No Regrets (43 page)

Now, as they entered the outskirts of Sacramento, they exited the freeway at the Jefferson off-ramp. Kari had thought that would take them into the historic Old Town section of the California state capital, but once again, she was lost. Mike was getting antsy. He wanted to dump her car before 7:00
A.M
. when an alarm might go out from the
day crew at Sancho Panza. He was trying to find a deserted area along the Sacramento River where her car wouldn’t be noticeable, but they couldn’t even find the river itself.

“I’m goin’ back on the freeway,” Mike muttered.

Now they were headed south toward Los Angeles. But Mike jumped from freeway to freeway, and ended up on the one that led back to San Francisco.

“Mike seemed to know where he was going,” Kari remembered, “and I saw a sign that said, ‘Airport Boating Recreation,’ and he got off there. Both of them were really nervous because it was almost seven. They were frantic to find a deserted phone booth where I could call Sancho Panza and tell the day shift people not to call the police...”

They came to a small café on a narrow road that ran parallel to the Sacramento River, and John pulled Kari out of the car, warning her, “You better pray that nobody at San-cho Panza has called the sheriff. Your life depends on that.”

He kept the knife pressed into her flesh as he walked her to the phone booth.

“I placed a collect phone call,” Kari said, “and Gracie answered the phone in the office.”

Kari’s voice sounded odd even to her as she said, “Gracie—please tell me that you have not called the sheriff, the police, or anyone—otherwise I’m dead.” She had to be very careful what she said, because John had his head pressed to hers so he could listen to the other end of the conversation.

“I haven’t called anyone, Kari,” Gracie lied. “And I won’t call anyone. I promise.”

John grabbed the phone from Kari’s hand, and said, “Shelly, your friend’s life depends on this. If we see a sheriff,
we
will
kill her. We have nothing to lose—we’re going to the pen. If nobody comes after us, she can phone after two. If everything goes right, we will leave her in a designated area, locked in her car.” It wasn’t Shelly on the end of the line; it was Gracie, but he had forgotten that. “And Shelly,” he said, using the wrong name again, “we’re going to party awhile before we let her go.”

Kari wondered how Shelly was doing and if they had untied her yet, but she didn’t dare ask. “Gracie,” Kari said, cutting her off before she could blurt out something that might trigger John into another spate of paranoia. “I
will
call you at two o’clock—”

John placed his finger on the phone lever, and the phone went dead.

Unfortunately, the phone call had been too short for the investigators to trace the location Kari had called from. Her coworkers prayed that the “partying” John Martin had referred to didn’t mean that Kari was headed for a hellish experience.

And then they were in Kari’s car again, hurtling along back roads until Mike turned at a sign that pointed toward the airport. The kidnappers decided it would be best to get a rental car, one that wouldn’t be so easy to spot by police—just in case the people back at Sancho Panza were lying and had already reported Kari’s abduction.

Kari herself didn’t know if they had or not. Gracie had been amazingly cool, and she wondered if that meant there was already a dragnet out looking for her car.

She devoutly hoped so.

Her kidnappers told her they would need the three hundred dollars in cash just as soon as they had the rental car. She had a leaden feeling that she was not going to survive this crazy crisscrossing of the city of Sacramento; something
would surely go wrong again. John continually reminded her that she was going to be killed, but then he would reverse himself and say he might let her live if she did everything they told her to do. He was far too volatile to read.

They parked at the airport and John led Kari toward the Hertz rental counter. He warned her again not to “pull anything” because he still had the knife. “It’s right here under my sweater,” he repeated. “You stay cool, and you pretend you’re my wife, and tell them we need the car for two days because we’re going to Reno.”

It wasn’t 8:00
A.M
. yet and Kari’s heart sank as she saw the Hertz desk wasn’t technically open for business. But the woman behind the glass spotted them, smiled, and opened the window.

The clerk noted that the couple appeared quite nervous, but the man kept talking to her—explaining that they were headed for Reno. He jingled change in his pocket as he said they were going “gambling.”

