Cherry Bomb (14 page)

CHAPTER
27

“
I
GOT NOTHING, SIS.”

I rubbed my eyes, which felt like I had sand under the lids. We were parked in an all-night diner lot, which was half-full even at five in the morning. I’d gone in earlier, not to eat but to borrow a phone book. Now I wished I’d eaten. The salsa-less tortilla chips and five sticks of jerky hadn’t done much to satisfy my hunger.

“Try searching for
motel
plus
Zd
plus
Wisconsin
,” I told Harry.

“I tried that. I’ve tried every possible Boolean search combination, and I don’t even know what
Boolean
means. Plus I’m exhausted. The only thing keeping me awake is this case of SuperMax Energy Drink I got at the discount store. What the hell is taurine anyway?”

“We’re all tired, McGlade. Try pinching yourself.”

“Does that work?”

“No. But it will amuse me.”

“Funny, Jackie. We’ve got half an hour left. Maybe the Milwaukee PD has found him already.”

“Milwaukee cops find him?” I asked Phin.

Phin shook his head. Naturally, Phin owned a police scanner. He was using an earpiece to listen in so the radio chatter didn’t interfere with my phone call. I was using Alex’s cell, because it was pretty much trace-proof. No doubt the Feebies were tracking my personal cell.

I yawned. “Did you try another search engine?”

“I’m using an aggregator that searches all the top search engines, including foreign ones. I’ve found some pretty horrible things, Jackie. Do you know what a brass clown is?”

“No. And have no desire to find out.”

“It’s this sex thing. But it isn’t really sexual, unless you’re some sort of sicko nutjob. You take a cup. Guess what you do with the cup?”

“I don’t want to know what you do with the cup, and if you try to tell me I’ll hang up on you.”

“I wish I could do a system restore on my brain and go back to a time before I saw it. There are certain foods I can no longer eat.”

For the fiftieth time I fought the temptation to drive to the nearest motel and start randomly searching rooms. With several hundred hotels within ten square miles, the odds weren’t with us. Much better to stay centrally located and be ready to move when we got some information.

The problem was, we had no information. And I held out little hope that Alex would call back with a last-minute hint. The next time she called, it would be to send pictures of David Strang with his head blown off.

“Think Alex fucked him?” Harry asked.

“Not sure if it matters, McGlade.”

“Maybe it does. What if there was some sixty-nine action going on?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“A lot. If she was on top, she could have written the letters upside-down.”

I accessed the picture on the cell phone, then rotated it one hundred and eighty degrees.

How about that?

“I bow to your deviant mind, Harry. Try all the searches again using PZ.”

“Way ahead of you, Jackie. Got twenty-seven million hits. Some scientist named PZ. A punjabi site. An ID3 tag editor.”

“What’s that?”

“It helps you catalog your music collection if you appropriate MP3 files on the Internet.”

“Appropriate? You mean stealing.”

“File sharing isn’t stealing. If I stole your bike, you lost property. That’s theft. But if I copied your bike, you still have the bike.”

“Then I’ve lost my right to sell the bike. How can I sell the bike if everyone is copying it?”

I bet myself twenty bucks McGlade was rolling his eyes.

“What if I already have the music on vinyl? Can’t I download an MP3 of a song I already own?”

“Downloading music for free is illegal, Harry.”

“No it isn’t. Ask Phin.”

“I’m not asking Phin.”

“Ask Phin what?” Phin asked.

I sighed. “This really isn’t something we need to discuss right now. Or ever.”

I hit the button for speaker phone anyway and repeated Harry’s question.

“It’s illegal,” Phin said. “You’re taking money away from the artist. That’s what intellectual property laws are for.”

“So downloading an out-of-print album is bad, but it’s okay to rob a bank?”

“That’s illegal too,” Phin said.

“We need to stick to finding Lance,” I said.

“Phin, you ever see that brass clown video?”

“Yeah. It was horrible.”

“Lance,” I said, holding up the picture. “He’s going to die soon. Remember him?”

“Remember that cup scene?” Harry said.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t eat corn anymore because of that.”

“I had to give up Greek food for a while.”

“Why Greek? Oh…oh yeah. You know, the last Greek I ate was a sorority girl.”

