24 Hours (40 page)

Karen looked into the trunk of the Camry and put her hand to her mouth. The woman Hickey had carjacked had beaten her hands bloody in her attempts to get out of the trunk. Several fingers were broken. The left side of her head was swollen from the pistol blow, and her eyes had the dull sheen of shock. She looked up at Karen like she expected to be raped and left for dead.

“Get out,” Karen said. “Hurry! Before he changes his mind.”

Hickey was sitting in the Camry, talking on the cell phone, checking on Will. At Karen’s urging, he had pulled off the interstate at a deserted exit to let the woman out of the trunk. But the owner of the Camry clearly didn’t understand the chance she was being given, because she wasn’t moving.

“Come on!” Karen hissed. She reached in and pulled the woman up by the arms. Slowly, like a sleepwalker waking, the woman began to jerk her arms, but whether to assist Karen or fight her, Karen couldn’t tell. Somehow she got the woman clear of the trunk and on her feet.

She was a pretty brunette, with a hint of Asian ancestry around her eyes, and she wore a blue skirt suit much like Karen’s. But her eyes were blank.

Karen pushed her toward the trees on the side of the road. “Run! Go on! Run!”

The woman looked around. The only sign of civilization was a boarded-up gas station. “Are you going to leave me here?” she asked.

“You’re safer here than you are with us. Go!”

Like a zoo-bred animal that finds its cage left open, the woman seemed reluctant to leave the familiarity of her car.

“If you don’t run,” Karen told her, “you’re going to die.”

The woman began to cry.

In the switchboard center at the Beau Rivage, the operator was heavy into
The Stand.
Trashcan Man was hauling his nuclear weapon toward the Dark Man’s stronghold, and trivialities like gainful employment simply could not compete. The young man answered the primary line on autopilot, and when the caller asked for suite 28021, he said, “Just one moment” as he usually did, and made the connection.

Twenty-eight floors above him, the phones in Will’s suite rang, faded, and rang again. The operator read another paragraph of Trashcan Man’s journey, then blinked and raised his head from the page. He was certain that something was wrong, he just couldn’t place what it was. It took a few seconds to realize his mistake, but he thought he still had time to correct it. He was reaching for the keyboard to execute the call-forwarding macro when the phones in 28021 stopped ringing.

“Shit,” he whispered. “
Shit.
”

Remy Geautreau had promised him a hundred bucks if he’d forward the suite’s calls for the next three hours. He punched a code that connected him to the desk manager’s office.

Remy Geautreau was not in his office. He was standing at the front desk, listening to an irate guest who had left a camcorder battery in his room after checkout. Housekeeping had already checked twice for it, but the guest refused to believe they hadn’t found it. At the first brief pause, a clerk stepped up and said, “Mr. Geautreau? You have a phone call.”

“I want to talk to the maid myself!” bellowed the guest.

Geautreau gave him a syrupy smile. “But of course, Mr. Collins. Do you speak Spanish?”

The man went purple. “Goddamn it!” He took his wife by the arm and stomped toward the grand entrance to make his exit.

“He lost eight thousand last night,” Geautreau said with a bemused smile. “You can always tell the losers.”

He went into his office and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“I screwed up,” said the operator. “With the call forwarding thing.”

Geautreau’s face darkened.

“A call came in for the suite, and before I could think, I put it through. I tried to catch it, but I was too late. They hung up.”

The manager closed his eyes and hung up. “You just cost me fifteen thousand dollars, you incompetent ass.”

As he closed the door of his office, he wondered whether the doctor would let him keep the thousand dollars of earnest money. Of course he wouldn’t.

The Baron roared northward above Interstate 55 at two hundred knots. Will didn’t think they had covered enough distance to sight Huey’s Rambler yet—if in fact he was driving the Rambler—but he was flying parallel to the southbound lanes just in case. Cheryl was glued to the passenger window. The traffic below was moderate but steady, the cars and trucks humming along at seventy-five miles per hour while Will shot past them at three times that.

He was about to cut his airspeed when the cell phone began ringing again. From habit he reached for the throttles; then he stopped himself. If he cut the engines at three hundred feet, the state police would soon be hosing them off the interstate.

