A Perfect Grave (23 page)

Chapter Fifty-Four

B
itter northwest winds were forking like a serpent’s tongue over the Olympic Mountains and reconverging over Puget Sound to deliver a thunderstorm to Seattle.

Rhonda Boland had finished an overtime shift at the supermarket. Her feet were throbbing and her back was aching as she arrived at Alice Valeeni’s house. Alice was the Italian grandmother who lived three doors down from the Boland home and watched Brady whenever Rhonda needed help.

The early evening sky had turned black and winds were kicking up when Rhonda and Brady arrived home. They ordered Brady’s favorite, a large pizza with the works.

They spent the rest of the evening watching a rerun of
Planet of the Apes.

Afterward, Brady got into bed with a Superman comic and Rhonda drew a hot bath. She added a ribbon of fragrant bubble bath she’d picked up from the discount bin because the cap had split. It saved her three bucks. The bubbles smelled like roses.

Like the roses on Sister Anne’s casket.

Easing herself into the water, Rhonda tried not to think of her money problems. Tried not to bother God again about Brady. But it was impossible. Not an hour, not a minute, not a second passed that she did not agonize over the prospect of losing her son.

Please don’t take him. Please. He’s all I have. Please.

She stifled a sob with her hands until the moment passed.

Soaking in the bubbles, the hot water soothing her, Rhonda considered her life so far, her dreams, the choices she’d made, and all that fate had visited upon her. She scolded herself, told herself that no matter how bad she thought she’d had it, someone, somewhere had it worse.

Again, Rhonda asked God to forgive her. She was sorry. She was just so tired. The hot water relaxed her. It felt good. So soothing. The water was so warm, like a Caribbean beach, the warm azure sea caressing her toes, palm fronds hissing in the breeze. Her muscles slackened. She grew drowsy and fell asleep, dreaming of palm trees and a better life when thunder woke her.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sleeping.

Rhonda drained the tub, slipped on her robe. She was exhausted, ready for bed as she padded through the still house, switching off lights. She knew every creak and groan of her home. She heard the hiss of the rain, punctuated with the rumble of thunder. The TV was off. The refrigerator clicked and ran with a rattle as she double-checked the locks on the doors.

Everything was fine. Secure.

Before going to her bedroom, Rhonda started for Brady’s room to check on him. His reading light was on, his door half open.

A few steps away, Rhonda froze.

Brady’s bed squeaked in a way she’d never heard before. Then everything went quiet.

Deathly quiet. Something wasn’t right.

“Brady?”

Nothing but the rain. Rhonda moved closer to the door.

“Brady, honey, are you up?”

A shadow flickered like a passing spirit on her son’s bedroom wall.

“Okay, sweetie, joke’s over, mommy’s ti—”

The bed squeak-creaked again, this time with a faint desperate vocal sound as Rhonda inched closer to the door.

She didn’t believe what she saw.

It couldn’t be real.

Before her jaw opened to shriek, before her brain could issue the cognitive command to react, her knees buckled, and she steadied herself against the door frame.

“Oh, Jesus!”

Brady was sitting up on the edge of his bed, fear pushing his eyes wide open.

A man’s right gloved hand was clamped over Brady’s mouth. In his left, the man held a serrated hunting knife.

Rhonda stepped toward them and met the man’s cold eyes.

“Don’t you fucking move!” he said.

“Please, please, let him go.”

“Do as I say and he’ll live.”

“What do you want? Who are you?”

“Sit down and listen.”

Rhonda held her arms toward Brady.

“Sit!”

Rhonda sat on Brady’s swivel chair near his desk.

“This will be simple. I think your pup here’s already grasped the concept of property when we met in the park the other day. Right, sport?”

“Please don’t hurt him. Oh, please.”

“Your husband was Jack Boland, that’s what he called himself.”

Rhonda nodded.

“He owes me from an old business transaction and I’ve come to collect.”

“Business? But his landscaping business failed when he died. I’m paying off all of his debts.”

