In Death's Shadow

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kidnapped?

I felt like I'd been struck squarely between the eyes with a two-by-four. Here I'd been sitting at home, keeping my own comfort-loving derriere well out of harm's way, believing that Mrs. Bromley was safely ensconced in a B &B on Maryland's bucolic Eastern Shore. How could she have been kidnapped?

It didn't seem like a good time to ask.

"We've stopped now, for some reason," Mrs. Bromley whispered, before I could say anything else. "Frankly, I think he's lost. He didn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean. Lights are on, but nobody's home."

"Can't you open the door?"

"I tried. I think he's got it tied together on the outside."

"Can you tell where you are, Mrs. B?"

"No! The cargo doors have windows, but they're all painted over. And there's a sliding Plexiglas panel that opens into the cab, but it's so scratched up I can barely see out of it. Just a minute." I heard banging and scraping sounds, then Mrs. Bromley came back on the line. "Damn thing has a lock on it, too."

"Thank goodness he didn't notice your cell phone. Tell me you called 911!"

"Of course, dear. The minute he drove away. I gave the operator a description of the van and my general impression that he was traveling north on Riva Road, but then I lost the blasted signal."

"As long as you have the cell phone, the police can locate you by tracking your signal through the cell towers. Right after I hang up, call 911 again."

"I don't know how long I have before the batteries run out." Mrs. Bromley drew a quick breath. "Wait a minute! I hear something!" She paused, and I strained to hear what she was hearing, too, but the only thing that came over the line was silence. "There's traffic going by, so I must be near a well-traveled road, but I can also hear music. Just a minute."

The line went quiet again, while I nearly expired from tension. "Somebody's playing music," she said at last. "No, wait a minute, it's chimes. Westminster chimes!"

One block away from where I stood, the Naval Academy chapel bells had just finished ringing the half hour. "Oh glory!" I cheered. "I can hear the chapel bells! You can hear the chapel bells! You've got to be nearby!"

But where? I could eliminate the Naval Academy grounds. Because of heightened security following the commencement of the war in Iraq, no vehicle was allowed inside the Academy walls without a Department of Defense sticker. Marines behind barricades armed with M-16 assault rifles saw to that.

I needed more clues.

"Can you see anything out of that cab window?" I asked. "Anything at all?"

"A chain-link fence and something yellow. Wait!"

I waited, panic making a crescendo in my gut. I felt ready to blow, like a geyser.

"It's construction equipment," Mrs. Bromley said brightly. "One of those back hoe things."

Construction. Construction within earshot of the chapel bells. Not far from a main road. Nobody was building anything on King George Street, at least not that I knew of. The other main road into town was Rowe Boulevard. Holding the telephone, I paced back and forth across the carpet, searching my memory banks.

Wait a minute! The state of Maryland was building a public housing project at the far end of St. John's Street, just one block off Rowe. That might be it!

"Listen carefully, Mrs. B. When you call 911, tell them it's possible that you're on St. John's Street somewhere near the Bloomsbury construction site.

"All right."

"Now, hang up, Mrs. B. No, wait a minute! Can you set your phone on vibrate? When I call you back, I don't want your kidnapper to hear it ringing."

"His name's Chet."

"Chet? Your kidnapper's name is Chet? How do you know his name is Chet?"

"It's embroidered right on his shirt."

"Okay. Noted. What does the van look like?"

"It's a dark blue Ford with 'All Seasons Lawn and Landscaping' painted on the side in orange letters."

That was certainly inconspicuous. Chet, whoever he was, didn't sound like a pro, otherwise he'd have chosen a plain white van to transport his victim in. I didn't know whether his status as an amateur kidnapper would spell good news or bad news for Mrs. Bromley. "Stay put!" I ordered. "I'm coming to look for you."

"You think I'm going anywhere?"

"Duh. Sorry. And call 911!"

I hung up quickly and, just as quickly, dialed 911 to report the kidnapping myself. I also called Paul on his cell phone. He'd have it turned off during his meeting, of course, but I could leave him a message. I had promised on a stack of Bibles that I wouldn't leave the house. Well, lightning could strike me dead, I didn't care. This was an emergency. I knew God would understand. I wasn't so sure about Paul.

