Middle of Nowhere (45 page)

He said dreamily, as if nothing had happened between them. “He bought it for me at a truck stop. This trip we took once. David. My brother—”

She said nothing, knowing it best to allow him to calm. Her breast burned. Her weapon beckoned, but she dared not move. She glanced down quickly only to see her purse had fallen on its side, the knurled handle of the handgun showing. She extended her knee and placed her foot over the weapon, covering it. She knew now what he would do to her if he found out who she was. All she wanted was out of that car—but she also knew he could not feel threatened by her departure, could not feel she would go running to police, or he would never let her go. One slip of the tongue had brought her here to this moment; she guarded her words carefully. She had a role to play.

Her voice rasped dryly as she spoke, requiring deep breaths to get any sound out at all. “You could have killed me,” she said.

Flek had left. The adrenaline had kicked the drugs in ahead of schedule. He ground his teeth so hard she could hear them—like a rock scratching slate. “Out there in eastern Colorado. Might as well be Kansas, it’s so damn flat. There was a ‘T’ on the cup when Davie bought it—TABBY—but he scratched it off with his penknife and handed it to me, saying it was my birthday present.”

“I’m going to get out of the car now,” she announced, having no trouble playing the terrified and wounded stranger. “You’re going to drive off and leave me.” With her foot, she tried to stuff the handle of the gun back inside, but it wouldn’t go, so she covered it again.

“No, no, no . . .” he said, suddenly aware of his predicament.

The car idled on the side of the road.

“This was a mistake on my part,” she said. “I should have taken the taxi.”

“A little late for that.”

“You’re upset over the loss of your brother. You’re lucky I’m a professional, because I understand that. I’ve seen men in your condition before. Another woman would report you to the police—”

He said sarcastically, “And you’re not going to!”

“No, I’m not. That would hardly be fair. It would only further aggravate your mental condition.”

“I do
not
have no ‘mental condition’!” he objected. “I am not no mental case!”

“Your grief,” she said calmly. “I’m referring to your grief over your brother’s loss.” She would have to turn her back on him to try manually for the door lock, and the car was one of those where the nub of the lock barely protruded when in the locked position, so it was not going to be an easy feat. There wasn’t a master-control-lock in her door panel—there was only the one window toggle and it was once again child-locked and inoperable.

“We got ourselves a situation here,” he said, rubbing his sweaty face with an open hand.

“I’m going to unlock the door,” she informed him, “and I’m going to get out of the car. All you have to do is drive away and there is no situation.”

He seemed to be talking to himself more than her. “The thing is, you look so familiar to me, and I been trying to sort that out. And then you go and speak my name like that, and I’m thinking you
are
a cop, that that’s where I seen you. Something to do with Davie. And now you say you won’t tell no one, but that’s bullshit and we both know it.” He hit the accelerator. The rear wheels shot out plumes of mud and the car slowly squirreled back out into the lane nearly hitting a passing car that swerved to avoid them.

Daphne turned and went for the lock, deciding she could jump at this slow speed. It accelerated quickly. She only had a moment. . . .

She heard the breaking glass and felt the blow simultaneously. The nauseating smell of cheap tequila engulfed her. One moment she was struggling with that damn door lock. The next, there was only pain, and the dark, blue, penetrating swirl of unconsciousness.

W
aiting for the 9:10 ferry to Bainbridge in the enormous State Ferry parking lot, his cellular voyeuristically held to his ear, Boldt agonized as he overheard the events that led up to the struggle between Daphne and Flek, Daphne’s calm pleading that followed and the final crashing of glass that had silenced all discussion. Only the faint groan of the car engine told him the line was still active. He couldn’t be sure if the car had been wrecked or if Flek was still driving.

Movement in his rearview mirror attracted him, or perhaps it was the magnetism of the man he saw there, walking with a limp through the light rain. The passenger door came open and a bruised and battered John LaMoia climbed into the car painfully. He glanced over at his lieutenant—everything below his eyebrows and above his chin a mass of swollen black and purple and yellow-orange skin—and said through a wired-shut jaw, “Couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

“Now you’ve screwed up everything,” Boldt said, “because now I’ve got to drive you back to the hospital instead of boarding this ferry.”

“No way,” the man mumbled, his words barely discernable. “Haven’t been on a ferry in years.” He added, “Don’t worry—I’m not feeling
any
pain, Sarge. Matter of fact, I feel pretty great.”

Boldt’s ear adapted to the odd speech impediment brought on by the man’s wired jaw. He sounded half-southern, half-drunk. Medicated to the hilt.

Boldt handed him the phone and said, “No talking into it, but what do you hear?”

LaMoia pressed his other ear shut, though the move was clearly painful. “Eight cylinder. Twin barrel maybe. Bad pipes.”

Boldt was not thinking in terms of a gear head. He had wanted a straight answer. “But it’s a car. Right?”

“You tell me.”

“A car engine. Idling or running?”

“This baby’s on the road, Sarge. Three thousand RPM and cruising.” LaMoia added, “What channel is this anyway? SportTrax?”

