The Night Monster (16 page)

The sun had broken out from behind the clouds, and the pavement was baking. I ducked into the shade and waited for Linderman to come out.

I stared at Linderman’s car. The FBI agent had been living in Miami for over a year, but still hadn’t bothered to change his plates. Although he’d never said so, I’d assumed that once he found out what had happened to Danielle, he planned to move back north.

Linderman came out of the garage. The frantic look had left his face and his brow was gleaming with sweat. His jacket and tie had to be killing him, only I knew from past experience that he wasn’t going to take them off.

“Take a look at this,” he said. “I found it on the second floor.”

From his hand dangled a white paper bag with the McDonald’s logo printed on the side. He tossed the bag to me. Opening it, I found myself staring at an assortment of greasy fast-food wrappers and crumbled paper napkins. One of the napkins caught my eye. It was smudged with pink lipstick. Kneeling, I dumped the bag’s contents onto the ground, and began sorting through them. I was certain that Linderman had already done this. Now, he was waiting to see if I drew the same conclusions.

The bag contained ten fast-food wrappers. Nine of the wrappers were for Big Macs, the wrappers stained with the secret sauce that made Big Macs so tasty. The other wrapper was for a fish sandwich. There was also a french-fry container with a few loose fries stuck to the bottom. And a receipt containing the time the food had been bought, and the amount paid. I was staring at the remains of last night’s dinner.

My eyes kept drifting to the napkin with the lipstick stain. Picking it up, I saw tiny bits of food stuck next to the lipstick. I sniffed them.

“Smells like fish,” I said to Linderman.

“That was what I thought,” Linderman said. “Do you think she’s talking to them?”

That was what I
wanted
to think. Only I needed verification before I jumped to any more conclusions. Removing Karl Long’s business card from my pocket, I called his private number on my cell phone.

My call went through and rang several times. Then I heard a man’s voice that was unmistakably Long’s. Harsh and loud and no pretense at being friendly.

“Who is this?” Long demanded.

“Jack Carpenter.”

“I’m on the other line. Let me call you right back.”

“Hang up the other fucking line. This is about Sara.”

Long gasped. Maybe no one had talked to him like that in a while. Or maybe he wasn’t expecting me to be getting back to him so soon. I didn’t know and didn’t much care.

“Hold on.” Long went away, then came back. “I’m here. What did you find?”

“Let me ask the questions,” I said. “I need to know what Sara likes to eat.”

“How can this be important?” Long asked.

I looked at the lipstick-smudged napkin still in my hand. Please let this be Sara’s lipstick, I thought.
Please
.

“Answer the goddamn question,” I shot back.

“All right. Sara’s been a vegetarian since she was in high school. She hasn’t eaten red meat or chicken for years. She’s into healthy organic food, sometimes drives me crazy she’s so picky. Does that help?”

I found myself smiling. “Does she eat fish?”

“Yes, it’s one of her favorite things.”

I had been in a McDonald’s recently, and visualized the menu that hung over the checkout. There were many different sandwiches and burgers. The chance that Mouse had bought Sara a fish sandwich on a whim was slight. More than likely, he’d asked Sara what she liked, and Sara had told him that she wanted a fish sandwich.

“Are you still there?” Long asked nervously. “Please tell me what this means. I have to know.”

Normally, I didn’t share information with clients during investigations.
It was a mistake to raise people’s expectations or give them false hope. But I’d brought Long into the process, and didn’t see how I could shut him out without giving him a heart attack.

“One of Sara’s abductors bought food last night at a McDonald’s, and got her a fish sandwich,” I said. “They couldn’t have known that Sara liked fish without Sara telling them.”

“And why is that important?”

“Two reasons. The first, which is the most important, is that her captors aren’t experiencing buyer’s remorse. That sometimes happens during abductions.”

“Buyer’s remorse? What the hell is that?”

“The goods aren’t what you’re expecting, so you get rid of them.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Long whispered.

“The second reason is that Sara’s abductors could have just bought her a burger, and shoved it down her throat. That’s what the majority of abductors do. They don’t care about what their victims like, and just feed them whatever they happen to be eating. Sara’s abductors are different. They asked her what she wanted to eat. That means Sara is talking to them, and has established a line of communication.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It depends upon what the line of communication is,” I said. “If a victim is constantly whining and complaining, then no, it’s not good. In this case, I think Sara has established a positive line of communication, and gotten on her captors’ good side.”

The napkin was still in my hand. One of Sara’s captors had used it to wipe Sara’s mouth after she’d finished eating her fish sandwich. It was as compassionate a gesture as I could envision between a victim and her kidnapper.

“Now I need to go,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

“Wait!” Long said. “I have something to tell you.”

I glanced at Linderman. The FBI agent had his cell phone out and was talking to someone. The frown on his face was so deep it almost looked permanent.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“I was just talking with the guy who runs my company,” Long
said. “I’ve instructed him to put all of my people at your disposal. That includes my two bodyguards and my driver and my helicopter pilot. They’re yours, if you need them.”

“You have a chopper?”

“Yes. Call me anytime you want to use it.”

Linderman had finished his call and was shaking his head in disgust. To Long I said, “That was smart thinking. I’m sorry I cursed you earlier.”

“I’m used to it,” Long said.

We exchanged good-byes, and I put my phone away. To Linderman, I said, “What’s going on?”

“The Hollywood police just found the van burning in a deserted lot in Hallandale,” Linderman said.

“Any sign of Sara or her captors?”

“Not a trace.”

allandale was part of Broward County, only it felt more like Miami, the soulless apartment and condo buildings crammed together, the sprawl of concrete so pervasive that you could drive for blocks without seeing a blade of grass or a tree.

