All the Dead Fathers (31 page)

“Okay, okay.” He must have realized she wasn't going to give up. “Tomorrow at three. Go to the bay doors, around back. I'll be there.”

And she knew he would. She'd been there for him when he needed it. Besides, he secretly loved this clandestine stuff. She hung up, exhausted, wondering if she could sleep. Ever again, until this was over.

She went to the living room window and looked down at the street. She walked back and sat at the kitchen table and disassembled the Colt .380, cleaned and oiled it, and put it back together. She packed a few clothes in a backpack and put it, and a Kevlar vest, by the door. Then she took a long, warm, aromatic bath … and came out just as tense as when she'd gone in.

*   *   *

An hour later she was still wandering around the apartment. She forced herself to sit down. She did her fingernails, very carefully, as though it were important. And then her toenails. She tried the herb tea and the scented candles that always had a soothing effect, but that night they only made Dugan's absence more acute.

A glass of wine might help her sleep, but she was afraid she wouldn't stop at a glass. She'd never felt so alone. She had brothers, yes, but they weren't that close, and she wouldn't even
hint
at any of this to them. When she became a cop she'd drifted apart from her high school and college girlfriends, until now they were little more than names on a Christmas card list. And when she left the department she left behind the people she'd known there. She'd been close only to Dugan … and Michael. And then just Dugan.

Now she was desperate for someone to talk to, and there
was
no one. Not even Cuffs, for God's sake. And not Michael, either. What could she do but encourage him not to drink and warn him again to be careful? Telling him about Dugan would only disturb him, and he might tell someone else, or even alert the police—and she had to avoid that. No, Michael was safe for now, and she wouldn't call him until Dugan was safe, too.

Getting Dugan back was all that mattered. She would trade Carlo for him. If she succeeded, she wouldn't have Carlo to bring back to Polly Morelli. And even if she managed somehow to capture Debra in the process, no way would she deliver either one of them to that creep. Debra she'd take to the cops so they could pin the priest killings on her. And Carlo could go … wherever. She'd have to figure out how to deal with Polly.

But that was a problem for later. Right now everything depended on him. He was a stinking chunk of waste, wending his way through society's sewer. Still, she was counting on him to keep his word. And she? With Dugan's life in the balance, she had no intention at all of keeping hers.

53.

On Monday morning Kirsten drove through the rain down I-55, headed for the Pontiac Correctional Center, about a hundred miles southwest of Chicago. The previous afternoon Renfroe had done his thing on the Impala and loaned her a Panther baton with a belt holster. He'd arranged a shotgun for her, too, and on her way she picked it up at a gun shop in Lyons.

*   *   *

The prison was an eyesore squatting in the heart of corn country, built during the first term of President Ulysses S. Grant. The designation “Correctional Center” fooled no one. It was a place to lock people up and brutally punish them. It may have provided jobs and revenue for the town of Pontiac, but it held little in the way of correction for anyone. Maybe Carlo felt at home there.

She remembered Carlo as a tall, broad-shouldered man, with large hands and a dark complexion that showed scars from a bad case of acne. His black hair had been pulled into a ponytail back then, but mostly she remembered his eyes. They were frightening eyes, because they held no expression at all. At their first meeting he had forced her out of a room with little more than a stare. But she'd seen him again just a few days later, sitting on the floor with his hands pressed to his thigh to keep the blood from spurting out, screaming, begging his sister Debra to help him. And Debra, bleeding herself, had left him and fled into the night.

Kirsten stopped at a gated guardhouse and was directed to parking area C. When she got there she went to the opposite end of the lot from where she was told friends and family members would gather. The prisoners were scheduled for release shortly after noon and she arrived at eleven-fifteen, before any of the others. The cold, constant rain had faded into a gray drizzle. With binoculars she scanned each vehicle as it came into the lot. Eventually there were ten of them, parked just this side of a guardrail separating them from a wide road that ran along the brick wall of the prison building.