I raced up the stairs to the kitchen, grabbed my purse and the house keys, rammed an Orioles baseball cap over my curls, and added a pair of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sunglasses that had been sitting in a basket on my kitchen counter ever since a house guest had left them behind more than two years ago. As a disguise, it was piss poor, but it'd have to do.

I eased out the back door, locking it carefully behind me.

I ran west on Prince George Street, dashed across Maryland Avenue and made it all the way to where Prince George intersected with College Avenue without collapsing. Astonishing! I would never have been able to do that before the race training.

Directly in front of me the St. John's College campus spread out in both directions, dominated by McDowell Hall, a grand, pre-Revolutionary brick mansion on top of a hill, and anchored by Greenville Library on one end and Woodward Hall on the other.

I could have turned left on College Avenue then right on St. John's Street, but if the van holding Mrs. Bromley was where I thought it would be, I could reach her more quickly if I cut across campus and through the parking lot adjoining Key Auditorium. I took off at a run, praying that either I or the cops would get there before Chet returned to the van and drove it away.

I jogged left, passing a replica of the Liberty Bell, and cut diagonally across the lawn, just your ordinary, Sunday jogger, panting like a hound dog in August, holding her sunglasses to her face to keep them from sliding off her nose.

The parking lot was jammed with cars and when I burst out onto St. John's Street near the Maryland state parking garage, both sides of the road were clogged with vehicles, too. Damn! Something must be going on at the college.

I checked my watch. Only three minutes had passed since I left my house.

I cut to the right, and as I drew even with the back of Key Auditorium, I could hear piano music. Ah, yes. The Heifetz piano competition. I'd read about it in the paper.

Under ordinary circumstances I might have paused to listen, might even have stuck my head inside the auditorium, but I found myself pausing only to catch my breath, my hands resting on my knees, eyes scanning the street ahead for any sign of a blue van.

There were three of them.

I jogged down the street, scrutinizing each van as I passed. None carried anything even remotely resembling an orange logo.

I jogged on.

Ahead of me, at the end of the street, behind a chain-link fence and not far from the banks of Weems Creek, sat a knot of construction traders. I raced in that direction, passing row after row of two-story town houses, sheathed in Tyvek, which were rising to my left out of the red Maryland clay. Just beyond the unfinished town houses, I came to a rutted road. I turned into the road and continued running, my ankles taking a punishment on the well-pocked surface as I thundered past a battered Ford pickup and a bulldozer.

Past the bulldozer and hidden between two construction traders I found the blue van. Just as Mrs. Bromley had said, it had ALL SEASONS LAWN AND LANDSCAPING painted on the sides in bright orange letters.

As much as I wanted to rush over, wrench the door open, and haul Mrs. Bromley out, I stood there quietly for a moment, looking in all directions, just to make sure Chet wasn't anywhere in the vicinity.

I checked my watch again. Five minutes. Where the hell were the cops? Several couples strolled along the banks of the creek, taking advantage of the afternoon sunshine. Just ahead, traffic rushed by on Rowe Boulevard, slowing now and again at the light on Bladen Street. But no cops.

I used my cell phone to call 911 and report our exact location, then approached the van cautiously from the side, so I could peer into the cab. Chet had not returned. I pulled the door handle. The cab was locked.

I crept around to the back of the van and knocked quietly on the rear cargo door. "Mrs. B. It's Hannah. I'm going to get you out of this thing."

"Thank goodness! Let me know how I can help."

"I don't think there's much you can do from the inside, except push when I tell you to."

Indeed, the back door of the van was securely locked and, just to make sure his prisoner couldn't escape, Chet had woven a bicycle chain through the door handles and secured it with an oversized combination lock. "Damn!" I called through the door. "He's put a chain on it. No wonder you couldn't get it open."

I dropped my purse to the ground and glanced around the deserted construction site, desperate for a tool I could use to pry the lock off the door. Failing that, I thought, something big and heavy. I'd bash the door in.

About twenty yards away was a Dumpster, loaded with debris, sitting next to another pile of debris. I patted the side of the van. "I'll be right back!" I told her.

I scrabbled over the pile, tossing aside bits of plywood, odd-shaped pieces of Sheetrock, squares of pink insulation, and leftover shingles and vinyl siding. My sunglasses finally gave up the ghost, sliding off my nose and disappearing under a pile of wood chips. I didn't care. I pawed on.

