With Child (24 page)

"How the fuck did you know that?"

"I've been busy, Al. I just found out. He's been sending Jules messages. He sent her a present, too - his old army dog tags. I assume he was in the army?"

"Yes. Jani... Jani told me he was dead. I still don't know if she honestly thought he was, or if she told herself he was so many times that she began to believe it herself, or - Anyway, that doesn't matter. What matters is, if Jules's father snatched her, there's a good chance she's still alive."

"Al, tell me, please tell me there's something visible on his car's license plates," she prayed.

"The car's registered to a Mark Kendall. He lives in the middle of nowhere in southern Oregon, two, three hours from Medford."

"It's him?"

"Sounds like. We've stayed away until we knew what the hell we were dealing with, but the FBI's already set up a team in Lakeview."

"I'll leave tonight, be there before morning. Where should I go?"

"They've taken over a building at - where the hell's that address? Here it is." He read it off to her. "It's a bank that just went bust; the FBI is borrowing it."

"Where will you be?" she asked him.

"I'll be there," he said, and hung up.

She lifted the receiver from her ear and placed it gently on the base that was mounted on the wall, staring at it for a long moment before she turned to the others. Struggling to contain the riot of emotions set off by the rebirth of hope, she looked first at Lee, then at Dio.

"Jules may be alive," she said.

"His name is Marshal James Kimbal, known as Marsh," the FBI man had begun, but that had been a long, weary time ago, and Kate now felt as if she'd been sitting for a week in this chair around the long table in the anonymously corporate boardroom in this building in southern Oregon. She'd arrived here at some ungodly hour on Monday morning, having driven through the night, and had sat here, it seemed, ever since. It was now Wednesday, and as far as she could see, they were setting off on a second full day of the same circular discussion that had occupied part of Monday and all day Tuesday.

Even the photograph of Jules that was pinned to the wall, blurry from enlargement and the dust in the air between the girl and the telephoto lens, failed to charm anymore. When she'd first seen it on Monday afternoon, she couldn't take her eyes off it for the sheer joy of seeing evidence of Jules alive. Now her attention, what was left of it, was all for the man who walked in front of Jules, the man with the gun in his hand, the man who had tracked Jani and found Jules and taken her out from under Kate's unconscious nose.

Since those introductory words on Monday afternoon, the compilers of evidence - those not occupied with Anton Lavalle two hundred miles to the north - had been in high gear. Photographs, a couple of nearly inaudible long-range recordings, and a detailed history of an obsessed father had been wheeled in, and analysts and recommendations had begun. And they had continued, until Kate was beginning to regret that the investigation was as high-key as it had turned out. Normally, a father kidnapping a daughter would not merit two FBI agents, a sheriff and his deputy (who knew the land like the backs of their sun-beaten hands), and two highly qualified psychiatrists, experts in the field of kidnapping (one speaking for the mind of the villain, the other, the only woman in the room aside from Kate, sharing her expert opinion on the mental state of the child victim). The experts were there as spillover from the Lavalle case, having been sent down because they were more or less in the neighborhood; the others were there because of Al, and because it had begun as a highly visible case in the media. One of the agents was unhappy about being in the sticks rather than in Portland, and both of the experts were tired and just a bit bored. Al was present because he was, after all, experienced in the field, and Kate had a seat at the table because he wanted her to. Various other people had been in and out of the boardroom during the last two days, from Jani (for an uncomfortable time, causing a collective sigh of relief when she left) to D'Amico (who shuttled back and forth a few times from one end of Oregon to the other before it was decided that he was best used on his home ground in Portland) and a handful of technicians and other law-enforcement personnel, who came and went as they were needed.

Two things had justified the cautious and high-tech approach they were taking: Kimbal had a well-documented tendency toward violence, and the girl's stepfather was a cop. There was no way they could use the standard approach, which would have been to take a couple of sheriff's deputies and bring the girl back. The core eight people had spent the last two days discussing evidence and options, and by now they were thoroughly fed up with one another.

"Look," Al was saying tiredly, "even you guys aren't allowed just to take the guy out without even giving him a warning."

"We're not suggesting that," began the FBI man at the head of the table.

"Sounds to me like you are. You just said you couldn't go in at night because of his dogs and because he and Jules are always in the cabin together, but during the day you can't get in fast enough to separate them without alerting him. Short of cold-blooded murder with a sniper scope, what're you going to do, disguise yourselves as rocks?"

