Shake the Trees (35 page)

It was finally five-thirty a.m., and Einstein Bagels would be opening its doors any minute.  Ellen had slept soundly in the minivan for almost three hours, and felt refreshed.  She’d parked the vehicle on the street, directly across from the En Route Center parking lot, where she had spotted Rob Parker’s white pickup truck.

After a brief tai chi ritual and a moment of meditation on the grass between the minivan and the sidewalk, Ellen began the block and a half walk to the bagel shop.  The cool air of the desert night felt invigorating, and she noticed the scent of blooming flowers for the first time since she left Florida. 

She purchased a large insulated mug filled with dark roast and a whole grain bagel with low fat cream cheese.  Then stepped out the door and brought the mug to her lips.  She took her first taste of the day while watching the eastern sky brighten into a swirl of blue and wispy white cirrus clouds.  With another hour to wait before the third shift ended, Ellen paused at one of the outdoor tables, but then reconsidered.  She felt uncomfortable not having the white pickup within sight, so she angled across the parking lot toward the minivan.

At 7:05 a.m., Rob Parker slowly accelerated past Ellen and turned right.  Ellen followed at a discreet distance, and soon realized that they were traveling the same route that her BlackBerry had plotted the day before.  Now she felt comfortable allowing the pickup to extend the distance between the two vehicles by two and eventually three blocks.

By the time Ellen neared the suburban home, the white pickup truck was in the garage and Rob Parker had retrieved the paper from the front yard.  As he walked up the driveway, Susie Parker stepped out of the garage with a toddler on her hip.  A second child - a little girl of no more than four or five - held her hand.  Susie smiled and kissed her husband on the lips, and he scooped up the little girl into his arms.  The family turned toward the house and disappeared from the rearview mirror of the minivan.  Ellen thought their lives looked excruciatingly boring; she was about to change all of that.

Ellen wound her way back down out of the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, toward a ribbon of blue nestled between startling strips of green.  But she wouldn’t reach the Rio Grande or even the irrigated pastures that were sometimes hidden in the early morning mist.  She sought the ribbon of gray that separated the brown foothills from the valley.  Today she would travel north on I-25.  One hour north to Sante Fe Municipal Airport, where a chartered helicopter awaited her arrival.

CHAPTER 52

They climbed above the Sante Fe Mountains, the southernmost tip of the Sangre de Cristo Range, skirted around 13,000 foot Truchas Peak, and eventually found the San Luis River as it branched off from the Rio Grande.  Then followed it to the northwest.  To view her purchase.

When Ellen added it altogether - the attorneys’ fees including the substantial but unrecorded payments made on her behalf to state officials, the earthwork on the reservoir, and the cost of the property itself - she’d spent nearly 18 million dollars.  All on a ranch she had never seen.  She’d relied solely on Google Earth and online property tax records.  Now it was time to take a look.  From a helicopter, instead of a satellite.

The 45-minute trip over incredibly beautiful high mountain alpine terrain passed quickly.  They left the isolation of the highest peaks, and began to descend toward the San Luis River valley and its patchwork of bright green and dusty brown.  The irrigated and the non-irrigated.  The worthy and the worthless.  The life-giving water had been distributed unevenly, and its value was starkly evident.  Soon a huge scar on the landscape came into view, and Ellen beamed with satisfaction.

That her plan would work was obvious.  Already the spring melt carried by Canones Creek was being captured by a monstrous hole that had been gouged into the earth.  The reservoir would greedily contain the life-giving force that once sustained what lay below.  A life-giving and precious resource that would only be released in sporadic and unusable bursts, and then hoarded once again.

Between the reservoir and the distant San Luis River, the land spread out into huge down-sloping pastures interspersed with trails of tall brown grass.  Trails of dead grass that meandered back to Canones Creek - a now dry Canones Creek.  Ellen knew that these trails were open hand-dug irrigation ditches.  Ditches that were probably dug generations before, but now were useless.

As they banked over the brown fields, an old white-haired man on horseback suspiciously eyed the big chopper above.  Ellen leaned back in her seat and smiled sensuously, enjoying the powerful throbbing vibrations of the loud bird as it continued its sharp turn.  Then she signaled the pilot to take her back, and began to consider her schedule for the next day.

Ellen had set aside the next 24 hours for herself.  To be pampered at a world-class resort and spa outside Sante Fe.  She’d accomplished a great deal in a short amount of time, and felt entitled to the best.  But Ellen was acutely aware of weakness.  And not only of weakness in others.  She knew how intoxicated she could become with the fine luxuries of touch, smell, and taste, so she would plan her departure now.

