The Night Stalker

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I parked and went inside the hospital. There was a pharmacy on the first floor, and I strapped myself into the free blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure and pulse. I’d had guns pointed in my face before, and I knew how it affected me.

My blood pressure and pulse were both sky high. I went to my car, popped James Taylor’s greatest hits into my tape deck, and started petting my dog. After a while, I started to feel better. Then my cell phone rang.

“I just wrapped up my news conference,” Burrell said. “You should come inside. The Wakefields want to thank you.”

“Tell them I’ll take a rain check,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s another little boy who needs to be rescued.”

“I’ll be out in five minutes.”

I drove Burrell to the Village Inn to retrieve my car, and neither of us spoke a word. Then I followed her to police department headquarters on Andrews Avenue. Finding a parking space, I rolled down the windows for my dog.

“I’ve had every detective from Missing Persons tracking down the Armwood hotels in Fort Lauderdale,” Burrell said as we crossed the lot. “I didn’t forget our deal.”

“I know you didn’t,” I said.

Burrell had me cleared at the reception desk, and we headed upstairs to the War Room on the top floor. The War Room was used as a communications center during emergencies like hurricanes and wildfires, and was outfitted with a bank of telephones and a wall of high-resolution TVs. It also had a panoramic view of the county. Although the building was smoke-free, people still occasionally smoked in the War Room, and a recent cigarette lingered in the air as we entered. Standing around an oval table were the six detectives from my old unit.

“Good afternoon,” Burrell said.

They broke out of their huddle. A detective named Tom Manning was holding a remote. He pressed a button, and on every TV appeared a clip of Burrell from the news conference. The detectives broke into applause.

“Thank you very much,” Burrell said. “Now, I’d like to hear what progress you’ve made tracking down Armwood hotels.”

A sunburned detective named Bob Smith stepped forward. Smith was the first detective I’d ever hired, and he knew how to get things done. He pointed at the map of south Florida spread across the oval table. The map was covered in red thumbtacks, and there were a lot of them.

“We were in the process of identifying all the Armwood Guest Suite Hotels in south Florida when you walked in,” he said.

“How many have you found?” I asked.

“Ninety,” Smith replied.

The number gave me pause. Tim Small had indicated there were forty Armwood hotels in south Florida. Searching forty hotels for a kidnapped child was manageable; searching ninety wasn’t.

“I was told there were less,” I said.

“It’s an inflated number,” Smith said.

“What do you mean, inflated?” Burrell asked.

“At one time, Armwood owned forty hotels in south Florida,” Smith explained. “Then their parent company bought another chain of hotels called Leisure Inns, which were quite big. When Armwood got sold, the Armwood properties and Leisure Inns were listed on the bill of sale under the Armwood name. We’re working off the bill of sale, because it’s the only record we could find.”

“So fifty of those thumbtacks are Leisure Inns, only you have no way of knowing which ones,” I said.

“That’s right,” Smith said.

I turned to Burrell. “Can we search all of them?”

“We’ll have to,” she said.

“There’s another problem,” Smith said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Many of these hotels are welfare houses and crack dens, and are dangerous places,” Smith said. “We’re going to need a small army to properly search them.”

“Define small army,” I said.

“If we’re going to conduct the searches at the same time, which is the best way to go, we’ll need a few hundred people at least,” Smith replied.

“Do we have that kind of manpower available?” I asked Burrell.

“Let me find out,” she said.

While Burrell made some calls, I talked with the detectives from my old unit. I’d had little contact with them since leaving the force. The case that had cost me my job had cast a dark cloud over Missing Persons, and I hadn’t wanted to hurt their careers by staying in touch. But I still cared about them, and always would.

Burrell hung up the phone and came over to where we stood.

“No go,” she said. “Every available cop is searching for Jed Grimes.”

“What about FBI or FDLE agents?” I asked.

“They’re looking for Jed, too,” she said.

It was rare for three different law enforcement agencies to search for a single suspect, and I suspected that Special Agent Whitley had convinced them that Jed was responsible for the bodies in the landfill. Cops worked on priorities, and right now, finding Sampson wasn’t as urgent as finding his father.

Except to me.

I studied the map. The two men who were holding Sampson hostage were known drug enforcers. That made it likely that they would use a crack den as their hideout.

“Which of these hotels are crack dens?” I asked.

Smith pointed out the known crack dens. Lonnie Lowman had said that Sampson was being kept in Fort Lauderdale, so I removed all the thumbtacks on the map except for the known crack dens in Broward. There were seven.

“Sampson is being held in one of these locations,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Burrell asked.

“Positive. The eight of us should be able to find him.”

Burrell looked at the map, then shook her head. “We need to know which hotel Sampson is in. If we raid one, and he’s not there, the drug dealers will get on their cell phones, and alert their friends. We could end up getting ambushed if we’re not careful.”

“What are you suggesting?” I asked.

“We wait until we have more people, then raid them all at once,” Burrell said.

“How long will that be?”

“I wish I could tell you, Jack.”

I tried to imagine Sampson Grimes living in a crack den. The kid was a survivor, but I didn’t see him lasting forever in an environment like that. No one could.

I kicked a trash can across the War Room on my way out the door.