Straw Men (20 page)

He shook her gently. “Wake up, sweet girl. I need to tell you something.”

His daughter sat up, seemingly wide awake. She looked around her room, said something that sounded like “Where's the stool?” and lay back down, apparently still asleep.

“Annie, sweetheart, wake up. I need your help this morning. I'm putting you in charge, because I have to go.”

She sat up again, looked at the dim daylight outside her bedroom window. “What time is it?”

“Early,” he said, trying hard to look like he was just heading off to work a little sooner than usual. “About six-thirty. I have to go somewhere for a while, and I won't be able take you guys to school or help you get your breakfast. But I put ice packs and Pizza Lunchables in your lunchboxes. You can add anything else you want. Get Taylor up and help him get his cereal. I already put the milk on the table. Clean up when you're done, brush your teeth, and get dressed. I already called Mrs. McFalls. She'll be over as soon as she can to help you and drive you guys to school, but you have to be up when she gets here, OK?”

Annie blinked. How much of that could a sleepy nine-year-old absorb?

“I'm in charge?” she asked.

“It's a big responsibility. Can you handle all that?”

She nodded. “What's the catch?”

“No catch. I just need your help this morning because I have to go somewhere to help out on something. It's important.”

Annie studied his face. “Where's Brenna?”

“She stayed down at her work, remember?”

“So where are you going?”

“Annie, I need to explain all this later, OK? Right now I just need to go. It's no big deal. Everything's fine. But I need you to make sure you guys get up and get ready for school. You'll do that for me, right? I'm counting on it.”

“Taylor has to do whatever I say?”

Christensen nodded, reluctantly, knowing he was opening the door for his little dictator to abuse her power. “Don't make a big deal out of it. You know the morning routine and so does he. Just get everything done, lock up the house with your key, make good choices today, and come straight home on the bus after school. I'll try to be here when you get back.”

He kissed her warm forehead and savored the sweet strawberry scent of her favorite shampoo, then got up to go.

“Dad?”

He turned, expecting she wanted some clarification about the breadth of her new power. Instead, she looked like a frightened child. He bent to her again and hugged her tight. “Everything's going to be OK,” he said. “Promise.”

“OK.” She held up her threadbare piece of comforting silk. “Need this?”

He smiled. She was every bit as perceptive as her mother had been. “You keep it. But thanks.”

The streets were quiet, the morning rush still an hour away. Christensen started the Explorer, but reached for his cell phone as he put it in gear. He punched in Kiger's pager number, then entered the number of his phone. Kiger called back within two minutes, just as Christensen was turning right onto Fifth Avenue, heading toward Oakland and the city beyond.

“Y'all're right,” the chief said. “She ain't there.”

Christensen felt as if he'd stepped into a hole, as if he were falling. “Where's Harnett?”

“We're tracking that,” Kiger said. “No word yet.”

“Tell me what you found at Brenna's office.” Christensen tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

“My guy talked to the Oxford Centre security people. Looks like she signed in yesterday afternoon. She's still signed in, but she's not there. The front-desk guy never saw her leave. Coulda gone out through the parking garage. Somebody'd blocked open one of the entrances down there.”

“What about her car? She's got a reserved space in the garage. The security people could—”

“Gone,” Kiger said.

Gone.

“Maybe she just went out early for coffee or breakfast,” Christensen said. “They check her office?”

“Slept there least part of the night. My guy says there's a sofa bed or sump'n, sheets and blankets all rumpled up. Lights were all out. Alarm set for five-thirty, and it went off like it was supposed to. Clock radio was on when they got there. No sign of a struggle or anything like that. The only thing is about the parking spot. We're checking sump'n there.”

“Checking what?”

“Could be anything, but we wanna look a little closer at it, is all. Just sort of stuck out.”

“What?”

“When she came in yesterday, you know if maybe she was bringing flowers or anything like that?”

Flowers? “I wasn't home when she left, so she could've been. I don't know. Why?”

“Bringing them down here to a friend or anything? Like a buncha different flowers?”

“Not that I know of.”

Christensen checked his speed. He was rolling down Fifth at almost sixty miles an hour, so he lifted his foot off the accelerator.

“There was a coupla flowers down there, just lying there in the parking spot. Roses. But we don't know—”

“Wait.” Christensen felt a wave of dread. “One red and one white?”

The light at Bellefield turned from green to yellow. No way Christensen could make it now that he'd lost momentum. He hit the brakes hard and the Explorer jolted to a stop. Through it all, Kiger said nothing. As Christensen sat listening to the blood pound in his ears, the chief finally said, “Wanna tell me how you knew that?”

Goddamn.

“Remember?” Christensen said. “Teresa got two roses before she was attacked. Dagnolo always claimed DellaVecchio sent them as part of that bullshit stalking—”

“Your boy could be AWOL, by the way. Or not. The damned bracelet still ain't working, and we're trying to run him down.”

The comment made Christensen pause, but only for a second. “Brenna always thought the flowers were part of the setup, to make it look like DellaVecchio was obsessed with her. Either way, the red-and-white thing is the same. And it's scary, or at least Teresa thinks so. Red and white. Love and death. That's how she remembers it now, as a threat.”