Beneath the remains of a roll of tar paper, I found a tangle of iron rods of the kind normally used to reinforce concrete. I picked carefully through the rods, tossing several aside before selecting one about two and a half feet long. Brandishing it like a sword, I scrambled back to the van, banging my shins several times on the corners of protruding plywood boards.

"Hold tight! It's going to take me a minute or two to bust this thing open."

A minute or two. That was optimistic.

I studied the chain and the padlock, trying to decide which was the more vulnerable. Finally, I inserted one end of the rod between the jaws of the padlock, braced the rod against the door of the van, and yanked down.

I succeeded only in bending the rod.

I eased the rod out, turned it around and threaded it through one of the links of the chain. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link," I muttered as I applied pressure to the link. Nothing happened, except a searing pain shot up my arm.

I removed the rod and reinserted it halfway, beginning at the point where the chain met the padlock. I began turning the rod clockwise, hand over hand, winding the chain up. When I'd wound it as far to the right as it would go, I grabbed the right end of the rod with both hands, hung on and pulled down with all my weight, lifting my feet up off the ground.

Once. Twice. I rocked the van.

Three times. Four. The chain groaned.

Suddenly, the chain snapped, throwing me, my hat, the rod, the chain, and the padlock to the ground all in one great, glorious heap.

Fueled by adrenaline, I shot to my feet and was reaching for the handle to the cargo door when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and squeezed hard.

"Oh, no you don't!"

Instantly, every ounce of energy seemed to drain from my body. I felt limp and defeated. I turned to face my assailant.

Chet loomed over me, lean and muscular, tall as a tree. He was dressed in khaki pants and a navy blue shirt with Chet embroidered on it in orange script. Without doubt he was the gardener I'd first seen in Mrs. Bromley's clandestine photos. His shirt matched his van, I remembered thinking. You pay extra for that.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Mrs. Bromley had managed to open the door from the inside. The crack widened as the door swung slowly outward.

Hoping to distract Chet, I dropped to the ground and scrambled to retrieve my iron rod. I grabbed the rod, rolled over, and swung it at Chet's shins, connecting with one of them with a resounding crack.

"Ooooow! You bitch!" Hopping on one leg, Chet managed to grab my arm and twist it behind my back, iron rod and all, pulling my arm painfully skyward. With his free hand, he grasped my weapon, twisted, and by sheer strength, pulled it out of my clenched hand. The last time I saw the rod, it was sailing over the chain-link fence. After what I'd done to his shin, I was counting myself lucky he didn't beat me to death with the thing.

In the meantime, Mrs. Bromley's tennis shoes had hit the ground. She picked up my purse and swung it at Chet, like a Biblical slingshot, but it bounced ineffectually off his head.

Chet tugged me back against him, reached around and clamped my neck in the crook of his arm. He jerked us both around to face Mrs. Bromley. "Get back in the van," he ordered, "or I'll break her fucking neck."

Mrs. Bromley froze, my purse dangling by its strap from her hand. Her eyes darted from my face to Chet's, apparently weighing her options.

Her eyes flashed. If she'd had a gun, I don't believe she would have hesitated to shoot the bastard, but with only my purse as a weapon, what choice did she have? She set my purse carefully inside the van, turned and climbed obediently back in.

Unless the police showed up within the next five seconds, our geese were cooked.

Chet released his grip on my neck but was still twisting my arm so painfully that tears came to my eyes. Holding me securely, he duck-walked me over to the cargo door, boosted me up with a well-placed, retaliatory knee kick to my butt, and dumped me unceremoniously in a heap on the floor.

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Bromley whispered.

I gathered my legs under me and sat up, shading my eyes against the glare of the sun that poured through the door. "That's okay," I said. "You gave it your best shot."

Suddenly, the sun was blocked by Chet's bulk as he stood framed in the doorway. "How'd'ja find…?" he drawled.

A light in his attic blinked on. "Yeah." Chet picked up my handbag, rummaged through the pockets until he found my cell phone. "Naughty, naughty!" he said. He drew his arm back and sent my cell phone flying in a wide, high arc until it landed somewhere on the Bloomsbury Square construction site where an enterprising youngster would find it the following morning and use up all my minutes having phone sex with some call girl in Miami.

