24 Hours (36 page)

“Get your ass in that car, or you’ll never see Abby alive again.”

He didn’t wait for her to obey. He jumped into the driver’s seat, cranked the Camry, and backed out of the parking space.

Snapped from her trance by the realization that he might actually leave without her, Karen leaped forward and began hammering on the back door, which had automatically locked when he cranked the engine. Hickey looked back at her but did not open the door.

“Please!” she screamed, her heart in her throat. “Open the door!
Open it!
”

He waited a few seconds, then unlocked the door. Karen jumped inside and pulled the door shut after her.

“Get on the floor,” Hickey ordered.

She lay stomach-down across the carpeted hump behind the front seat. Hickey drove at normal speed through the lines of parked cars.

“Are we leaving the airport?” she asked.

“Yes, we are!” he cried in his Wink Martindale voice. “That nice lady left her parking receipt right here on the drink caddy!”

Karen couldn’t believe it. Hickey was going to drive right out from under the nose of the helicopter hovering overhead. The strange thing was that she wanted him to succeed. She had seen enough of his personality to know that if he were arrested, he would clam up and smile at the police while Abby died in a diabetic coma somewhere.

Hickey stopped at the exit booth.

“How would you like to pay for that, sir?” asked a woman with a Hispanic accent.

“Cash, chiquita.”

“One dollar, please.”

Hickey had the money ready.

“Sir, the short-term parking lot is much more convenient for brief—”

“I’d love to chat,” Hickey said, “but you’ve got cars waiting.
Hasta la vista.
”

He drove away from the booth and joined the flow of traffic leaving the airport. He drove confidently, neither too fast nor too slow. Karen raised up enough to watch him between the seats.

A sound like a muffled drum suddenly echoed through the car. She thought Hickey had switched on the radio, but he hadn’t. The woman in the trunk was beating on the backseat.

“I’m glad she didn’t start that shit while we were at the booth,” Hickey said.

“
Help!
” screamed the muted voice. “
I can’t breathe! Please let me out!
”

Karen shut her eyes and prayed for the woman to be quiet. If she kept screaming, Hickey was liable to pull over and shoot her. The speed and intensity of his acts in her driveway and in the garage had sickened Karen. As a nurse, she had seen the effects of violence, but never the acts that produced the damage. Real violence was so unlike what she’d seen in movies that it was hard to grasp. Slashing Hickey’s thigh had been a reflex, an act of self-preservation. But he acted with a merciless dispatch that made her feel worse about the whole human race. The realization of what she had avoided by stabbing Hickey suddenly came home to her with searing clarity. Those other mothers had actually been raped by the man, had suffered the horror of becoming sexual whipping posts for all his repressed anger and resentment. And they had endured that horror for twenty-four hours. It was unimaginable.

The knocking behind Karen went on, but the cries decreased in intensity until they became a keening wail, like that of a small child.

“Traffic update!” Hickey cried.

“What?”

“I thought you might like to know, that helicopter ’s still hovering over the airport, three miles back. Amateurs, baby. Amateurs.”

“Are we going to get Abby now?”

He laughed. “We’re going somewhere, June Cleaver. That’s one thing you can count on. We got an appointment with destiny!”

EIGHTEEN

Despite his belief that Agent Chalmers might try to keep him a virtual prisoner in the bank, Will had returned to the vice president’s office on the second floor. He had the ransom (Moore had personally packed it into the briefcase at his feet), but he could not make a decision about what to do next until he knew the outcome of the FBI’s attempt to arrest Hickey at the airport. If Hickey somehow managed to escape, Will couldn’t trust him to tell the truth about Abby or anything else over a cell phone.

When the call from SAC Zwick finally came, Agent Chalmers lifted the phone, listened for a few moments, then turned paler than he had when the SWAT team had found nothing at the cabin. In his mind’s eye, Will saw a nightmare scenario: FBI agents drawing down on Hickey on an airport concourse, Hickey putting a pistol to Abby’s head, an FBI sharpshooter shooting wide, Hickey pulling the trigger. Chalmers went on listening to Zwick, but Will couldn’t wait.

“Tell me!” he demanded.

Chalmers held up his hand.

“What happened?”

