Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) (27 page)

“Hell, no,” Johansson replied, shutting the door in his face.

The warrant has taken longer than he’d hoped, but now Blankenship is primed to make an arrest. He approaches the house armed and outfitted in protective gear. Six other armed agents are in position, ready to take down their fugitive by force.

Blankenship pounds on the door. “Arlene Johansson! FBI! Open the door.”

She swings the door wide and stands with a hand on her hip. “I told you, he’s not here. Jesus, don’t you people listen?”

He hands her the search warrant and tells her to step aside.

“This is ridiculous. You think I’d have a murderer in my house? Christ, don’t track mud in here. Wipe your feet, would you, please?”

She purses her lips and watches with a hostile attitude as the agents stream from room to room. When they find no one, she says, “See? I told you he wasn’t here. Now, would you please leave?”

But they next approach a side door, and she blocks their way. “I don’t want you going in there. Stay out of my garage.”

“Step aside,” Blankenship says, restraining himself from giving her a hard shove.

“Jesus Christ, no one is in there,” she grumbles, moving aside.

Anticipating an arrest, Blankenship nods at the team leader, who gets into position and bursts through the door. Three men rush into the garage as Arlene Johansson hollers, “Don’t touch anything! Don’t you dare touch anything!”

The garage is crammed with furniture, including a bright pink dresser sitting atop a drop cloth with up-ended pink drawers arranged around it like sentinels. There’s a strong odor of paint.

“Dammit, that’s still wet,” she snaps.

A large dehumidifier chugs away in the corner as the men continue their search, pulling aside plastic sheeting, uncovering bed frames, tables, and other furniture along the walls.

“Hey, I try to keep this place dust free, all right? Is that a crime?”

Blankenship faces the woman. “You have a vehicle registered to Sven Larsson here. A 1996 Ford Bronco?”

“Well, it’s not in the garage, obviously. It’s around back.”

Three armed agents file out the back door and into the yard, where they find the vehicle up on blocks, rusty, and cannibalized for parts.

Blankenship hustles his team out of there. They shed their Kevlar and compare theories on the way back to Seattle.

His mood goes from bad to worse when he arrives back at the office and finds a bunch of nosy civilians waiting for him. Not only is Reeve LeClaire in some kind of snit, but Milo Bender and his son are now rallied behind her, tall and adamant, like a pair of damn Vikings. His first instinct is to have Nikki Keswick handle them, but she’s off somewhere, probably having dinner.

With scarcely any time to collect his thoughts, he tells them to sit down and keep it brief.

Reeve shares some crackpot idea about Dr. Moody’s former assistant being some kind of coconspirator.

He grunts in response. “Cybil Abbott? We questioned her the day after Moody’s body was found. She’s clean.”

Reeve narrows her eyes at him—as if he would lie about a thing like that— and launches into some theory about how Cybil Abbott is guilty of something just because she and Flint’s mother happened to have a conversation or two during her son’s trial.

“Are you kidding me?” Blankenship says.

“Come on,” Reeve says. “You must have found something linking her and Mrs. Pratt to the storage unit.” She barely takes a breath before she’s off on another wild-ass idea about a link between Flint’s mother and the storage unit, simply because it was on Church Street.

Blankenship interrupts, saying, “Your supposition that Mrs. Pratt may or may not have mentioned a church wedding to her son is awfully thin proof of any involvement. Especially since it was a male that rented that place.”

“But you can’t completely rule out his mother,” she insists. “She’s as slippery as he is.”

He almost makes a crude remark, but stops himself. They don’t need to know about Mrs. Pratt’s handful of arrests for prostitution over the years. What bearing does it have on this case? So poor Daryl Wayne had a crappy childhood. Big whoop.

“You should at least make her take a lie detector test,” Reeve is saying.

Blankenship turns to Bender, looking for help. “We can’t force the woman to take a polygraph, you know that.”

Bender at least shows some sense. “He’s right about that. There’s nothing to show that Mrs. Pratt had a role in her son’s escape. The forensic auditors went through all her receipts. She had no connection to the storage unit, and she never used credit cards near Olshaker except when she was there during scheduled visits.”

