Repo Madness (39 page)

“What's Flunitrazepam?”
Alan asked.

“Not something they covered in repo school,” I muttered. I went back into the office, and used Rogan's PC to look up what I had found. “Rohypnol,” I announced.

“Okay, and what is Rohypnol?”
Alan asked peevishly.

“It's like a knockout drug.”

“So…,”
Alan replied slowly, thinking it through.

“So that's it,” I finished for him. “He waits in his office. The drunk woman comes down the hall. He opens the door, gets her inside, sticks her with a needle, and she's out for hours.”

“He did it, Ruddy. He killed Lisa Marie Walker.”

I put the drug back up on its shelf and turned off the stairway light. “I need to talk to Strickland,” I said.

“What's that?”

I could hear it plainly: A vehicle was pulling up behind the building. Briefly, headlights caused a yellow strip of light to flare beneath the garage door.

“If we tripped an alarm, we're screwed,” I muttered.

Just as I was shutting the door at the top of the stairs, the garage door gave a lurch and began grinding upward, raised by an electric motor. It wasn't the cops.

Wade Rogan was returning to work.

*   *   *

“Run!”
Alan blurted, panicking. I didn't run, but I didn't dawdle, bumping into a table as I made my way through the darkened bar. There was no way Rogan was going to miss the destruction to his front door—cold air was flowing in through the shattered glass as I opened it and stepped outside. I thought that, with a little luck, he'd fail to notice the abuse to the office latch, because kicking it open hadn't really left much damage other than maybe a gouge in the strike plate.

How much time, though, before he realized he'd had a break-in? And then what would he do?

“My guess is that the first thing he'll want to do is make sure his drug stash is still there. Then he'll probably call the cops,” I speculated. I was running down the street, my footfalls muffled by the fresh snow, my breath steaming out in front of me.

“Will he? His bar was broken into, and nothing is missing. He knows you're suspicious of him.”

“You might be right.” Panting, I slid into my tow truck. “But we've got some time. He's not going to want to leave the door with that hole in it.”

“Time for what?”

“We know where he is, which means we know where he isn't. I want to go check out his house, see if I can find anything there.”

“You can't be serious.”

I drove north, right past the Ferry Bar. I stared inside: It was still dark. “He's in his office,” I said. “Or maybe he's still in his car, listening to a story on NPR.”

“Or maybe he took one look and he's already on the road,
ahead
of us,”
Alan suggested tensely.

“I don't think so. We'd see his lights.” Highway 31 has a lot of straight road before the turn to Boyne City.

“You can't honestly be thinking of going to his house.”

“Yeah, I can honestly be thinking of that.”

“Why? Why not just go to Strickland with what we've got?”

“What we've got?
I've
got? Well, what exactly do I have? And how about when I tell Strickland how I got it?”

“I think if you break into a place and discover evidence, if you're not a cop, it can still be used at trial.”

“And I appreciate your expert legal opinion, but even if that's true, all I have is circumstantial crap. Maybe, though, I can find something in his house. Don't a lot of these assholes keep trophies? I read that somewhere.”

“We're going to have no time at all, Ruddy.”

I put my foot hard on the accelerator. “Nah, we're going to have plenty of time. Ten minutes, easy. Maybe an hour, even.”

“God. What if he catches us?”

“If he catches
me,
then I'll make him lie down and I'll call the cops.”

“He could have a gun.”

“Well, I've been shot already tonight. Wasn't that bad.”

“You had on a
vest
.”

“Just relax, Alan.”

There wasn't a soul on the road this late at night, this late in winter. The trees flashed by, coated on their north sides by snow that flared white in my headlights.

I passed Strickland's place and thought briefly about going back and seeing if he had gotten home yet and maybe wanted to help me go shoot somebody else. In the end, though, I kept driving.

*   *   *

Rogan's mailbox had a red reflector on it that brightened as I approached. I turned and headed down the long, narrow driveway—it reminded me of the trip down the middle of Holy Island: just as dark, just as isolated.

When I got to his house, I decided to flip the truck around and point it back up the driveway so I could take off quickly.
“Hey
,
Ruddy,”
Alan asked as I was cranking the wrecker around.
“Where's the folder?”

“Sorry?”

“The folder. Our files. Did you leave it sitting out in the open for Rogan to find?”

“Huh. I guess we'll have less time than I thought.”

“We have to leave now!”

“Ten minutes,” I promised. I checked my watch.

“What was that? Is someone here?”
Alan asked.

“What? Where?”

“Next to the garage. See? There's a car.”

I backed my truck up and swung it so the headlights were beaming directly on the vehicle next to the garage. I sucked in a breath.

It was Katie's car.

 

31

The Mayor of Shantytown

I punched my fist through the glass door on the side of the house, unlocked it, and found myself in the mud room, the place designed for people to dump boots and snowshoes and coats in the winter. This one looked like every other mud room I'd ever been in—lined with hooks and benches—except for the incongruous presence of a large, new-looking freezer, hip high and four feet long, shoved up against one wall. The thing was so large, it made the mud room unusable for its intended purpose. I stopped, staring at the gleaming appliance.

“You don't think…,”
Alan whispered in horror.

I did not want to look in that freezer. Yet that's what I did, gritting my teeth and lifting the top. The missing snowmobile canvas was in there, white condensation frozen in fractal patterns across its black surface.

I moved the canvas.

A man, perhaps seventy years old, his eyes open, his face white with frost, was folded into the tight space, his mouth frozen open, as if he died screaming.

I'd found the mayor of Shantytown.

“He knew Rogan was the person buying Nina Otis drinks,”
Alan murmured in shock.

“And this is how he shut the guy up.” I plunged into the dark house, feeling for light switches. “Katie!” I shouted. “Katie!”

