The Trophy Wife (29 page)

Walter saw the light when Andrew Hogan and Helen Restivo came through the parking lot door and strolled through the store toward the mall. The man running must have been the kidnapper. The men in pursuit were working for Hogan. Somehow, they had followed him and then made their move to capture his contact. He followed Hogan and the woman toward the plaza where the frantic, troubled expressions of the pursuers confirmed his mounting fear. They had blown it
again! The man who had threatened to hack Emily into pieces had made his escape. Now, there was nothing to stop him from making good on his threat.

“You son of a bitch! You bumbling son of a bitch!” Hogan turned to the voice and Walter dropped the briefcase so that he could aim a punch at Hogan's mouth. Andrew ducked and then wrapped a bear hug around Walter and dragged him out of the aisle.

“Take it easy, Walter. Take it easy,” he consoled.

“You bastard. How did you get here? Why did you come? You've fucked up everything. You've killed her.”

“He won't get away, Walter.” Andrew kept repeating. “We've got the doors covered. There's no way he can get out of here.”

Walter calmed enough to get control over his urge to kill Andrew Hogan. “Who told you. Who told you about the meeting?”

“We've got your phones covered,” Hogan explained, still holding on to his bear hug. “We heard his threats and we were monitoring your car phone.”

“Jesus Christ.” Walter twisted out of Andrew's grip just as Helen Restivo ran up. “Someone thinks they saw him run out one of the plaza doors. It leads out to the yellow lot. My guys are on it!”

Walter yelled into Helen's face. “Like they were on it in Grand Cayman, you idiot.” Then he turned back to Hogan. “There are thousands of people out there. You're never going to pick him out of the crowd.”

“His car is probably parked near Walter's car,” Hogan said to Helen.

“We got another guy out there,” Helen answered. “There's a van that fits the description of the one that Emily was dropped into.”

Walter couldn't keep his rage bottled up. He screamed at Helen, “His car could be anywhere. He could be in it already, driving back to wherever he's keeping her.” Then he looked fiercely at Andrew. “And you know what he's planning to do once he gets there.”

* * *

“He brought the cops,” Mike kept repeating to himself. “The mother brought the cops.” He had peeled off his jacket as soon as he turned into the center aisle, thrown it under the bench, and then walked into the plaza. Only a few of the people who had seen him run out of the store kept following him. To others, he had suddenly become a faceless part of the crowd. He had walked out one of the plaza doors and into the yellow parking lot just as the witness had described. But he walked along the side of the building and then back in through another door only a few seconds later. Once inside, he had picked a direction opposite from the one from which his pursuers had come, walked into the aisle, and then turned almost immediately into a sporting goods store. He was calmly examining sets of barbells while confusion rippled through the corridor outside.

After several minutes he left the store and continued away from the plaza. At the next bank of elevators, he rode up to the third floor. Then he strolled back past the central plaza and stepped into a music store. He spent half an hour playing records by artists he had never heard of and then took an escalator back into the plaza. As he walked out into the blue parking area, he knew that he had escaped.

Now that he wasn't afraid of capture, he could give full vent to his rage. The lying little bastard went to the cops, he repeated over and over to himself. He didn't come to pay the ransom. He came to be a hero! He heard himself say, “I'll fix his ass so he'll never forget it.”

As he walked down the aisles of cars, he looked for a discarded clothing hanger and for a specific compact car model that he knew would be easy to steal. Minutes later, he was dropping a hooked wire hanger down beside the driver's window of a Ford Escort. In another few minutes, he was out on the parkway, headed back to the woman whose husband had taken him for a fool. “You're gonna pay,” he kept mumbling. “Christ, but I'm going to make you pay.”

* * *

Walter sat across from Andrew in a mall coffee shop. He had calmed down enough so that he could steady the cup if he held it in both hands. But he was still unable to form the words of a complete, logical thought.

“He just … took a car …?” Walter mumbled in an intonation that made it a statement of wonder.

