Middle Of Nowhere

CHAPTER 47

By the time Daphne reached the State Ferry Terminal, the vessel destined for Winslow on Bainbridge Island was booked full for vehicles, though was still boarding passengers. She parked her red Honda in the lot and walked briskly toward the ferry. Her purse thumped at her side. A warning light flickered at the back of her brain-the neck scar she carried was a wound inflicted on a ferry while in the line of duty. Boldt had been with her then; she wished he was there now.

All the state ferries were behemoths of welded steel and layer upon layer of white and gray deck paint, weary water buses transporting hundreds of thousands of passengers annually. The ship seemed about as wide as it was long, a mirror image of itself, with two pilot towers bow and stern. It amazed her that something made of hundreds of tons of steel, and carrying in its hold hundreds of tons of vehicles, and on its various decks several hundred passengers, could nonetheless somehow manage to float, to navigate open water. She never felt perfectly safe on one.

Mixed into her thoughts, as she moved up the outer stairs to the vessel's spacious deck lounges in search of Bryce Abbott Flek, was the portrait of the man created from her own psychological evaluation based on his criminal history. Short-tempered, randomly violent, prone to excessive drug use in times of acute stress, he was to be avoided. And she was pursuing him. Alone. On a ship. She would maintain surveillance but not make contact. Eventually Boldt would take her calls, return her messages-she was outraged that he had apparently either turned off his pager and phone or left them behind somewhere. In her mind her job was to identify and locate Flek, report his location to Boldt and consult on what to do from there. Meeting the ferry with an army of Bainbridge Island police was out; she knew that much. Flek was not the type to pressure with hundreds of potential hostages available to him. Like a wild horse, he was better observed than handled. If a lasso was to be thrown, then timing was everything. Mixed in with this rational thought was a burning desire to speak with him before he knew who she was. Before contact with police. Before his arrest. Rarely did such opportunities present themselves.

As it happened, he saw her first. She felt a burning sensation from behind her, and turned, only to meet eyes with him way across the stern deck area. She didn't want to turn away too obviously, but she didn't want to stare either. Flek apparently took the prolonged eye contact as female interest on her part, or at least as a green light to pursue her. Whatever the case, he started across the cabin toward her. It was only as she turned and walked away from him that it occurred to her he might have seen a photo of her-a press conference? one of the pieces on Boldt's closing of the prison? Courtney Samway had identified Boldt, but not Daphne. But what if Flek had seen her in the press coverage of that Denver hotel? What if Abby Flek was hunting her, not the other way around?

Her nerves unwound, and for a moment she felt desperate, losing her professional composure and wanting to scream for help. Then she reconsidered. He's a wolf, she told herself, a man who preys on women. Courtney Samway had been plucked from a stripper stage in Denver-Flek was a conqueror. It was nothing more than her looks, and their exaggerated eye contact that now caused Flek to pursue her. She refused to hurry, refused to fuel any suspicion in him. Her cell phone, still switched on, remained in her purse along with her gun. She felt tempted to reach for one or the other. Instead, she stopped alongside a group of tourists who were admiring the city's night skyline. She gripped the ship's metal rail with both hands to steady herself, prepared for a confrontation.

She stood there, head bent, hair tossed in the ferry's breeze, the sound of a foaming wake boiling below her, catching sight of seagulls flashing in the ship's outboard lights, the city's stunning night skyline receding in the distance. She stood there, all of her muscles taut and tense, her senses heightened, her skin prickling, expecting to hear a stranger's low voice from over her shoulder. Expecting to shudder from head to toe. He wouldn't dare harm her so close to others who could later identify him. In fact, she realized-fighting off her experience of several years earlier-a ship was no place to make trouble, for there was no escape except to jump overboard, and in the Sound's lethally frigid waters, that was no option at all. She looked up, turning her face into the wind.

Flek was now gone, nowhere to be seen. She controlled herself and turned slowly as if savoring the breeze, and looked to the stern. Gone.

A flutter of panic in her chest. Had she lost him? Had she lost her opportunity? Was he testing her, watching her right now to see if she followed, if she sought him out? Maybe it wasn't even him. They had been separated by a good distance inside that cabin. She supposed it could have been another man, someone else, her mind devilishly playing tricks on her.

