Pursuit (27 page)

W
alker studied the
photo-booth image enlarged and printed to four times its original size. “It's not what I would call an ah-ha moment, sorry to say. If we ever catch this guy, we can probably match him, but a picture that's, what, sixteen years old and at this cockamamie angle . . .” He set down the photo. “I don't know; just doesn't seem possible.”

Todd picked up the photo. “The problem as I see it, the guy's got a lot of hair, most of it down across his face. Mustache, goatee, and sideburns, his head's tilted. Too much stuff. I don't recognize him. Sarge?”

“Yeah, right. I don't, either, except it's all we've got. The guy from the pickup truck was all shadowed out. Hat, dark glasses, could be anyone. Cap, what would you say to a little subterfuge?”

“Like what?”

“I was thinking about an article in the paper, one of those ‘Police Are Working on New Lead,' ‘Photo May Be Abductor of Police Officer's Daughter,' ‘FBI Forensics Teams Working on Possible Link to Earlier Crimes.' Some sort of bullshit to get this animal to come after me.”

“We're not in the bait business, Sergeant.” Walker spread his arms, palms down, to signal the end of that topic. “You and Todd are not to do anything remotely close to putting you in danger over this thing. We want your daughter back, but not at this level of risk, got it?”

Julie acknowledged the captain and got up to leave, her gut telling her that she would continue to do whatever it took to get her girl home safely.

Todd and Julie walked the two blocks to Brisco's Beef, a cop joint specializing in keeping the police force fat and happy. Ordinarily, Julie devoured her turkey burger, but today she pushed the food around on her plate. The burger's one bite mark grinned up at her. “I've got to do something. I can't just sit around and ‘What if?' ”

“Let's take another run at the box factory,” Todd suggested. “There are a lot of healthy-looking fellas full of testosterone down there. Might be productive.”

“I'll see you in the car.” Julie got up. “Take your time.” She acknowledged several officers on the way out after paying her check. Most of the cops wanted to speak to her, offer their support, make suggestions of help, but almost all had already done that, and they were stuck for something to say.

The day was shiny and bright. Not too hot, just happily perfect. She wished it were miserable, to fit her mood.

Todd checked in with headquarters to report their locale. “What do you think, Sarge? Should we call that secretary at Drew and tell her we're coming down?”

As they left the city, Julie watched the rolling hills, trying to determine what approach to take when reinterviewing the factory workers. Should she lower herself, be condescending, or be the police bitch everyone expected of her? “Nah, let's just bust in, maybe take on a little different
no-bullshit attitude. We've wasted a lot of time. All these MFs can kiss my state trooper ass. I want some answers.” She napped, mostly in a fit, waking in an embarrassing sweat. “Pull over, will you, Todd? I've gotta walk around a bit.”

They came up to a gravel turnout built as a memorial to a Civil War skirmish. Julie walked around the compact historic site. A sign acknowledging the event had been vandalized, the name of the site chiseled and covered with red paint. In the fifteen years that she had been a policewoman, it never stopped overwhelming her how stupid some people could be. She looked at the field. Rows and rows of ripe corn stretching down a slight hill. At the bottom, bordering a creek, stood a dozen hefty oaks overlooking a series of other vast expanses of corn. Julie leaned against a five-foot-high barbed wire fence. She wondered if that copse of ancient oaks had sheltered a blue or grey squad of men doing what they thought was the correct thing at the time. She hoped her desperate pursuit would be on the winning side; that justice would be served. She got back in the car.

“Todd, give me a good boot in the pants every now and then, will you?”

He put his car in gear and accelerated out of the byway. “Sure, with pleasure. And . . . what else is up?”

“The not knowing is getting to me. The self-doubt when I think of Cheryl makes me want to beat my fists against someone's face so I can feel better. I want to hear that steel door close on some don't-give-a-shit punk.” She stopped. “Sorry, pard. I'm talking the woe-is-me bullshit called ‘I've lost my daughter, and some douche bag is going to pay, big-time.' ”

Julie wanted to lose herself in the roadside pines whipping
past her window. The straight, thick trunks and spindly branches a contradiction in nature. A number of quaint farming communities popped up along the winding road, each one with its own distinct high-porched facades. No Wal-Marts or Home Depots in this vast, rolling panorama. Only Mom, Pop, and Uncle Harry passing their friendly stores down through generations of would-be merchants.

She wondered if one of these quiet retailers would know her daughter's abductor.

“I will remain on the proper side of the law, Detective Devlin. No worries.” She hoped a manufactured lilt to her voice would keep Todd from thinking she had gone over the line. “And you, sir, will be the first to know if I go completely south. Okay?”

“If you go south, that large dark blue Crown Vic with the flashing lights stuck to your rear bumper will be me.” He reached over and squeezed her arm.

S
omewhere out past
the lake, a wild dog howled into the night wind. Cheryl listened to the animal's plea and continued her work. Her idea was to quietly pry as much of the remaining plywood out of the window area as possible.