Christensen pounded the steering wheel. “
Shit!
Why didn't I see it?” He wanted to run the light, but there was too much cross-traffic.

“Awright,” Kiger said. “I'm still home, but I'm gonna go on over—”

“Tracktron!” The thought seared Christensen like a bolt of lightning. “You guys monitor that, right?”

“The stolen car-tracking service?” Kiger asked. “What? Is her car wired?”

“That'd at least tell us something. They're pretty fast.”

“Usually just a couple minutes. What's she drive?”

“An Acura Legend, about five years old. Registered in her name.”

“Hang on,” Kiger said, and the line went silent. The Bellefield light turned green. The Explorer lurched forward into the intersection. Christensen was doing forty before he was past Heinz Chapel, fifty as the light turned red at Bigelow Boulevard. The intersection suddenly filled with pedestrians and crossing cars, so he put the car into a sideways skid. It stopped, finally, in the crosswalk in the far right lane. A pedestrian with a familiar face stepped around his front bumper and wagged a finger at him.
Jesus.
It was Fred Rogers, probably on his way from the WQED studios on Fifth to the PAA for his regular morning swim.
My God,
Christensen thought,
I nearly mowed down Mister Rogers
. He mouthed the words “I'm sorry” through the windshield, grateful for the forgiving smile of public television's most beloved icon.

“Hang on,” Kiger said. “I got Tracktron on the line with somebody Downtown. They're running it now.”

The crosswalk cleared, but the light stayed red. “A silver Legend,” Christensen said, feeling helpless.

“Color don't matter,” Kiger said. “Sit tight.”

“Easy for you—”

“Gimme that again, Jerry,” Kiger said, his voice softer. Talking into another phone. “Got it. That the best you can do?” After a pause. “Will do.” To Christensen, he said, “Schenley Park. Looks like down around Panther Hollow, least that's their best guess. You know any reason that car might be down there this time a day?”

Schenley Park. Maybe a mile. “I'm right there!” Christensen shouted as the light turned green. He felt his body kick into overdrive. There was no reason why Brenna's car would be in that isolated ravine in the middle of Oakland's sprawling public park, at least no reason that made sense outside this nightmare.

He looked left, hoping to make an impossible turn across six lanes. If he did, he could be at the park entrance in less than a minute. He held his ground as the other cars moved forward. Three, four, five passed. From the car directly behind, an agitated blast. Six. In his rearview mirror, empty lanes. He gunned the Explorer and lurched halfway across, nearly into incoming traffic. Tires screeched. Another blast.

“The hell you doing?” Kiger asked.

“I'm right near Schenley, on Bigelow!” Christensen shouted, edging the SUV's nose into the onrushing flow. A burst of code and descriptors from Kiger's scanner somewhere in the background. Christensen recognized only the words “silver Acura.”

“Just went out on the radio,” Kiger said. “We've got patrols in the area. Meet 'em, y'hear? Don't you go down in there without—”

“There's a maintenance yard or something there,” Christensen said. “Off Schenley Drive, behind Phipps. Tell them to turn at the Columbus statue and just follow it back, maybe a hundred yards. A service road goes down from there, right under the bridge. I run on it in the summer.”

“You wait for our car,” Kiger ordered. The lazy drawl was completely gone. “They'll meet you there.”

Christensen sped past the Cathedral of Learning and turned left through a red light at Forbes, sending an on-rushing minivan into a panic skid. A quick right put him into the Carnegie Library parking lot, hurtling the wrong way down a one-way aisle. He forked left onto the Schenley Bridge. The car shuddered as it hit a pothole, then bounced across the center line as its speed climbed. The Columbus statue was straight ahead, and just before it he veered onto a narrow blacktop road that disappeared into the trees.

“I'm serious, goddamn it.” Kiger shouting now. “You wait. You don't know what you might walk into down there.”

Christensen surveyed the maintenance-yard parking lot ahead. The only car there was a dark-blue Chevy. “There's a car, looks like maybe a city car, but there's nobody in it. I don't think it's one of yours. How long's it gonna be?”

“Soon's we get a response I'll tell ya.”

“Bullshit,” Christensen shouted back. “How long?”

Kiger hesitated, said something to Jerry on the other line. “We're trying to divert somebody.”

Christensen cut the engine and opened the door. With the phone still in his hand, he stepped onto the gravel lot outside a building labeled “Schenley Park 4th Division/Pittsburgh Department of Public Works.” The road beyond the building was rutted and muddy, but as far down as he could see it was scored by a car's recent tracks. Overhead, the decrepit span of the Panther Hollow Bridge blocked the sun.

“I'm leaving my car at the maintenance building and going in on foot,” he said.

“Do
not
leave your car,” Kiger said.

“There's nobody here!”

“
Wait,
goddamn it!”

Christensen thought of Brenna, of the hulking Harnett, of the possibility that the two of them were somewhere down in that dim and foreboding hole. “I can't,” he said.

