Shady Cross (10 page)

“This is his blood,” Stokes said.

“My God . . . Paul.”

“There was an accident,” he said, “a car accident. Paul swerved to avoid, uh, someone coming the other way . . . or something . . . and, well, he hit a tree. Killed him right away, I’m sure. I doubt he suffered. The car was pretty badly—uh, anyway, I don’t think he suffered.”

“What about Amanda?” Nancy said, her voice shaking. “You said she’s in danger. Was she in the car?”

“Oh, shit, no. Shit, I’m sorry, no. I’m pretty sure she’s OK.”

“Pretty sure?” She was nervously rubbing her hands up and down her thighs, and her nightshirt had ridden up just a little. Stokes realized he was probably going to hell for noticing that at a moment like this. Of course, he was bound for hell anyway, once his ticket was punched.

“Really,” he said quickly, “I think she’s OK. She wasn’t in the car, I mean. She’s not dead. Paul was alone in the car.”

“I’m not getting you,” she said desperately. “Amanda wasn’t in the car, but she’s in danger? Help me understand this,
please
. Where is she? What danger? Just tell me what’s going on.”

Stokes sucked in a breath, tried to gather his thoughts so he could lay out the situation clearly and concisely. “She’s been kidnapped.”

And he thought she’d looked frightened before. “
Oh my God
. Kidnapped? Amanda?”

“I guess you didn’t know, then.”

“No, I . . . . Why would anyone kidnap Amanda? I don’t . . . What do they want? Do you know what they want?”

“They want this,” he said, nudging the backpack in front of his chair with his foot. The bag fell over and a few stacks of bills tumbled out. Thousand-dollar bills. Nancy’s eyes were wide. Stokes leaned down and shoved the bills back in.

Nancy opened her mouth to speak and the doorbell rang. Stokes looked at Nancy. She looked back, confused. She obviously wasn’t expecting anyone.

“Who is it?” she called.

“It’s the police, ma’am.”

Oh, shit
.

Stokes leaped to his feet, and words started streaming out of him like water from a fire hose. “They’ve found your husband’s car, look, you have to trust me, your daughter’s in danger, she’s been kidnapped, and I’ll explain it all to you after the cops leave, but you can’t tell them about me, or your daughter, and you have to pretend you haven’t heard about Paul because you shouldn’t know about that yet, you have to pretend you think he’s still alive because they can’t know that he’s not, and you definitely can’t tell them about me, because if you do, or you tell them about your daughter being kidnapped, then Amanda will be in even more danger, but I have the ransom money Paul was going to pay them, it’s in this bag, and I’m gonna use it to get her back, so don’t worry about that, and oh, by the way, your husband’s body wasn’t with the car when the cops found it, I moved it, the body, not the car, and I’ll explain that later, too, but you really do have to trust me, so please just listen to the cops, act surprised and upset, which you obviously are, and get rid of them as soon as you can because time is running out on me here, running out on me and on your daughter.”

He paused and looked at her and tried to catch his breath.

A polite knock at the door. “Ma’am, please open up. I need to speak with you.”

Nancy looked at the door, then back at Stokes. He felt her blue eyes sizing him up, which was never a good thing for him.

“I know you have no reason to trust me,” he said quickly, quietly, and urgently, “but you gotta believe me. I want to help Amanda, but if you tell the cops any of this, I can’t. And this is real serious. They might kill her. Please, believe me.”

The bell rang again.

“Kill her?” she said in a strangled whisper.

“We don’t have time for this. What’s it gonna be?”

“Ma’am?” the cop at the door said. “Are you OK in there?”

Nancy was clearly torn. Stokes tried hard to look sincere. He had no idea if he was pulling it off, but he doubted it, seeing as he hadn’t had much practice being sincere and therefore had no idea how he looked the few times that he actually was.

“Please, Nancy, you don’t know what I’ve been through just to be here right now. I want to get Amanda back, and I need your help with that.”

The bell rang again.

Nancy struggled with indecision.

He pleaded with his eyes. She looked like she desperately wanted to trust him.

Finally, she nodded.

“Go into the kitchen. There’s a pantry by the fridge. You can hide in there. I’ll hear them out, play dumb, answer their questions, and let you know when they’re gone. And then you need to make me understand exactly why I sent them away instead of telling them all of this, or I’ll call them right back.”

He exhaled in relief as he bolted for the kitchen. He saw the pantry, right where it was supposed to be, and slipped inside. He pulled the door nearly shut, leaving it open a couple of inches.