Debra was a fugitive. Kirsten didn't expect her to be there, and she didn't see her. She did spot the car she was looking for, though. It was a four-door sedan, a blue BMW 7-Series, with two men in it, and the one in the driver's seat was Polly Morelli's tough guy, the lizard. She was confident Polly would have instructed his men, but she wouldn't know whether her plan would work until she made her move.

Noon came and went, and at twelve-twenty a white Dodge van, with
STATE OF ILLINOIS, D.O.C.
stenciled on its side, drove up along the prison wall and joined the group. Directly across the road was an opening that looked about ten feet tall and twenty feet wide in the otherwise solid two-story wall. The gate the prisoners would come through was set in a section of chain-link fence that stretched across that opening. Kirsten stayed put, occasionally raising her binoculars to her eyes.

Pontiac was one of the ten oldest—and without a doubt, she thought, ten ugliest—prisons in the country. It housed about fifteen hundred prisoners, all men, primarily problem offenders. But it also had a so-called “Level 4 Medium-Security Unit.” That was probably where Carlo did his time, away from the murderous Chicago street gangs that roamed the rest of the facility.

At twelve-thirty, two uniformed guards and about a dozen prisoners finally appeared behind the gate. The prisoners, wearing jeans and brown, hip-length jackets and carrying gym bags, stood in a tight, single-file line. They shifted from one foot to the other, apparently not interested in conversation. Most of them were dark-skinned: African-American or Hispanic. The three who were obviously white were at the end of the line and she couldn't see well enough to tell whether Carlo was one of them.

Suddenly there was a short burst from what sounded like a very loud school recess bell, and one of the guards unlocked the door-sized gate in the fence and pulled it inward. A chain at the top of the gate kept it from opening very wide and the now former prisoners came out one at a time, turning sideways to slip through the narrow gap.

By then people were out of their cars and up at the guardrail. Like Kirsten, they must all have been warned when they came in not to go nearer the gate than that, but they waved and called to friends and family members among the men coming their way. Kirsten sat with the binoculars glued to her eyes.

The last one through the gate was Carlo. She was sure of that now, although he looked different than she remembered. Thinner, paler, his hair cut army-short. She couldn't see his eyes very well, but she doubted they'd have changed. It surprised her how slight his limp was, even though he'd lost his left leg somewhere above the knee.

Carlo ignored the welcoming committee and headed straight toward the van, which Kirsten knew was a shuttle to the bus station in town. He was just about to climb in when the lizard's partner got to his side. They had a brief conversation, after which the thug took Carlo's arm and guided him to the BMW and both of them got into the back seat.

The vehicles started filing out, and she slipped into line two cars behind the BMW. They drove out of the lot, went under the raised barrier at the guardhouse, and left the prison grounds. The drizzle had turned back into rain, and it was so dark that headlights were a necessity.

In a few minutes she was trailing the BMW along the northbound entrance ramp onto I-55, headed back toward Chicago. But two exits later, they abruptly left the interstate. She followed them as they drove past the only reasons anyone but a local would ever have exited there, a chicken restaurant and a gas station. Then, on a long, straight stretch of paved road with cornfields on both sides, she drew up close behind the BMW, flashing her headlights and sounding her horn. The Beemer slowed, went another hundred yards, and pulled off where the shoulder widened into a gravel parking area. They were by one of those little fenced-in-squares where a natural gas pipeline poked up out of the ground for inspection and service.

Kirsten pulled behind the stopped car and her hand started toward the button to open the trunk. But of course Renfroe had disengaged the opener, so she hurried back and unlocked it with the key, then ran up to the BMW on the driver's side. The lizard lowered his window and she flashed him an ID case which held nothing but her driver's license.

“FBI,” she yelled. “Stay in your car, sir. It's Mr. Morelli we want.”

She saw Carlo staring at her, and could tell he recognized her. When he spoke—a raspy, half-whispered version of speech—she couldn't hear what he was saying beyond “lying bitch.”