“We don't know that,” Andrew said patiently. “There are probably a dozen cars stolen out of these lots every day. There's no reason why this one is connected with our man.” The statistic was close to true, but was irrelevant to their situation. They both knew the instant that the stolen car was reported that Emily's captor had slipped out of their trap.

Walter's eyes stared blankly over the rim of his cup. He sipped the coffee without tasting it and heard Andrew Hogan's voice without understanding it. “Just walked out … and took a car … and drove away,” he allowed. He shook his head slowly.

“Maybe,” Andrew said. “There's a chance he's still inside. But I think it's obvious that Emily is being held somewhere in the area. We've alerted all the local police forces with a description of the car. Something is bound to turn up.”

Walter suddenly exploded, hissing his words loudly enough to turn heads all around the coffee shop. “If you just let me pay the money. I wanted to pay the money.”

“It wouldn't have done any good,” Hogan answered more quietly. “He wouldn't have turned Emily loose. It isn't his call to make.”

“You don't know that. You're guessing. You're gambling with her life.”

“Walter, for God's sake. We know this guy is only minding her. It's not his operation. He was just trying to shake you down for a little money for himself.”

“It was the only chance that Emily had left You screwed up the major deal in the Caymans. And now you trampled all over this one.”

“You're right,” Hogan allowed glumly. “I shouldn't have tried to handle this on my own. I should have gone right to the chairman.”

Walter had no sympathy for Andrew's misgivings. “She was right,” he said quietly. “It couldn't have been worse if you wanted to destroy me.” He looked up from his daze and focused clearly on Hogan. “Andrew, I want you to back away from this whole affair. Just leave me alone. If I get another chance, let me do what I think best.”

Hogan thought and then nodded. “I'll keep looking, Walter. But I won't interfere with you. On Monday, we'll go to Hollcroft. I'll take full responsibility for the delay.”

Helen charged into the coffee shop, looked around, and then darted between the tables until she was standing next to Hogan. “That van out in the parking lot. We ran the registration. It belongs to a woman named …” Helen stopped to consult a slip of paper she had pushed into her jacket pocket “… a woman named Rita Lipton.”

Hogan nodded his approval but with no particular enthusiasm. They were looking for a man, not for a woman. And the van's only crime was that it had remained parked near the spot where Walter had been ordered to park.

“Here's what's interesting,” Helen went on. “The address is only about ten minutes from your house, Walter.”

Hogan's head snapped up, his grim expression suddenly enlivened. “Screw due process,” he said to Restivo. “Break into the van and see what you can find.”

She smiled. “It won't be hard. The damn thing isn't locked.”

“What's she talking about?” Walter Childs asked, slowly recovering from his stupor.

“There's a van parked near your car that sort of fits the description of the one that your wife was left in. It's been there all day. It could be the one that our guy used to get here.”

Walter's eyes were suddenly alert. “Whose is it? Do we know?”

“A lady named Rita Lipton. Does the name mean anything to you?”

Walter searched his memory, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don't think so. Maybe if I knew more about her.”

Andrew Hogan snatched up the check. “You will in just a few minutes.” Walter followed as Hogan rushed to the cashier.

Walter was sorry he had decided to drive himself. Andrew Hogan had tried to push him into the backseat of Helen Restivo's car for the journey. But once he realized that the address they were heading toward was only a few minutes from his home, it made sense for him to take his own car. Now he was sitting ramrod erect, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, trying to keep up with Restivo and Hogan as they wove through traffic at better than eighty miles and hour.

He was doing his best to close the space. When Helen darted out to the fast lane, her headlights flashing to scatter the traffic ahead, Walter followed. But then, somewhere up the line, a car refused to give ground. Restivo rocketed into the middle lane, leaving Walter hung up on the outside. Then, well up ahead, Restivo's car snapped into the slow lane. About the time Walter found an opening and began to gain in the center lane, the car he was trying to follow bolted across the center lane and back into the high speed traffic that Walter had just left. Finally, he decided to take his eyes off Helen Restivo and simply drive as quickly as he could, making whatever lane changes were available. That gave him his best speed and the chances of his racing past Helen and Andrew were too small to even consider.

