Abduction (11 page)

VINCE
had instructed two men to drive to the address in Alva and find out everything that there was to know about Thomas Cody.

Lee Harper was behind the wheel of an old flame-red Pontiac Firebird. As a kid he’d fallen in love with the model, being an avid fan of James Garner, the actor who’d driven one throughout
The Rockford Files
TV series.  Ford had stopped manufacturing the car in 2002, but Lee was determined to keep his on the road till hell froze over.

“What’re we supposed to do when we get there?” Boo Mercer said through the mouthful of gum he was chewing.

“Ask questions,” Lee said.  “All we know is that the guy is currently in Fort Myers.  Maybe he’s married and his wife will be at the store.”

“What if there’s nobody there?”

“Then we’ll break in and toss the place.  Find out all we can and report back to Palmer.”

“Sounds like a waste of time and gas.”

“Whatever.  We get paid to follow orders.  Don’t knock it, Boo.”

Boo blew a bubble, sucked the gum back in when it burst, and licked his lips.  He knew that Lee was right.  They were pretty far down the food chain in Nick Cady’s outfit, and that suited Boo just fine.  He was happy to run errands and beat up on jerk-offs that didn’t pay their protection dues on time.  He liked to break bones with his Louisville baseball bat, which had been his pa’s and was thirty-two inches long and made of ash.  It was a real attention-getter.  A couple of belts with it always decided a holdout to hand over the green.

The sudden bang and jolt almost caused Lee to lose his grip on the steering wheel.  He managed to stay in control and bring the car to a stop on the grass next to the blacktop.

Boo was coughing, due to swallowing his gum.  “What happened, did you hit something?” he asked Lee when he could speak.

“A blowout,” Lee said.  “First one I’ve had in ten years.”

They got out and changed the wheel.  The rusted lug nuts took forever to remove.  Fifteen minutes later they were back on the road again.

The sign for Cody’s Country Store was lit up by a single tube of blue neon.  Lee slowed down as he drove past.  It was the middle of the night.  They would have to break in and play it by ear.  After driving about three hundred yards farther, he stopped and did a K-turn on the dark, narrow highway and headed back at not much more than walking pace, with the lights off.  He pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine.

Debbie was wide awake.  She had sat in the large dining kitchen at the rear of the store and swapped life histories with Gail as they had consumed half a bottle of bourbon before going to bed.  She was in a second-floor room at the front of the store, and was standing at the window looking out and up to the moon and star-filled heavens, thinking that they had been one of the few constants throughout her life.  An unknown number of generations come and go, to suffer all the physical and emotional hardship thrown at them, believing as individuals that being in the world and what they did in it was in some way important, and that their having been born and lived was ordained; not just a random and totally insignificant event.  Given time, even the Grand Canyon would crumble away, and mankind’s extinction was inevitable, because she believed the scientists who’d said that once the hydrogen in the core of the Sun ran out, it would expand outward into a red giant and consume the solar system.  But whatever happened in the far future was not her concern.  Neither was the past.  History was dead and gone, like yesterday’s news. Here, now, and Kelly’s safe return was all that mattered in the universe.

The car caught her eye.  It was moving too slowly, purposefully, not just being driven at what would be considered normal speed.  She waited and placed her face near the window to look to the right and keep it in sight.  The brake lights flared.  The vehicle stopped, turned, and the lights went out.  It crept back towards the store like a dark, stalking predator.

Running out onto the landing, Debbie called Gail, and knocked on her bedroom door.

“What?” Gail said, appearing blurry-eyed and wearing nothing but a pair of panties.  “You had a nightmare?”

“No, I couldn’t sleep. I was standing at the window and a car went by really slow, and then it came back with the lights off.  I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Gail said, going back into the bedroom to pull on her jeans and a T-shirt.  “No one could possibly know anything.”

They went through to the front, to look out and see two men standing below.  One drew a handgun and headed off around the side of the store.  The other hammered on the door with his fist.

Boo made short work of the lock on the back door.  There weren’t many things in life that he was good at, but lock picking was one of them.  He used a short-handled bolt cutter to snip through the security chain that had been engaged, and walked into the kitchen.

Lee waited a few seconds and then knocked again.

“Who is it?” Gail shouted from where she was standing behind the counter at the rear of the store.