Kari said what John had told her to say: that her brother-in-law had dropped them off outside the airport.

“I thought they were having an affair,” the Hertz clerk said later, “and that was why they seemed so anxious.”

The woman showed her a credit card in the name of Ben Lindholm (which the clerk noted did not match the name “John” that the man had given her).

The woman began to write a personal check for the car, saying, “It’s OK—he knows about this.”

That made the Hertz representative believe even more that these two were sneaking away for a stolen weekend. “John” was being absolutely charming and charismatic, babbling on about how he and “the wife” were going to have a fabulous holiday in Reno. Still, when Kari handed
her check over, the clerk told her she couldn’t accept the check. She had to have something with Kari’s name on it.

Kari glanced at John, and he seemed perfectly at ease, playing his role as her husband. Kari had her Chevron Travelers’ Card, and the woman behind the counter said that would do. Kari knew it was out of date, and she hoped the clerk would notice that and at least call her manager or
someone.
Any other time she would have, but this time, she was distracted by John’s rapid-fire conversation. The clerk didn’t care who they were or what their relationship was—as long as their credit was good.

Although Kari darted her eyes around the rental car area, she didn’t see anyone she could run to for help; at this time of day, it was virtually deserted. If she screamed, she would only endanger the Hertz clerk. The two women would have no chance of overpowering John, not with his knife just beneath his sweater. As far as finding a place to hide in, there was nothing, no stairwell or cubbyhole or door she could rush through and shut behind her. The moment John realized she was trying to escape, she would be as good as dead.

She gave up for the moment. Maybe she would get another chance at their next stop.

Soon, they were out of the airport and headed toward the red and white Thunderbird that John had selected. Once more, Kari wondered about his common sense; it wasn’t an inconspicuous car. It was a dumb choice for someone who wanted to avoid the police.

“You drive,” John ordered. “I don’t have a driver’s license. Mike will follow us in your car until we find a place to ditch it.”

She almost laughed. John had already broken a number of laws that were far more serious than driving without a
valid license. But she didn’t argue; she climbed behind the wheel and put a shaky foot on the accelerator.

“We headed back toward the river,” Kari remembers. “It was about ten miles away from the airport, and we were on the road that ran beside the river again. John told me to take a road off to the right, but I missed it, and had to turn around. We were in a farming area and he finally told me to pull the car off the dirt road next to some kind of abandoned structure, with a lot of trees around. I knew that they were probably going to kill me at that point and stuff my body in the trunk of my car.

“John told me to get my belongings out of my car. There was no one around, not a person, not a car, for miles.”

She wondered if this was to be the “field” where they would “drop her off.” Or if they were going to lock her in her car trunk. In California in September, under a hot sun, she would suffocate in there before anyone found her.

And then, just as Kari accepted she was about to die, she was surprised to hear John order her into the rental car. She sat in the middle of the front seat between Mike and John—who had changed his mind about the dangers of not having a license and was now driving.

The men seemed to have relaxed a bit, now that they had another car, and, seemingly, a new identity. But Kari was still full of dread. “My life depended on my getting that three hundred dollars for them.”

Kari had homed in on their predictable behavior, but that didn’t make her feel much safer. Their pattern of response was up and down, and back and forth. But she figured they needed her at
least
until she got the money for them. They were leery of going in to cash a check without her. As she tried to lull John and Mike into believing they could trust
her, Kari found herself employing the same arguments and sentences that she had used in her dream only last night.

It was eerie that her dream was keeping her alive—at least for the moment.

Even now, the California Highway Patrol troopers and sheriff’s deputies from several counties were spreading out looking for the Ford Granada. But they weren’t likely to find it; it was tucked away back in the brush near the broken-down farmhouse near the Sacramento River. Kari and her captors were in the sporty Thunderbird heading east once more—toward Reno.