He understood the urgency. The stolen car had been reported half an hour ago, which meant that, even if they were headed to the right house, the madman had at least half an hour to take out his frustrations on Emily. The thought of Emily suffering even a few minutes of his rage was more than Walter could bear.

But, still, he shouldn't be driving like this. The past week had overloaded his nervous system to the point where he could feel the connections overheating and flashing into flame. His brain was dealing with pain signals from nearly every corner of his body, creating a current overload that had squeezed his throat shut and set up trembles in his hands and
fingers. It took all his concentration just to hold the car in a straight line. The high-G lane changes were pushing him to the edge of his physical endurance.

If it were the right van, then they had the name of the registered owner. But it wasn't certain that the van was anything more than legal transportation for an all-day shopper. And if the van had been stolen, then they might be racing toward nothing more dramatic than a woman who would be happy to get her car back. But, despite the odds, they had to act. None of them could stand another second of sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for reports from the local police, or the results of credit card checks to confirm that someone named Lipton had actually been shopping at the mall.

Up ahead, Walter saw the car zigzag to the right and then peel off into an exit lane. He checked his own spacing and then followed onto the access road. He knew the area well, his own home being just one exit farther and then a few miles to the north. But as they turned left over the highway and headed south, he was unsure of the immediate surroundings. This was a commercial area, sprinkled with light industry, that was outside the perimeter of his country club set. He had generally driven around it rather than through it.

Helen pulled up to the curb and Walter screeched to a stop behind her. When he walked up close to the two detectives, he was aghast to find each of them checking a pistol. “You wait right here,” Andrew Hogan ordered. Walter nodded. There was nothing in his makeup that yearned for a gunfight.

He watched Helen dart across the street and move briskly down the other side. Andrew waited for a few moments and then began easing along the street on his side. Helen passed the target address, an attached wood-frame house, and then cut back across the street. As she was stepping up on the rotted wooden porch, Andrew was pressed flat against the building, where he could see through the window and spot whoever came to answer the door.

There was the sound of Helen's knocking and moments later, Walter saw the door open. Helen lingered a moment, apparently in conversation with someone inside. Andrew left
his post by the ground floor window and came around to the porch where he joined her. The conversation went on for another minute, with Hogan taking out a pad and writing notes. Then the two detectives came down the steps and walked quickly toward their parked cars.

“We're late,” Hogan said.

“He got away?” Childs demanded.

“No, moved out two weeks ago. Rita Lipton lived her for a few months. She moved out without saying where she was going.”

“Christ,” Walter cursed.

“Walter, that house belongs to a social services charity, the Urban Shelter. You remember that was the same outfit that your first messenger had worked for.”

Walter tried to remember. The night when he had found the man waiting in his living room seemed a century ago.

“You were on the board of that outfit,” Helen Restivo joined in. “That was the only link we could find between you and the messenger.”

Walter nodded slowly. “That's right,” he allowed. “Emily did volunteer work for the Urban Shelter. I was more of a figurehead than a worker.”

“I want you to do something for me,” Andrew said to Walter. “I want you to get together with your daughter. She's been searching through Emily's papers for the names of everyone connected with that group. Correspondence, membership lists, programs she was involved in. Go over the records with Amanda. Look for anything that rings a bell. Anything!”

Andrew looked incredulous. He thought that Amanda had been going through Emily's files simply to embarrass him. He had no idea that she was working with Andrew Hogan. “But Amanda isn't …” he started to argue.

“Do it, Walter. This is too much of a coincidence for me to swallow. First, the guy with the ransom note worked there. Then, the two guys who took her out of the shower were defended by the shelter. And now the one who comes to pick
up the ransom was living in housing paid for by the shelter. That has to be the connection.