“She left her cell phone on.”

“You told me,” LaMoia reminded him.

“But it’s
still
on. There was a struggle, and no one’s doing any talking.” Boldt spoke frantically. “I made the call to Poulsbo PD from a pay phone. Told them they couldn’t use any radios because this guy’s a scanner. They have one plainclothes detective over there. He was going to sit on the Liberty Bay Grill with some radio cars nearby as backup. Maybe we’ve still got a shot at him.”

The ferry lights approached.

“Finally,” Boldt said.

“No chopper, I take it,” LaMoia surmised.

“All tied down for the night. One pilot was available, and he said with drive time and prep it would be an hour and a half before he’d be off the ground. Ferry’s thirty-five minutes. I opted to have the car once I’m over there.”

“Hang on a second, Sarge. We got some action here. This guy’s pulling off the road—some place bumpy.” LaMoia handed the cell phone back to Boldt who listened intently.

“He’s pulling over,” Boldt told his sergeant. “Stopping. . . . Oh, thank God!” he said with a little too much emotion.

“What?” LaMoia begged.

“She’s groaning. It’s her! She’s alive!” A loud scratching. The line went dead. Boldt knew it was not just silence on the other end, but a full disconnect. “Oh, no .. .” he moaned. He passed the phone to LaMoia, who jerked it to his ear.

“She may be alive,” LaMoia said, “but this baby’s dead.”

“He disconnected the call.”

“Or the battery went dead,” LaMoia suggested. “How long has that thing been on anyway?” He added angrily, “And how the fuck did she find this skel ahead of you anyway, Sarge? What the hell’s that about?”

“I found him,” Boldt answered. “She just took the call. Flek’s cell phone records,” he said, the words catching in his throat like chicken bones. “I . . . had . . . them . . . work . . . their . . . call . . . logs.”

“Sarge?” LaMoia knew that tone of voice in his boss.

“That’s why she left the call open, John. It wasn’t so I could listen in, it was so I could
find her.”

“Sarge?” LaMoia repeated.

“Get Gaynes over to AirTyme Cellular in the Columbia Building. A guy named Osbourne. Wake him up if we have to. Escort him, I don’t care. Just get him downtown. Now!” He added in dry whisper, “Now, before her battery dies . . . and she along with it.”

S
he awakened in a dark, confined space, foul smelling and warm. It took her a moment to identify it as the Eldorado’s trunk. By now Flek had found her weapon and her ID wallet. By now he understood that to kill her—a cop—meant the death penalty, if caught. By now he was plotting what to do, this man wired on a glow plug cocktail. Whatever the stakes previously, for Bryce Abbott Flek they had just escalated.

Her wrists were handcuffed, her ankles tied together with white plastic ties. Sight of the ties stirred memories of Sanchez and Kawamoto, and stole her breath. Her mouth was gagged with an oily rag. Pulled tightly around her sore head, it was knotted in the back. She felt a strange sensation on her neck and decided it was damp blood: whatever injury she had sustained, it was not life threatening. The man behind the wheel was another story.

The car rattled and bounced and she blamed the pounding headache as much on the seeping fumes as the blow to her head. A pinkish-red light from the tail-lights seeped through the car fixtures. Her blouse, soaked in tequila, radiated a sickening smell of her own fear, perfume, and the alcohol. She had no idea where they were, no idea where they were headed, though by the sound of oncoming traffic passing quickly, she knew they were traveling fast, and with so few roads in this area, it meant either toward or away from Poulsbo. If headed away, then her message to Boldt had failed. Only the open phone line presented any ray of hope— however faint—and only then, if Boldt figured it out.

She credited her training—her ability to transcend the moment, to rise above a patient’s despair and think clearly—for the steadiness of thought she experienced. She did not wallow in self-pity or succumb to fear. Instead, after a quick flirtation with the latter, she began to reposition herself in the trunk, knowing what had to be done.

She had been inside a trunk once before in her life. A different life, it felt like. A different woman. She had no intention of this experience resulting in the same outcome. This time someone would die. And she wasn’t going to allow that person to be her.

T
he ferry steamed on through the dark, churning waters interminably. Wind and rain frothed the waters into sharp, angular chop, unique to the Sound, but the ferry plowed down the peaks and beat them out its wake as a subdued, white, rolling foam.

Boldt and LaMoia sat off by themselves on a mostly empty deck. A few tired businessmen occupied the other seats, and a couple of kids with backpacks. On these milk-run legs, the ferry definitely lost money.

“You shouldn’t have come along,” Boldt said.

“True story,” LaMoia answered through his clenched jaw.

“What do we feed you?”

“Ensure, through a straw. If I puke, I die. Nice thought, isn’t it?”

“Then why?”

“The last time this happened, she got cut bad, and you . . . you beat yourself up pretty hard over that. I hear you been beating yourself up over my little accident. It ain’t worth it, Sarge. My gig. My choice. My bad,” he said. “I’m slow, but I’m not useless. Besides, I knew you could use the company.”