Middle Of Nowhere

C H A P T E R

62

"Y ou need to focus on what Davie would think of all this," Daphne advised.

"I warned you to shut up!" he reminded angrily.

"Yes, you did. It's true. And maybe I'm just delirious from blood loss," she suggested, "but I want to help you if I can."

"Fuck you."

She said, "Does the name Maria Sanchez mean anything to you?"

"I seen the news," he said.

"Was that you? The Sanchez place?"

He scoffed. "Cops are all the same. If it's easy, then that's your man."

"What if they'd put this on Davie?"

"Davie didn't have nothing to do with it!"

"But you did?"

"According to the news."

"I'm asking you," she said. "I'm trying to tell you that that's the primary reason we wanted to collar you: Sanchez. We need answers. I've gotta believe," she said, trying her best to keep her brain functioning, to use vernacular capable of establishing a rapport, "that Davie wouldn't want you going down for something you didn't do."

"You don't know nothing about Davie. What he did for me."

He didn't complete the thought, but Daphne's mind raced ahead looking for answers. "What he did for me. . . ." Suddenly she saw it, she understood what he was talking about. Psychologically, it changed everything. Davie was a martyr. She said to Flek, "The robbery he went down for, he confessed to. . . . It was yours. He let slip about a delivery coming into the store, and you pounced. But you were about to get caught. Sitting on two convictions, with a third looming, you're fifteen to twenty without parole. Three strikes. And so Davie takes the fall for you, and big brother picks up bags and splits for Seattle." It was Flek who suddenly looked wounded. "But big brother can't leave well enough alone. He hears about little brother's work in the private commerce program—a program his brother has qualified for because he's such a model prisoner—and here comes another scam, and little brother can't say no."

Flek glanced over at her with a look of crestfallen failure. The truth could soothe, or the truth could aggravate, and Daphne had taken a huge chance trying it out on him, but for the first time since climbing into this car in the belly of the ferry, she felt progress. She just wasn't sure she could retain consciousness long enough to take advantage of it.

"We couldn't find any record of Davie having worked the phone solicitation on Sanchez. All your other burglaries were on his list. That is why we wanted to question you, Abby. Granted, our Burglary division would have heralded the arrest. You'd have gone away for five to twelve. But we're overcrowded, and with the crime being nonviolent, you'd be out in two. But breaking the neck of a policewoman and kidnapping another? You want to think about that for a minute?"

"That's a bullshit charge, and you know it."

"The kidnapping?" asked the hostage.

"Sanchez," he said.

"Do you have an alibi?"

"What if I do?"

"Then I shot myself in the foot. It's my gun—it'll fit. It happens more often than you think." She added, "Besides, I'm a woman. None of these guys think a woman can handle a sidearm."

"You'd lie through your teeth to save yourself right now."

"You're missing the point, Abby. What would Davie want you to do? That's got to be your focus. You want his name linked to this assault? Does he deserve that? He was a good kid, Davie was. He stepped up when others would have walked away. But now you're dragging him through it, and there's nothing he can do about it. But you—"

"Shut up!"

"He's dead," she said bluntly, knowing this was the button that had set him off. "He's dead and gone, all through a string of mistakes. Your mistakes, Abby. And if he's looking down right now, then his soul is tortured. Is that what you want? Did he take the fall for you to have it end up like this? Him dead. You a cop killer?" She let this sink in. "That's what you have in mind, isn't it? Kill Boldt. Or me? Or both of us? Put the blame onto Boldt instead of yourself? Do you see that's all you're doing? Do you realize it won't do anything to take away the voices?"

He snapped his head toward her as if she'd poured salt on a wound.

"You hear voices. They started right after your brother's death." She said, "You think they're bad now? You've never killed a man, have you, Abby? It's not something you forget. It's not something you walk away from and all is forgiven. You blame Boldt for Ansel— but you've got that wrong."

His eyes burned into her as he turned the car right onto a street marked Sid Price. A damp and dark narrow lane. Enormous trees. Close quarters. She couldn't be sure he'd even heard her.

He drove down a small dirt track, a dead-end driveway that led down to a muddy patch of lawn and a boat launch into Miller Bay. The narrow waterway was only fifty yards wide at this point. Flek parked the car up from the boat ramp. He lowered both windows, shut off the car and turned off the lights. Daphne could smell the low tide and mud flats. It smelled like death.

"Don't do this," she pleaded. "I can still get you out of most of this. But if you go through with it. . . ."

Paying little attention to her, he leaned over awk

wardly and reached under the seat and worked to untwist some hidden wire. If she was to have a chance to fight back, it was then, with his head lowered. But she couldn't summon the strength, nor the courage. She could barely keep herself conscious. She had lost great quantities of blood. Perhaps she was dying. She had heard Flek mention one hour and she no longer believed she could or would make it that long, certainly not conscious.

"Please," she said.

He sat up, the Chinese assault rifle in hand. The German scope. He had wired it high under the seat, so that even a thorough check under the seat by a traffic cop might not have revealed it. He said, "Cops lie, lady. They lie about me doing that other woman, and now you lie to save your ass. They'll lie about anything, if it makes their job easier."

He sought out the oily rag and gagged her again, a man going about his business. He turned on the car's interior light and met eyes with Daphne. "If I get Boldt, I'll spare you. If I don't, it's you who's gonna pay. Say your prayers." Then he was gone, down toward the water, the rain and the darkness absorbing him.