I was going to tell them, more forcibly this time, to stay on task, but the word
Greek
stuck in my head and bounced around like a pinball. I looked at the PZ again.

“Harry, do a search for
Greek alphabet
.”

“She was a physical therapy major, Phin. Had an incredibly strong grip. I used to fake injuries.”

“Harry! The search!”

“Okay! Sure! Greek alphabet! Done! You happy?”

“What do
P
and
Z
stand for?”

“
P
is
rho
.
Z
is
zeta
. Rho zeta?”

“Row zayta. Row zeta. Rosetta?”

I flipped the Yellow Pages open to
Motels
and searched the Rs. No Rosetta Motel, or anything even close.

Harry chuckled softly. “Damn, Alex is smart.”

“You got something?”

“I did a search for
Rosetta
plus
Milwaukee
plus
lodging
. First hit is for the Rosetta Stone—that old rock with all the languages on it. But farther down the page is the Old Stone Inn. If PZ is Greek for Rosetta, the Rosetta Stone was certainly an old stone. And the Old Stone Inn is near the Milwaukee airport.”

I checked my watch. Lance had less than fifteen minutes to live. The clues fit, but that might have been because we were tired and hopeless and wanted them to fit.

“Where’s the address?” I asked Harry.

“It’s on Whitnall.”

Phin started the truck. “Ten minutes, if we push it.”

I didn’t see we had any choice.

“Push it,” I told him.

We peeled out of the parking lot.

CHAPTER
28

A
LEX WAKES
to the ringing of the hotel phone and the homey smell of copper pennies. She gives the receiver a quick up and down, stretches, and pads over to the bathroom. Apparently Cyn had more life left in her than Alex thought, because she managed to pull herself out of the bathtub to curl up and die under the sink. There’s a good amount of blood browning on the floor, and Alex watches where she steps—it’s not wise leaving bloody footprints up and down the hotel hallway.

After using the facilities, Alex puts on a pair of fresh pan ties from Cyn’s suitcase, and also liberates some sweatpants and a Hootie and the Blowfish tee. Cyn’s shoes are too small, and the cop’s black leather shoes look stupid with sweats, so Alex heads out the door in only socks.

Sunrise is still over an hour away, and outside it’s cool and crisp with a wind that threatens winter. Alex digs her laptop out of the Hyundai and takes it back to the lobby, where complimentary continental breakfast is being served. Even this early there are three people milling about, reading papers, drinking coffee, pouring milk into bowls of cereal. Alex keeps her head down, bangs covering her face, and snatches a bagel and a small container of cream cheese without being acknowledged.

Back in the room she sets up at the desk and accesses the hotel’s WiFi, charging it to Cyn’s account. Then she activates the cell phone program and enlarges the window to the size of the laptop screen, which shows a live view of Lance at the Old Stone Inn.

Poor Lance is sleeping. He’s made quite a mess of the bed—even in the close-up Alex can see the mattress is off-kilter and the sheets under him have twisted around. She zooms the camera out, and sees the duct tape is still holding him tight, but it has bunched up on itself so it looks like gnarled gray rope. The secret to binding someone with tape is to make it as tight as possible; it stretches, and sweat and blood work against the adhesive. Lance has more than a little blood around his wrists. He fought hard. Alex feels strangely proud of him.

She zooms out farther, and sees that the rest of Lance hasn’t held up so well.

“Ouch.”

The rubber band has transformed Lance’s once proud manhood into something resembling a rotten banana, all brown and droopy. If Jack arrives in time, it’s unlikely that part of him can be saved.

Alex smiles with half of her face, using her finger to apply cream cheese to half the bagel, imagining macho Lance living out the rest of his days as a chaste monk in some Tibetan monastery. Certainly his wife wouldn’t keep him around. Infidelity can be forgiven. Having no dick would put an unrealistic strain on even the healthiest of marriages.

She zooms in, getting a close-up of the Greek letters burned into Lance’s chest, and uses her screen capture to save a JPG. Then she checks the time. Twenty minutes after five. Lance has thirteen minutes to live.

Alex transfers the picture to her cell, then sends it to Jack Daniels. At this late stage in the game, it’s unlikely Jack knows where Lance is. But there’s one clue left to give, and Alex wants to make sure Jack has every possible opportunity to figure it out and save him, so she feels even worse when she fails. Alex texts:

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN.

