The Pawnbroker (26 page)

Nancy drove into the northwest lot, as directed, then parked fifty yards from either street and turned off her vehicle lights, waiting.

“DuPree has warned off university cops and APD patrols, right?” Gordon said, watching as he spoke.

“Yeah.” Charlie's cell phone vibrated and he brought it to his ear. It was Nancy, on a second phone.

“No vehicles or people on foot, unless they're really prone or in a hole,” Charlie reported. “Right, Gordo?”

“Right.”

“All we can do now is wait for another call, I guess. DuPree is parked on University, north of my location. All I can see is his vehicle. He's just off the street in the shadow of a building. He can see me, he says,” Nancy added.

“Charlie. You hear that?” Gordon called out, turning his head toward the south.

“Helicopter,” Charlie said. “Could be a news copter, but more likely air force or army, coming from the airport.”

“In our direction,” Gordon said, turning and looking up into the clear night sky with his binoculars. “Not military, no TV logo.”

“Nancy?” Charlie asked. He turned to Gordon. “She hung up.”

“Maybe she's on the Eddie line.”

A half minute went by, then Charlie's phone vibrated again.

“Get under cover, guys,” Nancy said. “New instructions from Eddie. Believe it or not, he wants me to meet the helicopter in the northwest corner of The Pit parking. Your area.”

“Copy.” Charlie turned to Gordon. “Head for The Pit,” he said. “We need to find some dark shadows. They're in the chopper, and they're going to land in this lot.”

Gordon started running immediately, swerving to his right, hoping to keep out of sight of the copter approaching from the south.

Charlie stayed with him, careful not to trip while stepping on and off curbs of the parking lanes. Fifteen seconds later they reached the north side of the arena walls, well away from the glass. Though much higher than the original design since the remodeling, the structure still wasn't as high as most sports stadiums because almost all the eighteen thousand-plus seating and the playing floor were below ground level.

Nevertheless, the walls at this spot were high enough to create plenty of shadow. They quickly found a vertical support beam that stood out from the wall, giving them a dark place to stand.

“Crap. Go here, go there. This is more like
Die Hard 3
than real life. I thought we'd left this behind,” Gordon said. They looked up just as the helicopter, looming large even in the dark, hovered a few hundred yards away. It moved slowly, the pilot obviously wary of the regularly spaced light poles and the small trees.

Nancy's sedan came to a stop just inside the lot, headlights on and engine running.

“I count three adults, including the pilot. Where's Rene?” Gordon said, his binoculars on the cockpit of the noisy machine as it settled onto the parking lot. The pilot killed the engine, which whined quickly down to silence. The rotor blades slapped a while longer.

“Can you see Rene?” Charlie asked into the phone.

“Not yet,” Nancy said. “Hold on, Ruth. Stay inside until we see your son,” she ordered.

Charlie watched the helicopter, which was on the asphalt, resting at a forty-five degree angle to them. The cockpit was to their right, the tail to their left. “I see a big guy getting out. Looks like he's carrying the boy against his chest,” he said.

The man, walking stooped over, finally stopped and stood just outside the sweep of the chopper blades. He was visible to the car but had his back to Charlie and Gordon. Another man got out and hurried over beside him, holding what looked like a phone, judging from the glow of the display.

Charlie heard a phone tone. Nancy answered it and put the call on speaker. “You see the boy,” a man, not Eddie, said. “Bring out the blackmail material and walk toward the helicopter. When I tell you to stop, put the material down, then walk back halfway to the car.”

“Let my son go first. I'll give you the damn papers, you son of a bitch,” Ruth yelled.

“Sounds like he's the son, and you're the bitch, Mrs. Brooks. Just do as I say or we're leaving.”

“Go ahead, Ruth. If you try anything, you bastard, you're the first one who'll die tonight,” Nancy warned.

Charlie couldn't see Nancy—she was blocked by the two men at this angle—but he knew she had the M15s laser sight on phone-man's face. Unfortunately, there was nothing to do but wait and do nothing.

Ruth walked over quickly, set the thick portfolio down, then stepped back.