Voices floated upstairs. Television laughter, canned and too loud. Her head poised toward the open window, she waited to time the TV actor's buildup in speech and the subsequent laugh track with the splintering of wood. After each effort, she waited, and then resumed, having not heard the dreaded footsteps on the steep basement stairs. All this through back-to-back reruns of
Cheers
. She wrapped each jagged piece of splintered plywood with the tattered remains of her dishcloth, trying to muffle the noise. She had long ago passed the point of worrying about protecting her hands. It wasn't the physical effort that exhausted her, but the coordination attempts.

She listened carefully, her head bent into the opening. Wiggling through the ragged hole now might have been possible, but weighing the pros and cons of a major gash,
she waited. Cheryl pulled out more long slivers from her escape hatch and stumbled off the refrigerator. The noise was more of a scraping effect rather than a loud
kerplunk
. She lay still on the bare mattress, her sore back enjoying the hard surface of the concrete floor. While trying to catch her breath, the basement door opened. King's booted step sounded deliberate.

“Oh, it's now or never! Tra-la-de-da!” Halfway down, he stopped.

Cheryl put a twist in her hair and slipped her last oily sardine can into her hair bun. Once again she vowed not to be harmed by Nasty Nashville.

He sang his country lament in a different way this night, more controlled and personal. Even the guitar, not being played with its usual gusto, was only moderately awful. After too long a while, it stopped. And the heavy footsteps retreated up the stairs with a barely discernible “Thank you, thank you very much.”

Cheryl breathed a heavy sigh at the departure, and then realized that she had left the curlycue lightbulb turned off. If he'd continued down and opened the food slot, he would have seen her darkness.

She scanned the room and went back to work on the remaining shards, carefully bending them back and forth until they gave way. One long tentacle stretched from the bottom left-hand corner a third of the way across the twenty-by-eighteen-inch rectangular opening. She knew the splinter would do heavy damage to her left side if she attempted to go through. Electricity hummed while a refrigerator was opened upstairs. Then the soft closing followed by a pan being knocked against metal. Her down-home Caspar Milquetoast was having a midnight snack. She heard a toilet flush and the slow, sliding creak of a
window being closed. And all grew quiet. Poised on the fridge, she waited to hear a snore or a cough.

Cheryl looked around the room, wondering what she could take with her. On the stained floor next to the toilet, she eyed a plastic bag used to bring in groceries. She stuffed it into her back pocket, cringing at the thought that he had touched the bag. She wrapped her blanket into a tight bedroll, placing it around her neck and tucking one end of it into the front of her jeans. Holding the rapier-like plywood needle in both hands, she cranked it toward the broken window and then back a few inches toward the room. She heard nothing from upstairs.

She pried the piece of wood up and down until it came loose. She glanced back at her prison room: there wouldn't be anything more to take. Again Cheryl listened for something from above her. Hooking her right elbow outside the window casement, she gripped the left side and pulled. As her feet left the steady support of the refrigerator, she began to wiggle her way through the tight opening.

Halfway through, with her head and shoulders protruding into the wet grass and earth, she felt the basement window above her trip the overhead latch, bouncing down onto her back, wedging itself into the curve between the end of her spine and butt. She was stuck. Then the rain started. Cheryl reached back with her left hand to try to grasp the hinged window, to no result. The bedroll she'd fashioned caught in the shattered glass of the basement window, making the passage even tighter.

She stopped to listen again for any noise coming from the living room window just a few feet above her head. If the man had heard her struggles, he would look out that window.
Why not? Isn't that the way it goes for the good guys?
The girl shook it off, knowing that feeling sorry for herself would do no good.

Her hips were killing her. All the weight of her body, centered in the middle of the window, had dealt her a teeter-totter position, half in, half out. The blanket was still caught. Cheryl reached down to where it was stuffed into her jeans and pulled out the other end. She looped the thin cover back over her head and shook the blanket against the glass shards, trying to dislodge it. It took a while, and her shoulder cramped, forcing her to stop. Movement came from the room above her.

King was up. A light went on, and she heard pacing in what she was fairly certain was the room with the television.

The window in the house squeaked and bounced while being raised. Cheryl smelled cigarette smoke. An off-key humming started; then once again the hollow thump of the guitar. She renewed her efforts to free herself. The guitar music faded above her head, and the window closed.

She cursed for having brought the worthless blanket. The pain against her hips and stomach grew more intense. Cheryl thought that if she pulled the rest of the blanket from her jeans, it would help her to slide out from underneath the tight space, but her hips and ribs, along with the now bundled-up cover, put her in a tight fix. The thumping of the guitar resumed and was getting louder.

He had moved to the basement steps. Of all the nights to serenade her, why now? If he opened the food slot, he would see the light was not on. She pulled her left knee up even with her hip and pushed down hard against the sharp edge of the metal window casement. Inching her
way forward, something else began digging at her back: the outside handle of the basement window.

“Are you lonesome tonight?” His voice echoed in the stairway.

Cheryl hesitated to answer for fear that he would hear a difference in her voice, considering her head was outside. She pulled her knee even higher and felt a glass shard rip her denim jeans. She wanted to scream but clamped down on her teeth and pushed even harder. His voice changed. She realized he was at the food slot, and would see the light was out. She glanced over her shoulder as the light flickered on, then off. Her jeans belt buckle caught on the bottom of the metal casement as she made a last huge effort to push through. Again, the light went on and off. The fan stuttered, he was in the room.