Riptide

16

The phone rang sharply at midnight. Everyone heard it, but Becca was the fastest. She was on her feet, running down the front stairs to the living room by the second ring.

It was him, she knew it, and she wanted to talk to him. There wasn’t the need to keep him on for any specified length of time. The slammer was instantaneous, the identification there in a flash.

Her hand shook as she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“I don’t know if I want to be your boyfriend anymore. You shot my dog, Rebecca.”

Shot his dog? “That’s a lie and you know it. Besides, no animal would have anything to do with you. You’re too crazy and sick.”

“His name was Gleason. He was very fat and you shot and killed him. I’m really upset, Becca. I’m coming to get you now. Not long. Hey, honey, you want to send flowers to poor Gleason’s funeral?”

“Why don’t you bury yourself with him, you murdering psycho?”

Adam heard his hitching breath, the flutter of rage. She’d gotten to him. Good.

He saw Savich write down the name and address from the slammer and sit down on the sofa, opening his laptop. He pressed close to Becca.

“You got that big guy there with you, Becca? Listening to me?”

“Yeah, I’m here listening to you, you pathetic piece of shit. Cheer up, you killed the front door, but we’re so good we even brought it back to life. It probably looks better than you do.”

Becca could feel the black fury in the silence that flooded over the phone line. She could nearly feel the stench of it-hot and rancid, that fury. “I’ll kill you for that, you bastard.”

“You already tried, didn’t you? Not much good, are you?”

“You’re a dead man, Carruthers. Soon. Very soon now.”

“Hey, where are you holding Gleason’s wake? I wanna come. You want me to bring a priest? Or isn’t your kind of crazy into religion?”

The breathing speeded up, rough and harsh. “I’m not crazy, you bastard. I’ll have Rebecca watch you die. I promise you that. I see you got two more folk there with you. I also know they’re FBI. You think they’re going to do anything to help? No one can catch me. No one. Hey, Rebecca, the governor call you yet?”

Adam gave her a cool nod, a thumbs-up sign. She said, “Yeah, he called me. He wants to see me. He told me he loves me, that he wants to sleep with me again. He said his wife is such a bitch, she doesn’t understand him, and he wants to leave her for me. The dear man, do you think he’s well enough yet for me to tell him where I am?”

Cold, dead silence, then, very gently, they heard the phone line disconnect.

She stared at the phone. The slammer was showing “501-4867, Orlando Cartwright, Rural Route 1456, Blaylock” in black letters on a bright-green screen.

Sherlock said, “Everyone stay still for a moment. Savich will have all the information in just a moment. He sounded healthy enough, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“Then it was only a flesh wound, more’s the pity,” Sherlock said, and scratched behind her left ear. Her curling red hair was all over her head. She was wearing a sleep shirt that said across the front: I BRAKE FOR ASTEROIDS. Savich had pulled on a pair of jeans. He was bare the rest of the way up. So was Adam.

“That dog bit,” Adam said, “it was an excellent ploy on his part. All right, let’s head out of here and go get the bastard. You got our directions, Savich?”

“In a second,” Savich said.

Adam took Becca in his arms. “You did great, Becca, really great. You rattled him. Now, let’s get dressed and go nail that little bastard.”

“We’re all going,” Becca said.

Savich looked up and grinned. “It’s a farmhouse some six miles northwest of here, outside a small town called Blaylock. Let me call Tommy the Pipe.” He got him quickly on his cell phone.

“Yeah, Tommy, call all the others and head on out there, but don’t go in. This guy is very dangerous. Just keep him under wraps until we get there. I’ll find out everything I can on the way there. Yeah, on MAX.”

In the backseat of Adam’s Jeep, Savich kept up a running commentary. “Here we go. The farmhouse belonged to Orlando Cartwright, bought the place back in 1954. He’s dead now. Oh yeah, that’s good, MAX. He had one daughter, she was with him until he died three weeks ago at Blue Hills Community Hospital. Lung cancer, Alzheimer’s. Oh, no, she’s still there, alone.”

“Shit,” Adam said.

“What’s her name?” Becca asked, turning in the seat to look at him.

“Linda Cartwright. Just a minute here, okay, good hunting, MAX. She’s never been married, age thirty-three, and she’s on the heavy side, one hundred and sixty-five pounds, but she’s really pretty, even on her DL photo. She’s a legal secretary for the Billson Manners law firm in Bangor, been there for eight years. Hold on a second, let me get into her personnel file. Yes, she’s got very good evaluations-in 1995 she complained about sexual harassment. Hmmm, the guy was eventually fired. Her work record is clean. Her mother died back in 1985, a drunk driver killed both her and Linda’s younger sister. No, MAX, there’s no need to go into police files, probably a waste of time.”

“She’s single and she’s alone,” Sherlock said. “Not good at all. Hurry, Adam.”

“She’s alone,” Becca said. “She’s alone, just like I was.”

