Ransom (28 page)

Carlton Waters and his two friends had called Peter as soon as they crossed the Bay Bridge and were driving through Berkeley. They used the new number he'd given them, on his brand-new nontraceable cell phone.

“We had a little problem,” Waters said to him. He sounded calm but angry.

“What little problem?” For a terrifying moment, Peter was afraid that they'd killed her, or Sam.

“You forgot to mention she had four cops with her, sitting in her kitchen.” Waters sounded livid. They hadn't expected to have to kill four cops to get to the kid. That was not part of the deal. And Peter hadn't warned them.

“She what? That's ridiculous. I never saw them go in. She had a few friends in the other day, but that was it. There was no one with her.” He sounded certain. But he had also left before ten o'clock the night before, maybe they had gone in after he left. He wondered if that was why he hadn't seen much of her for the past few days. But there was no one to tip her off to what was happening. No way for her to know. Nothing had happened, except Addison getting himself arrested for tax problems. But nothing about that could have warned the police or the FBI, unless he had said something inadvertently. Peter knew he was too smart for that. He couldn't figure out what had happened, or what had gone wrong.

“Well, whoever wasn't with her is no longer a problem. If you get my drift,” Waters said, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco out the van window. Stark was driving. And Free was in the back seat. The boy was in the bag they'd put him in, in the back of the van, with their weapons and the groceries. Free had an M16 at his feet, and an arsenal of handguns, mostly .45-caliber Rugers and Berettas, both were semiautomatic weapons. Carl had brought his favorite, an Uzi MAC-10, a small fully automatic machine gun he'd grown fond of and learned to use before he went to prison.

“You killed them?” Peter asked, sounding stunned. That was going to complicate everything, and he knew Addison wasn't going to like it. Nothing like that was supposed to happen. He'd been watching her for over a month. How the hell did four cops get into the picture? And who had they been watching? Suddenly, Peter felt a chill run down his spine. As Addison had said, there was no such thing as a free lunch. All of a sudden, Peter knew he was about to earn his ten million.

Carlton Waters did not comment on Peter's question. “You'd better warn the cops not to say how those guys died. If they put any of this in the newspapers, we'll kill the kid. I told her that, but maybe you'd better remind them too. We want everything nice and quiet, till we get the money. If they put it on TV, every asshole in the state will be looking for us. We don't need that too.”

“Then you shouldn't have killed four cops. Christ, what am I supposed to do here? You can't expect me to keep them quiet.”

“You better do something fast. We left there half an hour ago. If the cops talk, it's going to be all over the news in the next five minutes.”

Peter knew his phone was untraceable, but he hated testing the limits. He had no choice though. Waters was right. If the kidnapping hit the press along with the murder of four cops, there would be a statewide search on every freeway, on every road, in every corner of the state, and on every border, even more so than just for Sam, which would be bad enough. But killing four cops added a whole new dimension. Sam was still alive, and the police would know he would be. But four men had died now. That was a very different story. It was against his better judgment, but Peter called a central police number, and asked to speak to a sergeant. He knew it didn't matter where he called, whoever he gave the message to would get it into the right hands within seconds. So he passed on what Carl had told him.

“If anything about the dead cops or the kidnapping hits the press, the boy is dead,” he said, and hung up. Ted and his captain got the message in less than two minutes. It presented a problem for them because two officers and two FBI agents had died, but a child's life was hanging in the balance.

The captain called the chief of police, and what they came to was that a statement would be made to the press that four men had been killed in the line of duty. They were going to say that an accident had occurred involving a high-speed chase. Details would be released at the appropriate moment, to give the families time to notify their loved ones. It was all they could do, and the simplest and cleanest explanation for the deaths of four law enforcement officers, from two agencies, both city and federal. It was going to be tough to cover. But they all knew they had to, until the kidnappers were found, or the boy reclaimed. After that, all hell could break loose and the boy's life would no longer be at stake. The captain wrote the press release himself with the FBI media rep, and Carl Waters heard it on the radio two hours later, while they were still on the road to Tahoe. He called Peter and said he had done a good job. But by then, Peter was facing a serious dilemma, as he sat in his motel room on Lombard. Things had not gone entirely according to plan, and he felt he owed it to Addison to tell him. He didn't tell Carl he was thinking of doing that, although he expected Peter to contact his superiors after what had happened. Waters was still angry at Morgan for his sloppy surveillance, which had led to the problem. The murder of four cops was definitely a problem.