She was damned if she did, damned if she didn't. To go after him could tip her hand. It all had to do with appearances and intention, she convinced herself. People strolled the ferries constantly, checking out all the various decks and cabins. All she had to do was put one foot in front of the other and take her time. Stroll, don't walk, don't hurry. Use peripheral vision. Don't inspect the ship, enjoy it. She would stroll in the opposite direction from him-toward the stern. The crossing was thirty-five minutes. Ten of those had passed. It was a large, crowded ship, with hundreds of passengers, but a ship, a finite space, nonetheless. She would methodically work this deck stern to bow, then the next deck bow to stern. She would cover every inch of the ferry, top to bottom. Her police training kicked in: Flush him out. Patience, she reminded herself, glancing at her watch.

She had about twenty minutes in which to find him.

The size of the vessel only became apparent when one started searching it. The hundreds upon hundreds of faces blended one to the next, like sampling perfumes, to where she could not distinguish one from the other without staring intently, and she did not want to stare. Worse, the ferry's population moved continuously, scores of passengers moving constantly from deck to cabin and deck to deck, to the cafeteria and the toilets. Men, women and children, though more men on this commuter leg. And whereas some wore suits, most did not, and these others wore jeans and a brown jacket, the ubiquitous recreational dress code of the Pacific Northwest.

Daphne moved through this shifting sea like the ferry through the dark waters, hellbent and determined, but all the while attempting to give off an air of restless boredom. More than a dozen times she believed she'd spotted him, only to realize it was not Flek at all, disappointment and self-doubt stinging her. The more she searched, the more she convinced herself she had never seen him. An apparition. A wish, unfulfilled.

She spent the majority of her time on the main level-a huge, open deck broken in the middle by stairs and the cafeteria. Cell phone records suggested that Flek used the crossing to make cellular calls. Her own stubborn belief demanded that if he made such calls they would be placed as far away from others as physically possible. After a thorough search, she shifted her attention to the outside decks.

The minutes dragged on, Daphne's discouragement flaring toward impatience. Her strides increased in tempo and length. Those men facing the water with their backs to the ship hid their faces in partial shadow, requiring her to slow and pay special attention. She was amused by how many men spent the crossing on their cell phones.

Minutes ticked past.

Only as the ferry turned past Wing Point and angled up Eagle Harbor toward a shimmering Winslow did she move her search to the parking decks. Everyone on the ferry had to get off.

She descended through the smell of oil and the sea. There were two levels of parked cars on either side of a single open hold for vehicles. She checked the two upper side wings first, walking the long rows of parked vehicles, amazed at how many drivers chose to ride out the thirty-five minutes dozing behind the wheel or listening to NPR. The hold was dull paint and dim lighting, vehicles bumper to bumper, all aimed toward the bow. Vehicle after vehicle. Face after face. No Flek.

She reached the lower center hold, facing well over a hundred vehicles. Time running out. The water churned violently at the bow, noisy in her ears and tangy in her throat. She approached one of the ferry personnel and took full advantage of his interest in her. "Listen," she said, raising her voice above the engine noise, "is there any law preventing a woman from asking a few of these good people for a lift?"

"Not as far as I'm concerned," the man replied. "When we dock, these cars roll. Don't be standing out there then, I'll be yelling at ya."

"Thanks," she said.

"There's a couple taxis," he told her.

"Thanks," she said again.

The information about the taxi caused her to reconsider her plan. If she spotted him, then maybe the taxi would do. She could follow. Then again, maybe someone else would beat her to those taxis. Or maybe Abby Flek wasn't in a car, despite her conviction at this point that he had to be. He was in possession of a fairly large rifle, perhaps stolen goods as well. It seemed unlikely he would travel on foot.

A thought occurred. Boldt had been shot at the night before, sometime around 11 P.M. Bryce Abby Flek had taken the 8:30 ferry to Winslow-Osbourne had evidence supporting this. The next day, this same morning, Flek had ridden a ferry back from Winslow to the city. Granted, there were numerous return ferries, but what were the odds that Flek had returned that same night to take a pot shot at Boldt? It seemed unlikely, if not impossible, to her. She reached into her purse and grabbed her phone-she wanted to tell Boldt immediately. But as she prepared to dial, she looked up to see that most, if not all, of the vehicles were now occupied. Out the bow, the well-lit dock at Winslow quickly approached. If she were to do this, it had to be immediately. She had only the one chance.

She returned the phone to her purse, rehearsed a few opening lines, walked to the center of the four rows of vehicles and started down the aisle in front of her. She looked left to right, catching sight of every driver. She approached only men, and did not confine herself solely to this center aisle.

