Boobytrap

17

Dixon was there.

He heard us coming into the vestibule; footsteps made sharp clicking sounds on the tile floor, and there he was in the archway to a darkened living room, staring at us out of eyes that even at a distance looked like those of a hunted wolfs. His lean face was haggard, showing beard shadow. The white shirt and slacks he wore were both rumpled, pulled out of shape, as if he’d been sleeping in them.

Marian said “Pat!” in a choked voice and ran to him. He folded her against him, held her, but he was looking at me over her shoulder. An angry, desperate look.

After a few seconds he eased her back and to one side, with his arm still draped around her shoulders, and said to me in a scratchy voice, “What the hell’s the matter with you? I told you to take her to the Doyles’.”

“You told me some other things, too,” I said. “That you were going to notify the state and federal agencies about the kidnapping, for one.”

“Listen…”

“No, you listen. Marian and I have a pretty good idea what’s going on in that head of yours and we’re going to sit down and talk about it, the three of us, while there’s still time.”

“What do you think you know?”

“Pat, for Christ’s sake, sacrificing yourself won’t bring Chuck back. And even if it could, you can’t make that decision alone. You can’t go through with it alone.”

“He’s right, darling,” Marian said. “It’s my choice, too. I won’t let you shut me out.”

He glared at me a little longer, but the glare lacked heat now. He stroked Marian’s hair, then turned away from her and went back into the living room.

She followed him and I followed her. Big, stucco-walled room furnished in a Spanish motif — wall hangings, tiles, pottery jars. Heavy drapes were drawn across the front window. Dixon sank onto a massive leather couch; Marian sat beside him and took his hand. I moved over to stand facing them in front of a tile-trimmed fireplace.

Nobody said anything. Up to me, I thought. Get him to admit it, that’s the first step.

“What time did Latimer call you, Pat?”

His head jerked up. But he lost the rigid posture almost immediately; his shoulders slumped and he used his free hand to maul his head in that way he had. His jaw, though, retained its stubborn jut.

“What time, Pat?”

“Tell him,” Marian said, “for heaven’s sake!”

“Few minutes before nine,” he said, as if the words were being ripped out of his throat. “Not long before you called from Judson’s.”

“Did he give you any idea where he was?”

“No. In transit, he said.”

“He let you talk to Chuck?”

“Briefly.”

Marian’s fingers dug at him. “He was all right?”

“Scared, that’s all.”

“What’d Latimer say to you?” I asked.

“He said if I wanted to see my son alive again, I’d do exactly what he told me. Exactly. He stressed the word more than once.”

“Go on. What else?”

“Don’t tell anyone that he had Chuck — no one, even Marian. Don’t talk to anyone in my office, or to the police or the FBI. Don’t leave the house until I heard from him again, some time after five o’clock. He wouldn’t call again before that.”

“Has he called since five?”

“Not yet.”

“What happens when he does?”

“He’ll tell me where to meet him. Someplace not too far away, I think.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Something he said. That it wouldn’t be long after I heard from him again that I’d be seeing Chuck.”

“And trading places with him.”

“No. That’s not what Latimer wants.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Money. Ten thousand dollars—”

“Bullshit, Pat. He wants you.”

Dead air. I imagined I could hear it crackle.

“You,” I said again. “You turn yourself over to him and he’ll release the boy unharmed — that’s his bargain, right? Your life in exchange for Chuck’s.”

A little more dead air. Then with bitterness, anger, resignation, “It’s the only way.”

“He’s a madman. You really believe he’ll release Chuck unharmed?”

“Why wouldn’t he? It’s me he’s after, you said it yourself.”

“That’s right. He wants you dead. But he also wants you to suffer, maybe more than you’re suffering right now. What better way to accomplish that than to kill your son, too?”

Marian made a pained sound. Dixon glared at me with heat again. “That’s a goddamn brutal way to put it.”