Thank God she believed him. He knew he sounded crazy. Must have looked it, too—disheveled, with blood on his shirt, probably a wild look in his eyes.

The bell rang again, followed by a loud knocking. He thought he even heard the cop call to her again. Why the hell didn’t she just open the damn door already?

Just when Stokes thought maybe she went to put on some clothes or something, she finally let the cop in. He could barely hear her voice, apologizing for taking so long, explaining that she’d been about to step into the shower. Then he heard a man’s voice, a cop introducing himself. Apparently, he was alone. He was explaining how they’d found her husband’s car. There was a lot of blood in it but no Paul. And someone had worked hard to make it difficult for them to identify the car, so it looked like foul play. He was just starting to ask another question when he stopped, seemed to be listening for a moment, then spoke quietly, too quietly for Stokes to hear what he was saying.

Stokes frowned. He pushed the pantry door open another few inches, leaned his head out to hear better. And he heard Nancy speaking, her voice soft, her tone urgent.

“He’s got blood on him,” she was saying, “and he said it was Paul’s. He probably killed him. He’s hiding in the kitchen right now.”

Thanks a shitload, Nancy.

FIFTEEN

8:51 P.M.

“I THINK HE MIGHT BE
dangerous,” Stokes heard Nancy say to the cop at her door.

Stokes may not have been the quickest thinker around, but two options came to him in a blink: he could either run for it, burst from Nancy’s pantry, fly out the back door, and hope he could lose the cop as he raced on foot through the neighborhood, or alternatively, he could take the offensive, which is what he did without making a conscious choice. It was just instinct—an instinct that wouldn’t let him run away without the quarter of a million dollars sitting in the backpack in the living room with Nancy and the police officer.

He bolted from the pantry and was through the kitchen in four strides. He’d come without warning and was moving fast. Nancy hadn’t expected it. The cop hadn’t yet understood the situation. And suddenly there was Stokes, all 190 pounds of him, charging across the living room. The cop—thank God there was indeed only one—looked up at the last second and reached for his belt, where he had all sorts of things that could hurt Stokes—things like a baton, pepper spray, and, of course, a gun—but Stokes was on him before his hand found any of those things. Stokes lowered his shoulder and slammed into the cop, a little like a linebacker, but more like a guy who had experience fighting his way out of trouble. His shoulder plowed into the cop’s chest and the impact knocked the man back into the closed front door. His head smacked off the solid wood with an ugly sound, and he slid to the carpet. Stokes threw a punch that he realized only a split second after it landed was unnecessary. The impact of the guy’s head with the door had knocked him unconscious. The punch, which landed on the poor bastard’s cheek, had been overkill. And now Stokes’s whole hand stung. He turned to Nancy.

“Nancy, what the hell?”

The woman backed up a step, her eyes wide with fear, and stumbled over a pair of her shoes. She landed hard on her ass, her nightie flying up high on her thighs, exposing delicate white panties that Stokes barely noticed.

“Get up,” he said. “And sit down. On a chair, I mean.”

She moved over to the armchair he had occupied earlier.

“Stay there.” He looked back at the cop, unconscious on the floor. “
Shit
.”

He jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed hard, trying to relieve tension that hadn’t been there twenty seconds ago.

“Shit,” he said again, with true feeling.

He’d just assaulted a cop. Millett was gonna love this.

“You have any idea what you’ve done here?” he asked her.

She was silent.

“Goddamn it.” He started pacing. He had to do something. The cop would wake up eventually. Unless he was dead. Oh, man, Stokes hadn’t considered that. Maybe he’d done far more than assault a cop. Maybe he’d killed one.

He walked over to Officer Martinson—the cop’s name, according to the little plastic nameplate on his chest—and put his hand in front of the man’s mouth. He felt breath.

With a warning look at Nancy, Stokes took a couple of sets of plastic ties off the cop’s belt—plasticuffs, he thought they were called—and secured Martinson’s hands, then his feet. He took the guy’s belt, which held his radio, along with his gun and a few other cop goodies, and put it on an end table by the sofa.

Stokes wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think Officer Martinson had gotten a good look at his face. Just in case he’d been lucky in that regard, he took a black shirt from the pile of laundry Nancy had moved earlier to the floor and blindfolded the cop with it. He used a pair of Nancy’s black tights to gag the man. He wiped sweat from his forehead as he worked. He was in deep and dangerous waters now, with swift currents tugging him toward jagged rocks.