“This was
old
business.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Was it gambling? Because he gambled.”

“We were partners on a project. I kept up my end and now I want my money. In full. With interest!”

“How much? I don’t understand. The accountants—I mean—we don’t—”

“One and a half million dollars.”

“My God!”

“I know you have it.”

“No. We have nothing. You’ve made a mistake.”

“Don’t lie! Don’t you fucking lie!”

“Mister, I don’t know who you are, or what you think you know! But you’re wrong! Look around! Look at how we live! I’m a supermarket cashier! Jack left us in debt! My son’s sick and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the operation he needs to save his life! You’re wrong about us!”

“Look on the computer keyboard.”

“What?”

“Look!”

Rhonda turned in the chair and picked up a snapshot she’d never seen before. Brady with Sister Anne Braxton, the murdered nun. Taken at his school.

“Where did you get this?”

“From Sister Anne. I saw you and your pup here at her funeral. Both of you.”

Rhonda’s control swirled between fear and anger.

“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t move!”

The man reached into his rear pocket for handcuffs, snapping them on Brady, deftly binding him to his headboard, keeping the knife to his throat and Rhonda at bay.

“Don’t!” Brady shouted.

Instantly the man backhanded his fist across Rhonda’s face, shocking her as he reached under the bed for a large roll of duct tape, swiftly peeling and spinning it around her until she was restrained in Brady’s chair in a silver cocoon.

Then he grabbed the cup of water on the desk. Next to it were four pills. He showed her the brand marking on the pills.

“These are sleeping pills, Rhonda. Harmless.”

He shoved them in her mouth and held her nose and clamped his gloved hand over her face as she struggled.

“Swallow them now!”

“Leave my mom alone!”

She continued resisting.

“Swallow the goddam pills or I’ll keep you awake to watch him bleed!”

She swallowed them. He let her breathe and checked her mouth, his finger roughly probing under her tongue and along her gums.

“When you wake, find a way to get yourself out of this tape because I’m going to call. When I do, you will have twenty-four hours to clear your husband’s debt with me. I’m going to be watching you. If you contact the police, or anyone, you will never see your pup again. I’ve got a perfect grave ready for him. Do you believe me?”

Rhonda nodded.

He drew his face close until his eyes burned into hers.

“You’ll never know the price I’ve paid, or the things I’ve done to find you!
You will get me my money!
I’ll contact you with more instructions. When I have my money, your pup comes back. Be smart, Rhonda. Your asshole husband held my money. Find it and we’re done! Fuck up, and you’re going to another funeral.”

As the man looped tape around Rhonda’s mouth, she would not take her eyes from Brady.

She prayed.

Soon her muscles refused to obey her and she grew semiconscious. She wanted to call the police. She wanted to run screaming into the street but her body was turning to stone.

Her eyes started to flicker.

Her lids became heavy.

She couldn’t hold them open.

Her final image was of Brady and the glint of the knife against his throat.

Chapter Fifty-Five

S
o far this morning, Bob Germain was four for four.

Rare on residential routes, he thought as he stopped his Escort wagon in front of number five and reached for his clipboard. Let’s see. He ran his finger down the page with the Super Quick & Friendly Delivery letterhead.

Recipient is Rhonda Boland. A letter from an insurance company.

“Help me, Rhonda,” Germain chuckled to himself after ringing the doorbell, wondering if he’d be lucky enough to have all twenty-five of his deliveries be home. Could be a record-setting day.

He rang the bell again. As time ticked by in silence, his hope faded.

“Figures.”

He reached for his pad to leave the message that he’d return later. His pen was poised when he was stopped by a noise from inside. What the heck was that? Sounded like a cry. He banged on the door.

“Hello!”

He tried the handle, surprised to find it was unlocked.

“Anybody home? You have a delivery! Hello!”

He heard another sound like a woman’s muffled groan. He entered, calling as he moved farther into the house, scanning it for a clue, hoping that he wasn’t going to come upon a love session, like his buddy did.