“I meant it to be brutal. Don’t tell me the prospect hasn’t occurred to you.”

It had occurred to him, all right. So had another possibility, I was certain, one that had been on my mind — and surely Marian’s — from the beginning and that none of us had spoken aloud or would for the duration. That Chuck’s life had already been snuffed out and what Latimer intended to present to Dixon was the boy’s dead body. I kept clinging to the conviction that Chuck alive was Latimer’s insurance policy, his way out in the event Dixon opted to call in the law or if anything unforeseen happened. But he was pathological — that was the bottom line. It was a crapshoot that logic or rational thought would dictate anything he did.

Dixon was still wallowing in denial. He said vehemently, “I won’t let anything happen to Chuck.”

“No? How’re you going to stop it?”

“There are ways. I’ve had training.”

“Take a hideout gun along? You wouldn’t have a chance to use it.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“Only if you catch Latimer by surprise, and you know that’s not likely to happen. He’ll figure on you being armed and he’ll be armed, too. He’s crazy but he’s not stupid.”

“I have to take the gamble, don’t you see that? I’ve been over this and over it. It’s the only way Chuck has any hope of survival. If anybody shows up except me, he’ll kill the boy right away. One whiff of the law and my son is dead. Latimer’s exact words, and I believe him. He’s an animal, he doesn’t care about a damn thing except revenge, not even his own miserable hide, and if I don’t… if I let him…” Dixon ran out of words. Things moved in his face, dark things; he mauled his hair again. The hunted eyes appealed to me, then to Marian, to please for God’s sake understand.

Across the room, the telephone rang.

It was like a siren going off in the emotion-charged confines — overloud, tearing at frayed nerve ends. We all reacted to it, Dixon the most violently. He was off the couch and racing for the phone while the echoes of the first ring were still bouncing off the stucco walls. He swept up the receiver as the second jangle started, almost knocking the base unit off its stand.

“Yes?” he said, and listened, and the adrenaline rush left him all at once, putting his body into a sag. He leaned a shoulder against the wall before he said, “Why do you—? What? He told you to call here?… All right, yes. Yes.”

He took the receiver from his ear, held it away from him as if it were something he was in a hurry to be rid of. “Your assistant,” he said, talking to me. “Urgent, she says.”

I was at his side by then. He said “Make it quick” as I took the receiver, but the words were nothing I needed to have told to me so I didn’t acknowledge them.

“Got your connection,” Tamara said. “K. M. Dusay. Latimer’s wife’s maiden name be Kathryn Marie Dusay.”

“Good work. Anything more from Felicia?”

“No.”

“You mind standing by a while longer?”

“Long as you need me.”

I rang off, returned to where Dixon and Marian were supporting each other near the fireplace. “You can’t carry the burden alone,” she was saying to him. “Shutting me out like that… what were you thinking?” He shook his head and she said, “I couldn’t stand to lose both of you.”

“You won’t lose either of us.”

“She will if you don’t listen to reason,” I said.

“Reason. What reason?”

“What Marian just said. What I’ve been saying.”

“Talk, talk, it doesn’t change anything.” He disengaged himself, stalked to where a loaded bar cart was pushed up against one of the walls. “Christ, I need a drink.”

“No, you don’t. You need to keep a clear head.”

“Yeah. Don’t you think I know that?”

“Here’s something you don’t know. I’ve got an idea where Latimer’s holding Chuck.”

He came around fast and jerky, movements that were almost feral. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Where? Jesus… where?”

“Half Moon Bay. Latimer’s been living out there. That’s what the call from my assistant was about.”

“How did you—?”

“Never mind. Not important now.”

He came over to me. “You have an address?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to give it to you yet.”

That brought him right up in my face. His breath and his sweat were both sour — the smells of desperation and fear. “You have no right to keep that from me. No right, you hear? Where in Half Moon Bay?”

“Calm down—”

“Screw that. Where?”

