You Can’t Stop Me (17 page)

Forty-some minutes later, Choi was set up in a dark room in the Pratt Police Department with a DVD player hooked up to an old tube TV. While most of his team was down the hall, working their own specialties, he was subjected to your classic Dirty Job But Somebody’s Gotta Do It: going through security video, grainy washed-out footage, looking for even a single frame that showed something it shouldn’t, something
off
, a person in the wrong place, a car that looked out of place,
any
damn thing.

Mounted where it met the cross corridor, the camera on the hall from the lobby should reveal anyone coming in that way. Ten rooms were on each side to the left, and ten more to the right. Other cameras gave views of that same corridor in either direction.

Choi started with the hallway with Carmen’s doorway. He would fast-forward until he saw someone, then would slow down, back up, and look from just before the person entered until they went into their room. Shortly after midnight on the video, his teammates made their appearances—Jenny went into her room, Anderson into his, and even Choi himself. The last one to enter a room, at the far end, was Carmen…then nothing.

He fast-forwarded as slowly as possible—unlike the old VHS, DVDs skipped frames rather than skimming over them. Finally, nearly half an hour after Carmen had closed her door, someone came down the hall.

Choi sat up.

With the person’s back to the camera, all Choi could make out was a sweatshirt and jeans and a ball cap.

Choi’s cell seemed to leap into his hand; but he didn’t hit any of the numbers just yet. Instead, he watched as the ball cap–wearing man—at least that much seemed clear, that this was indeed a male—fairly swaggered down the hall, in a gait with purpose and no hesitation.

Someone who knew where he was going….

Ball Cap stopped just short of Carmen’s room, and knocked. A pause while he waited. Then, he lifted the front of the sweatshirt slightly and withdrew from his waistband what, from this angle and distance, appeared to be a gun…but Choi already knew it wasn’t.

When Carmen finally opened the door, Choi somehow managed not to yell,
No!
at the screen.

Instead, he merely watched in mute rage as the Taser fired, and he caught just a glimpse of Carmen before she tumbled back into her room.

The man went in after her, his face still not visible as he slipped in and shut the door.

After a minute or so, the door opened, and he stepped out with a human-sized shape wrapped in the bedspread over his shoulder, like a carpet hauler making a delivery. The door to the side parking lot was right there, couldn’t have been handier, and the guy disappeared through it.

Choi hadn’t seen anything that would help them identify Carmen’s attacker—all he had accomplished was to confirm that Carmen had indeed been abducted.

He hoped Jenny could work some of her computer voodoo and enhance the picture enough that they’d be able to ID the guy; but he frankly didn’t hold out much hope, from what he’d seen so far.

He gave Harrow a call, and reported.

“So it’s a kidnapping,” Harrow said.

“Yeah. Where does that leave us with the FBI?”

“…I’ll work on that. Keep at that footage. Maybe you’ve seen enough to make him on the convenience store or bank video.”

“Still some motel vid to check, too. Anyway, I’m on it, boss.”

He pocketed his cell and changed discs to check the hallway coming from the lobby. Without a key card, the front door would be the only way the guy could get in at that hour.

He fast-forwarded to just short of the time the man came around the corner into Carmen’s hallway. This camera provided a view from the intersection with the cross-corridor straight to the front door.

The man came in, head down, glanced for a second toward the front desk to his left, then kept coming right at camera, seemingly aware of its presence and not wanting to give it a good look.

How did he know the camera was there?

Had Ball Cap been in a motel of the same chain, laid out identically, or had he been in this particular motel before? Was he a local? A non-local who had cased the place?

When the man disappeared from the shot, Choi reran the disc twice before he decided he hadn’t missed anything. The next disc was the main parking lot, but there was nothing to see. The abductor had probably parked on the side and walked around, staying close to the building. Otherwise, he would have to carry Carmen’s body to the front, and that was unlikely.

This camera, from above the entrance, swept back and forth across the parking lot and revealed no sign of movement after the team’s buses emptied and they’d all come inside.

The camera on the side of the building was mounted above the door too, and similarly swept back and forth. Choi synced up the time for when the kidnapper and his package should have popped out the door, but the investigator saw nothing. Problem with the camera was that it showed the lot and nothing of the sidewalk next to the building, aimed just a few degrees too high.

“Shit,” Choi said.

He kept the video rolling, hoping the guy would come out and cross the parking lot to one of the vehicles…

…but he never did.

Choi was just about to give up when the camera swept left and caught the roof of a vehicle sliding by to the right.

“
There
,” he said, pointing to the right as if that would make the camera move faster.

Painfully slow, the camera finally swept back to the right, Choi expecting the truck to be long gone. To his surprised delight, the truck sat at the motel entrance, its tail to camera.

Better to be lucky than smart
, he thought.

A car passing on the street had forced the truck to wait, and those few seconds were Christmas to Choi.