Simple. Clever. Elegant. After entering the message she tucks her legs under her in the desk chair, licks cream cheese off her fingers, and waits for the big bang.

CHAPTER
29

“
H
OW’S OUR TIME?”
Phin asked.

I checked my watch. The pigstick was set to go off at 5:33 a.m. It was 5:24.

“Not good. How close are we?”

“I’m not sure. A few miles.”

My eyes locked on the speedometer. We were already doing sixty mph in a thirty mph zone, and I stopped counting all the red lights we’d blown through.

“Go faster.”

Phin nodded. The veins on the backs of his hands bulged out from holding the wheel so hard, and I noticed my legs were braced and my fingers had death grips on the armrests. As if that would help if we crashed.

The cell phone rang, and I pried off a hand long enough to answer it. Another picture of Lance, apparently asleep. The burns on his chest had scabbed over, becoming almost black. A message accompanied the photo.

“Got another text.
Stairway to heaven.
” I wrinkled my nose. “What does that mean?”

“That Lance is about to die.”

The truck crept closer to seventy, which seemed a lot faster on the narrow street we were on. Each pothole we hit felt like a thunderclap.

“No…I mean—yes—that’s part of it. But I think it’s a clue. She’s telling us something about his location.”

“What does Led Zeppelin have to do with rho and zeta?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. An earlier call to the Old Stone Inn hadn’t given us much to work with. The front desk had confirmed the motel was full, all twenty-six rooms occupied. This was one of those single-floor, park next to your room motels. I asked about a woman with scars checking in, or anything out of the ordinary, but English wasn’t the clerk’s first language, or at least he pretended it wasn’t, and I couldn’t get anything out of him.

I had also dialed 911, explaining the situation and telling them a kidnapping and murder of one of their own was being committed there. I was sure they’d send a car, but had no idea of their response time or their procedure. Even if they got there before us, it’s unlikely they’d get any more help from the clerk than I did. And no cop I ever met would kick in twenty-six doors without a warrant.
Exigent circumstances
and
probable cause
were weighty terms, but not as weighty as
lawsuit
and
disciplinary action
.

“What were the band members’ names?” I asked Phin.

He took a corner so fast the tires cried out. “Robert Plant…John Paul Jones…Jimmy Page…”

“Which one died?”

“The drummer. John Bonham. Died in his sleep. Choked on vomit.”

My heart rate jumped up even higher. “Did he die in a motel room?”

“Page’s house. Drank too much.”

Phin tapped the brakes and just missed clipping a Volvo, who laid on the horn to show his disapproval. I tried to swallow, but had no spit left.

“How about something in the lyrics?” I forced myself to focus, not the easiest thing to do when I predicted a car accident in the immediate future. “Any mention of rooms or motels?”

“It’s about a woman who thinks she can get what ever she wants.”

Phin swerved and climbed the curb, causing my body to rise up against the seat belt. I readied myself for the passenger-side air bag, but it didn’t deploy.

“We’re on the sidewalk.” I tried to sound calm, but my voice came out squeaky.

“Motel,” Phin said, eyes glancing right. I followed his gaze, saw the large Old Stone Inn sign a block ahead. A light illuminated its
$49.95 a Night
rates, but the
i
in
Night
was missing.

We came upon the parking lot fast—too fast—and Phin hit the brakes and still slammed into the rear of a parked SUV. Still no airbag. I wondered if the truck even had them.

I checked my watch. Five thirty.

The motel was laid out in an L shape, ground-level rooms stretching off in two perpendicular directions. Thirteen on each arm. With three minutes left, not enough time to check them all.

Phin and I ran for the lobby, at the center of the L. There was a Milwaukee police cruiser parked in front, and through the window I saw two uniforms talking to the desk clerk, who was shrugging and shaking his head.

“Four!” Phin yelled at me.

I looked at him, wondering if he had a golf club.

“‘Stairway to Heaven’ is on the album
Led Zeppelin IV
!”

Was it that easy? Was Lance in room four? I didn’t question it, I acted, yanking the gun out of my bouncing purse, running down the arm past rooms ten…nine…eight…seven…

Phin outpaced me, getting there first, slamming his shoulder into the door. It popped inward, Phin stumbling into the room, me coming in right after him, dropping to a knee, gun out, eyes and ears open.