Peter had Addison's phone number in the South of France, and called him from his cell phone, while Phillip was sitting in his hotel room. There had never been any plan for Peter to join the others in Tahoe. In fact, he was to stay as far away from them as possible, so there would be no link to him, or Addison. He was going to say that his rented house had been broken into, long after they claimed the ransom.

Addison had arrived in Cannes the day before, and had just begun enjoying his vacation. He knew what was happening, and the schedule they were on. What he wanted to hear about was good results, not problems. He had told them to wait a couple of days before making their ransom request. He wanted to give Fernanda time to panic about it. He knew if they did, she'd pay faster. He assumed she would pay quickly.

“What are you telling me?” he said as Peter beat around the bush for a minute. Peter hated telling him that Waters and the others had killed four cops. It was also going to be difficult to explain why he hadn't known they were in there in the first place. Peter began by telling him they only got Sam, the others were away.

“I'm telling you there was a problem,” Peter said, holding his breath for a minute.

“Did they hurt the boy or his mother?” Addison's voice was icy. If they killed the boy, there would be no ransom. Only headaches. Big ones.

“No,” Peter said, pretending to be calm, “they didn't. Apparently, four cops got into the house last night after I left. There haven't been any till now, I'd swear to it. There's been no one in the house except her and the kids. There isn't even a maid. I don't know how the cops got into it. But Waters said they were there when he and the others got there.”

“And then what happened?” Addison said slowly.

“Apparently, they killed them.”

“Oh, for chrissake …my God…is it all over the news yet?”

“No. Waters called me from the road. I called the police and left a message. I said that if anything about the dead cops or the kidnapping hit the press, we'd kill the boy. They just issued a press release on the radio that four officers were killed in a high-speed chase. There were no other details. And there's no mention of the kidnap. Our guys warned her they'd kill the boy if she or the cops talk.”

“Thank God you did that. They'll be looking for the boy everywhere anyway, but if they warn the public, it'll be that much worse. There would be random ‘sightings’ of the kidnappers from here to New Jersey. All we need are cops combing the state, looking for cop killers. They care a lot more about that than a kidnap. They know you'll keep the boy alive to get the ransom money. But four dead cops are another story.” He was anything but pleased. They both knew that for Sam's safety, the police would keep their mouths shut, so as not to put Sam in even greater jeopardy.

“It sounds like you handled it, but how stupid of the others. I suppose they had no choice. They couldn't take four cops with them.”

Addison sat on the balcony of his suite at the Carlton in Cannes for a long moment, watching the sunset, thinking about what to do. “You'd better go up there.” It was a change of plan, but might make an important difference.

“To Tahoe? That's insanity. The last thing I need is to be identified with them.” Or worse, caught with them, if they did something equally stupid, like rob a 7-Eleven for a sandwich, Peter thought, but didn't mention it to his boss. Addison was upset enough about the four dead cops, and Peter was too.

“The last thing any of us needs is to lose a hundred million dollars. Consider it protecting our investment. I'd say it's worth it.”

“Why in hell do you want me to go up there?” Peter sounded panicked.

“The more I think about it, I don't trust them with the boy. If they hurt him, or kill him accidentally, we're screwed. I'm not sure their baby-sitting skills are quite what they should be. I'm relying on you to protect our principal asset.” They were turning out to be more violent than he thought they would be. All they needed was for one of them to get out of control. It wouldn't take much to kill the boy, and they might be dumb enough to do something like that. And with only one child to bargain with, Addison didn't want to take any chances. “I want you to go up there,” he said firmly.

