

Blossom backed into the doorway. “You must decide now. I can’t wait any longer. I won’t come back again.”

The room Blossom had chosen, a bedroom, was deserted. Betty slid the window up and looked outside. The porch roof, only a few feet below the window sill, sloped to within six feet of the ground. A tall fir standing alongside the roof cast a deep shadow. The scene was exactly as Blossom had described it.

“Are you ready for this, Mikey?” Betty asked.

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation.

“Then let’s go.” Betty unconsciously touched the improvised weapon thrust into her belt before stepping through the window and onto the porch roof. Michael followed and they crawled to the edge together. The ground seemed more like six miles than six feet below. Betty, not wanting to think about it now that she’d made an irrevocable decision, tried to lower herself down, but her hands slipped and she fell heavily.

“Are you okay?” Michael whispered.

“Yeah. Fortunately I’ve got a big butt and I managed to land on it.”

Michael hung his legs over the edge and Betty was able to help lower him to the ground. “I’m glad I didn’t fall,” he said seriously. “My butt is very tiny.”

For the moment, they were safe. The tree they stood under cast a deep shadow, but the twenty feet of lawn they had to cross was brightly lit.

“Mikey, see those trees over there?” She pointed to a stand of birch, eight or nine trees clustered together. “That’s where we’re going to go. We can’t hesitate or stop no matter what happens. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to carry you, okay? We’ll move a lot faster that way. Once we’re safe in the trees, I’ll put you down.”

He answered by climbing into her arms. His small body was shaking with fear, and Betty, her hatred for Davis Craddock rising into her throat, took off at a dead run. For a moment, she thought she was safe, but then she heard the sound of breaking glass, the rapid-fire pop of a semi-automatic weapon, the sharp whine of bullets passing close to her body, the slap of those bullets cutting into the trees surrounding the house.

A setup. Blossom had set them up. Without asking why, Betty continued to run until she felt the sharp tear of the briars at the edge of the woods. She ignored the pain, pushing through until they were lost in the darkness of the 2,000-acre Mashomack Nature Preserve.

Moodrow, Tilley and Higgins left Moodrow’s apartment right after Betty’s phone call. They drove fast enough to attract the attention of three state police cruisers, but, in each case, Tilley flashed his badge, announcing, “We’ve got a witness to a homicide. A
reluctant
witness. The bastard’s liable to take off any minute.” Leonora Higgins’ identification removed any doubt the troopers might have had and they were allowed to continue. Tilley was driving Moodrow’s big Mercury. He had no trouble maintaining a steady 75 mph, weaving through the traffic all the way to Riverhead, where the Long Island Expressway ended. Then they were forced onto Route 25, a narrow, two-lane road that passed through every resort town between Riverhead and Greenport. Still, by eleven-fifteen, they were lined up for the Shelter Island Ferry.