Spencerville (32 page)

The desk clerk, a young man, looked up from a television behind the counter.

Keith adopted a manner of sexual urgency and said, "Need a room."

The clerk put a registration form on the desk.

Keith said, "How much for a few hours?"

"Same."

"Hey, I just bought her a Sizzler steak, buddy. Can you do better?"

"How long you staying?"

"Maybe midnight. You get off at midnight? You can check."

"Yeah, I'm off at midnight, but I'm not rushing you."

"Tell you what — I might be longer. I'll give you twenty-five for all night."

"Okay."

Keith filled out the registration form with some creativity, listing a Ford Escort as his car. He'd discovered that the clerk, who could possibly identify him despite the disguise, would be gone at midnight. So far, so good. He gave the young man twenty-five dollars in cash, took the key to room 7, and left.

He got into the Blazer and pulled up to a parking spot several places away from room 7. There weren't too many cars there on a Sunday night, and none of them could be seen from the highway. But he had no intention of leaving the Blazer there anyway.

They took the luggage, and Keith also took all his personal possessions out of the car, including his audiotapes, the registration, and other odds and ends.

Keith opened the door to the room, and they carried everything inside. Annie turned on a lamp and said, "It's lovely."

Actually, it was very shoddy. Keith found the telephone book under the nightstand and flipped through the yellow pages.

"What are you looking for?"

"I need... here it is." He closed the book and said, "I'll be back in about fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Where are you going?"

"To get the car out of here."

She put her hand on his arm. "I'll go with you. If they come, I don't want to be here without you."

"All right."

They went outside and got into the Blazer. Keith drove up the lane and stopped at the lighted signboard near the highway. He got out and pulled the light plug out of the electrical outlet, leaving the signboard in darkness, then got back in the Blazer and said, "Enough customers for one night."

Annie glanced at him but said nothing.

Keith pulled back onto the highway and made a right, toward Toledo. He said, "We're going to have to walk back."

"Okay."

A police cruiser came toward them from the opposite direction and passed them. Keith looked in his sideview mirror, but the cruiser kept going. He said to her, "There's a Chevrolet dealership on this road, according to the phone book. Odd number, so it'll be on the left-hand side."

She nodded. "That's a good place to leave a Chevy. You're smarter than you look, Landry."

"Thank you."

"Do you still need that mustache and glasses?"

"For your fantasy, later."

She smiled and punched his arm. "You are my fantasy."

The Chevrolet dealership came into view on the left side of the road, and Keith slowed down and took the left into the lot. The place was closed, as he thought it would be at this hour, and he found space in the used-car lot.

They got out, and Keith went around to the rear, got two screwdrivers from the toolbox, and they took off the license plates. "There. They'll wonder about the good car fairy in the morning. Let's walk. It's exactly one-point-four miles, if you're interested."

They began the walk back to the motel, along the commercial highway. Keith stuck the license plates in his waistband and zippered his windbreaker over them.

She asked him, "Will we come back for the car in the morning?"

"It's an option."

They came to a Burger King, and Keith asked, "Hungry?"

"No, my stomach is in knots."

"You need a belly-bomber. Come on."

They went into the Burger King, got hamburgers, Cokes, and fries, and sat at a table. Keith asked, "Is this as romantic as you thought it would be?"

She smiled. "When I'm with you, the airport highway looks like the Via Veneto."

"I think I'm going to throw up."

She laughed, and he put his hand on hers. "It's okay now."

She nodded.

They ate, and he found he was hungry and so was she. He glanced at his watch. It was always a good idea to put in some time outside of the room you just booked. The police sometimes got sloppy about their stakeouts when they were waiting for you to return.

She said, "Don't swallow your mustache."

He smiled. "I like you."

At ten P.M., he said, "Let's walk off the fries."

They left and crossed the highway at a light. There were absolutely no other pedestrians on this highway, and in some parts of America, pedestrians were a rare enough sight to attract attention. He picked up his pace, and she kept up with him.

They approached the dark motel sign near the lane, and Keith slowed down and took her arm. There was an all-night convenience store next to the lane that led to the motel, and he directed her into the parking lot. They stood in the lot and kept watching the motel. He asked, "Do you want to go in there and get some snacks for later?"

"No. I'm not leaving your side."

"Okay. We'll wait here a few minutes."

Keith gave it five minutes, then they walked to the motel, through the parking lot, and went to the door of room 7. If the police were here, or somewhere out there, it was already too late, so he just walked in, noting the lights were still on and nothing seemed disturbed.

Annie locked and bolted the door behind them.

Keith threw the key on the nightstand and the license plates on the bureau and looked at her. "You're a real trouper."