Kari’s husband knew that the last time she was seen, she was captive, driving off with two strange and violent men, a knife held against her neck. Ben Lindholm knew that
anything
might have happened to his wife in the hours since 5:30
A.M
. She could be hundreds of miles away, she could be injured, or—and he tried not to think about it—she could be dead. Ben called a close friend, a man who worked at the Solano County Probation Office, and asked him to check for any prior arrests of the man who had given his name as John Martin when he came into Sancho Panza. Ben now knew that Kari was with a sexual predator. Shelly had heard John threaten to kill Kari several times before they drove off with her.

As the morning passed with no word of Kari, it was very difficult to keep hoping for a happy outcome. Ben Lindholm could only sit by his phone waiting for it to ring. He had faith in Kari’s ability to handle emergencies, but this was one in which she was outnumbered and outweighed.

Detective Ray Van Eck of Solano County told him that the entire California police network was now alerted to watch for the Lindholms’ car and for Kari and her abductors. That only reminded Ben of how far away Kari might be by now.

“I knew I had to find some money for them,” Kari said. “John kept asking if there was a highway patrolman behind us. I had to do a considerable amount of reassuring with them, and tell them that, ‘No, there aren’t any highway patrolmen behind us, and we’re not going to see any. We’re in a whole different car now—we look just like anybody else on the freeway.’

“That seemed to relax them, and that was exactly what I was aiming for. I knew if I could get them to feel relaxed around me—and trust me—that I could make my escape when they least expected it.”

Kari planned her words very carefully, determined to make her captors believe that she was very much like them. She created a life story for herself as someone who had also had a rough childhood who was just trying to get by in an uncaring world.

“I had to make them think that I came from a background similar to theirs in order to develop bonds of trust. It made them nervous when I got upset, so I tried to display a positive air—assuring them that I would find a way to get them their three hundred dollars.”

Clearly, Mike and John didn’t draw much strength from one another. Kari realized she was succeeding in bolstering their egos. She could at least put temporary Band-Aids on them by telling them how she had risen above her miserable childhood.

“If I can do it,” she said, “you can, too!”

She wanted to seem very strong to them and still maintain her image as someone who had suffered, too.

She didn’t feel strong. It hadn’t yet been three hours since they left Sancho Panza, but it seemed like days had passed. Every nerve in her body was standing on end; she had believed she was on the edge of death many times as they stumbled around Sacramento, and that wasn’t a feeling that went away easily.

It was close to 9:00
A.M
., and the thick commuter traffic was beginning to slack off. Now they planned to get off the freeway at Elkhorn Drive in the North Highlands section. She knew where there was an Albertson’s store, but she pointed out a Safeway, the first supermarket they came to. Once more, John, his knife tucked into his sleeve, walked Kari into a building. This time, she tried to cash her paycheck.

The clerk shook her head. They could not cash checks for any more than the amount of purchases. John turned on the charm while Kari darted her eyes around, looking for someplace she might run, but again, she found no shelter nearby. It would be foolhardy of her to try to run.

Finally, John picked up a twelve-pack of beer and some cigarettes. The clerk, responding to his compliments, grudgingly allowed Kari to write a check for twenty dollars over the amount on the sales slip.

Kari had her role down pat. No matter how frightened she was, she managed to smile and even laugh at John’s jokes so that he would think she was calm and had no intention of bailing on them. But this didn’t give her a chance to signal anyone with her eyes, and she had no way to write a note to leave behind.

They hurried back to the Thunderbird, and drove on the surface street until they came to the Albertson’s store. Once again, the clerk shook her head. Kari’s check-cashing card was for the Fairfield-area stores, and there was no manager on duty to OK handing out over three hundred dollars. Kari nodded and kept her face calm, but she wondered how she could be having so much bad luck. Inside, she felt like screaming.

“So,” John said when they were back in the Thunder-bird, “what’s your next plan for getting our money?”

Kari thought fast. “I have some friends who live in North Highlands—not far from here. They keep money in a safe in their house. They might cash my check.”