24 Hours (20 page)

McDill wrung his hands, a gesture he despised but at this moment was powerless to stop. “I understand that. It’s just . . . I know the potential for human error. If you involve a large number of people in any process, you exponentially increase the risk of mistakes. The kind of surveillance you’re talking about, planting bugs, following cars with helicopters—”

“We’re the FBI, Doctor,” Chalmers said. “We’re professionals.”

McDill sighed heavily. “No offense, but that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

TEN

“Go to the other side of the bed,” Karen ordered. “Move.”

Still rattled by the gunshots, Hickey edged around the foot of the bed, leaving her between the bathroom and Will’s side of the bed.

“Pick up that phone,” she said, pointing at the cordless beside Hickey. “That’s the private line.”

“Who am I calling?”

“Pick it up!”

Hickey obeyed, but his eyes had a manic gleam that kept Karen’s finger on the trigger.

“Call my husband’s hotel room.”

“You’re making a mistake, Karen.”

She raised the gun until it was pointed at his face, then spoke into the phone in her left hand. “Abby, are you outside yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get down out of sight.” She shifted the phone into the crook between her right shoulder and cheek. Now she could keep the pistol in her right hand while taking the private line from Hickey with her left. The phone on which Abby waited—Will’s phone—handled both lines, but she didn’t want to put Abby on hold unless she absolutely had to. “Are you down in some bushes?”

“Uh-huh. They’re itchy.”

“You sit tight right there. I’m calling Daddy, and we’re going to straighten this out and come get you. Don’t hang up, remember?”

“I’m not.”

“Have you got Will yet?” she asked Hickey.

He raised his hands as though to negotiate. “I’m bleeding to death here. Can’t you stitch up my leg first?”

“The sooner you get Will on the phone, the sooner you stop bleeding.”

Hickey dialed a number and asked for suite 28021.

“Throw the receiver onto the bed.”

He did. She picked it up with her left hand and heard the phone ringing. Then a female voice said, “Hey.”

“Put Dr. Jennings on the phone.”

“Who is this?”

“This is Mrs. Jennings. And if you don’t put him on the phone, I’m going to shoot your husband in the head.”

There was a stunned silence. Then the woman said, “You can’t do that. We’ve got your little girl.”

“Your husband’s bleeding pretty badly right now, missy. You’d better get a move on.”

She heard a fumbling with the phone. Then Will said, “Karen?”

“Will, thank God.”

“What’s going on? Is Abby all right?”

“She’s free. I mean—”

“Free?”

“She got away from the man guarding her. She’s hiding in the woods with a cell phone. I’m talking to her right now.”

“My God! Where’s the man now?”

“Hunting for her. But she’s hunkered down in some bushes.”

“Where’s Joe?”

“I’m holding a gun on him. And I’m very tempted to blow his goddamn head off.”

“Don’t do that, Karen.”

“I know. But what can we do? If we call the police, can they trace the cell phone Abby’s using? Can they find her?”

“I think they can triangulate cell phones pretty well. But if she’s out in the country somewhere . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if they use towers or trucks or what. How far away from Jackson do you think she is?”

“An hour. Maybe more, maybe less.”

“It won’t work,” said Hickey.

“Sixty miles,” Will mused.

“It won’t work,” Hickey said again. “What you’re thinking won’t work.”

“Shut up!” Karen snapped.

“What’s the matter?” asked Will.

“Hickey says tracing the phone won’t work.”

“To hell with him. Look, I know the guy who runs CellStar. I did a gallbladder on his wife, and I played in a golf tournament with him.”

“Call him! He’ll know what the police can do.”

“We need to know what cellular company Hickey’s people are using. CellStar is the biggest, and he might have picked it for anonymity. Tell him to give you his cell phone.”

Karen gestured at Hickey’s pocket with the pistol. “Give me your cell phone.”

“What for?”

“To keep me from shooting you! I’m losing my patience here.”

Hickey took a small Nokia from his pocket and tossed it across the bed.

“I’ve got it,” she told Will.

“Turn it on and dial—Wait. Is it already on?”

Karen used the barrel of the .38 to flip the phone over. The lights of the LED display were dead. “No, it’s off.”

“Damn. Okay. Dial star-eight-one-one and see who answers.”

“I’m doing it right now.”

“Mama?” Abby said in her other ear.

“Hang on, baby, I’m talking to Daddy.”