I followed Linderman west on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, then south on South Federal Highway to a deserted strip mall inside Bluesten Park. Hallandale was a town of retirees, and the traffic moved in slow motion.

The strip mall had seen better days, the shops lifeless and empty. Linderman drove around the building, and parked beside a Dumpster overflowing with garbage. Parking beside him, I stared at a line of police cruisers. Everywhere I looked, uniformed cops were traipsing around, poking their noses where they didn’t belong. Police departments in south Florida were revolving doors, and most cops didn’t know the first thing about preserving a crime scene. I leashed Buster and got out.

A large dirt lot sat behind the strip center. The lot was flat and dusty and filled with tire rims and torn bags of garbage. It backed up onto a large warehouse whose walls were painted white and without graffiti. Only in a retirement area did you see that.

The van sat in the lot’s center, a plume of gray smoke still billowing from its hood. The gas tank had ignited, causing the van’s roof to melt down and disappear. The smell of gasoline and burnt upholstery hung in the air like a toxic bouquet.

Linderman stood beside me, his badge pinned to his lapel. Although he’d never expressed it in words, he had a low tolerance for the local cops.

“Do you think there are any clues these guys haven’t trampled on?” he asked.

A baby-faced cop stood a dozen yards away from us. As we watched, he picked up an empty soda can with his bare hand, and dropped it into an evidence bag.

“Probably not,” I said.

Linderman shook his head, clearly disgusted.

“Sara’s abductors didn’t pick this place randomly,” I said. “They’d been here before, and knew that it was deserted. I’m guessing they had another escape vehicle parked nearby, in case of an emergency. They came here, burned the van they were driving to destroy any clues, then transported Sara to the other vehicle, and bolted.”

“That was smart.”

“Yes, it was. I originally thought these guys were both nutcases, but now I’m not so sure. The big guy is definitely off his rocker, but I think his partner is cagey, and might be calling the shots.”

“One is the brains, the other the brawn.”

I pointed at the burned-out van. “That’s another important clue.”

“How so?”

“Sara’s abductors used a stolen minivan as their first getaway vehicle,” I said. “The Fort Lauderdale cops found it in a parking garage across the street from the Broward Library. The van had been wiped clean.”

Linderman gave me a puzzled look. He was one of the few law enforcement agents I knew who didn’t get offended when he was in the dark.

“Why is that important?” he asked.

“They wiped the painter’s van down because they didn’t want their fingerprints getting lifted,” I said. “They would have wiped this
van down as well, only there wasn’t enough time, so they burned it instead. But the end result was the same: Their fingerprints were destroyed.”

“So one of these guys has a criminal record and doesn’t want his fingerprints being found,” Linderman said. “Which one do you think it is?”

“It’s Mouse. The Broward cops checked the police databases for the big guy, and he didn’t turn up. If we can identify Mouse, we’ll have a much better chance of finding Sara. If we can’t, we’re in for the long haul.”

Linderman shot me a look that said he understood. Catching criminals was a numbers game. We’d had our chance to catch Mouse and his partner, and they’d slipped through our fingers. Our odds were getting worse by the minute.

Buster pulled at his leash. I looked down at him, and saw that his hackles stood straight up. He had locked onto a scent.

“I’m going to let Buster sniff around and see what he can find,” I said.

“And I’ll talk to the Keystone Kops,” Linderman said.

I walked toward the smoldering van. One of the cops working the scene stopped me, and asked me what the hell I was doing. I pointed at Linderman, who was talking to the officer in charge on the other side of the lot.

“I’m working with the FBI,” I explained.

The cop let me pass. I walked up to the van, stopping when I was ten feet away. Buster had his nose glued to the ground, and had not stopped pulling. He was seventy pounds of pure muscle and strong enough to make my arm ache. From my pocket, I removed the paper napkin with Sara Long’s lipstick, and put it up to my dog’s snout.

“Find the girl,” I told him.

Buster sniffed the napkin. He resumed sniffing the ground, and crossed in front of me, pulling to my left. I shortened his leash, and let him drag me clear across the lot, stopping at the boundary to the warehouse. I glanced over my shoulder. We had walked in a perfectly
straight line from the van. My experience told me that when hurried, people took the shortest route possible. Buster had found the escape route.

“Good boy.”

I let Buster move ahead. There was pavement here, most of it broken. My dog went fifty feet, then came to an abrupt halt. We were beside the warehouse, the shade a welcome relief from the burning sun.

I stared at the ground. My eyes locked on a pair of tire tracks and a fresh cigarette butt. Mouse had been smoking a cigarette the night of Sara’s abduction. This was where their second vehicle had been parked.

The tire tracks were muddy and looked fresh. As a detective, I’d used an online company called TirePrint to identify tire tracks that I’d discovered at crime scenes. I would e-mail the company the tire track and wheel base measurements of a vehicle I wanted to identify, and they would input the information into a database, and determine the make and year of the vehicle. The simple procedure rarely took more than a few minutes.

I felt my spirits soar. I was going to find the vehicle Mouse and the giant were using, and I was going to alert every law enforcement agency in the state to be on the lookout. I scratched behind my dog’s ears.

“You make me look so good,” I told him.

Then, I cupped my hand over my mouth.

“Over here,” I called out.

Linderman was the first to reach me. The FBI agent inspected the tracks, then went to his SUV, and returned with an evidence collection kit. Using a tape measure, he measured the tire tracks and jotted down the numbers onto a notepad. He also snapped a photo of the tracks with a small digital camera. The cigarette butt was placed in a plastic evidence bag, onto which he scribbled the date, time, and location. Then he took out his cell phone.