The room was bright, every light on, someone in bed.

Lance.

He was naked, eyes wide, terrified. He screamed at me through his duct tape gag.

The pigstick was set up on the nightstand next to him, the shotgun shell held in place by a metal arm. I followed the wire to a timing device, realized I had no expertise at all to disarm it, and chose instead to simply point the contraption away from Lance.

Two seconds after I grabbed it, the charge went off.

The explosion was deafening, and the shock—coupled with the powerful vibration of the shot—made me drop the pigstick. I cast fearful eyes at the bed, expecting to see blood and guts and carnage.

The mattress had an ugly, ragged hole in it. Lance did not.

Phin said something that sounded like “Jesus,” but my ears were ringing, so I couldn’t be sure. I spun around, gun sweeping the room, then did a quick search, tugging open the closet and bathroom doors. No Alex.

“Please…”

Phin had removed the duct tape from Lance’s mouth, and stared down at him, frowning. I glanced between Lance’s legs and had to look away.

“Freeze! Police! Drop your weapons!”

The two Milwaukee cops were at the door, their guns drawn, their faces bright with urgency. I moved slow, deliberate, not wanting to spook them.

“We’re putting down our guns,” I said. “I’m the cop who called earlier. Lieutenant Jack Daniels, Chicago PD. My ID is in my purse. This man on the bed is David Strang. One of yours.”

I crouched, setting my gun on the floor, putting my hands up. Phin did the same. The cops moved in, putting Phin against the wall, frisking him, taking his gun. As I watched, I noticed something taped to the motel wall. A cell phone.

Alex was watching.

“This man needs an ambulance,” I said.

Neither cop said anything, but the taller one took his handcuffs out of his case.

“There’s no need to restrain him. He’s with me.”

“There’s a federal warrant out for his arrest,” the tall one said. “There’s one on you as well, Miss Daniels.”

A sound from Phin, either a soft snort or a loud sigh. “We just saved your man’s life.”

“I’m sure you’ll get all of this straightened out. Orders are orders. You understand.”

Phin tried to spin around, got a rabbit punch in the kidney by the shorter one. He dropped to his knees. So did I, picking up my Beretta. Just as Shorty pulled back for a second punch I fired into the ceiling.

“Hit him again,” I said through my teeth. “See what I do to you.”

Shorty opened up his fist and backed away from Phin.

“Guns. Drop them.”

The cops looked at each other, then complied.

“Now get on the goddamn radio and call a goddamn ambulance for your man.”

The taller one used his lapel mike. Phin stuck their guns in his waistband, retrieved his own, and jammed it into the neck of the cop who socked him.

I almost warned Phin not to do anything stupid, then remembered that I trusted him.

“I got a question,” Phin said. “Is it just you, or do all short guys hit like sissies?”

Shorty didn’t answer, which was probably wise.

I kept them covered and made my way to the cell phone, feeling for it on the wall and tugging it off. Held it to my ear.

“Alex?”

No answer. I powered it off and stuck it in my purse, then motioned for Phin to come over to the door.

“Your guns will be in one of the Dumpsters outside,” I told the cops, “which is more professional courtesy than you’ve shown me.”

“You sure you want to do this, lady?” Shorty said.

I frowned. Then in one fluid motion I tugged their guns out of Phin’s belt, stuck my fingers in the trigger guards, and whipped them around butt-first while smoothly pressing both ejector buttons. The full clips sailed out the bottom ports and bounced off each cop’s chest as they flinched.

“It’s not
miss
, and it’s not
lady,
” I said. “It’s
Lieutenant
.”

“She outranks you guys because you suck,” Phin offered.

I really couldn’t blame them too much for trying to arrest us—the order probably came from the top—but I did pass up two relatively clean Dumpsters before finding one stinky enough to ditch their pieces, buried under a pile of rotten food.

Then I crashed. Big-time. The adrenaline that had been keeping me going had vacated the premises, leaving me an empty shell. Sleep had always been a problem for me, but I probably could have gotten forty winks right there, curled up on the garbage pile.

Phin didn’t look much better. Long damn night.

“You okay?” I asked when we got back to the Bronco.

He nodded, but I noticed he was favoring his left arm.

