Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (26 page)

Though Lumbergh initially resisted it, the notion that Sean’s disappearance could
be tied to his interest in that case began to mull within his mind. He pondered the
possibility that Sean had gone looking for the prime suspect, Norman Booth.
Could
he have somehow managed to actually find him?
The chances seemed small, but Lumbergh
had learned in the past not to underestimate his brother-in-law when he was set on
doing something, even if it was something stupid.

The premise had holes in it—big ones. There was no plausible scenario that Lumbergh
could formulate that would lead to a
confrontation between the two taking place inside
Sean’s home. Suspects on the lam typically didn’t go looking for their pursuers.

The longer Lumbergh mulled over the angle, however, the more he felt that it at least
deserved consideration. If anything, pursuing the lead would help pin down Sean’s
whereabouts earlier in the day.

He recalled Sean saying that he was interested in the Carson case because he knew
a relative of the victim. It was a good place to start.

The last sheriff ’s deputy from Sean’s house returned to the police station. Lumbergh,
the deputy, and Redick removed Martinez from his cell and cuffed his hands behind
his back. Martinez refused to stand on his feet, so they dragged him with his knees
rubbing against the tile floor all the way to the front door.

“One more chance, Martinez,” Lumbergh said, hovering over them like a watchful hawk.
“Tell me what you saw at Sean’s house!”

Redick flashed Lumbergh a disapproving glance.

Martinez paid Lumbergh no mind. He just hummed and moaned with his eyes glued to
the ceiling.

Redick turned his head to the chief. “I’m sorry, Gary.”

His eyes looked sincere, though Lumbergh had his doubts as to whether he really was.

“Listen,” he added. “We’ve got a public defender meeting us at the station. I’m sure
she’ll persuade him, if anyone can, to talk.”

Lumbergh shook his head in dismissal. When everyone had left his station, he retreated
to his office and flipped on the overhead light.

He pulled his desk chair in front of his computer and began tapping away at his keyboard
with his good hand. After a moment, he recalled the user login and password information
he’d been given by his Greeley counterpart the other day. He logged into the P.D.’s
mainframe and was soon looking at the Andrew Carson file again.

Carson’s daughter Katelyn was listed as the primary contact in the case, so Lumbergh
picked up his phone and quickly dialed
her number. There was trepidation in the young
woman’s voice when he introduced himself, but her tone quickly changed to one of
befuddlement when he explained that he wasn’t involved in the search for her father.

He told her that he was looking for a man named Sean Coleman. To Lumbergh’s relief,
she immediately recognized the name. After some prompting, she explained how she
had met Sean for the first time after he had joined one of her search parties. She
said that he seemed helpful enough at first, but then became erratic when he realized
that a woman he believed to be her cousin was of no relation to the Carson family.

“He didn’t seem to believe us,” she added.

Lumbergh asked her if she knew who the woman was. She didn’t, but said that she vaguely
recognized her from an earlier search party in a picture Sean had shown her.

“Picture?” asked Lumbergh. “What picture?”

She told him that she believed the picture was from an article, but she wasn’t sure
of the newspaper. “He said her name was Jess. No . . . Jessica!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know her last name?”

“If he did, he didn’t say it.”

When he asked her if she could describe what Jessica looked like, she did. “The picture
was small, and I had only taken a passing glance of her when she helped us. I just
remember that she had long red hair.”

He nodded, writing down “Jessica long red hair” on a notepad. His eyes widened and
his pencil stopped dead on the paper when Katelyn further described Jessica as “attractive-looking.”

He swallowed, letting the gears in his head grind together for a moment before erratically
writing under his description “THE RED FOX.”

He didn’t remember thanking Katelyn or fielding any questions she had about his inquiry,
but he guessed he had done both as he hurriedly reached for his jacket moments later.
He slid it on over his good arm and was halfway out the front door when a phrase
he had heard Alex Martinez use earlier echoed through his head:
The red fox has him
now, Chief. She brought him back to her den.

“Her den,” Lumbergh whispered.

He hustled back inside and snatched Martinez’s timesheet. He looked at the odometer
reading that the intern had recorded on the previous day. It was a number they kept
track of so the police station could reimburse Martinez for any gas he used while
running errands in his own car. It was the only form of compensation that Martinez
ever received from the office—usually paid out from the station’s petty cash drawer.

The chief repeated the mileage reading over and over again in his head while he raced
down the front steps of the police station. He trampled through the snow to the side
of the building where Martinez’s car had been towed following its collision with
the tree. It was scheduled for impound but hadn’t been picked up yet.

He opened the driver side door, knelt along the front seat, and looked at the odometer.
There was a discrepancy of over fifty miles. Martinez’s trips back and forth to Lakeland
and out to Oldhorse’s cabin would have accounted for some of the distance, but nowhere
near fifty miles. The intern had done a good amount of additional driving.

Lumbergh reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a stick of gum, and popped it
into his mouth, chewing ravenously.