“Keep walking, lady, if you really want your son back,” the guy with the phone said. Ruth walked away slowly, then stood beside Nancy, who was still aiming the assault rife.

The man walked over, crouched and picked up the portfolio, then stuck the phone in his pocket. He was far enough from the hot engine of the helicopter for his own heat signature to stand out clearly, but Charlie still hadn't seen his face.

Charlie watched as the man opened the portfolio and aimed a penlight inside. After several seconds, he put away the flashlight, then stood, portfolio in hand.

“Let the boy go, now. Or I'll kill you where you stand,” Nancy said clearly.

“Don't lose control now, lady, we're almost done. I'm going to climb inside the helicopter, then my friend will set the boy down on the ground. Now don't worry, he's been drugged to keep him quiet, but he's just asleep. Start shooting or try and rush the helicopter and the kid will never wake up. Stay back.”

Phone guy climbed into the helicopter and the pilot restarted the engine. As the noise level increased, the man holding Rene laid him gently on the ground. He hurried back to the helicopter, climbed inside, and the machine rose quickly, throwing dust and small debris everywhere despite the paved surface.

Charlie looked at the figure on the ground. “Nancy, keep Ruth back. Something's wrong.”

“No frigging heat signature,” Gordon muttered. “Either he's dead…”

“Or he's not real.”

Ruth tried to slip around Nancy, who grabbed her arm. Ruth fought back, then suddenly gave up and collapsed, hysterical. Her scream was low and agonizing—the pain from a tortured heart, not ripped flesh.

Suddenly there was a bright spark and an almost instant explosion. “Flashbang!” Charlie yelled, too late to be heard or avoid the blinding light.

 

Chapter Eighteen

He couldn't see jack, but at least he could hear again, though faintly at first. Ruth was crying loudly and Nancy was shouting something.

“You guys okay?” she yelled.

“Yeah,” Gordon said.

“Fine.” Charlie looked at the ground, trying to shed the afterimage, like a giant flashbulb had gone on right in front of his face—which it had, actually.

“I think, hope, it was a dummy, not Rene,” Gordon said, walking gingerly toward the shape on the ground, which was now dismembered.

“Keep Ruth back,” Charlie ordered, stepping forward. His vision was improving, though the big blue and yellow spots hovered, like he was staring at the sun. His toe crunched on something solid, but not gooey. It didn't feel like a body part, and, unfortunately, he knew how that felt.

Bending down, he picked up the object and brought it up close to his face. “It's a dummy. One of those Halloween things. I just stepped on a rubber hand.”

“It wasn't really Rene?” Ruth managed hopefully. Charlie could see her now, walking toward the shapes on the parking lots.

“Bastards,” Nancy said, approaching and looking down at the child-sized articulated figure dressed in the clothes Rene had last worn. “They kept Rene after all.”

They gathered around the figure, which was basically intact except for an arm and the missing hand, which had probably held the flashbang grenade and whatever timer was used.

“Lawrence thinks he's got me now. If I want my son, I'll have to come back. You were right, Charlie, keeping some leverage,” Ruth said, her voice now cold and hard.

“Wish I'd been wrong. But you've still got the originals of everything, and he'll find that out once he discovers that little gotcha note on the flash drive. He'll have to deal again, and maybe this can buy us some time,” Charlie said. “Hopefully it'll take a while before he discovers he's not the only one who's been double-crossed.”

“Now what?” Gordon asked.

“We can't just sit still. Once we hear from Claudia, the Realtor, we can drive by any newly rented estates and see if we get a signal from Rene's game console,” Charlie said. “It's a shot in the dark, but at least it's proactive.”

He looked over at Nancy, who was on the phone to her captain. From what he could hear, she was giving a description of the helicopter and its flight path. Maybe she'd seen where it had gone. His vision had been too trashed at the time to see anything at all except spots.

“Think it was a rental, or his own copter?” Gordon asked, also watching Nancy.