Getting down in Tacoma.

Germain stopped in his tracks.

First hair, then a forehead and a woman’s face, her mouth covered with tape. She was on the floor, on her back, taped to a chair, moaning, rolling her head.

Germain rushed to her side, pulled the tape from her mouth.

“Please, he’s got my son!”

Her face was bruised. He checked for more signs of injury.

“Who?” Germain glanced around. “Ma’am, are you hurt anywhere else?”

He pulled out his keys, extracted the blade of his pocketknife, and sliced at the tape, freeing her and helping her sit more comfortably.

“Ma’am, I don’t know what happened but I think I should call an ambulance.”

“No!”

“Ma’am, I think you need help.”

“My son! He took my son! Don’t call the police! He’ll kill him! Oh God!”

“Who? Ma’am we have to call some—”

The phone rang, jerking Rhonda to her feet. She trailed tape as she scrambled, grabbing the phone before the second ring could sound.

“Mom!”

“Brady! Oh, honey are you all right? Where are you, just tell me!”

Rhonda heard a scuffle, traffic noise. It had to be a public phone.

“Brady!”

The stranger came on the line.

“This is your wake-up call!”

“Please don’t hurt him! Please let him go! I’ll sell my house, anything! I’m begging you! Please!”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours to pay me in full! Say good-bye to your mother, pup!”

“Mommee!”

“Brady! I love you! Brady!”

The line died in her hand and Rhonda collapsed on the floor. She cradled the receiver, then released an agonizing sob.

Germain was dumbfounded.

“Ma’am, I think you’d better call the police right now.”

“
Nooooo!
He’ll kill him!”

Germain blinked, then swallowed and looked around until his attention went into the bedroom, the posters of the Mariners, Spider-Man, the models of choppers and cars, ships, the skateboard.

A boy’s room.

On the floor he saw the photograph of a woman and a boy.

Isn’t that the murdered nun whose picture’s been all over the news?

Sister Anne.

Who’s the boy? What the hell’s going on?

Germain looked at the bed. At the sheets. At the small, dark smears.

Blood?

He reached for his cell phone, pressed 911 to get the police and an ambulance to Rhonda Boland’s address when Rhonda hurled herself at him, struggling for his phone.

“I told you no police! Now he’ll kill Brady!”

Germain held her back until he’d completed the call.

Rhonda dropped to the floor.

Would she ever see Brady again?

Chapter Fifty-Six

T
he 911 operator kept Bob Germain’s information off the air.

The kidnapping suspect could be monitoring police calls over a scanner.

Using the computer-aided dispatch system, the operator sent the call immediately to Officers Ron Lloyd and April Vossek, in the district’s nearest unmarked unit. Vossek read the call on the car’s Mobile Data Computer. The engine roared as they responded without activating their lights or siren, arriving along with paramedics, who examined Rhonda Boland.

They treated her face. She was hysterical. After calming her and taking stock of the bloodied sheets, the tape, the photograph, and other facts, Lloyd and Vossek quickly determined the gravity of what had happened and its link to Sister Anne Braxton’s murder.

Urgent calls were made.

In her downtown high-rise apartment, Grace Garner was stepping from her shower when Sergeant Stan Boulder phoned her.

“We’ve got a kidnapping of a boy in a case that looks to be linked to the Braxton homicide.”

“What? What do we know?”

Grace had wrapped a towel around herself and made a watery trail to her bedroom.

“Not much. The call’s hot. Only a few minutes old. Dom’s on his way to take you to the scene. Get there fast, Grace. Find out what you can before the FBI bigfoots this one.”

Grace dressed at top speed, grabbed her badge and gun, and trotted to the elevator. In the lobby she picked up a copy of the morning’s
Mirror.
Outside, she read Jason Wade’s stories and devoured a banana just as Perelli whipped the Malibu up her driveway. She got in and he left several feet of burning rubber.