“Who answers it?” Cheryl asked.

“You.”

“Joey already told me where to go. He wouldn’t call again.”

Will considered not answering at all, but he couldn’t risk it. He pulled the throttles back as far as he dared, then picked up the Nokia and hit SEND.

“Hello?”

He heard only the open connection. Then someone said, “Jennings?”

“Joe?”

More silence.

“Joe? Are you there?”

“You wanna tell me how I dialed Cheryl and got you, you clever son of a bitch?”

Will gripped the phone tighter but kept his voice calm. “You must have dialed the wrong number. You thought you were dialing her, but you dialed the hotel instead.”

Hickey didn’t reply.

“Joe?”

“Put Cheryl on the phone.”

Will’s breath caught in his throat. “How do I do that?”

“You hand her the fucking phone, that’s how.”

The coldness of Hickey’s voice was worse than any blast of temper. “Joe, I’m telling you—”

“No, I’m telling
you,
Doc. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. You’re never going to talk to your kid again.”

Will’s face went numb.

“It was always going to be that way,” Hickey said. “It had to be. It’s predestination. From the day you murdered my mother. You took what was precious to me, so I gotta take what’s precious to you. You see that, right?”

“Where is she, Joe? Where’s Abby?”

“You don’t need to worry about that. In fact, if I was you, I’d go ahead and slit my wrists, to save myself the hell that’s coming. Going down to a funeral home to pick out that tiny little casket? Facing your wife after going off and leaving her like that? What kind of father does that, huh?”

Hickey’s words cut to the bone, but something more terrible struck Will like a hammer. There was no way Hickey could speak that way if Karen were in the car with him. She would be screaming at the least, possibly even trying to kill him.

“Where’s Karen, Joe? I know she’s not with you. What have you done to her?”

“You don’t need to worry about that either. No point at all.”

The numbness began to spread along his arms. It was like being cut adrift in space, lost in a vacuum without air or sound.

“Wherever you are,” Hickey said, “you might as well just stay there. See if Cheryl will give you a little head while you shoot yourself. She’s good at it. Oh, and tell her I’ll be seeing her soon.
Real
soon.”

“Joe, you’ve got the wrong idea. I don’t know where Cheryl is. I kept the phone because—”

The phone went dead in his hand.

Will tasted blood. He had bitten through his bottom lip.

“What’s the matter?” Cheryl asked in a fearful voice. “What just happened?”

He couldn’t speak.

“He knows, doesn’t he? He knows we’re together.”

“I think he killed Karen. And he’s going to kill Abby.”

“What? You’re crazy.”

Will’s hands began to shake.

Karen closed the Camry’s trunk and looked back over her shoulder. The woman was moving now, making for the abandoned gas station at an ungainly trot. Karen wished she would turn toward the trees, because Hickey could easily drive over and shoot her if he changed his mind about letting her go. Hopefully he had too much on his mind to worry about that.

Karen walked to the passenger door and climbed in beside him. Hickey was off the phone. He was just sitting there, staring through the windshield.

“Did you talk to Will?”

He fished a Camel out of his pocket and lit it with the cigarette lighter. “I talked to him.”

“What did he say?”

“It’s not what he said. It’s where he said it. He wasn’t in his suite.”

She felt a stab of alarm. “What?”

“He answered Cheryl’s cell phone. I told you he was pulling something.” Hickey turned and let the hatred in his eyes burn into her. “You just remember, he asked for every bit of this.”

Hickey put the Camry into DRIVE, spun it in a 180-degree turn, and sped back up to the interstate. His cheeks reddened as he drove, but his lips only grew paler.

“Call the Beau Rivage again,” Karen pleaded. “There must be some mistake!”

“Oh, there’s a mistake, all right. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing anybody can do now.”

He said this forcefully, but he didn’t look like he quite believed it.

Karen reached out and touched him softly on the arm. “
Please
tell me what’s happening.”

Hickey backhanded her across the face.

“Don’t you touch me again,” he growled.