“I'm guessing it's leased or rented. It'll take a while to find out. The pilot will stay below the airport radar as much as possible, do some fancy maneuvering and changing of direction, then probably land behind a hill or ridge at some remote location where vehicles are waiting. It was on somebody's radar screen initially, but I don't know what protocol the feds require on flight plans. Our best bet is to find Rene, not these bozos,” Charlie said.

“Right. And we need to get one of those black boxes that'll pick up his WiFi signal—assuming Rene was allowed to recharge and use the same game console. DuPree was supposed to get us a tracking unit,” Gordon said. “What the hell happened to him?”

Nancy came over, interrupting. “DuPree held back, like we all did, and was far enough away not to be blinded by the flash. He and his partner tried to follow the copter and see where it was headed. It avoided the airport and went off to the west, toward the volcanos. Then it turned and disappeared south, flying just above the cottonwoods along the bosque. DuPree's already got the state police and feds looking for it down toward Belen and Los Lunas. Even Socorro.”

“Here he comes,” Charlie said, recognizing the vehicle coming up the street toward the arena. “Let's get that black box.”

*   *   *

An hour later, with a crime-scene unit and the bomb squad going over the Rene dummy and The Pit parking lot, Charlie and Gordon were heading west toward Rio Grande Boulevard in his rental Chevy, armed with information from Claudia.

“Good thing you thought to check your e-mail when the officer dropped us off at the shop,” Gordon said. “Now we have some serious real estate to check out with DuPree's little gadget.”

“He said they got the basic units from Sandia Labs, then the techs tweaked them a little,” Charlie said. “Said the hardest part was tracking down the Nintendo people to get the codes or whatever for Rene's particular unit. Good thing you signed him up for online play.”

“Even with the rest of the community ruled out, we'll still have to get close enough for a signal—and the boy will have to be online,” Charlie said. “That'll take a lot of driving around—and luck. Who was it who said I'd rather be lucky than smart?”

“Every guy I knew who wanted to come back from their deployment with arms, legs, and head still attached,” Gordon said.

“Amen to that. Okay, for the moment we've ruled out the fancy homes around the old country club—they're just too close to each other for Lawrence-level privacy. How about we start just north of the freeway, taking the east side of Rio Grande Boulevard? There are two houses on that side that are possibilities, including the newly sold one at the far end. We can catch the three on the west side on the way back south.”

“Works for me,” Gordon said. “I'm the tech genius. You drive, and I'll fire up the black box.”

The speed limit was only twenty-five, so they didn't have to worry about attracting attention by moving too slowly. After fifteen minutes, they passed the last house and Charlie pulled over.

“Plenty of WiFi hits, but no traffic from Rene's game. Either he doesn't have the console anymore, isn't online, or just isn't around here anywhere,” Gordon said. “I'm not sure how much range these WiFi sources have, and I'm sure we picked up some from the west side of the street too.”

“Yeah, discouraging. But two of the houses we're targeting are on the street just west of Rio Grande Boulevard. When we get into that area, we'll get in as close as possible, just to be sure.”

Charlie completed the three-point turn, then headed south, again at twenty-five mph. Traffic was mostly local because people in a hurry usually took Fourth Street, which had a higher posted speed limit and stoplights instead of four-way stop signs.

“We're approaching that $3.5 mil place,” Gordon said after about five minutes. “According to Claudia, that used to be owned by a big Indy racing family.”

“It's about a quarter mile down that private lane. If Brooks and Eddie are there with Rene, they'll have people out watching,” Charlie said. “I'll creep along. Hopefully we'll be within range.”

“Okay, we're getting some WiFi. But not gaming stuff, at least traffic from the right servers,” Gordon said. “We can put this down as a maybe, then get more intelligence on the residents.”

“Right.” Charlie sped up to thirty, then slowed, looking at some old, probably two- or three-bedroom homes that had obviously been there long before the mansions. They were sturdy adobe, with pitched corrugated-metal roofs. “Cheapest house in the best neighborhood? That would be here.”

“They've got WiFi. No Nintendo connection, however. Keep driving.”

Finally, they made a sweeping turn, ninety degrees to the west, and came upon the road running parallel to Rio Grande Boulevard. Charlie slowed way down to make the curve and they headed north again.