"You're amazing." She took his glasses off, peeled off his mustache, and kissed him.

In fact, he was basically happy with his tradecraft, which was at one time second nature to him. Now he had to think about it, but at least he knew what he was supposed to be thinking about.

Annie was unpacking her overnight bag in the bathroom, and Keith parted the blackout curtains and looked out into the parking court. Everything seemed all right, but he had this sense of deja vu, like he was in East Berlin again, looking out at the street from a window in a safe house that wasn't so safe.

So far, he thought, he'd done the best he could. Even picking Toledo because it was closer was the right decision, notwithstanding the small problem of having missed the last flight. The only thing he'd done wrong, his only true mistake, was his spontaneous decision to run off; to act on his emotions instead of his intellect. But maybe that's what the entire last two months were about. To let go, to lose control, to want someone so badly that a quarter century of doing things by the book — what they called the right combination of D&D, discipline and daring — was suddenly transformed into desire and daring, just like that. It felt good. But there was a price to pay. After his first impulsive act, all his cleverness — all of Plan B — was just damage control. He looked out into the parking lot again. "It looks okay. It is okay..."

There were no chairs in the room, so he sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes. He let himself think about the morning. There was no way they were going to Toledo Airport, of course, or any other airport. An all-points bulletin for kidnapping a police chief's wife, mother of two, and so forth was sufficiently serious to keep every cop in the state and surrounding states on full alert, unless, of course, as he'd suggested to Annie, the state police got onto Baxter. But Keith wouldn't know that immediately.

His best bet, the thing that appealed to him most, was to just get out of the state. And the best way to do that would be to wait until about seven or eight A.M., a normal, busy workday, then take a taxi into Toledo, which was a big enough city to blend in. He couldn't rent a car, as he knew, and he didn't want to steal one and compound his problems.

Trains and buses were not an option, but he had several other options — hire a limousine, charter a plane, or charter a boat to take them to a Great Lakes port someplace out of state. Charter and hire places were cash up front, didn't require identification, were not normally watched or even notified by the police, and the only question a charter or hire service usually asked was, "Where do you want to go?"

He had three other options — call the police, as Annie suggested, call the Porters, or call Charlie Adair. But none of those options seemed palatable at the moment. He might call the police in the morning, but the Porters didn't need any more problems at any hour, and lastly, Charlie Adair had a string attached to everything. Nevertheless, these were options, too, and Keith would decide in the morning.

Annie came out of the bathroom, and he stood. He said to her, "Is it your birthday?"

"No. Why?"

"You're wearing your birthday suit."

"Oh! I forgot to put on my pajamas. I'm so embarrassed. Don't look."

He smiled, and they walked to each other, embracing and kissing.

She said, "Keith, no matter what happens tonight or tomorrow, we're going to have this time now."

"We have all the time in the world."

Cliff Baxter sat alone in his office at Spencerville police headquarters. The entire fifteen-man force was on duty, some at headquarters, the rest on the road.

He drank a Coke, staring off at the opposite wall. He took some perverse satisfaction in the knowledge that he'd been right. His wife was a liar and a whore, Keith Landry was a low-life, wife-fucking prick. "I knew it."

What bothered him was the fact that they'd somehow gotten together over the past weeks, right under the noses of his stupid men, and had made their plans and gotten away. He couldn't blame himself; he'd been right on top of this from day one.

It had been relatively easy to find Annie's car. One of the options she didn't know the car had was a radio transmitter, a homing device bought by the Spencerville police for its high-tech fight against crime, and in Baxter's car was the radio receiver.

Baxter remembered walking into the Landry barn, seeing the white, gleaming Lincoln sitting there beside the tractor, and opening the car door. Cliff, Fuck you, signed Keith Landry. "No, fuck you, asshole."

He'd pocketed the note before his men could see it — not out of embarrassment, he told himself, but because it was a purely personal note and wasn't a clue to the kidnapping.

Of course, it wasn't a kidnapping, and he guessed his men knew that, but no other cop in the state knew it.

The intercom buzzed, and Sergeant Blake said, "Chief, it's Captain Delson from the State."

"Okay." Cliff Baxter picked up the phone, and Captain Delson, of the Ohio state police, said, "Chief, we got something."

Baxter sat upright in his chair. "Yeah?"

"About half an hour ago, the state police were checking out Toledo Airport, and a security man there tells them he saw the subjects. Right car, right description, and he even remembered part of the license plate, which matches."

"They get on a plane?"

"No, they missed the last flight and told the guy they were going home."

"Okay, okay. Good. You got them fixed in the Toledo area, so..."