Karen used her trigger finger to switch on the phone and punch the keys. Hickey watched her with a puzzled look in his eyes.

“Welcome to the CellStar customer service line,” said a computerized voice.

Karen hit END. “It’s CellStar.”

“Yes!” Will exulted. “We finally caught a break. Stay on the line. I’ll use Cheryl’s cell phone to call my guy.”

“Don’t worry. I’m too scared to hang up.”

She heard Will tell Hickey’s wife to call directory assistance for the home number of a Harley Ferris in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Then he said, “Karen, ask Hickey why he thinks we can’t trace the phone.”

“Why can’t we trace Huey’s phone?” she repeated.

Hickey’s eyes glowed with a strange sort of amusement. “You’re about to kill your kid,” he said, “and you don’t even know it. You’d better let me talk some sense into that husband of yours.”

“He wants to talk to you,” she told Will.

“Fine. Just be careful passing the phone.”

Karen tossed the phone onto the bed. Hickey picked it up.

“Doc? You there?”

Karen said to Abby: “I’m going to put you on hold for a few seconds, honey. I’m not hanging up, I’m just going to listen to Daddy for a minute. Okay?”

Abby’s voice rose to a frantic whisper. “Don’t hang up, Mama!”

“I’ll be right back.” She hit the button that switched that phone to the private line.

“You’re screwing up, Doc,” Hickey said to Will. “All you had to do was follow the rules, and you’d have got your kid back in the morning. But now you’re trying to pull a fucking John Wayne. And your old lady thinks she’s Wonder Woman.”

“Sometimes I think she is, too. The simple truth is that I don’t trust you to keep your word.”

“Let me explain something to you, Doc. In some ways tracing a cellular call is easy. ’Cause a cell phone ain’t nothing but a radio. Right?”

“Right.”

“And you can triangulate a radio just like in the old World War Two spy movies. That’s what you’re thinking. You look at the relative signal strengths between towers and figure a location down to yards. The problem, Doc—for you, I mean—is that not many towers are equipped to measure that stuff yet. All this is under legislation right now. People
want
cell companies to be able to do that kind of tracing, so people making nine-one-one calls can be found before they bleed to death. Great idea, right? The problem is the equipment. And Mississippi’s five years behind the rest of the country. As usual, right? That’s why I feel okay using cell phones in this operation. So, if you think the cops are gonna find your kid before Huey does, you’re out of your mind. And if you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, it’s simple. I still want this thing to work. I still want my money. But if you bring in the cops or the FBI, you’re taking control out of my hands. It’s like bringing divorce lawyers into a marriage. It’s the irrevocable step. There won’t be anything I can do. I’ve got to cut my losses and run. That means when Huey finds the kid, he kills her.”

“But we know who you are,” Will pointed out. “If you kill Abby, you’re opening yourself to murder charges.”

“You’re not thinking, Doc. Kidnapping alone is a death penalty offense. So I’ve got nothing to lose by killing her. And by killing her, I kill any chance that she can identify Huey.”

“My wife saw him, too.”

“Did she? Gee, I don’t recall that.” Hickey smiled at Karen. “You starting to get the picture?”

There was a hissing silence as Will considered his options. Karen was about to switch back to Abby when he said, “Screw you, Joe. Put my wife back on.”

“I’m here,” said Karen. “Abby’s on hold. Let me get her back.” She switched her phone back to the main line. “I’m back, baby. Are you okay?”

“No! I was scared. Don’t get off anymore.”

“I won’t.” She motioned for Hickey to toss his phone back to her. When it landed beside her, it was smeared with dark blood. She wiped it on the comforter, then held it to her mouth. “Go ahead, Will.”

“I already called my guy on the hotel phone. I’m getting an answering machine.”

“No. Oh God.”

“It is after midnight. And they may not have a phone in their bedroom. I’ll keep calling back till they wake up.” He fell silent for a moment. “Look, you saw the guy who was holding Abby, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he would kill her if Joe told him to?”

Images of a giant standing in the dark flashed through Karen’s mind. The startled eyes as she shoved the ice chest into his hands and begged him not to hurt her baby.
Hurt your baby?
Huey had echoed, as though the idea had never entered his head. But what had he really meant? Had the idea of hurting Abby been so alien that he’d been shocked by the suggestion? Or was Huey just too simpleminded to do anything but repeat what was said to him?