“I’m putting you on the speaker, Frank.” Chalmers hit a button on the phone. “Go ahead.”

“What happened?” Will asked. “Is my wife all right? Was my daughter there?”

Zwick’s voice came from the bottom of an electronic well. “We think your wife is fine, Doctor.”

“You
think?
What about my daughter?”

“We don’t know.”

“What do you mean? What
happened?
”

“Hickey and your wife pulled into the long-term parking garage, but they never came out. We found your Expedition with one door open. Right now, we don’t know where they are. We’re searching the airport, but it’s just possible they got out of that garage in another car. We have a photo of Hickey from Parchman Prison, and we’re faxing it down for the garage attendants to look at. We got a photo of your wife from the
Clarion Ledger,
and that’s on its way down, too. We’re also getting the parking lot security camera tapes.”

“What about your helicopter?”

“Nothing useful. A lot of cars left that garage during that window of time.”

“Jesus, you don’t know anything!”

“Doctor, there’s no way Hickey can—”

“Can what? It looks like he can do any damn thing he pleases!” Will stood and lifted the briefcase that held the ransom.

“What are you doing?” asked Chalmers.

“Going back to the car and waiting for Hickey’s next call. And I want you to stay right here.”

“That’s not an option, Doctor,” Zwick said from the speakerphone.

“You want to bet?”

“The only way you can participate in the resolution of this situation is our way. Otherwise, we’ll have to arrest you.”

“For what? I haven’t done anything.”

“I’ll have the Gulfport police arrest you for reckless driving. You’ve got a hooker in your car. How about prostitution?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“By now Agent Chalmers has some special equipment at his disposal downstairs. A tracking device, which you can carry in your pocket, and which will allow us to follow you from a very discreet distance. We can wait for Hickey to arrange an exchange, then be ready to take him down at the safest possible moment. We also have an undetectable wire. With the wire, we’ll know just when that moment is, and we’ll also have everything Hickey says on tape.”

“Undetectable, my ass. A wire helps you guys at trial, but it doesn’t do squat for my wife and daughter. And they’re my only priority.”

“This is nonnegotiable, Doctor.”

“You think so?” Will reached into his pocket and brought out Cheryl’s pistol. “Ask Agent Chalmers if it’s negotiable.”

“Bill?” said Zwick.

“He’s holding a gun on me, Frank. Looks like a Walther automatic.”

“You just committed a felony, Doctor,” Zwick informed him. “Don’t make this worse for yourself.”

Will laughed outright. “
Worse?
Are you out of your mind?” He backed toward the door. “You guys had your chance. Two chances. And you blew it both times. It’s my turn now.”

Agent Chalmers held up both hands to show that he had no intention of going for Will’s gun or his own. “At least take the tracking device. Forget the wire. I wouldn’t wear it either.”

“Shut up,” Zwick snapped.

“Where is it?” Will asked.

“I’ll call downstairs and have it waiting for you.”

Zwick said, “Agent Chalmers, as soon as he leaves that room, you will call downstairs and order the agents down there to arrest him.”

Chalmers looked into Will’s eyes. “They’ll have to shoot him to stop him, Frank. I say we let him go.”

“Goddamn it.” The speakerphone crackled for a moment. “All right, just give him the tracker. Jennings, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life. But if you’re dead set—”

“I’m out of here,” Will said. “Please don’t try any cowboy stuff. I’ll call you if you can help.”

He aimed the gun at Chalmers all the way to the stairs. Then he gave the FBI agent a salute, turned, and bounded down the steps.

In the lobby, he made a beeline for the door. The secretary who’d led him up to Moore’s office saw the gun and screamed, but a business-suited man by the front doors held up his wallet and yelled: “FBI! Everyone stay calm! It’s all right!”

As Will neared the door, the FBI agent held out a small black box with a blinking red LED on it. “GPS,” he said. “Military grade. We can track you down to the square foot you’re standing on. Don’t lose it.”

Will stuck the unit in his pocket, went through the automatic doors, and raced for the Tempo. When he hit the driver’s seat, Cheryl said, “Where the hell have you been? I’m peeing prune pits out here.”