He had to do something. The cop would wake up eventually and Stokes couldn’t be there when he did. And if he didn’t wake up soon and radio in, more cops would be here before Stokes knew it. And it would be all over for him . . . and for little Amanda Jenkins.

Things had gotten very bad very fast.

Stokes turned back to Nancy.

“Goddamn it,” he said, “you really screwed up here. Why the hell’d you tell him about me?”

She had her arms wrapped around herself, her breasts resting on her forearms. She shook her head, looking like she might cry. “I don’t know you. You show up with blood on your shirt, tell me it’s Paul’s, that he’s dead. You tell me Amanda’s been kidnapped. I’m confused, scared, and I don’t have any idea who you are. You tell me I can’t talk to the police about you, which only made me more scared. What was I supposed to do?”

“Goddamn it, Nancy, you made things a whole lot worse.” He was pissed, but he couldn’t truly blame her under the circumstances, if he really thought about it. So he didn’t think about it. He stayed pissed. “Goddamn it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me.” She was shaking. She was scared. Of course she was scared. Some guy she’d met ten minutes ago just knocked a cop cold in her living room. She was probably having a hard time thinking of anything good that could come of that. Realizing this didn’t do much to take the edge off his anger, though.

He walked over to Nancy, sat on the coffee table in front of her. She shied away.

“Listen to me,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster. “I wasn’t lying, OK? Everything I said is true. Paul died in a car crash. Your daughter’s been kidnapped. I plan to get her back. But I need your help. Are you listening?”

She took a shuddering breath and nodded.

“OK, first, you have to understand something. The cops are not our friends in this. You just have to believe me about that, OK?”

“Why not? If Amanda’s been kidnapped, we should go to the police, right? Or the FBI?”

“Look, I don’t have time to go into all this right now. Just believe me, if you want your daughter back again, you can’t tell anyone about this, at least not until it’s all over and you have her back.”

“I don’t understand. They can help. They can get my little girl back for me.”

“Look, the men who took your daughter say they have someone in the police department, and I have good reason to believe them. And if they were telling the truth about that, they might have been telling the truth about the FBI, too. True or not, we can’t take the chance on making a mistake. Trust me on that.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“Look,” Stokes continued, “Paul made that mistake and he regretted it. After that, he was trying to handle this by himself when he had his accident. That’s why I’ve got two hundred fifty thousand dollars in that backpack there, money I’m gonna exchange for Amanda.” He looked for the backpack where he’d left it and saw that Nancy had moved it around behind the chair before she opened the door for the police.

“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars?” she said.

“That’s right. And I’m going to trade it for Amanda. So no cops, you got it?”

She hesitated.

“If we call the authorities,” he added, “Amanda’s as good as dead. I really believe that. And I need you to believe it, too, understand?”

Finally, she nodded.

“OK,” he said. “Now, I told you that I’m gonna get your little girl back, and I am. But I need some information. First, you didn’t know anything about this, did you?”

Her eyes were unfocused. She looked like she was having a tough time processing all this.

“Nancy, please. You gotta get with it here. You gotta help me out.” He shot a glance at the unconscious cop. “We’re running out of time.”

She blinked a couple of times, nodding a little to herself.

“Nancy?” he said. “You didn’t know anything about this, did you?”

She shook her head. “About the kidnapping? No. Paul didn’t tell me. He probably didn’t want to worry me.” She looked on the verge of tears again. “Oh, my little girl.” She lowered her face into her hands. Thankfully, it didn’t look like she was crying, just holding her face in her hands, struggling to keep it together.

“This seems like a silly question right now,” Stokes said, “but you don’t have a hundred thousand dollars lying around, do you?”

She looked up. “What?”

“Maybe hidden somewhere. A little nest egg. Emergency fund. Nothing like that?”

“A hundred thousand dollars?”

“Actually, a hundred and two. I’m a little short right now. Paul had the money but I gave a little away.”

“A hundred and two thousand dollars?”

“Well, maybe not so little. But look, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now, and Amanda would have no chance, OK? So I guess you don’t have that kind of money, huh?”

She shook her head again.

“You got anything here? Any money to speak of?”

“Maybe sixty dollars in my wallet.”

He sighed. It was what he expected, but he had to ask.

“OK, here’s the main reason I came. Did Paul say anything to you about having to be somewhere tonight at one thirty? Anything at all?”

“Tonight? No, nothing.”