She’d already pulled up the flight plan online, and determined that the American Senior Security jet was scheduled to depart Tampa at 10 p.m. Florida time.  The plane would be in the air at least two and a half hours before it over flew the Roswell vicinity, but would gain two hours as it traveled west thru two time zones.  So she began to work backwards from 10:30 p.m.  She wanted to be in Roswell by 9:30.  That meant she would need to leave Albuquerque by 6:30 at the latest. 

So her deadline would be 5:00 tomorrow afternoon.  She would leave the resort by five, make the one-hour drive from Sante Fe to Albuquerque, and pick up her passengers around six.  She had built in a thirty-minute margin for error.  For the unforeseen and unexpected.  Any less would be too risky.  Any more would be boring.  And she didn’t want to spoil the fun. 

Ellen brought the minivan to a skidding stop in front of the Parker house at exactly 6:00 p.m. Thursday afternoon.  The garage door was still wide open.  Both vehicles were there, but no one was in sight.  Ellen stepped out of the minivan, propped the hood open, and walked briskly to the front door and rang the bell.  In a few moments, Rob Parker appeared.  He looked past Ellen at the minivan.  Ellen smiled and looked into the house.  The family was eating dinner together.  An attractive blonde in her late twenties, a little boy in a high chair, and an older girl in pigtails.

“Can I help you?”  Rob Parker asked.

“I hope so,” Ellen answered breathlessly and nodded toward the minivan.  “My car is doing really weird things and keeps like surging and then dying, and, of course, my cell phone battery just died.  I need to call my husband.”  She looked at the man with a mix of embarrassment and helplessness.

Parker smiled with understanding.  “Sure, step inside and I’ll get you my cell.”

Rob Parker turned and began to walk down a hall.  Ellen smiled at the still seated blonde, and quickly followed.  Parker sensed or heard Ellen and began to turn, but before he could do so she reached out with the Taser and made contact with his midsection.  The high voltage jolt scrambled the signals from his brain, and he fell to the hall floor with enough noise that Susie Parker heard the commotion.

“Rob?  Is everything okay?”  Susie Parker called out with mild concern.

“I think you better come here,” Ellen answered calmly.

Susie Parker walked briskly around the corner and brought her hands to her mouth.  “Oh my god, Rob!  What happened?”  Then she ran to him and kneeled down.

“This happened.”  Ellen showed Susie Parker the Taser.

“What?”

Ellen brought her index finger to her lips.  “If you care about your children, you need to shut up right now.  And listen.”

“Is he okay?  Is he . . .”  A confused and mounting panic had begun to set in.

“No, he’s not dead,” Ellen answered derisively.  “He’s unconscious.  But this can stop his heart cold.  Is that what you want me to do?”

Susie began to cry.  “No!  Please don’t hurt us.”

Rob Parker began to moan. 

“See, I told you.  He’s regaining consciousness.  But he won’t regain motor control for another fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“What do you want?”  Susie blubbered.

“Knock it off,” Ellen responded angrily.  Then nodded toward the dining room.  “It’s up to you whether they live or die.”  And then she nodded toward the figure on the floor.  “And whether he lives or dies.  It’s up to you.  So knock it off.”

“What do you want me to do?”  Susie sniffled.

“Do you have a land line?”

Susie shook her head.  “Just cell phones.”

“Bring them here right now.  And close the god-damn garage door.”  Ellen ordered.

Susie returned in a moment with a purse in one hand and a cell phone in the other.  “Here’s Rob’s.”  Then she rummaged through her purse.  “And here’s mine.”

Ellen took the phones.  “Now put the kids in your minivan. And give them this.  Double the maximum dosage for their age and weight.”  Ellen pulled a small bottle from her pocket and handed it to Susie.

Susie looked at the bottle.  “Liquid Benadryl?  You want me to drug my children?”

“Listen to me, you nitwit little housewife.  This isn’t one of your soap operas.  This is real.  Shut them up with that, or I’ll shut them up with this.”  Ellen nodded at the Taser.  “I can’t deal with whining children.”

Susie began to cry again, but quickly regained her composure.  “Okay.  I will.” 

Ellen followed Susie into the garage and watched as she loaded her children into the van.  The toddler made a face when she used the syringe-type applicator to give him the liquid Benadryl, and the little girl argued.  But eventually the task was complete.

“Now what?”  Susie asked more boldly.

“Go outside.  Use the front door.  Put the hood down on my minivan and get my bags.  A roller and a laptop.  Act normally and don’t do anything stupid.  Remember.  It’s all up to you.”

Susie returned with the bags in record time, and Ellen nodded toward the back of the minivan. After her bags were loaded, Ellen spoke with cold detachment.  “I need to talk to hubby before we leave.  Are you coming?”

Susie checked the toddler’s car seat and gave the now frightened five-year old stern instructions to stay in the minivan, and followed Ellen back into the house.  Although he was now clearly aware of everything happening around him, Rob Parker still had not regained control of his major muscle groups.  He looked up at Ellen with huge and frightened eyes.