He started to put his hands on me; I pushed him off. “Listen to me. I won’t tell you because I don’t want you doing something crazy, like rushing out there. I don’t know it’s where Latimer is or Chuck is. Call it a strong hunch based on—”

“Hunch? Christ!”

“That’s right, but given what we know about Latimer, it has a solid basis. He must’ve risked driving all the way back to the Bay Area or he wouldn’t have said what he did to you. Why run that risk instead of holing up somewhere in the mountains or the foothills, making you drive a hundred, two hundred miles to get to him? Much safer for him if he’d done it that way.”

Dixon had nothing to say. But he was listening, struggling with the ragged edges of his control.

“Whatever his plan is,” I said, “chances are he wants to work it on familiar territory. Chances are, too, the place he rented in Half Moon Bay has some degree of privacy. He’d feel safe there. As far as he knows, nobody is on to the fact that he was living on the coast, much less has the address. He used a different name when he rented it.”

I was getting through to Dixon, finally; I could see it in his eyes. Marian helped by taking his arm and saying, “It makes sense, Pat. Can’t you see this may be our best hope of getting Chuck back safely?” He looked at her, sucked in a raspy breath, and then did that hair thing again, using his knuckles this time. Thumping his head with them as if he realized how close to coming apart he’d been and was trying to knock some sense back into himself.

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

“You’re not in this alone,” I said, “and you can’t tackle Latimer alone. Has that gotten through to you?”

Jerky head bob. “But what can you or anybody else do? If Latimer is in Half Moon Bay, if that’s where he wants me to come, you can’t go along. I told you what he said—”

“There’s another way.”

“What way?”

“I go out there ahead of you. Leave right away.”

It didn’t compute. His head wagged this time.

“To check out the address,” I said. “If Latimer’s there, I should be able to tell it.”

“Then what? You’re not thinking of—”

“Going in after him myself? No, of course not. Set up a surveillance. Look for a way to get at him, some sort of weak spot we can exploit.”

“Suppose there isn’t one?”

“We’ll still have one thing working for us. The element of surprise. Two of us coming at him, when he expects only you.”

“How do we use the advantage?”

“We’ll figure that out later. Depends on what I find when I get out there. Circumstances.”

“If he sees you, becomes even a little suspicious—”

“He won’t. I’ve got better than thirty years’ experience at this kind of thing.”

Dixon indulged in more scalp-rubbing. “And while you’re checking the address, what do I do?”

“Just what you’ve been doing. Wait for his call.”

“It might be hours. I can’t stand much more waiting, not knowing. Look at me… I’m half crazy already.”

“You’ll know what I know as soon as I find it out. Where I am, what I’m doing.”

“You mean we confer by phone.”

“Right. I’ve got a mobile unit in my car, and if you have a second line here—”

“We do. Fax line in my office.”

“I’ll call you on that line when I get there and we’ll keep it open. You let me know as soon as you hear from Latimer. Cell phone in your car?”

“Yes.”

“Good. When you leave here we’ll stay in touch on that line, no matter where he tells you to go.”

“Suppose it’s not to Half Moon Bay?”

“No profit in worrying about that now. One step at a time.”

Abruptly he moved away, took a couple of restless turns around the room. Thinking it over, weighing it. Pretty soon he stopped and asked Marian, “What do you think?” which surprised me a little. If she had the same reaction she didn’t show it.

“It’s better than the other way,” she said. “It’s something.”

“All right,” he said to me, “we’ll do it your way. But I’ll tell you one thing right now — I’m not going to Half Moon Bay or anywhere else without a gun.”

Marian said, “Pat…”

“No. There’s no argument on that issue.”

“Your choice,” I said. “As long as you use restraint.”

“I’m no cowboy with a handgun, don’t worry about that. What about you? You carrying?”

“I will be. Colt .38 in my car. And I’m not a cowboy, either.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

We exchanged phone numbers. Two minutes after that, I was back in the car and rolling.