The truck was obviously a Ford F-150, gray on the washed-out security video, and the license plate stared right back at him, as did a sticker on the back window. From here, nothing was clear enough to make out, but he felt Jenny Blake and her laptop would see this stuff just fine.

He dialed Harrow, who answered on the second ring.

“I think we’ve got the son of a bitch,” Choi said, then he explained.

“Get Jenny on it,” Harrow said. “Anderson’s been going over the map some more—he thinks whatever the target’s center indicates, it’ll be within Smith County. Probably a town called Lebanon—about a hundred seventy miles north of here, straight up US 281.”

“How soon we leaving?”

“That’s up to Jenny. Get her on this. Once she’s got what she needs at the PD, we’re on our way.”

“You got it, boss.”

Soon, after Jenny Blake had loaded the contents of not only that disc onto her laptop, but all the rest—including the convenience store and bank footage—she told Choi they were set to go.

“Already?”

“Yup. I’ll do the work on the road. You found a good image, Billy. Shouldn’t take long.”

Within half an hour, both buses and the semi-trailer crime lab were rolling up the highway toward Lebanon, Kansas, where three hundred people normally lived. When
Crime Seen!
showed up, they would add twenty-some to the population of the town, which would represent more growth than the place had seen in a decade.

The team rode in the trailer-cum-crime lab, each working in his or her own way on finding Carmen Garcia. Though the search for her kidnapper and that of the serial killer were almost certainly one in the same, the team was now centered upon getting Carmen back.

No camera or audio personnel were in the crime lab, the camera teams having been ushered to the bus by Harrow. The lab was now off limits for them. The TV show was a secondary concern at present (really, it always had been); but now they were trying to save one of their own, and didn’t care to cater to camera crews underfoot.

In the lab, Harrow sat them down right away, and stood in their midst, working them like an actor doing theater in the round.

“We have a kidnapping,” he said, “and that means FBI.”

Laurene asked, “Have we called them?”

“Chief Walker will be doing that. I asked him to give us, well…what they used to call in old western movies, a head start.”

Chris Anderson was frowning. “Why?”

“Because if we waited for the FBI, we would be stuck back there, Chris, as material witnesses to that crime. We aren’t law enforcement, and we aren’t required to deal with the FBI until or unless they catch up with us.”

Laurene said dryly, “So keep an eye on caller ID.”

Harrow nodded. “We’ll cooperate with them, of course. But right now I think we have a better shot at this bastard than they do.”

Pall said, “No wonder you didn’t let the cameras record this.”

“Michael, would you suggest we wait back there, and turn this over to the FBI?”

“No. Make that,
hell no
. I never had any use for those stuffed shirts.”

Coming from the well-dressed, fairly formal-of-speech Pall, this was pretty amusing. But nobody laughed or even smiled. Or, for that matter, objected.

“We will of course cooperate fully,” Harrow went on. “The originals of the security-cam discs are back with Chief Walker—the federal investigators will have access to the same evidence as we do. If anyone feels I’m overstepping, or putting the team in any legal jeopardy, say so now. And I won’t try to stop anyone who feels that calling the FBI right now is the thing to do.”

No one did.

They had been on the road for just over an hour now. Jenny Blake was working on enhancing the crappy quality of the security video from the motel. Choi was next to her, at a computer station, checking convenience-store video, Laurene nearby going through bank cam footage. Anderson was at another computer researching Lebanon itself, and Pall was testing the blood from the motel room to make sure it really was Carmen’s. Having seen the security video, Choi already had no doubt.

Harrow was on the phone, and his half of the conversation with network president Dennis Byrnes served as a soundtrack for their labor.

“That’s right, Dennis,” Harrow said. “Abducted. Kidnapped, yes.”

A long pause was followed by the chipmunk sound of someone speaking quickly on the other end of a nearby cell.

Exasperated, Harrow said, “I don’t
know
what the network’s liability is to her family, Dennis. I’m sure it will be less, if you let us do our work, and get her back alive.”

Another pause.

“Ask the lawyers, Dennis…What? I haven’t really
thought
about it. Dennis, I have to get back to it.”

And Harrow clicked off and said, “Jesus.”

Choi asked, “What?”

“Byrnes wanted to know if I thought this would make ‘good TV.’”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

“You know what would be a good twist?” Choi asked. “The killer throwing Dennis Byrnes off the rooftop of UBC.”

“Bad taste, Billy,” Harrow said.

Laurene said, “But a good idea.”

“Oh
shit
,” Jenny said, and they all turned her way.

“What?” Harrow asked.

“Got the license number.”

“And?”

“It’s registered to Herman A. Gibbons of Lebanon, Kansas.”

Choi swung a fist, saying, “We’ve
got
him!”

But Jenny’s face registered confusion, not jubilation.

“What?” Choi asked.

“When I got the name from the DMV,” Jenny said, “I Googled the guy.”

“And?” Harrow asked.

The little computer expert met her boss’s gaze. “Herman A. Gibbons? He’s the Smith County sheriff.”

Company was coming.