Several angry voices spoke up at once, and Kate half-listened to the argument, her eyes drawn to the enlarged photos of the small cabin where Jules had been taken by her father.

It was literally out in the middle of nowhere, in an expanse of knee-high scrub and rock, five miles from the nearest neighbor. For a paranoid ex-con with survivalist leanings out to save his only daughter from the wicked world, it was perfect: He could see the enemy coming, miles away.

Other photos tacked up on the carpeted walls showed fuzzy images of Marsh Kimbal, lanky and black-haired. In several of them, Jules followed behind, but the pictures, taken over a considerable distance with lenses like telescopes, were too hazy to give a hint of the girl's expression. To Kate, though, the girl's body language told of her confusion and doubt.

The argument was coming around again, and it was time for Kate to say her bit. She stirred, waited for an opening, and spoke up.

"I still think you're wrong. I know kidnap victims always fall in love with their captors, but I don't believe Jules would fall for his crap, not in the long run. I mean, look, the man's a fascist."

"He's a survivalist," corrected the male psychiatrist, and Kate went on hurriedly before he could present a lecture on political niceties.

"Same thing," she said. "He's a sexist and a swine, and Jules would never go for it. You won't have any trouble separating her from him."

"She's only a child," he insisted.

"She's got more brains than any three adults, present company not excluded."

"She may be bright," commented the woman expert, "but that doesn't mean she is not gullible."

"Okay," Kate conceded. "Granted, intelligent people can be really stupid. But not Jules, not in this case. I know that if I go in there all by myself, let her see me, just ease in and out again, she'll read it as a warning, so that when you come in with force, she won't panic. She'll be ready to come to us. On the other hand, if you just descend on her with guns blazing, then she probably would hang on to Kimbal, because she wouldn't know what the hell was going on. An adult wouldn't, either."

At this point in the argument's cycle, the head man normally either redirected the flow or called for a break, but this time, before he could do more than place his hands on the table preparatory to shifting his chair back, the woman expert sat forward and placed her gold pen onto the glossy wood with an authoritative click.

"Inspector Martinelli may be right," she stated. The room went still in surprise. "If she did succeed in going in, making contact with the child, possibly even conveying a message, and coming away, then we would be in much the stronger position: Jules would be forewarned, and we would have had a direct look into Kimbal's defenses. If she failed, one of three things would have happened: She would be driven off, taken hostage herself, or shot outright. In the first case, we would not be much worse off than we are now, nor in the second, which would also give us the thin advantage of having a trained adult present to oppose Kimbal. As to the third possibility, I don't know that there is much to say, other than noting that Inspector Martinelli is clearly aware of the risks involved, has had a good deal of field experience with decoy situations, and does not appear to me suicidal."

Well, thought Kate, feeling her mouth go dry, it's always good to have a clear mind to tell us how matters lie. She glanced at Hawkin, but he was not looking at her.

"I still think I should be the one to go," he was saying.

Both psychiatrists began immediately to shake their heads. Even the man agreed that, with this particular hostage taker, any casual intruder would have to appear blatantly harmless. Were they in a city, an aged drunk might do, but not miles from the closest bar. The analysts knew enough about Marsh Kimbal to feel certain that he would take an adult male intruder as a threat. He might believe that a woman was harmless, though, and that she was stupid enough to get lost among the dirt roads of eastern Oregon.

For once, Kate agreed with the experts.

And for once, to everyone's astonishment, the disparate law-enforcement personnel assembled in the room seemed on the verge of agreement, as well. So tired of waiting that they were willing to go along with any proposal actually involving forward motion, they found themselves, with varying degrees of reluctance, agreeing to Kate's proposal.

The rest of the morning was spent laying out plans and fallbacks, and then Kate was excused so that she could put on her fancy-dress costume.

Kate sat, clenching and loosing her hands on the wheel of the little Japanese car, staring through the streaked windshield and over the carefully dirtied hood at the bare road that stretched out into the distance.

Beside her, Al Hawkin rubbed his hand over his mouth, grimacing at the scratchy sound, and broke the silence.

"You don't have to, you know."

"Al, the sooner you get out of the car, the sooner I can get on with this."

"I could go."

"Al," she said warningly.

"All right." He made no move toward the door handle. "Are you scared?"

"Of course I'm scared. I'm always scared when I dress up as a decoy. It's gotten so I start to sweat whenever I pick up a tube of lipstick."