Karen covered the mouthpiece of the phone that connected her to Abby. “I can’t answer that. He’s huge, and he’s simpleminded. Hickey says he gets angry when children run from him, something about the way he was treated growing up. And Abby just ran from him.”

“Jesus. Do you think Abby could hide from him until dawn? Or maybe walk to a road?”

“It’s the middle of nowhere, Will.”

“But you left some insulin with her, right?”

“Yes. Hang on.” She uncovered the mouthpiece of the other phone. “Abby? Do you have your ice chest with you? The one I left with Mr. Huey?”

“No. I picked it up when I first ran. But when I went back inside for the phone, I forgot it.”

“That’s all right. You’re doing great. I’m talking to Daddy.”

“Are ya’ll coming to get me?”

“Yes. We’re figuring it out right now. Where’s Mr. Huey?”

“I’m still getting the answering machine,” Will said.

“I don’t know,” said Abby. “He stopped yelling.”

A shiver ran through Karen. “Don’t make a sound, baby.” She covered the phone again. “She doesn’t have the insulin. She doesn’t know how to inject herself even if she had it.”

“I think she could do it if she had to. I just don’t know if she’d know she was in trouble in time.”

“She’s only five years old, Will. Do we have any alternatives?”

“Abby gives herself up and we trust Joe to give her back after he gets the money.”

Karen looked across the bed at Hickey’s glittering eyes, his prison tattoo, the bleeding leg. “No. We’ve got to try to save her now.”

“Let me talk to him again,” Hickey said.

Karen threw the phone across the bed.

“Doc? Let me tell you a quick story. Me and Huey are cousins. We grew up in different states, but our mamas were sisters. They both married sons of bitches, only Huey’s daddy was the leaving kind of son of a bitch, and mine was the ass-whipping kind. After Huey’s little sister died, he had to move down to Mississippi with us. He’d got in some trouble up there trying to talk to little girls after that. Hurt some of their parents. Anyhow, my old man could be okay when he wasn’t drunk—which wasn’t often. He was nice to Huey, but when he was loaded he’d lay into him over being useless. Then he’d whale on me, just for kicks.”

Karen wanted to hear Will’s responses, but she knew Abby might break down if she was put on hold again. She hoped Will was still ringing the president of CellStar.

“So, Pop takes us deer hunting one day,” Hickey said. “We didn’t let Huey carry a gun, of course, but we always took him. You couldn’t beat him for hauling dead deer out of the woods. Anyhow, I was climbing through this bobwire fence, and my gun went off. Pop was drunk, and he started yelling how he’d felt the bullet pass his cheek. He threw down his rifle and started whalin’ on me right there in the woods. I was about thirteen. Huey was twelve. He was a big boy, though. So, Pop whales on me till he runs out of wind, then he stops to rest. I try to go for my rifle on the ground, but soon as I do, he gets between me and it. Then he takes a sip from his flask and starts whalin’ on me again. Huey has this funny look on his face. Then, real slow like, he walks up behind Pop and grabs him around the arms, like he’s hugging a tree. And he just holds him there. Pop goes crazy. He’s kicking and screaming how he’s gonna kill us both when he gets loose. I pick up my rifle and point it at him. I know when he gets loose he’s gonna tear me to pieces. But I can’t shoot him too easy with Huey holding him, except point-blank in the head, which wouldn’t look right.”

Karen made sure her palm was sealing the phone Abby waited on.

“So Huey gets this scared look on his face and says, ‘I just wanted him to stop hitting you, Joey. I don’t want to hurt him none.’ I say, ‘He ain’t ever gonna stop. Not till he’s dead. You kill him, Buckethead, and we’ll be done with it. We’re blood brothers, boy, you gotta listen when I tell you something.’ So Huey thinks for a minute. Then he picks Pop up where his legs won’t touch the ground and carries him over to this big rock and lays him down and smashes his head against it till he stops wiggling. He carries the body the top of a ridge, just like I tell him to, and drops him down onto the creek rocks. Like he fell there.”

Karen closed her eyes, praying for Abby with all her being.

“Now, Huey didn’t
want
do that, Doc. But he did it. He won’t want to hurt your little girl, either. But if I tell him to, he will. ’Cause he can’t envision a world without cousin Joey in it. And if he thinks your little girl living means me going to Parchman, she’ll die sure as old Pop did.” Hickey winked at Karen as he spoke into the phone. “He could break Abby’s neck without even meaning to. Like dropping a china vase.”