"Right... thing is, Chief, the guy said that the woman, who he identified from the photo you sent as Mrs. Baxter, didn't look like she was under duress or being forced..."

"Ah, bullshit. The son-of-a-bitch had a gun on her..."

"Well, the male suspect — Landry — was away from the Blazer for some time, and the female was sitting alone in the vehicle."

Baxter cleared his throat and said, "Well... who was this airport guy? A security cop? How the hell does a square-badge guy know about?.."

"Chief, the subjects appeared to be wanting to board an aircraft together. This doesn't look like a kidnapping or an abduction in the strict legal sense."

Baxter didn't reply for a few seconds, then said, "You're gonna take that chance? If she winds up dead, you want to be the one that called off the search?"

"Chief, we turned this state upside down for you, and I don't respond well to threats. Look, cop-to-cop, I have to tell you, it looks like your wife ran off with this guy."

Baxter stayed silent.

Captain Delson continued, "Based on the Social Security number you gave us for Keith Landry, we faxed the FBI, but we can't seem to get much information on him. What we have seems to indicate that he's a retired colonel in the United States Army, assuming this is the same guy. No criminal record, no previous anything. We're still checking."

"Yeah... a colonel?"

"That's right."

"What's the bottom line? What are you telling me?"

"Well... I don't know. You want to fax us a deposition with the whys and wherefores and your signature?"

"Well... why don't you make the state of Ohio the complainant?"

"The state of Ohio has no complaint against this man or Mrs. Baxter."

"No? You mean you have no complaint against kidnapping?"

"Yeah, we would, but it seems you were mistaken. Look, Chief, I know this is tough, but I had that security guy on the phone myself for twenty minutes, and I have to believe that these two people he saw were the subjects of the all-points, and further, that Mrs. Baxter, whose photo he identified, was a willing companion of the male she was with. Now, we can keep looking for them, as a professional courtesy — and that's between us and not for the taxpayers to discover — but I have to put out a new bulletin that says locate and maintain observation, await further instructions, and do not question unless subjects are about to leave the jurisdiction, and do not detain or arrest unless there's probable cause. We don't need a lawsuit, and you don't need the embarrassment. Okay?"

Baxter thought a moment, then took a deep breath and said, "Landry is wanted here in connection with traffic violations, obstructing justice, harassment, and trespassing."

There was a silence on the phone, then Captain Delson said, "Well, fax us the particulars." He added, "But don't reach for things that won't stand up."

"Hey, I'm gonna send you a bench warrant, signed by the local judge here, and we will extradite. All you got to do is hold them. Spencerville will come get them."

"I'm not holding them, but if we locate them, we'll let you know. Here's something else — a Keith Landry made reservations at the Airport Sheraton in Cleveland and booked a USAir flight to New York from there." He gave Baxter the details and added, "We're watching the roads between Toledo and Cleveland, and there will be Cleveland police at the Sheraton." Captain Delson added, "We'll leave that in place for you. Also, because they were spotted at Toledo Airport, as standard operating procedure, the state and local police are checking the area motels, boardinghouses, and so forth. The subjects might not be going to Cleveland if they get wind of an all-points bulletin."

Baxter nodded. "Yeah... okay. You'll let me know as soon as you get a lead or something."

"We will." Captain Delson stayed silent, then said, "You might want to handle it yourself, man-to-man."

"Yeah... whenever and wherever you get a fix on them, you let me know." Baxter added, "I want to talk to her... I want to see if she knows what she's doing before she runs out on a husband and two kids. Hey, if you're right, and she's going with this guy willingly, then the hell with her. But I want to hear it from her own mouth. You understand."

"I do."

"Yeah... hell of a thing. Married twenty years... son and daughter in college... they're home now," he lied, "real upset... her mother almost had a heart attack. Sister can't stop crying, father is mad as hell at her. What the hell's wrong with these women today?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I appreciate all that's being done. I just want to talk to her."

"We'll keep you posted."

"I'll be right here all night." He blew his nose into the phone and said in a cracking voice, "I just want to see her again. Please, God..."

"Okay. Take it easy."

Baxter hung up and slammed the desk. "Goddamnit! I'll fucking kill her! I'll crucify that cocksucker..."

The door opened, and Sergeant Blake stuck his head in. "Everything okay, Chief?"

"Yeah. Get the hell out of here — no, wait." He thought a moment, then said, "Have Schenley fix up a bench warrant for Landry — obstructing justice, trespassing, some other shit — and tell him to go wake up Judge Thornsby and get it signed, and send it out."

"Yes, sir."

"Wait! Then get two cars, three men including you, and the homing device. We're going up to Toledo."