He smiled dutifully at the feeble joke. "Christ, I hate sending you out there without a backup."

"You're not sending me out anywhere," she said, bristling slightly. He turned to look at her for the first time since they'd left town an hour before.

"I wonder if Jules will actually recognize you."

"My new look," she said. "I thought the lace on the collar was a really nice touch." With her tired blond curls, light pink lipstick, trim brown penny loafers, and tan polyester trousers - she'd drawn the line at the flowered skirt that had been offered - she looked like a conservative young woman, the sort who could easily get lost out here in the middle of nowhere.

"In my youth, they used to call that a Peter Pan collar."

"Did they? Funny. Jules told me once she hated Peter Pan - the idea of lost boys made her furious. This was when we were looking for Dio," she explained.

"Yes? Well, I'm sorry Lee can't see you."

"Jon would love it even more. Get out of here, Al. I need to go."

"Watch your, back, Martinelli," he said, and surprised them both by reaching out an arm to embrace her shoulders briefly. In a moment, he was standing on the roadside, watching her drive away, before he turned and got into the back of the governmental car that followed her for a while before turning off to join the rest of the watchers on the low hillock three miles south of the cabin where Jules Cameron was being kept by the man who would be her father.

Kate decided that sweaty hands and heart palpitations were not unsuited to the role she was supposed to be playing, so she might as well not try to hide them. She pulled up in a tentative manner in the dirt space in front of the cabin and sat for a moment, studying the two sleek Doberman pinschers who stood inside their high-wire cage that adjoined the house. They were studying her in turn through the wide spaces of the wire, their heads down, their jaws shut in concentration, their eyes hungry, as she opened her door and cautiously got out of the car. Nothing moved, including the dogs, although she knew that Kimbal and Jules had been inside as recently as when she'd dropped Al, or the FBI men following her would have let her know. Besides, his pickup truck was still there, parked under the bare tree that in the summer would shade a part of the dog run.

She walked around the back of the car, keeping it between her and the dogs, and walked up the two worn wooden steps to knock at the screen door. She stepped back down onto the packed earth, turned her back on the door, and waited.

Tense as she was, she didn't hear the inner door open until the man spoke.

"Yeah?"

Kate spun around, laughing nervously at the shadowy figure behind the screen. His right hand was on the door, his left hand resting on the jamb at shoulder level. She squinted up at him.

"You startled me," she said, with just the slightest drawl in her voice, and tittered again.

"What do you want?" he said.

"Well, I'm lost, I think. At least none of the roads much resemble the directions I was given, and haven't for some time now. I wonder if you might tell me where I am."

She felt his eyes on her, and wondered where Jules was. "Where d'you want to be?" he asked.

"A place called Two-Bar Road? Here, let me get my map. I'll show you." She went to the car, aware of his suspicious gaze burning her, a gaze echoed by the two animals off to her right. She opened the passenger door, took out a crumpled and completely unfolded Oregon road map, and carried it back to the house.

He had not moved. He did not move when she stood on the lower step and fumbled with the awkward sheet, balling it up rather than folding it to the place.

"See, I was here, and - here's the place. It's just a driveway, but they call it Two-Bar Road. It's there where the circle is - see? D'you mind if I open the door so you can see it? That's better. So, can you tell me where I am now?"

No sign of Jules, not even in the slice of tidy room she could see when he allowed the door to open just enough to bring his right shoulder out and point to a place on the map with his index finger while his left hand stayed glued to the inside door jamb - with a gun, she speculated, nestled up against the wood trim and held tightly in place? Kate fancied she could smell gun oil.

"You're right here," he said, his ringer in the blank space forty miles from the imaginary Two-Bar Road.

"Am I really? Oh no. And it'll be dark by the time I get there. How on earth did I get way over here? Oh well. Let me just make sure I have it right. I don't suppose you have a pen? No, don't bother," she drawled, although he had made no move toward stepping inside his house. "I'm sure I have one in the car." She went back to the passenger side of the car, rummaged about in the fake leather handbag, and came back with a cheap ballpoint pen. One of the dogs was smelling the air for her scent, its muzzle protruding from the cage up to its eyebrows. "Those are certainly powerful-looking dogs you've got there," she said to their owner. No response, and Kate was torn between the building fury that nothing whatsoever was happening and the need to maintain her line of helpless chatter.