At one o’clock in the morning, beneath a nearly full, brilliant summer moon, Adam pulled his black Jeep next to a dark-blue Ford Taurus parked on the side of a two-lane blacktop road. They were some fifty yards from the old farmhouse with its peeling white shutters and sagging narrow front porch.

There was no need for introductions.

Two men, both in their thirties, fit, one wearing glasses, the other smoking a pipe, were leaning against the side of the car. Savich said, “The guy in there?”

“The lights are still on, but we haven’t seen any movement at all. No one left since we got here. Chuck and Dave are around the back.” He took out his walkie-talkie. “You guys see anything?”

The answer was clear and loud. “He hasn’t come out this way, Tommy. You and Rollo haven’t seen anything?”

“Nothing.”

Dave said, “There’s no movement in the house that we can see. Chuck wants to go up close and look through the windows.”

“Tell Chuck and Dave to stay put,” Adam said. “Here’s Savich, he’ll give you the rundown on what we’re facing.”

Savich was concise, his voice clipped.

“I don’t like this,” Tommy said and puffed frantically on his pipe. “Damn, a woman living way out here, all alone, no neighbors for a couple of miles. I’ll bet he scoped her out really fast and that he’s been here with her. God, this doesn’t look good. We’ve seen nothing of either of them. Maybe she’s not here. Maybe MAX is wrong and she was never here.”

“Yeah, right, Tommy,” Rollo said, and he sounded depressed. He was short, dressed all in black, and he was perfectly bald, his head shining brightly beneath the summer moon.

Tommy the Pipe said, “Maybe he left before we got here. It could be that he took her with him, as a hostage.”

Linda Cartwright was a woman alone, and Becca knew he’d been in there, with her.

Damn the bright moon, Adam was thinking, it lit them up as clearly as daylight from the front of the farmhouse. But there were thick pine trees crowding the eastern side of the small farmhouse. Folk grew potatoes in this area, and so much of the land was cleared, open, just occasional random clumps of pines and maples dotted here and there, but no place to hide. There was a big mechanical digger sitting in the middle of an open field. There was a small sagging porch in front of the house, a naked lightbulb burning over the front door.

On the eastern side of the house, he could get to within twenty feet of the structure before the pine trees played out. It would have to be good enough. He pulled out his Delta Elite, thoughtfully rubbed his temple with the barrel. Then he said, a feral gleam in his eyes, “I got a plan. Gather round.”

“I don’t like it,” Savich said after Adam had fallen silent. “Too dangerous.”

Adam said, “I was thinking that all of us could go in guns blazing, raising hell, but the woman might still be alive. We can’t take the chance he’d pop her then and there and then kill two or three of us, what with all this damned moonlight.”

“All right,” Savich said after a moment, “but I’ll go with you.”

“Bullshit,” said Adam. “I don’t care if you’re a damned FBI agent and your goal in life is to catch bad guys. You’re married and you’ve got a kid. What I need from you and everyone else is good cover. I hear you’re a pretty good shot, Savich. Prove it.”

“I’m coming with you, Adam,” Becca said. “I’ll cover your back from right behind you.”

“No.” He held up his hand. “I’m the professional here. Just say some prayers, that’s all I ask.”

“No,” Becca said, and he realized then that if he wanted her to stay put, he’d have to have one of the men tie her down. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. It could be dangerous, too dangerous. He just didn’t know what to do.

“I’m coming,” she said, and he knew she was committed. “I have to, Adam, just have to.”

He wished he didn’t understand, but he did. He nodded. He heard Savich snort. “Becca will cover me from the woods,” he said. “No, no arguments, Becca. That’s the deal.”

Sherlock took the walkie-talkie and spoke to Chuck and Dave at the back of the house, told them what was going to happen.

Becca’s heart was pounding hard and fast. The night was chilly but she was sweating. She felt faint nausea in her stomach. This was real and it was scary and she was terrified, not just for Adam and her, but for that poor woman inside the house, that poor woman she prayed was still alive. Sherlock and the men looked calm, alert, ready. Tommy put his pipe back in his pocket and handed Becca a Kevlar vest. “It’s the smallest one, after Sherlock’s.” He shrugged. “Let me help you with it. You’re going to stay under cover in the woods, remember. You’ll be out of the line of fire, but hey, it always pays to be careful.”

Once she was strapped into the vest, she pulled her Coonan, and checked the clip three times. Adam took one look at her and didn’t say a thing, just mouthed at her to stay a bit behind him. Her heart was pounding harder and faster than it had just five minutes before. Her hand was shaking, no good, no good. She stuffed her left hand in her pocket. Keep steady, she thought, as she looked down at her right hand, which held her pistol. She looked over at Sherlock, who was frowning at one of the Velcro fastenings on her Kevlar vest. No one was taking any chances at all.

“Show time,” Savich said after he checked his watch. “Go, Adam. Good luck. Becca, you keep down.”