The lizard answered Carlo without even turning his head. “Whoever the fuck
you
think she is, crip, her badge says fucking FBI, and I'm not going down for an asshole like you. Polly waited this long to cut off your other leg, he'll wait a little longer. Get the fuck outta the car.”

By that time she had the back door open and Carlo had no choice. The man beside him pushed him out and she met him, the Colt in her right hand.

“Hey, crip!” the lizard called, and Carlo turned toward him. “Sorry we didn't get to have our little chat, but we're not through with you, okay? And Polly's not, either. You're gonna—”

“Federal officer!” Kirsten yelled. “Shut up and move on!” She slammed the back door and the lizard turned the Beemer around and sped off toward I-55. She'd managed to seize the one chance she had to save Dugan. And she was trembling.

She walked Carlo at gunpoint to the rear of the Impala. In her left hand now was Renfroe's stun baton … the smaller Panther model, three hundred thousand volts, and that would be plenty. There were no cars coming from either direction, and beside the open trunk she told him to drop his gym bag on the ground and turn all his pockets inside out. He did.

“Okay,” she said, “get into the trunk.”

“What,” he half-whispered, “or otherwise you'll kill me?” He turned to face her. “I don't think so.”

His empty stare no longer frightened her. “Jail time's made you dumber than ever,” she said, and swung the baton up and touched the tip to his belly. Contact was less than a second, but his body stiffened and his face contorted, and she wondered if he could stay on his feet.

He did, though, and it was quickly over. He was backed up to the open trunk … but still made no move to get in. She holstered her gun. “I just saved your life,” she said, keeping the baton between them, “so you—”

He lunged and grabbed the baton—and made contact with its metal side strips. The charge he took this time was far worse. He froze up, then crumpled backward, and she shoved him into the trunk. It took him a few minutes to recover, and while he did she cuffed his wrists together.

With one hand on the trunk lid she said, “You think that was pain? Think about the fun those those two goons would have had. You'd have been
begging
them to kill you. But no, they'd have taken you to your uncle Polly … for worse. But me? I saved you, Carlo, and I even cuffed your hands in front of you, and not behind your—”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Right,” she said. “But no time to thank me now, because those two mopes might wise up pretty soon and come back looking for us.”

54.

Polly's thugs weren't about to come back, of course. That wasn't in the script.

Kirsten drove east, through farmland and a couple of tiny towns, past I-57 and into Indiana. Then, at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, she pulled into what was once a gas station but was now a burnt-out shell on an island of crumbling concrete. She opened the trunk, showed Carlo the baton, and told him to stay put … and to listen.

“Until I came along you were headed for your uncle Polly,” she said. “He'd have tortured you for a while to see if you knew where your sister Debra is, and then he'd have killed you. Everyone knows this. And if
you
don't know it, you're out of your mind.”

“Fuck you,” was his whispered answer. His throat still bore the ugly scar from the County Jail incident.

“I'm giving you a chance to avoid Polly,” she said, “and here's why. Your sister is holding my husband somewhere. She plans to kill him. I'm going to offer her your life for his. If she doesn't like the deal, you die.”

“You won't kill me, bitch. You don't—”

“Kill you? Not me. I just take you back to Polly. Finishing that job on your throat is the least of what he'll do. Count on it.”

That seemed to get through to him, but all he said was, “He'd kill you, too. For taking me.”

“He'd do his best, maybe,” she said. “But that won't help
you.
What you need to know is this: unless I get my husband back, I don't give a damn what happens to me.” Her voice was trembling. “Do you understand that?”

He didn't answer, but it was true and she was sure he believed her.

“So here's the deal. If you and Debra cooperate, I give you to Debra and she gives my husband to me, and that's it. Otherwise, you go back to Polly. And meanwhile if you behave, I treat you decently. I'm not into pain. But if I need to, I
will
hurt you … whether it's with this baton or by putting a bullet into your one good leg. You got it?”

Again, no answer.