Ellen spoke in a detached but stern cadence.  “In a few moments you’ll regain control of your large muscle groups.  You’ll be fine - just sore.  Now listen to me carefully.  You’re going to go to work just like normal.  And you’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do.  If you don’t, I swear to god that you will never see your wife and children again.  Do we understand each other?”

A tear formed in Rob Parker’s left eye, and rolled down his cheek.  He was barely able to nod his head.  Ellen laid his cell phone beside him.

“Call your wife’s cell in thirty minutes.  We’ll talk more then.  And remember, you’re going to work on time.  Just like normal.  If you contact the authorities - if I see a red light in my rearview mirror - you know what will happen.  And you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.”

Ellen motioned Susie Parker toward the garage, but then reconsidered and turned around to speak to Rob Parker once again.  “There’s no reason to be a hero here.  Someone stole ten kilos of coke from an associate of mine.  It’s going to be flown into New Mexico tonight.  We want that plane on the ground, and we want to recover what’s ours.  If that happens, I promise you that your kids will be in their own beds before sunrise.  I promise you that your wife will come home.  In twenty-four hours I’ll be six thousand miles away, and I’ll look very different.  I have no reason to kill them.  I don’t want to kill them.  But know this.  If you screw with me, so help me god, I will kill them.”

Sally had prepared a booklet of photos of Elizabeth Ellen Hayes for distribution to everyone involved in the assignment.  The Florida driver’s license photo, the federal court system ID photo, the ID photo from the cruise line she’d worked for, the California driver’s license photo from years earlier, the photo Sally took in the café and the photos from the funeral.  And then there were several computer-generated variations as well, including several based on Sam’s descriptions of Ellen.

FDLE agents had been substituted for many of the regular employees at the general aviation terminal.  The woman behind the information desk, the fuel attendant, the janitor, and two mechanics were all undercover FDLE.  As were several passengers, pilots, and flight attendants. And then there were the hidden agents monitoring the surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition software, and the agents viewing the approaches and the open tarmac with night vision equipment.  Of course, everyone was well armed.

Tillis wore the uniform of a copilot and Sally was dressed as a flight attendant.  They accompanied Bubba, Sam, and Sandi to the corporate jet.  All five wore bulletproof vests.  By 9:50 p.m. they were on the plane, and Sally was checking in with the team.  There was nothing to report.

“I’m gonna fire this baby up and get my clearances,” Bubba announced as he turned to make his way to the cockpit. 

Tillis stood and began to follow, but Bubba shook his head.  “Sorry to disappoint you, Tillis.  Especially since you got that pretty new outfit and all, but Sam’s my copilot tonight.”

Tillis turned to Sam with a look of surprise on his face.  “You’re a pilot?”

“I have 70 or 80 hours of single engine time.  In a little Cessna 172.  But it was a long time ago.”  Sam answered.

“Really?”  Sandi asked with doubt in her voice.

Sam nodded.  “When I lived in San Diego.”

“That’s not exactly time in type.  The Citation X is the fastest civilian airplane in the world.  It requires a crew of two.”  Tillis sounded uptight.  Like the cop that he was.

Bubba produced a huge belly laugh.  “Get your panties out of a wad, Tillis.  Dang.  You’re as tense as a dog shittin’ a peach seed.  I‘ll be in the left seat.”  Bubba shook his head in mock disgust and slapped Sam on the back.  “What will this be, Sam?  Lesson number five?”

“Eight,” Sam answered hesitantly, concerned about the conflict he’d caused.

“Time flies when you’re havin’ fun,” Bubba responded as he directed Sam to the front of the aircraft.  After he’d settled into the soft leather of the seat opposite Sam, Bubba leaned into the aisle and winked at Tillis.  “Relax.”  Then he nodded at Sally.  “And have the girl fix you a drink.”

Sally gave Bubba the finger.  “We stay put until 10:10.  Maybe she got caught in traffic.”

“What traffic?  It’s time to piss on this fire and call in the dogs.”  Bubba replied.

“We wait ten more minutes,” Sally ordered.

Bubba smiled broadly at Sally.  “Yes sir, ma’am.”  Then he winked at Tillis again.  “Tough as woodpecker lips, ain’t she.”

The Citation X was an eight to twelve seat medium-size business jet, and since the Concorde had been taken out of service, it was indeed the fastest civilian airplane in the world.  Thanks to a highly swept back supercritical wing design and two Rolls Royce/Allison turbo-fan engines, the airplane could travel .92 Mach, or 605 miles per hour.  It was a complex and unforgiving machine.

The sleek jet had been in the air for almost an hour, and had traveled over 500 statute miles.  For most of that time, Tillis sat silently in the darkness, staring out the window.  Finally, Sally took the seat next to him.