“Elbow?”

“Yeah. One of them twisted it. I’ll be okay.”

Phin tried to start the truck using his left hand. I should have offered to drive, but I was lapsing into zombie mode and didn’t trust myself. My phone rang. Mine, not the one Alex gave me.

“Hiya, sis.” Long yawn from Harry, who must have been really concerned about us. “You save the day?”

“Lance lived. The police tried to arrest us. We disarmed them. Now Phin can’t turn the ignition.”

“Good, that’s good.” I don’t think he heard a word I said. “I’m in Deer Park. I’m going to catch some Zs, then look for the last cell phone in the daisy chain. I’ve got a tracking device that pinpoints RF frequencies. But even better, these cells are Bluetooth enabled, and Alex never disabled it. I’ve got a computer program that can scan for Bluetooth devices. When it finds one, I can have it download SIM card info. So I don’t even have to find the physical phone. I just have to get close enough to it.”

Turnabout was fair play, because I didn’t pro cess a single thing Harry said either. I yawned, then reached over and helped Phin start the truck. His hand covered mine, held it. He continued to hold it as we pulled out of the parking lot. I was too tired to protest, and his grip was warm on my cold fingers. Warm, and strangely comfortable.

“Jackie? You still there?”

“I’ll call you later, Harry. We’re going to crash someplace too. Find a motel on the edge of town.”

“One bed or two? Not that it’s my business.”

“You’re right. It’s not your business.”

“I agree. So one bed or two?”

“Good night, Harry.”

I hung up, cutting off his reply.

We drove for twenty minutes, silent, exhausted, and I felt every second of every minute of every hour I’d been awake—over thirty hours total. Phin found a chain hotel, dropped me off to check in while he parked the Bronco someplace inconspicuous. When he pulled away, my hand felt empty.

The employee at the front desk looked pert and freshly scrubbed, greeting me with a smile so wide it bared gums.

“Good morning.” Her voice was full of annoying morning cheer.

“Two rooms,” I muttered.

“Sorry.” Smile. “We’re all booked up.” She leaned closer, conspiratorially. “Wisconsin Mom of the Year Awards.” Smile. “It’s our best turnout yet.”

I yawned again, so big it hurt my jaw. “That’s fine. We’ll sleep in your lobby, on the sofa. My friend likes sleeping naked. I talk in my sleep, and since I work for a phone sex hotline I tend to use the word
cock
a lot. If you hear me yelling about how much I love big cock, or how I love to watch you play with your big cock, just give me a nudge.”

Her smile drooped below the gum line.

“Let me double-check and see if there were any recent cancellations.”

She stuck her nose into her computer, tapped a few keys. I dug around in my purse for my wad of Latham’s cash.

“A single is recently available. King-sized bed.” Smile. “Will that be okay?”

“That will be fine,” I slurred, my eyes shutting briefly.

“Our rate is one hundred and thirty dollars a night.”

“Cash okay?”

“Cash is fine, but I need a credit card for incidentals.”

I always wondered why they called room ser vice and pay-per-view porno incidentals. Weren’t those the main reasons people stayed in hotels?

“Wallet was stolen,” I told her. “No credit cards.”

“That’s terrible.”

Perhaps, but she kept smiling.

“Cash deposit okay?”

She nodded; money, receipts, and key cards changed hands, and Phin came in. We managed to find our room, the key worked on the third try, and I stumbled to the bed and kicked off my shoes. Phin stood and stared.

“I can call down to the lobby, have them bring in a cot for me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, yawning. “Just try to control yourself.”

He smiled, sheepish.

“What if I try really hard and fail?”

“I’ll be sleeping. Try not to wake me up.”

I tugged off my sweatpants, too tired to feel awkward or embarrassed. Then I noticed I was still wearing those lacy red pan ties, and I felt both awkward and embarrassed and not nearly as tired anymore. In fact, I was all of a sudden pretty awake.

Phin watched me, waiting to see what I did next. I looked down at my sweatshirt. Take it off, or keep it on? I had a sports bra on under it. Not sexy at all, flattening my boobs. But why should I care how I looked? We were just going to sleep. And seeing me in my underwear was the same thing as seeing me in a swimsuit.

Of course, it took me three hours to put on a swimsuit.