She tapped on a window and waited for the driver to roll it down.

"Excuse me," she said, "do you happen to know who won the Mariners' game?"

The stranger's hopeful expression faded from his face and he answered, "They aren't playing today."

"Oh," she said. "Well, thanks anyway."

She moved on, crossing past the front bumper of a minivan and settling on a black BMW. Knock, knock. "Excuse me," she said, "do you know if there's a Costco in Poulsbo?"

"I doubt it," he answered.

"Thanks anyway," she said, and continued on.

The ship smoothly slowed. She wanted to be seen making as many appeals as possible. For this reason, she moved laterally, port to starboard as well as working her way back toward the stern. She was midships when she spotted Flek. He sat behind the wheel of an old model Cadillac or Plymouth. A gas hog.

She approached the passenger side and knocked. The thing had a Landau roof that looked like burned coffee grounds-too many years in the elements.

He turned the key and put down the window electronically. "Hey there," he said.

"Excuse me," Daphne said, a little flirtatious, a little hopeful, a tiny bit cautious, "you wouldn't be heading north by any chance, would you?" The island's only major road ran north toward the bridge at Agate Passage.

"Suquamish," he answered. "You need a ride?"

"Poulsbo," she replied, affecting disappointment. She had a destination now-the Port Madison Indian reservation town of Suquamish. He'd been smart enough to leave the city each night, smart enough to hide in a place that neither Boldt nor anyone else ever would have thought to look for him-past the affluent enclave of Bainbridge into the isolation of a reservation town.

"There's a casino the other side of the bridge. Pretty well traveled. I could leave you there," he offered. "Or I'll tell you what," he said before she could respond. "It's nothing to run you into town. A couple miles is all. Hop in."

"You sure?" Her heart fluttered in her chest. No matter what the police side of her believed about seizing such an opportunity-and it warned to err on the side of caution-the psychologist hungered for a chance at conversation with this man "in the raw"- unaware of who she was, his guard down, his true personality exposed. Her own ambitions had threatened her before, but as a scientist she could justify this in any number of ways, none of them very reasonable if she'd been forced to listen to herself. At that moment, she knew she could refuse him and walk away-she could lift the car's registration as she passed to the rear. She could call Boldt and organize a manhunt. But conversely, it might prove tricky ever finding him again. Perhaps it was a friend's car, perhaps a joy ride he would ditch within the next few hours.

Boldt could still be notified. The manhunt could still take place. Suquamish was tiny. It wouldn't be too difficult to find this old car. Or perhaps they could lay a trap for him back at the ferry landing. Perhaps she would pull her weapon and walk him into the Poulsbo Police Department and claim the collar herself. Sanchez was her case, after all. But none of that mattered right now. First she had a decision to make.

She opened the door and climbed in. "Thanks," she said, laying her purse on the seat next to her. Then reconsidering, she set it on the floor. "It's awfully nice of you."

"How could I say no?" he asked.

A flicker of fear. Did he know her? Something in the way he had said it. The ferry arrived at the pier with barely a nudge, and the deckhands busied themselves. The psychologist sensed the danger. Who had trapped whom? she wondered. The door handle cried out for her to grab hold and get out of the car while she still could. It grew in size, begging for her to use it.

"None of those others would help you out?" he said.

Had he sensed her reluctance and constructed a good line to ask?

"They all live on-island," she replied, that door handle still calling to her.

The cars up ahead started their engines, and the foul smell of exhaust filled the old car nearly instantly. Eldorado-the glove box read. He pulled the transmission into gear. As he did, she heard the familiar click of all the doors locking at once. She didn't look. She didn't want to make a point of it, but she knew he'd locked the car, or the vehicle itself had done so automatically upon leaving PARK-but it seemed to her it was too old a car for that safety feature.

Very subtly, she adjusted her arm on the door's armrest and fingered the window's toggle. The window didn't open-whereas it had moved for him only a moment earlier. Flek had disabled the windows with the child lock from the driver's door controls. How much was paranoia, how much reality? She felt an icy line of sweat trickle down her ribs.

The cars and trucks began to roll. She understood perfectly well that this was her last chance to attempt to flee. To do so would alert Flek and cause him to break any patterns he had established. The psychologist battled the cop, and the cop battled back, and the psychologist argued again, and Flek took his foot off the brake.

In the end, the decision was made for her. He drove off the ferry and into traffic.