Chet tossed my purse back into the van, where it landed at my feet with a thud. "Now you'll stay out of trouble."

His hard, dark eyes settled on Mrs. Bromley. "You must have one on you, too, then." He held out his hand. "Give."

Mrs. Bromley unclipped her cell phone from her belt and reluctantly handed it over. Soon it was sailing over the chain-link fence in the general direction of mine.

Chet started to close the door, but seemed to think better of it. "You ladies are too damn much trouble," he muttered. He rubbed the spot on his head where Mrs. Bromley had clipped him with my purse, then limped back a few steps, staring into the van, thinking. It was probably a relatively new experience for him.

While he stared, I looked around the inside of the van, too, hoping to find something I could use as a weapon.

Whatever else Chet might be, he was definitely a gardener. The van was chock full of the wherewithal required to provide fairly competent lawn care service. A lawn mower was lashed to one wall with bungee cords; hedge clippers, a chain saw, pruning shears, shovels, rakes surrounded us. Any one of them would have been useful as a weapon if they hadn't been stowed away so securely. Zero chance of getting any into my hot little hands while Chet's beady eyes were still upon us.

Chet seemed to be cataloging the contents of the van, too. Hanging on a metal hook near the door was a bright orange extension cord, neatly coiled. He reached out and lifted it off the hook.

"You two sit together now."

I scowled. "We are sitting together."

"No. Back-to-back."

I turned obediently until I was sitting directly behind Mrs. Bromley.

"Closer," he said. "Now link your arms together."

When he was satisfied with our position, Chet stepped into the van. He paused a few cautious feet away. "No funny business now."

"We'll behave," I assured him. We were confined in such close quarters, I feared that if I tried anything, I'd end up injuring Mrs. Bromley.

I never knew an extension cord could be so long. Chet managed to wrap it around our waists, twine it about our necks, draw it tightly across my chest, loop it down around my ankles, and pass it back around our waists again. By the grunts, I could tell when he got to the knot tying part, somewhere out of reach in the vicinity of Mrs. Bromley's ankles.

Apparently satisfied, he climbed down and slammed the cargo door behind him. A few seconds later the shock absorbers squeaked and the van heeled to the left as he climbed into the driver's seat. The engine roared to life and, tires spinning on the loose dirt, our kidnapper peeled out onto St. John's Street.

"Keep track of the turns," I said in quiet desperation.

We turned right, then stopped. "This must be the light on Rowe Boulevard," I guessed, struggling to loosen our bonds.

We turned right again, then made another right, then a left, and an almost immediate right. By this time I figured we were in West Annapolis. But then the van made a series of zigzags, perhaps intentionally, or perhaps because Chet was lost again, and it wasn't long before I lost all track of where we might be. We could have been in Admiral Heights or Ferry Farms or all the way out in Cape St. Claire, for all I knew.

Suddenly, Chet took a sharp left, and both Mrs. Bromley and I toppled over. "Ouch!" she cried.

"What is it?"

"Something's digging into my side!"

"Hold tight!" I struggled to work us back into a sitting position, but the van took another hard turn and we rolled again, sliding along the floorboards. This time I knocked my head on a corner of the lawn mower and saw stars.

For what seemed like hours, but was probably only twenty minutes, we careened around like tennis shoes in a dryer, before the van finally screeched to a stop, throwing us back against a plastic, five gallon gasoline tank. There was an electronic beep from within the cab.

"What's that?" Mrs. Bromley whimpered.

"I think it's a garage door opener."

The van inched forward, then lurched to a stop. There was another beep, and the sound of a garage door grinding down.

Mrs. Bromley and I waited, hardly daring to breathe. "I wonder where we are?" she whispered after a moment of silence.

In the dark, I shrugged. "I don't have the vaguest idea," I whispered back.

Chet turned off the ignition and climbed out of the cab. We heard the sound of a door opening, and muffled conversation. After a few minutes more, the cargo door opened and Chet climbed into the van. Without saying a word, he went about the business of releasing us from the extension cord, then hopped out.

Mrs. Bromley and I were rubbing our arms and checking each other for damage when a hand appeared at the door, followed by a brown sleeve and a face only a mother could love.

“Well, ladies, what a pleasure to see you today." It was Nick Pottorff.