Blankenship pinches the bridge of his nose. His head is pounding and he’s got a ton of paperwork ahead of him. “If there’s nothing else, I’ve got work to do,” he says, and wastes no time shooing them out of his office.

F
lint’s mother knows who’s calling the instant the number lights up on her phone. She nearly says, “Hello, Cybil,” but catches herself, remembering that her phone is likely tapped.

“Mrs. Pratt?” says Cybil’s familiar voice. “Your friend Zola asked me to call. She’s in the hospital and she’s asking if you can stop by.”

“When?”

“Now.”

Mrs. Pratt bites back a nasty comment and plays along. “I’m sorry to hear that Zola is back in the hospital so soon,” she says, using their code. “It hasn’t been very long.”

“Yeah, but she really needs your help.”

Mrs. Pratt tells her she’s on her way and hangs up, irritated that Cybil has called. That blond bitch thinks she’s being clever. She imagines that she is going to casually buy a vial of pills while prying loose information about Daryl’s whereabouts. That hefty reward has stirred her juices, it’s clear as day.

Mrs. Pratt reviews the phone call in her mind, worrying that it was a mistake to involve Cybil, which had been Daryl’s dumb idea.

It all started with an idle exchange during visiting hours one day. “Who owns that gorgeous Audi in the parking lot?” she’d asked her son.

When he said it was Dr. Moody’s, she remarked, “Well that’s some doozy of a scratch in the side. Who’d he piss off?”

Daryl had apparently made a point of finding out during his next psychotherapy session, for an opportunity was born.

A woman scorned, and all that.

“Remember that hot blonde from the trial?” he asked. “You two were buddies, weren’t you?”

“Hardly,” she said, though it was true that she’d cultivated a relationship with Cybil. “We shared a few drinks, but we didn’t stay in touch.”

He gave her that lizard look of his, saying, “I need you to give her a call.”

She hadn’t guessed what he was up to, but at Daryl’s insistence, she’d managed to rekindle her relationship with Cybil. She set it up innocently enough: Just a brief call to get reacquainted, a friendly chat, a lunch, and the offer of some illicit pharmaceuticals.

“Still having trouble sleeping?” she’d asked, pretending sympathy. “I can help with that.”

Of course, Mrs. Pratt made sure there was no link between the two women, other than a few calls like this one, placed from one of the few remaining pay phones at Tacoma General. That was clever, if she says so herself. A woman of her age would likely have friends calling from the medical center from time to time. It had been a safe place to meet, and the arrangement had served both their needs. Cybil’s various complaints got treated, and Mrs. Pratt pocketed some extra folding money. Simple.

But not long after she’d reported that to Daryl, he surprised her with another strange request. Glancing around the visiting room, he’d leaned forward and whispered, “I need you to call Walter Wertz. Tell him we’re on for Plan B.”

She lights a cigarette, thinking about the day she’d first laid eyes on Walter. He was a dangerous young man—all hard muscle, smelling of hormones and campfire.

It was the same summer that hot-tempered husband of hers had broken Daryl’s arm. Don had decided there was need of another pair of hands up at the lake, and so he’d dragged her along, though she hated camping. “Nothing but dirt and fish guts,” she said. But he left her no choice.

Walter showed up just after they’d pitched their tent. The three males had apparently made acquaintance the previous summer. But Walter calmly informed Daryl’s father that they’d strayed onto his land.

“You’ll have to pack up and move back down the road to the public campground,” he said.

Don took issue with that. He argued that they were in a national forest, that they had every right to camp wherever they liked.

The two men were standing toe-to-toe, and it was clear they were about to fight. Then she came out of the tent and stepped between them, putting a hand on each chest.

Pretty soon, Walter was showing up whenever Don took the Chevy for a run into town. Sometimes, she’d cook dinner for him—until Don found out and beat her with his belt, that mean son of a bitch.

One night toward the end of summer, while Don was off buying liquor and cigarettes, she’d invited Walter to join her inside the tent. She was still pretty enough to attract a young buck. But if she was expecting to tame him, he certainly surprised her. He’d already worked out a whole scenario in his head.