Wouldn’t be long now. They wouldn’t make it today, maybe not even tomorrow, but Friday for sure.

They could even do the show live from his house. That would be something—all those messages he had delivered would be worth it. And he had
just
the bait….

Leaned back in his frayed old lounge chair, the Messenger looked over at the couch where the TV girl lay on her back, duct tape over her mouth and binding her hands behind her back. She had awoken earlier, but homemade chloroform had put her back to sleep.

He took no pleasure in putting her through this. He hadn’t anticipated how uncomfortable this would make him, prolonged dealing with somebody up close and personal. Usually, delivering a message, it had been get in and get out. He’d mostly been able to avoid even viewing his targets as people at all, just dots on the big target he was making.

This was different. This was unsettling.

He expected her to be waking up soon. He’d had her for nearly sixteen hours now. Even in just the T-shirt and shorts, without makeup, she was still pretty.

In some ways, she reminded him of Cathy. Reminded him of what it was like to have a life, a wife, a family. The thing between his legs was twitching quite a bit now, and it felt good, but made him feel guilty. He was not about hurting people or humiliating them, not at all. He wasn’t that kind of person.

Suddenly he became aware of tears trailing down his cheeks. This was no time to give in to weakness. It was weakness, after all, his inability to protect his family from men who were stronger or more powerful than he was, that had put him in this situation.
His
weakness, not Cathy’s. Never Cathy’s.

The woman on the sofa awakened, slowly, looking around, not sure what had happened to her or where she was. He didn’t rush it. They had some time left—no need to be harsh.

He watched as she got used to her shabby new surroundings, took them in. When she finally looked over at him, he tried to smile, a sort of comforting, welcoming smile. But her face became a mask of fear and confusion and something else…hate? She didn’t need to hate him. He didn’t hate her.

Under the tape, her mouth tried to scream, but the sound was a muffled nothing, as she thrashed around on the sofa.

The thing twitched.
Stop it
, he told it.

Rising, smoothing his pants to keep that thing down and in its place, and moving to her side, he made cooing sounds, hoping to soothe her; but for no good reason, the closer he got, the more she thrashed and muffle-screamed.

Finally, as if to a naughty puppy, he said, “Now, honey, you have got to settle down.”

She glared at him. Big brown eyes, terrified and hateful and pretty.

“Look, tell you what—if you settle down, I’ll help you into the bathroom. You must need to you-know-what, by now.”

She continued to glare at him.

“Or…” He made a show of shrugging. “…you can go right where you are. Doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.” He turned away and folded his arms, and his chin went up, a disapproving parent.

She responded, as best she could, through the tape, not screaming, but a sort of pitiful plea now.

He turned back to her.

Her eyes were still wide, but something in them had softened.

“All right,” he said. “Bathroom it is.”

He unbound her feet, and, when she didn’t try to kick him or anything, he helped her up, then led her to the tiny bathroom. At the door, she implored him with her eyes.

“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t untie you. I promise not to look.”

She frowned.

“Sorry, honeybun, that’s as good as I can do. We can always take you back to the couch, and you can piddle yourself.”

The bathroom had faded green windowless walls, gray bubbled ceiling that was once white, rust stains in the sink, tub, and toilet. He wasn’t proud of it by any means.

“Ain’t much to look at,” he admitted when he saw the concern in her eyes. “But she’ll do the trick.”

He lined her up in front of the toilet, then—keeping his eyes on hers—he squatted a little and gently drew down her shorts. It twitched, and he told it,
Stop that!
When he got her situated on the stool he walked out and closed the door. Nothing in there for her to cause trouble with.

He listened at the door, heard tinkling, then no tinkling, and went back in, maintained eye contact as he pulled her up, then her shorts. He flushed the john. When they were back in the living room, he let her sit on the couch instead of recline.

“Thirsty?” he asked.

She swallowed. Then nodded.

He opened a cooler next to his chair, withdrew a can of Diet Coke for her, which he opened, then inserted a straw.

He crossed the room to her, and said, “This is your brand, isn’t it?”

She seemed momentarily surprised.

She shouldn’t have been, he thought—thanks to Facebook and MySpace, she’d supplied him a goodly portion of information about herself. Just because he lived in a crummy house didn’t mean he couldn’t use a computer.

He got his pocketknife out. “Hold still.”

Her eyes widened, but she froze. He made a tiny slit in the tape where her lips met. He was very careful when he did it, just as he was careful in every aspect of his life now. If he’d been careful back then, when he had a life with Cathy, maybe things would be different now.

He stuck the straw through the slit, then held the can up, saying, “Drink.”

She did.

“You’re going to have to lie down again, after this,” he said. “And you’ll have to take another little nap.”

She looked terrified.

“No, go ahead and drink—it’s okay.”

She drank but still looked scared.

“It’s just that I’ve still got a lot to do. Your friends will be here soon, and everything has to be ready.”

Her eyes widened.

He looked at her gravely. “Company’s coming.”