“Just a guy who needs to make a phone call,” Lee said.  “I got a flat and don’t have a spare, and I can’t get a signal on my cell.”

“The door’s open,” Gail said.  “Come on in.”

Lee turned the handle and entered.  It was gloomy inside, and something was bothering him.  Why was the woman out of sight, and why had the door been unlocked?  He drew his gun.  This felt like a setup, even though there was no way that he and Boo could’ve been expected.

“Drop the gun,” Gail said.  “If you don’t, I’ll shoot you.”

His night vision was good.  He saw the dim shape of the woman behind a counter.  She was holding something bulky.  It looked like a crossbow.

“Put the crossbow down, honey,” Lee said.  “All I want is to ask you a couple of questions.”

Gail chuckled.  “You’re an armed intruder, and believe me if you don’t lose the gun you’ll have an arrow sticking out of your chest.  Make a decision.”

The blood-curdling scream from the kitchen froze Gail and Lee for a second.  Lee recovered first, moved to the side and loosed off four shots at the woman.

Gail felt one bullet burn a path across her forearm, and dropped down behind the solid oak counter for cover, moved sideways, crablike, and rose up to find her target and pull the trigger.

Lee felt a piercing agony as the arrow entered his chest, just above his right nipple.  The broadhead metal tip of the carbon shaft erupted from his back, and he fell to his knees as his fingers lost their grip on the gun and it clattered to the floor.

Gail quickly reloaded the bow and hesitantly approached the man.  Kicked the gun away from him, then took the time to go over to it, squat down and swap it for the crossbow.  “If you try to stand up, I’ll shoot you dead,” she said, unaware that her cell was vibrating on the dresser upstairs, moving ever nearer to the edge of it.

Debbie had been standing back at the side of the kitchen door.  She didn’t move as she heard the light scraping and probing as someone picked the lock.  The door opened a couple of inches, and then the jaws of some kind of wire cutter appeared and snipped through the safety chain.  Her grip tightened on the handle of the large hunting knife that Gail had furnished her with.  She knew that she should be scared shitless, but was just tense, feeling confidant and ready ‒ if necessary ‒ to plunge the serrated blade deep into the intruder’s neck, before running out of the door, in case he was somehow still able to fire the gun he held.

Boo stood perfectly still and listened.  He could hear voices coming from the front of the store, and so assumed that someone had answered the door and let Lee inside.  He relaxed, took two steps forward and then screamed as something tore into his shin bone at the front, fracturing it, as it simultaneously bit into his calf muscle at the back of his left leg.

Dropping the bolt cutter and his gun, Boo went down onto his right knee and groped with his hands to feel for what was causing him such excruciating pain.

Debbie darted forward, picked up the gun and backed off, to then switch on the kitchen light.

The man was moon-faced, a little overweight, and had wispy blond hair and bright blue eyes that were currently filled with tears.  His hands were scrabbling ineffectively at the solid steel, hand-forged bear trap, which had been no more than an ornament hanging on a wall in the store for over fifty years.

The crushing force of the jaws had totally immobilized Boo.  He looked down at the trap with a horror-filled expression on his now pale face.

Gail appeared at the inner door and smiled.  “That worked a treat,” she said to Debbie.  “It was worth us breaking a few fingernails to get it open and set.”

“What happened to the other one?” Debbie said, staring at the gun that Gail was holding.

“He has an arrow in his chest.  Maybe he’ll die,” Gail said.  “Let’s tie both of them up anyway, and then you can phone Logan and tell him what went down, while I pour us both another bourbon.  I think we deserve one to settle our nerves after what we’ve just had to do.”

With the two men bound with their hands behind their backs, and of no further threat to them, they locked the back and front doors and went upstairs.  Debbie picked up the cell and called the number Logan had given her.

“Are you okay?” Logan said.  “We’ve been trying to call you both.”

“We were busy.  We got visitors.  Have you found Kelly?”

“We know where she is.  We’re on our way back.  What happened?”

“Two guys with guns made a house call, but we used our feminine charms and a crossbow and a bear trap to deal with them.  They’re tied up and no longer fit for purpose.”

Logan grinned.  But the situation was getting out of hand.  Cady knew that Tom was involved.  This really was turning into a full-blown war.  He now felt a degree of responsibility for Tom and Gail, as well as Debbie.  He was in deep against a large outfit, and reckoned that he would be better off operating alone.