“You’ve got a real way with words, you know?” He cranked the Ford, backed up, then pulled out of the lot and onto Highway 90. Traffic was heavy, but he didn’t see any obvious pursuit vehicles.

“Where are we going?” Cheryl asked, her voice jittery from the speed she’d taken earlier.

“That’s up to Joe. Right now, we’re headed up to I-10. Wherever the meet is, it’s going to be north.”

Will swung into the right lane and started around a dawdling pickup truck. As he came alongside it, he rolled down his window, tossed the GPS device into the bed of the truck, and sped past.

“What was that?” Cheryl asked.

“A pig trail for the FBI to follow.”

“The FBI? Was the FBI in the bank?”

“Yes.”

“Oh shit. Oh God . . .”

“The FBI raided the cabin, but Huey and Abby weren’t there. All they found was the green truck and Huey’s cell phone.”

“Shit. I was right about the truck, though. I told you.”

He turned and gave her a hard look. “They also found a regular phone. A landline. You told me there was no regular phone service at the cabin.”

“I didn’t know there was! I told you I never went there.”

He lifted the briefcase from the floor and set it in her lap. “Open it.”

“Is the money in here?”

“Yes.”

She hefted the case. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s too heavy. Is there a dye pack in here or something?”

“No dye pack. Open it.”

When the lid rose high enough to reveal the neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills, Cheryl’s face lit up like Abby’s did when she saw a deer walk into the backyard on a cool fall morning. “This is too much,” she said in a flustered voice. “Isn’t it?”

“That’s three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

She picked up a stack of hundreds and ran her fingers over it, then fanned the edges like a kid playing with a deck of cards. A high-pitched noise that was almost sexual came from her throat. Will knew the effect of cash money on poor people. He had learned it the hard way.

“Talking about money and holding it in your hand are two different things, aren’t they?” he said. “I told you I’d give you enough to start over. Now you’ve got it. That’s more lap dances than you could do in a lifetime. That’s freedom, Cheryl. Mexico, Bermuda, anyplace you want to be.”

She turned to him, her eyes guarded. “Can I leave now? Right this minute?”

“No. Joe is going to call any second to set up a meeting. I need you to tell him everything’s still all right.”

“No way.” She shook her head like a two-year-old. “I’ve already done too much. Joey will—”

“He won’t do anything! You’ll never even have to see him again.”

“You’re lying. To bluff Joey, you’re going to need me up to the very last second. Then I’ll be with him. And he’ll
know.
”

“He won’t know anything.”

“You don’t know him.” Unalloyed fear shone from her eyes. “Joey’s got this thing about betrayal. Like the mafia. He’s totally paranoid about it.”

“He’s going to kill my little girl, Cheryl. You don’t want to believe that, but deep down, you know. If he’s capable of killing you, he could kill Abby without batting an eye.”

“Would you let me go if you knew where she was?”

Will nearly slammed on the brakes. “Do you know where Huey’s going?”

“Would you let me go if I did?”

“That depends on whether I believe you.”

She pursed her lips and looked down at the money in her lap. “I was supposed to bring you to the motel, like I said. Then Joey was supposed to pick us up. I think he was going to take us back to the cabin where Huey was keeping Abby. But if the FBI raided the cabin, and Joey knows that . . .”

“He knows.”

“Then he’s going to his backup plan.”

“What’s his backup plan?”

“For Huey, I don’t know. I’m still supposed to go the motel in Brookhaven. Only I don’t bring you. I’m supposed to stay off the cell phone, too. Joey will call me at the motel—on a landline—and tell me what to do. I might sit tight with the money until he tells me to go somewhere, or he might pick me up.”

“Where would he tell you to go?”

She looked at the money again and swallowed. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve been thinking about it. One time we were driving from Jackson to New Orleans, and Joey got all hot and wanted to do it. I told him I didn’t want to in the car, and he said we didn’t have to. About ten minutes later, he pulled off the interstate and went down this two-lane blacktop a ways and stopped at an old house. He climbed in a window and unlocked the door for me. His daddy’s people owned it, I think. The house was mostly empty, but there was a bed and a stove. I think if things went to hell up Jackson way, that’s where he’d go.”

This
was what she had held back during the torture session. “Could you find that house again?”