“Think about it. Think hard. He didn’t tell you he had to be someplace specific tonight, someplace people should look for him if he, uh, didn’t make it home? Nothing like that?”

“No, I’m sorry. What does that have to do with getting Amanda back?”

Damn it. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you get going, get started doing whatever you’re going to do to bring her home?”

“Yeah, I should. I mean, I will.”

“When? You do have a plan, right? Please tell me you do.”

“I’ll figure it out, don’t worry about it. But listen, I need help with part of this. I don’t think I can come up with a hundred and two thousand dollars, and unless I do, Amanda’s gonna get hurt. Is there anyone you can call? Any friends who might loan you the money?”

“I don’t have any friends who have that kind of money. And you’re saying you have to meet with them tonight. Who has that kind of cash lying around their house?”

He’d struck out. Coming here had not only been a waste of time, a precious commodity at the moment, it was a disaster. He’d assaulted a cop, bound him with his own plastic ties. He’d face serious charges for that when this was all over, unless he was lucky enough that the cop hadn’t gotten a good look at him
and
Nancy here helped him out by saying he’d worn a mask or something so she didn’t see his face. Shit.

He shook his head to clear it. It didn’t work. He’d really hoped Paul had told Nancy where he’d be going tonight. Now, as suspicious as it would sound, especially after raising their suspicions earlier, he might have to ask the kidnappers where he needed to be at one thirty and take his chances. He’d wait as long as he could in case they mentioned it in passing, but if they didn’t, he would have no choice but to ask. It was a big risk. And if it turned out to be a mistake, little Amanda would pay the price.

Nancy was watching him.

He was about to ask another question but the kidnappers’ call stopped him.

“This is them,” he told her. “Their nine o’clock call. Don’t say a word.”

“But—”

“
Ssssssh
.”

He kept one eye on Officer Martinson, who was still unconscious, as he pulled the cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open.

“Hello,” he said.

“Answered on the second ring this time. I’m honored. Got the money?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“All of it?”

“Enough.”

Silence.

“Listen, Paul, don’t pull any shit with us. We know you have three hundred and fifty thousand. You think we don’t know where it came from? Did you think we wouldn’t want our money back? So don’t screw around with us. You try to save a few bucks in this, it’ll cost you something you can’t replace. We’re not kidding here.”

“I’ll have it all.”

“You better. We’re gonna count it, while you wait, and if you’re a dime short, we’ll kill her and maybe you, you got it?”

“Yeah. You’ll have all of it.”

“And your evidence, of course.”

“Yeah, yeah, that, too.”

More silence.

“Let me talk to Amanda,” Stokes said.

A moment later, the little girl’s voice came down the line. “Daddy?”

“Good girl,” he said. “You OK?”

“My hand still really hurts . . . Daddy.”

“Is that Amanda?” Nancy asked.

“Ssssh,” Stokes hissed at her.

“My hand’s all wrapped up in a bandage,” the little girl said, “and they gave me medicine but it still hurts.”

“I know, Amanda. We’ll get you to a doctor soon. He’ll make it stop hurting. And Amanda, remember, don’t—”

“Don’t what?” It was the kidnapper again.

A sudden inspiration struck him. It was a long shot, but he’d hit a long shot once before. At the track. Blew the money on a new stereo system, which was stolen a month later, but it showed him that long shots sometimes come in. “Let me talk to Amanda again.”

“No.”

“Put her on.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, pal, fuck you. Now let me talk to my daughter one more time.”

The silence on the phone was cold. Stokes felt a tension crackling down the line, like the moment just after lightning has struck and you’re waiting for the next ear-splitting crack of thunder.

“Not the right time to grow a pair, Jenkins,” the kidnapper said. “Want me to cut off her whole fucking hand?”

Stokes took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. I’m just tired, I’m under a lot of stress, and I’m worried about my daughter. Can I talk to her one more time? Please? I just want to tell her that everything’s going to be OK. She sounds scared.” Nothing. “Please?”

After a long pause, Amanda came back on.

“Daddy?”

“Listen, Amanda, you’ve been in the room with those men when they’ve called me, right?”

“Huh?”

“Every hour they’ve been calling me, thinking I’m your daddy. You’ve been in the room with them. So listen, OK? This is important. Do you remember anything about a pay phone? Did you hear where your daddy was supposed to be tonight to get a phone call later?”

“A phone call?”

The kidnapper was going to grab the phone back any second.

“At a pay phone. Did you hear them say anything about a pay phone? Please, Amanda, think. And hurry.”