It took all of two seconds for her to agree. It satisfied them both, didn’t it? And it wasn’t as if her sorry excuse for a husband had a regular job or a boss who would miss him.

The next day, Donald Flint was just a bad memory. And once all the evidence was tidied up and the authorities were convinced, she sent her boy off to live with his “Uncle Walter.”

What Wertz saw in the boy she couldn’t fathom. Maybe he just liked bossing him around. It was comic, the way the kid jumped to attention every time Walter showed up, ready to fetch and carry. So unlike his usual sullen self.

“My favorite helper,” Walter called him.

It was a nice arrangement. After being relieved of her abusive husband and her quarrelsome son, she’d been free to do exactly as she pleased. At least, until the money ran out. Then she’d had to scramble to make ends meet, until finding Pratt, a long-faced pharmacist whose profession was his primary virtue.

Over the years, it had seemed wise not to have much contact with Walter or her son, other than the odd transfer of required school forms. Their agreement was that there would be no official record of “Uncle Walter.” And once Daryl had grown to match Walter’s height, those two became so secretive— like twins speaking a shared language—that she’d made sure to keep her distance. They were a menacing pair.

She hadn’t seen Walter for ages until that day he showed up at her house months ago. It had never occurred to her that he even knew her address until she stepped out of the shower and smelled the smoke of his cigar.

She tied her robe tight around her and found him sitting in her living room, looking bigger, heavier, more intimidating than ever.

“Hey, Connie. Nice place you got here.” He sucked on his cigar and blew smoke in her direction, smiling.

Walter lost no time in reminding her that they had a shared interest in getting Daryl away from the prying questions and greedy ears at that loathsome psychiatric hospital. “Your part is simple,” he told her. “I’ve got everything set up. All you need to do is relay information back to Daryl.”

She wasn’t crazy about the risk of getting involved. But Walter wasn’t a man to cross.

He showed up at odd times—always unexpected—asking about Daryl’s progress. Each time, he seemed more threatening than the last.

She stepped up her visits to Olshaker, greasing the wheels of her son’s escape, but had no desire to know the full scope of whatever scheme those two males had concocted. She kept her role to a minimum, remaining scarcely more than a courier of information.

Once all the wheels were set in motion, Walter suddenly went quiet. Daryl seemed to have expected this. He responded to the news with a hungry gleam. But her son remained unreadable, so she made sure to remain alert for the stink of Walter’s cigar.

Of course, Walter’s plan had not included anything about Dr. Moody. That was something Daryl cooked up all on his own. When her son snagged on the idea that he needed a map and key to Moody’s house, she tried to warn him that it was reckless, but he wouldn’t listen. Anyway, he was correct about Cybil being more than happy to oblige.

Mrs. Pratt had simply given Cybil the security codes for getting into Church Street Storage and told her to leave an envelope inside the unit. She had no intention of stepping even one foot inside that place.

Who knows what motivated her son to kill Dr. Moody—something to do with his fixation on that ridiculous LeClaire girl, no doubt—but at least Daryl isn’t betraying any more secrets about his daddy.

Dead and buried and in the past.

Unfortunately, since she was Daryl’s sole visitor at Olshaker, she is the one under scrutiny. And there’s no way she’s going to yield to pressure and take a polygraph. She’s no fool. She puts out her cigarette, thinking that no matter how hard the FBI might press, they’ll find nothing linking her to her son’s escape, and not a scrap of paper connecting her with Walter Wertz. Nothing!

The problem now is that Cybil is sniffing around, trying to find out where Daryl is hiding, thanks to that fat reward. And Cybil may not be all that smart, but she could sure stir up trouble.

Mrs. Pratt checks the time, irked that she must rush off to meet with that meddlesome twat. As she’s slipping into her leopard-print heels, an idea blooms.

Cybil has served her purpose. Now that girl is a loose end, and loose ends must be eliminated.

Mrs. Pratt opens a drawer and rummages through her private collection of pill vials, one of the perks of being a pharmacist’s wife. She finds a bottle of zolpidem, a generic sleeping aid, and another of fentanyl tablets, a narcotic more potent than morphine. She slips on a pair of latex gloves, wipes her fingerprints off the bottles, and carefully exchanges the contents.