I listened. Nothing.

Leaping up the stairs two at a time, I ran from one bedroom to another, tearing open closets, diving to the floor to look under beds. One room was an office, piled high with folders and other papers. I was panting, sick to my stomach. I turned and dashed back to the main floor. Rogan could turn up any minute.

Bathroom. Master bedroom. Small study.

Nothing. No sign of her.

“We've got to hurry,”
Alan begged.
“You have to find her, Ruddy!”

“I know! Stop. Let's think. Think.” I stood, trying to get my breathing under control, listening for any sign of her.

“Wait. Rogan's shanty.”

My blood chilled. With the temperature so low, Katie could die out in that shanty, especially if he had shot her full of Rohypnol. I turned to leave the house, then froze.

“What is it? Why are we stopping?”

“Listen.”

The low hum of a pump bringing up water from a well filled the air.

“What is it?”

“He's got a pump house. We need to find it.”

I thought about it. I hadn't seen any cellar stairs on the outside of the house. The stairs must be accessible from the inside. I went to the staircase, but all the doors nearby were closets. No.

“It's winter. It would have to be heated or the pump would freeze,” I explained. “If she's there, it'll be warm. Where is the damn thing?”

“In every house I've shown, the pump is usually in the basement under the kitchen. Or the crawl space,”
Alan informed me urgently.
“It's where most of the plumbing is.”

“Makes sense.” I checked my watch.

“It's been
ten minutes!”
Alan squealed in horror.

I ran to the kitchen. “You want me to stop looking?” I demanded crossly. I searched, my eyes darting into the corners. “No stairs,” I noted.

“We have to hurry!”

I flung open every door I came across. No stairs. Frantic, I ran back to the kitchen, wanting to scream in frustration.

“Wait!”
Alan shouted.

“What?” I snapped back.

“Doesn't the table look out of place to you?”

He was right. Instead of being in the nook where it belonged, the table was pulled to the center of the room and was resting on a rectangular rug. I lifted the corner of the small carpet and saw the seam in the shiny laminate. Trapdoor.

“Good work, Alan.”

I shoved the table away and yanked the rug aside, popping open the door. A ladder led down to a dark room, and I descended quickly, nearly falling in my haste. I found a light bulb and pulled a string and gasped.

There was a mattress on the floor underneath the small shiny pump, which looked like a squat torpedo with a motor on top. Katie lay on the mattress, her hands and feet bound with duct tape, which also covered her mouth. She was unconscious.

“Katie. Honey,” I whispered. I shook her gently, and her head lolled. Her eyes flickered when I ripped the tape off her mouth, but they did not open.

“I want to kill him,”
Alan raged.
“Let's get a, a knife, let's—”

“Alan!” I barked. “Stop it. We can't risk that he has a gun. He shoots me, he'll be free to do whatever he wants to Katie.” I looked at the steep ladder and measured the difficulty of getting an unconscious woman up it. “Okay. We need a phone.” I scrambled up the ladder and looked around the kitchen. No phone. Master bedroom. No phone.

“The office!”
Alan urged.

I raced upstairs. No phone.

“Who doesn't have a phone?”
Alan demanded.

“Some people just use cells now,” I said. “It doesn't matter.”

“We have to hurry.”

“Okay. Wait. I have an idea.”

I ran through the mud room and out the door into the cold. The wind had kicked up, and the snow was coming down harder. I ran to the repo truck, yanked open the door, got under the dash, and stuck the connector back into the GPS. Then I hit the red switch, the emergency “Call Kermit” switch.

“Now”—I panted as I ran back toward the house—“I've got to get her out of there and into the truck. It won't be easy.” I pictured wading in the snow and hated how long it would take with a woman slung over my shoulders. Then I got inspired. I stumbled over to the woodpile. Like a lot of people up north, Rogan had a wood sled—basically just a metal toboggan with a U-shaped handle at one end. You load the sled with wood and drag it to your front door, saving yourself dozens of trips.

“What are we doing?”

Rogan had stacked a dozen logs on the thing. I impatiently flipped the sled over, dumping them into the snow.

“Once I get Katie on this, it will be a lot easier to get her into the truck.” I pulled the sled after me to the mud room door and went back inside.

“How long have we been here?”

I looked at my watch. “Twenty-five minutes.” I dropped down through the door in the floor and went to my fiancée.

It broke my heart to see her in her professional clothes. Her first call for a listing. She'd been so excited, Jimmy had said.

It was my fault. I'd personally handed Rogan her business card. He didn't need to ambush her on the way to the ladies' room. She'd driven right to him.

It wasn't easy, getting her balanced on my shoulders. Gripping her with my right hand, I grabbed for the rungs with my left, powering upward as quickly as I could. Despite the cold, sweat ran down my forehead and into my eyes. Each step made me gasp with effort.

“Hurry,”
Alan urged.

There were fifteen rungs, altogether, and by the end of them, my thigh muscles were trembling and I was panting for air. I laid her gently on the floor, catching my breath.

“We need to move, Ruddy!”
Alan hissed.

“Right. Okay.” I used the rug as a toboggan and dragged Katie across the smooth floor until we got to the mud room. Then I put my hands under her arms and walked backward, pulling her, her heels sliding. Both of her shoes came off—she had worn impractical, business-looking footwear. Her boots were probably in her car.

I got her outside and, without too much difficulty, laid her out on the wood sled, wrapping her in a blanket. To keep her from getting frostbite, I went back into the mud room, found some fur-lined boots, and jammed them on her feet. “Okay,” I said. “We did it.”

Then my head snapped up. Someone was coming down the highway, his lights flickering in the trees.

“Just someone passing by,” I said quietly to Alan.