It was the last thing Peter wanted to do, but he could see Addison's point. And he knew that if he was there, he could keep an eye on Sam. “When?”

“No later than tonight. In fact, why don't you go now? You can keep an eye on them. And the boy. When are you going to make the call to his mother?” He was just checking. They had worked out all the details before he left. Although he certainly didn't expect them to kill four cops. That was not part of the plan.

“In a day or two,” Peter said. It was what they had planned and agreed on.

“Call me from there. Good luck,” he said, and hung up, as Peter sat in his hotel room staring at the wall. Things were not going according to plan. He hadn't wanted to go anywhere near Tahoe while they were there. All he wanted was his ten million dollars and to get out. He wasn't even sure he wanted that. The only reason he was doing this was to save his daughters. And going to Tahoe to be with Waters and the others put him at much greater risk for being caught. But he knew, as he had from the beginning of this mess, there was no way out. He tried not to think of Fernanda and what she must be going through, as he picked up his bag of toiletries and shaving gear, the two clean shirts and underwear he'd brought in a paper bag, and walked out of the motel ten minutes later. But whatever she was feeling now, or how terrified she was, one thing he was sure of, with a hundred million dollars at stake, they'd be sending back her son. So no matter how sick she was over it, it was going to turn out all right in the end. Peter reassured himself with that thought, as he left the motel and hailed a cab. He had it drop him off at Fisherman's Wharf, where he took another cab to a used car lot in Oakland. He had left the car he'd been using for the past month in a back alley in the Marina. He had removed the license plates and dropped them in a dumpster before walking half a dozen blocks to the motel, where he had paid cash for the room.

In Oakland he bought an old Honda, paid cash for it, and an hour after his call to Phillip Addison, he was on the road to Tahoe. It seemed a lot safer to use a different car than he'd been using while following her for the past month, in case someone in the neighborhood had seen him. Now that Waters and the others had murdered four cops, the risk was greater for all of them, and for Peter, going to Tahoe increased the risks further. But he knew he had no choice in the matter. Addison was right. Peter didn't trust them with Sam, and he didn't want anything worse to happen than already had.

Long before he reached Vallejo, photographs of Peter and Carlton Waters had been circulated all over the state on police computers. Peter's now-abandoned license plates and the description of his previous car were circulated with them, along with extreme confidential warnings not to publish any information, as there was a kidnap in progress. Peter didn't stop along the way, and drove within the speed limit, to avoid incident. And by then, Addison was already under surveillance by the FBI in France. And all Fernanda needed now was a phone call from the kidnappers, so the police and FBI could find Sam.

Chapter 15

All the police photographs
they needed had been taken by that night. The men's families had been notified, the bodies were at funeral parlors, what was left of them. The wives and families had been told the circumstances, that a child's life was hanging in the balance, and no one could talk, or tell the truth until the boy had been released by his captors. They understood, and all had agreed. They were good people, and as cops' and agents' wives, they knew the difficulties of the situation. They were dealing with their own and their families' grief, with the help of trained psychologists in both departments.

By then profiling experts were at work on Peter Morgan and Carl Waters. Their respective rooms had been searched extensively, friends interviewed, and the manager of the Modesto halfway house had supplied the information that Malcolm Stark and Jim Free, both parolees, had left with Waters, which spawned fresh investigations, and the dispersal of more mug shots, profiles, and APBs over the Internet to law enforcement agencies around the state. The FBI profilers in Quantico were adding their expertise to that of the SFPD. They had spoken to Waters's, Stark's, and Free's parole agents and employers, Peter's parole agent, who said he scarcely knew him, and a man who claimed to be Peter's employer but appeared not to know him at all. Three hours later, the FBI profilers had ferreted out the fact that the company that alleged to employ Peter was actually an indirect subsidiary of a company Phillip Addison owned. Rick Holmquist correctly suspected that Peter's job was a front, which made sense to Ted as well.