Will reduced his airspeed to a hundred knots. They were far enough north now that spotting Huey and Abby driving south was a possibility. It was more than that, in fact. It was his only hope. The greater part of him believed that Karen was dead. There was no way she could have sat silently by while Hickey explained why he had to kill Abby. It was possible she was tied and gagged, but he doubted that scenario. With Abby under his control, Hickey didn’t need such measures to make Karen cooperate.

His prayer now was that Hickey had no way to contact Huey while he was on the road. That Abby would remain alive for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, while Will tried to locate her from the air.

“I’m dead,” Cheryl mumbled for the twentieth time. She was hugging herself and rocking like a heroin addict going cold turkey.

“Sit up!” Will shouted. “Look for the Rambler!”

She leaned forward and looked at her knees.

He shoved the yoke forward. The busy interstate rushed up to meet them. In seconds, power pylons and oak trees rose higher than the Baron.

“
Pull up!
” she screamed, going rigid in her seat. “
Pull up!
”

At the last instant, Will pulled back on the yoke and began skimming along beside the southbound lanes. Cars slowed as their drivers gaped at the low-flying airplane. From eighty feet you could see individual faces, chattering mouths, pointing fingers. Most of the car passengers probably thought he was a crop duster, albeit a crazy one.

“You look for that Rambler, or I’ll flip this thing on its back until you vomit.”

She pressed her face to the Plexiglas. “I’m looking!”

Will switched on his radio. He had just thought of a way in which the FBI might help him after all.

“Baron November Two-Whiskey-Juliet,” crackled the speaker. “Baron Whiskey-Juliet, this is an emergency call. Please respond.”

It was a little too soon to be hearing from the FAA about his treetop run over I-55. He keyed his mike.

“This is Baron Whiskey-Juliet, over.”

There was a brief silence. Then a voice said, “Dr. Jennings, this is Frank Zwick.”

Will shook his head. The FBI man didn’t give up easily, he had to give him that. There was no telling how long they had been making that radio call. Ever since he switched off his radio, probably.

“Doctor, we intercepted part of that last cell phone transmission. We heard what Hickey said about your daughter.”

Will didn’t respond.

“Where are you, Jennings? Let us help you.”

“Where I am doesn’t matter.” He kept his eyes on the interstate to his right. “Tell me one thing. Did you ever figure out how Hickey escaped from the airport?”

“We’re pretty sure he carjacked a Toyota Camry from a woman who arrived in the garage at the same time he and your wife did.”

“What color was it?”

“A silver ninety-two model. We got it off the garage security tapes. We just had the Highway Patrol put out a BOLO on it.”

“Could you answer one question for me?”

“What is it?”

Will steeled himself. “Has my wife’s body turned up anywhere?”

“No. We have no reason to believe that your wife has been injured. Doctor, we need to know where you are. We can’t—”

Will switched off the radio.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked Cheryl.

“I’m looking,” she assured him. “I’ve seen every other kind of car, but no Rambler.”

“Scan, don’t focus. If you see anything that looks remotely like it, sing out. I’ll come around with the flow of traffic.”

“Is that Brookhaven over there?”

“Where?”

She pointed east. “Yonder way.” “Yes.”

“Hey!” she cried. “There’s the motel! That’s the Trucker’s Rest! Right by the exit.”

“Can you see the parking lot?”

“We’re too far away.”

Will didn’t think Huey could have reached the motel yet, but he couldn’t afford to pass it by without a look. He pushed the engines harder and circled back to check the parking lot. Skipping the Baron over a cellular transmission tower, he floated past the exit ramp and dropped over the parking lot of the Trucker’s Rest like a seagull looking for scraps.

“No Rambler,” Cheryl said.

Will shot back over the interstate and resumed his course parallel to the southbound lanes coming out of Jackson. He saw Tauruses, Lexuses, SUVs by the dozen, semi-trucks, Winnebagos, and motorcycles. But no Rambler.

“Be right,” he said softly, holding the image of a Rambler in his mind. “
Be right.
”

“Oh my God,” Cheryl said, which sometimes seemed the sum total of her vocabulary.

“What is it?”

She was staring down at the interstate with her mouth hanging open.

“What?”

“I saw it.”

“The Rambler?”

She turned to him and nodded, her eyes wide.