Larry phoned Vince.  Told him what had happened at Will’s apartment, then listened to silence for ten seconds; just waited for Vince to reign in his temper before saying anything.

“You broke in, took them by surprise and lost Johnny and Kelsey.  Is that what you’re telling me?” Vince said.

“Yeah,” Larry said.  “It went bad on us.”

“Bad?  It’s a fuckin’ disaster.  There’ll be cops all over the scene.  They’ll link Will, Johnny and Kelsey to us.  Nick will go fuckin’ crazy, and I’ll get the fallout.”

“What do you want me to do?” Larry said.

“Find Logan.  I’m expecting word back on the guy who owns the Camaro.  Boo and Lee are probably there now.  They’ll call when they know anything.  I’ll tell them to kill whoever is there, and then to torch the place.  This has gone too far.  I want Logan’s and the other guy’s heads served up on plates within twenty-four hours.”

LOGAN
checked the man tied up on the floor in the store.  He was unconscious, his pulse was thready, and he didn’t look as though he was going to make it.  The wallet from his pocket had a Florida driver license in it that identified him as Lee Harper.  Pocketing the license, Logan went through to the kitchen.  The man with the bear trap attached to his broken and swollen leg was sitting up with his back against the wall, trying to keep the lower part of his leg straight to avoid putting any undue pressure on it.  He was moaning continuously.  Logan frisked him and found his wallet in a back pocket of his jeans and his cell in his jacket.  Checked the photo and name on his driver license and then pulled up a chair, sat down and said, “You think that you’re in a bad place, Boo Mercer, but it can get a whole lot worse, believe me.  I’m going to ask you a few questions, and then get you to call whoever sent you here.  How does that sound?”

“Like I don’t have a choice,” Boo murmured.

“You got that right.  First, we’ll get rid of that trap.  I daresay it will hurt a little.”

Logan called Tom down from upstairs, and the two of them levered open the steel jaws with their hands.  As the rusted teeth came free, Boo shrieked like a stuck pig, and blood ran freely from the deep wounds.

“There you go,” Logan said.  “Nearly as good as new.”

They lifted Boo up and sat him in a wooden chair.  He was trembling, working hard to assimilate the pain he was suffering, and also believing that whatever he might say to these two men would probably not buy him his life.

Logan sat close up, facing Boo, while Tom heated up the coffeepot.

“How did you get this address?” Logan said.

“The Camaro,” Boo said.  “A guy walked past you at the industrial park.  He phoned it in with the plate number.  The name of the registered owner came up on a check.  We were told to drive out here and find out what his connection was to you.”

Logan reflected on the time that they had been waiting outside NC Transport.  The only pedestrian that he had noticed was a vagrant pushing a cart.  “A homeless-looking guy?” he asked Boo.

“Yeah, Marty Shaw.  He should’ve been an undercover cop.  He likes to get into character when he’s doing surveillance.”

“And who are you due to report back to?”

“Vince Palmer.”

“Then that’s what you’d better do.  I’ll tell you what to say to him, and then you can repeat it back to me,” Logan said as he produced Boo’s BlackBerry from his pocket.  “Make sure that he believes you.  Your life depends on it.”

Boo Mercer’s name came up on the screen of Vince’s cell.

“What do you know, Boo?” Vince said.

“That Tom Cody sold the store out here at Alva two months back.  A gay couple owns it now. They told me that he mentioned moving up to Tampa, but they don’t have a forwarding address.  I asked about the Camaro, and they said they’d paid him cash for it but hadn’t got round to doing the paperwork.”

A cold trail for now, Vince thought.  “Head for home, Boo.  I’ll call you and Lee when I need you,” he said before thumbing the END button.

“Good job,” Logan said, taking the phone back from Boo.  “Problem now is what to do with you.  You know too much about us.”

“I’m no threat to you,” Boo said.  “I just lied to Vince Palmer.  That makes me untrustworthy and a liability.”

“If I let you go and they ran you down, you’d talk,” Logan said.  “You just spoke the truth when you said you’re a liability.”

They left Boo taped to the chair in the kitchen.  Logan went back through to the store to find that Harper had died.  He knelt on his ribcage and used both hands to twist and pull the arrow from his chest.