Adam, with Becca on his heels, made a wide berth to the east side of the house. He walked slowly, quietly, Becca just as quiet, through the pine trees. When they got to the edge of the woods, Adam pulled up. Twenty feet, he thought, not more than twenty feet. He looked through the window at the other end of those twenty feet, right in front of him. There were curtains, thin, see-through white lace, but they weren’t drawn over the single wide window. It was probably a bedroom. He turned to look at Becca, her face as pale as the fat moon overhead. He cupped her neck in his hand and pulled her close. He whispered against her cheek, “I want you to stay right here and keep alert. You stay hidden, do you hear me? You see him, you blow his head off, all right?”

“Yes. Please be careful, Adam. Your vest is on correctly? You’re protected?”

“Yeah.” He touched his fingertips to her cheek, then dropped his arm. “Stay alert.”

It seemed to Adam that it took him damned near an hour to run those twenty feet. Every step was long and heavy and so loud it shook the earth. It seemed to him that every night sound, from owls to crickets, stopped in those moments. Watching, he thought, they were all watching to see what would happen. Nothing from the house, no movement, no sound, not a single quick shadow. He flattened against the side of the house, his pistol held between both hands, then slowly, slowly, he looked around into a bedroom filled with old white rattan furniture with cheap faded red cushions, a dim-watted bulb shining from an old Lava lamp on a nightstand next to a single bed. He saw nothing, no movement, no one. The cover on the twin-size bed barely covered the top of the mattress. He could see that there was nothing beneath the bed except big-time dust balls. No, no one in the room. If anyone was in there, he was in the closet, on the far side, the door closed. He saw that the door to the bedroom was also shut. He quietly tested the window, paused, listened intently. Still nothing. The window wasn’t locked. He raised it slowly, the sounds of creaking and scraping against old paint as loud as thunder in his head.

The window was some five feet off the ground. Because he had to, he stuck his pistol in the waistband of his jeans. He’d always hated doing that ever since he’d heard the story some decades back that an agent had stuck his gun in his pants and hit against a car fender in some weird way that pulled the trigger. He shot off the end of his dick. Damn, no, he didn’t want to do that. He pulled himself up and eased his leg over the windowsill. He waved back at Becca, motioning for her to stay back and keep hidden. But, of course, she didn’t. She trotted right up to the house and stuck out her hand for him to help her through the window.

“Only if you stay hidden in here while I check the rest of the house.”

“I promise. Pull me up, hurry. I don’t like this, Adam. She was alone here. I know he’s done something bad.”

A lone owl hooted fifty feet away, from the safety of the woods and a tall tree. The moon glistened down on her face. Adam pulled her over the ledge and she swung her legs to the floor.

She watched him walk toward the closet door, listen intently, then jerk it open. Nothing. Then she watched him walk to the closed bedroom door, staying to the side, never directly facing the door. He slowly turned the knob, then smashed the door open, sending it banging back, and stepped into the hallway, his pistol up. Then he was gone. She stood there shaking, wishing she wasn’t, listening to that owl, loud and clear, sounding from the forest.

Where was he? Time passed as slowly as it did in the dentist’s office. Maybe even slower.

Finally, she heard him shout, “Becca, go back out the window and tell Savich it’s okay for everyone to come in. He’s not here.”

“No, I want to come out-”

“Out the window, Becca. Please.”

When he was sure she was outside, Adam stepped out onto the sagging front porch with its scarred and peeling railing and said, “He’s gone. Savich, come here a moment. The rest of you just stay outside and keep watch, okay?”

“Yeah, we’ll keep watch, but this is nuts,” Tommy said and pulled out his pipe. “No one moved after we got here and we converged on the place not ten minutes after you called, Adam.”

Savich said slowly, “Then he knew, of course, that we’d tapped the phone.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “The bastard knew, all right. In the kitchen, Savich.”

“I don’t like this,” Becca said to Sherlock as she pressed toward the front door. “Why can’t we go in the house?”

“Just stay there for the moment, Becca.”

Several minutes passed. No one said anything, but one by one the men walked into the farmhouse through the open front door.

Becca didn’t know what to do. Sherlock, who was standing on the small front porch, her 9mm SIG drawn, sweeping in a wide arc around her, scanning the perimeter, said, “I’ll go check. Becca, why don’t you wait out here just a while longer?”

Becca stared at her. “Why?”

“Just wait,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “That’s an order.”

Becca heard the men talking, knew all of them but her were in the house. Why didn’t they want her in there? She ran around to the back of the house and slipped in behind one of the men who was standing in the middle of the back door. The kitchen was painfully bright with two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging naked from the ceiling. The kitchen was small, the appliances were harsh white, clean, and very old. There was an old wooden table, scarred, a beautiful old vase holding dead roses in the center. It had been pushed against the wall. Two of the chairs were overturned on the floor. The refrigerator was humming loudly, like an old train chugging up a hill.

She slipped around the man in the doorway. He tried to hold her back, but she pulled free. Tommy, Savich, and Sherlock were standing in a near circle staring down at the pale-green linoleum floor. Adam rose slowly.

And suddenly Becca could see her.