As soon as he hung up, he hit the speed-dial combination for Brenna's car phone. Just as when he'd tried it from home, it rang and rang. He had no choice. Searching the Explorer's interior for something, anything, he could use as a weapon, he pulled the driver's seat forward and found his ancient ice scraper, with its cheery red brush bristles at one end of the long wooden handle and a molded plastic scraper at the other. It would have to do.

She tried to move her head. Her body tensed instantly, and she drew one quick breath, sharp and desperate. Now the rest of her throbbed like a nerve rubbed raw. She heard herself moan. And something else, distant but familiar, soft but painful beyond question—the shriek of her car phone. She knew its call like the cry of her own child. Again and again, somewhere … else. Each ring jolted her, but she dared not move again.

She closed her eyes; the effort to keep them open was exhausting her. She imagined someone bringing a hammer down on a spot just behind each eye, crushing the stalk, reducing the optic nerve to a mushy pulp but leaving the eyeball intact. Yes. That's exactly how it felt.

The phone stopped ringing, but the earth suddenly moved. A gentle roll to one side, a jostle, followed by another sound, a muted pulse. It sounded almost like a muffled gunshot, but she knew it wasn't. The sound was too familiar—a car door's electric locks. Nothing else sounded exactly like that.

“Mmmmph,” she said, and the effort to speak registered on the back of her eyelids. A thousand pinpricks of pain unfolded like a constellation, and she felt herself start to black out. Air. She needed air. She tried to open her mouth and felt the skin across her face pull tight. Something was wrong. No air came. She felt for a moment as if she were drowning, then realized she was breathing only through her nose. She probed with her tongue, but it stopped at her lips. She pressed it hard against whatever was stretched across her mouth, trying to push through, but felt it flatten against that unexpected wall. The effort pulled again at the skin on her face.

Duct tape,
she thought.

For the first time, an adrenaline chill mixed with the pain. The sensation triggered something, an image that suddenly flashed in the darkness like lightning. Eyes. Vicious eyes. Staring down at her through the red-rimmed holes of a ski mask. Behind them, in the dusky moment, she recognized the track lights in her law-office ceiling. And she felt hands, powerful hands. She felt their size and strength as she surged against them, fighting, scratching, struggling against a flurry of fingers that smelled like latex and chlorine.

Then darkness. And pain. She was back in the here and now, wherever and whenever that might be.

It would be torture, but she had to explore. She curled the toes on her right foot. This time the pain reassured her; at least her primary systems were working. She tried to lift the foot, and the effort sent a searing wave up her spine and down her left arm. She braced herself for another go and tried again, extending her knee only a few inches before the foot found a wall. She pressed hard and felt pressure against the top of her head. Those were the limits of her world at the moment, a dark space maybe five feet across. She struggled against the clutching fear of confinement.

Another sound, muted again but familiar. A car door latch sprung open, maybe two in quick succession, followed by the same rocking sensation she felt before. She wondered,
the trunk of a car
?
She tried to reach a finger forward, only to realize her arms were pinned behind her.

The right one was numb, asleep beneath the weight of her body. She wiggled the fingers on her left hand, felt in her grasp the deadened fingers of her right. She curled her left index finger down toward her wrist and felt duct tape again.

In the darkness, as slowly as she could, she felt behind her for other clues. Her left hand hit a rigid hump. She let her fingers explore its dimensions and play across its surface, and suddenly she knew where she was. Her hand had found the CD changer mounted in the Legend's trunk. She was curled semiconscious into the trunk of her own car, her hands bound behind her, her mouth taped shut.

This struck her, at first, as preposterous.

Then, as her mind cleared, as terrifying.

She'd gone to her law office to work, to stay overnight and work on … DellaVecchio. She'd crashed, late, on the fold-out couch and then …
Oh shit, the hearing. Jesus. What time is it? What day?

She heard the Legend's rear door open just behind her head. The car bumped and swayed as someone crawled into and out of the passenger compartment, then stopped moving as whoever it was stepped outside again. She heard the chinking
clank
of metal on metal and the
clack-clack
of wood hitting wood, as if someone were wrestling something awkward from the backseat.

Nothing made sense. She pulled a long breath through her nose, hoping the air would clear the fog in her head.

Outside the car, she could hear footsteps, the sound of one person, maybe two, moving heavily over damp earth. Sometimes, she heard the crackle of dried leaves. Which made no sense at all. Damp ground and dry leaves? Where could that be? A forest? She was weighing that possibility when the footsteps moved away from the car, receding into some indefinable distance. When they were gone, she tuned into the other sounds coming from outside the trunk.

What she didn't hear bothered her most. Where was the traffic noise? She had no idea what time of day it was, but even if it was the middle of the night she couldn't imagine a place in the city without the hum of cars and trucks. She listened more carefully. Birds? And now something else, in the distance, from the same direction she'd heard the footsteps disappear:
Ch-shik.

And again:
Ch-shik.

No matter how hard she tried to make sense of what was happening, coherent thoughts wouldn't come. She was aware only of a developing rhythm.

Ch-shik.

Ch-shik.

Ch-shik.

She counted maybe four seconds between each sound, her sense of dread rising as the cadence revealed itself. Even now, disoriented by pain and darkness and claustrophobic fear, she understood one thing clearly—the sound a shovel makes as it slices into soft earth.