“What do we do with the body and the guy in the kitchen?” Tom said.

“Get rid of the stiff, and then lock the other guy in the barn.  You and the girls will have to keep away from the store until I’ve dealt with Cady and got Kelly back.”

“Hey, we’re in this together, Logan. I―”

“This isn’t something that you get to vote on, Tom.  When these two jokers are missed, Palmer will send another crew to find out what happened here.  I need for you to take Gail and Debbie to a safe location that you have no connection with.  One way or the other this is going to be a done deal in twenty-four hours, or less.  I’ve got all the info I need to take Cady’s outfit apart.”

Gail and Debbie took a little pity on Boo.  It was obvious that he and his partner were just small fry in Cady’s organization, employed to do penny ante jobs.  And so while Logan and Tom wrapped up Lee’s body in a sheet of tarpaulin and took it out and laid it in the back of the pickup in the barn, along with two heavy wheel rims and some nylon rope, they bathed Boo’s chewed-up, broken leg, applied antiseptic, splinted the limb, and then gave him four Tylenol capsules and a glass of water to wash them down with.

“Do you know where my daughter is?” Debbie said to Boo.

Boo frowned.  Shook his head.  “Nobody tells me anything,” he said.  “Lee and I just get told to go somewhere and do something.  We spend most of the time convincing small businesses to cough up protection money.  Is Lee going to be okay?”

“He’s dead,” Gail said, feeling a little guilty, even though she had fired the crossbow at an armed intruder.

Boo’s face crumpled and he began to cry like a kid who’d just been told that his pet dog had been hit by a truck.  Lee had been his best friend.

“You should start over and do something honest with your life,” Gail said.  “I can tell by your aura that you’re not really an evil person, just misguided.”

Through the pounding pain in his leg and the sense of grief at knowing that Lee was dead, Boo let Gail’s words sink in.  If he survived this situation, he would have to get the hell out of Fort Myers.  He would make his way north and west to Ozark in Alabama, where his widowed aunt, Vera Caitlin, had a small timber frame house in a nice rural location, a spit away from a lake.  He was sure that he would be welcome to stay there.

“I won’t be long,” Tom said to Logan.  “I know a swamp that never gives up its secrets.”

Logan closed the barn doors after Tom had driven out and headed east on the deserted highway.

Less than fifteen minutes later Tom made a left onto a rutted track that used to lead through mangroves to a shack that had burned down a decade ago.  Its owner, Zachary Selman, had got loaded on the corn mash white lightning he produced in a still out back, and had fallen into a stupor while puffing on his corncob pipe.  The pipe had fallen to the floor, and the glowing embers had spilled out and set fire to the place, and to Zachary, who’d somehow made it outside, engulfed in flames like a human torch, to almost make it to the swamp before burning to death.

Fifty yards past the blackened skeleton of the shack, Tom stopped next to what had been dubbed Selman’s Swamp.  He dragged the tarp-wrapped body over roots to the water’s edge, and then made two more trips for the wheel rims and rope.  After removing the tarp, he cut two lengths of the rope and threaded the first piece through one rim and tied it around the corpse’s waist, and then repeated the process, attaching the other rim to the neck.  The awkward part was getting the weighted body into the swamp.  He had to step into the stinking quagmire and pull the dead man in.  The steel wheel rims drew the slack body down, for it to disappear from view and sink into a thick layer of mud.

Tom lost a shoe as it was sucked from his foot when he climbed back out on to the bank.  He stood for a minute until the last air bubble had broken the surface of what he thought of as the Black Lagoon, to leave it smooth and still again.

Less than an hour after he had left the store, he was back.  He had made one stop on the return journey to dump the tarp in a storm sewer in a channel at the side of the highway.

After a hot shower, Tom joined the others downstairs in the kitchen.  He gave Boo a withering look and said to Logan, “What about him?  I can’t think of one good reason why he shouldn’t join his buddy in the swamp.”

“Jesus, Tom,” Gail said.  “He’s injured and is no threat to us.”

“He came here armed, and would’ve shot you or Debbie if he’d thought it necessary, or been told to.  He’s a no-account hoodlum; part of an organization that needs to be eradicated.”