At the Boland home, Lloyd and Vossek briefed Grace and Perelli. Crime-scene people were rolling. The caller’s number had come up as a public phone at a gas station at the edge of Renton.

“Renton PD and King County Sheriff’s Office are trying to get any surveillance video,” Vossek said. “It doesn’t look good. The place is pretty beat up.”

Kay Cataldo arrived with her crew from the Seattle Police Crime Scene Investigation Unit.

“I brought help,” Cataldo nodded to Chuck DePew, who had a team from Washington State Patrol’s Crime Lab.

“We’ll divide the load so we can move faster,” DePew said.

The vice section sent detectives from special and general investigations. They set up a trap on Rhonda’s phone, started searching through Brady’s computer files and e-mails. They got records to run urgent and extensive background checks on Rhonda Boland and her deceased husband Jack Boland. Then Special Agent Jim Crawson called from the Bureau’s Seattle Field Office to say agents were on their way.

Grace and Perelli didn’t wait.

They took Rhonda alone into her kitchen and had her go back to the previous night and give them a time line of how Brady’s kidnapping unfolded. All the while, Grace used a microrecorder and took careful notes.

“Why would he ask you for over a million dollars?” Grace asked.

Rhonda shook her head as tears rolled down her swollen face.

“We’re broke. I’m looking for a second job to pay for Brady’s operation.”

“What sort of operation?”

“He has a tumor.”

“Does he need medication?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll put that out now and in the alert,” Grace said.

“What about this ‘project’ the kidnapper claims to have been involved in with your husband?” Perelli asked.

“I don’t know anything about any project that would involve that much. Talk to the bankruptcy people. My husband’s biggest landscaping clients were in the range of five thousand a year, tops. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“What about former employees?”

“He was self-employed. He’d take Brady along, but he ran things on his own.”

“What about further back in your husband’s past? You said he gambled. Did he deal in drugs? Did he have any outstanding gambling debts?” Perelli asked.

“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

“What about his family?” Grace asked.

“He had no family. His parents died in a house fire when he was young.”

Grace looked hard at the photograph of Brady with Sister Anne.

According to Jason Wade’s article in today’s
Mirror
, Anne Braxton was also orphaned as a teen and donated one million dollars to the order.

Were these factors at play here?

“How could this guy figure into your husband’s business?” Grace asked

“I don’t know.”

“But before your husband started his landscaping business, he gambled.” Grace said.

“Yes, I told you, he said he was a professional gambler. When we met in Las Vegas he was playing the tables.”

“And before that?”

“I think he held quite a few jobs. He seemed to know a little about a lot of things.”

“Rhonda, did he ever do time in jail or prison?”

“If he did, I’m not aware.”

“And you never saw this kidnapper before?” Grace asked.

“No. I don’t know who the hell he is.”

“Not even in the neighborhood?” Perelli said. “Like, maybe he pretended to be lost, looking for directions?”

“No.” Rhonda put her face her hands and shook her head. Then she froze. “Wait!
The park!
”

“What about it?”

“He said he met Brady in the park the other day.”

“Met? Was that the word he used? It implies they spoke.”

“Yes. Two, no, three days ago, Brady went to the park with his friends, Justin and Ryan.”

“Which park?”

“The community-pool park. It’s three blocks away.”

“We need to talk to the boys now, they may remember something.”

Rhonda pointed to her fridge and a list of numbers scrawled in Brady’s hand.

Perelli snatched the sheet and started dialing, just as Cataldo called Grace to join her outside. Cataldo was working at a rear window and pointed a latex finger to fresh markings made by a hard-edged tool used to pry open its weak wooden frame.

“Looks like he gained entry here.” Cataldo showed Grace the busted lock latch. “More important, look what he left.”

Under the window, in the soil bed, a full foot impression.

“Looks like a DOC-issued tennis shoe. We’re right behind this guy, Grace. We just need one piece of evidence to lock on to him. We’re breathing down his neck.”

Grace looked through the window and down the hall at Rhonda Boland.

“I pray we’re not too late.”