“We’ll just keep him till we have Kelly back and Cady is dead,” Logan said.  “He won’t be able to stay in the area, and Gail’s right, he’s no threat to us.”

Boo sat still and said nothing.  They were discussing his fate as though he wasn’t there.  The big bearded guy wanted to cap him, but the other appeared to be in charge, and he seemed to be the more rational of the two.

“What do
you
think, Boo?” Logan said.  “Should we just put a slug in the back of your head and have done with it?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Boo said.  “I’ve never killed anyone in my life.  We were sent here tonight to get information on Thomas Cody; just ask questions and then report back.  I’m a smalltime criminal.  I don’t make decisions, I just follow orders.”

Tom drew a nine-millimeter pistol from the waistband of his pants, stepped toward Boo and pushed the muzzle up against his left eye with enough force to almost dislodge it from the socket.

Boo pulled his head back, but the pressure did not relent.

“Do it and you get to clean up the mess,” Gail said from behind Tom.  “And you won’t get to fool around for six months.”

Gail’s words broke the dark spell that Tom was under.  He stepped away from Boo and returned the gun to his waistband.

“We’ve got a few hours,” Logan said. “I need to go for a walk and think of the best way to resolve this.”

“I’m starving,” Tom said.

“How do scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries and toast sound?” Gail said.  “Seeing as how you didn’t blow Boo’s brains out and turn the kitchen into a bloodbath.”

Tom grinned:  “That sounds great.”

“Do you both want some?” Gail said to Debbie and Logan.

“Yeah,” Logan said.

“Please,” Debbie said.

“Do you think you could manage to eat?” Gail said to Boo.

“I’m hurting and I feel sick,” Boo said.  “But I’d like to try some.”

Tom shook his head in disbelief.  It seemed weird to be offering food to someone who’d broken in armed with a gun that he would probably have used.

“I’ll be back soon,” Logan said as he opened the kitchen door and walked out into the night.

The fresh air was cool and invigorating.  The back yard led to a rail fence with a gate set in it. He opened it and walked along the edge of a field to where an old 4020 diesel John Deere tractor had settled into long grass and weeds and was just a rusted hulk.  He reached out and touched it; ran his hand over the side of it and felt flakes of reddish-brown rust come away and fall to the ground.  He closed his eyes, kept his palm against the cold and corroding metal and was transported back to when he had been a ten-year-old and spent many weekends on his grandparents’ small farm on Staten Island, where his grandpa, Walt Logan, had taught him to drive
his
4020, which had been about the last of that model ever produced.  The rush of memories was a welcome distraction.  He had learned a lot from his grandpa.  Being a farmer had made Walt a patient, considerate and understanding yet strong-minded man.  He had come to know that you had to work with nature, not fight against it.  And he had instilled Logan with values that he still held dear.

Logan took his hand off the tractor, and as if a connection had been broken he was fully back in the present.  His grandpa had been in the ground for thirty years now, shortly followed by his grandma, who had just faded away without Walt by her side.

Returning to the store, Logan sat at the table in the kitchen with the others and ate the tasty supper and drank two cups of black coffee.

Tom had removed the tape that bound Boo’s wrists, and warned him that if he gave him any cause to, he would definitely shoot him and risk Gail’s wrath.

After finishing the meal, Logan went through to the store, found a couple of thick blankets on a shelf, spread them on the floor and used a folded fleece jacket from a rack as a pillow. He wasn’t particularly tired, but needed to be fresh for whatever the next day would bring, so laid down, closed his eyes and dozed, thinking of a time when he was a young boy again, with no concern of what might be waiting up ahead in life.  Perhaps he had come full circle, and just lived each day moment to moment.  He was now over fifty, but had not yet reached whatever his conception of illusory splendor the future might hold.  Reality had blown away much of the adventure he had thought lay ahead.  There was too much bad shit in the world, which youngsters would have to face when they left the fantasies of childhood behind them.

Logan walked a fine line, attempting to be an outsider to all that confounded him, but with a weakness to become too involved if need be, and fortunately possessing the mindset to utilize any amount of force necessary to right a wrong that he could not turn his back on.  There would be more violence and probably loss of life before this situation was resolved, and he hoped that he would be up to the task.  He had one goal only at this moment in time; to reunite a mother and child.  Anyone that stood in his way was an obstacle to be ridden roughshod over.