The siren of his police cruiser was blaring loudly as he tore off in pursuit of the
sheriff ’s car. He bit out obscenities when his tires wouldn’t gain the same traction
that his mind had. The snowfall was
beginning to stick and the wind whistled through
the bullet holes in his windshield, chilling the car’s interior. He grabbed his radio
and held it beside his jaw.

“Hughes. Roy Hughes. This is Chief Lumbergh. I know you’re listening in on a police
scanner somewhere. I need you to get back to me on channel 14,” he said crisply.
“Repeat. Roy Hughes of
The Windsor Beacon.
Get back to me on channel 14.”

He had seen Hughes dancing around the crime scene at Sean’s house when he had gone
back there. The reporter looked like a kid on Christmas morning, wearing a gleeful
smile and snapping pictures left and right. He was treating Sean Coleman’s disappearance
as his own private Watergate.

Lumbergh flipped a dial on his radio and tapped his hand on his steering wheel until
a voice broke through the silence.

“Chief?” it came, riddled with a sense of puzzlement.

Lumbergh wasted no time, instructing Hughes to scour the state and local newspapers
looking for a photograph from an article on the Andrew Carson disappearance.

“Andrew Carson?” Hughes asked in astonishment.

“Yes. I’m looking for a picture of people searching for his body—one with a woman
with long red hair. Look closely. It’s important.”

Hughes asked if it had something to do with Alex Martinez and Sean, the story he
was apparently already feverishly working away on for the morning edition.

“Roy, if this pans out, you’ll have yourself an even bigger story. And I’ll give
you an exclusive. I promise,” Lumbergh clipped. “Right now, I just need you to do
this for me.”

“Okay. When I find the picture, do you want me to bring it over to the station?”

“No. I won’t be there. Just fax it to the sheriff ’s office.”

“Where will you be?”

“Getting Sean.”

Chapter 22

S
ean wondered what his captors could believe a man like him was capable of doing.
They don’t know me. If they bothered to do any
research on the man they dragged from
his home in the middle of the night, all they would have found would have been humiliating
Beacon
stories about a town drunk who never missed an opportunity to screw up his
life
, he realized.
They could have killed me at any time, but they didn’t. They left
me with food, and offered assurances that I’d be fine. If Jessica was right, and
what had happened to Andrew Carson wasn’t intended, maybe they would be desperate
not to let it happen again.

He stood up from his seat against the freezer door, tossing an empty water bottle
into the cardboard box he felt in the dark next to his foot. It made a hollow clunk
when it landed on top of the other empty bottles.

Blindly, he paced back and forth in the dark, his shoes shuffling in uncertainty
along the concrete floor. He scratched an itch at the back of his head, one that
used to be persistent but hadn’t bothered him in months. He was less than confident
about the plan that was stewing in his head, but he’d convinced himself that it was
at least worth the risk of trying. He relaxed his pace, slowing his stride. Walking
to the back wall, he stood there for a moment beside it, outside of the eye of the
camera. He then returned to the center of the freezer so he’d be visible again.

He repeated the routine a few more times, each time taking a longer break near the
back wall, underneath the evaporator. On the fifth sweep, he reached the wall and
felt his open hands along it
until he found the electrical cord he had stripped loose
earlier. He wrapped his hands around the end still plugged into the wall and savagely
yanked on it until it tore loose. A few sparks flew as a result. He hoped the camera
wasn’t able to pick up the bright flickers.

The cord was longer than he remembered. Some of it must have been pulled out from
behind the wall. This was good. The longer, the better.

As quickly as he could, he wound the cord up in a ball and shoved it in his front
pants pocket. He then casually strolled out to the center of the room again, hoping
the time lapse hadn’t provoked any suspicion from “Big Brother.”

He felt around in the dark for the bucket. When he found it, he placed it near the
center of the room upside-down. He turned his back to the camera, facing the door
of the freezer. Before sitting down, he discreetly pulled the cord from his pocket
and kept it in front of his body. Slowly, it unraveled in his hands. With his head
bent forward, he hoped that he would appear distraught, like a man worried about
his fate in a helpless, desperate situation.

He sat there for ten minutes, sometimes placing his hand to his head; other times
he interlaced his fingers behind his neck, taking one of those opportunities to slide
the cord around it. He hoped the cord was thick enough to support his weight—if it
came to that. A few inches from his throat, he tied the cord in a bowline knot so
it wouldn’t cinch up. It wasn’t an easy knot to tie in the dark, but he’d practiced
it and many others as a child for countless hours. Uncle Zed had been a good teacher
when it came to that kind of thing.

Sean hadn’t been completely sold by Jessica’s concern for his well-being, but nonetheless,
he banked on the notion that whoever was watching him didn’t know that he was aware
of their eyes. If they
did
know, the show he was about to put on would only be good
for a laugh at his own expense.

He stood up. With his eyes closed, he pivoted in the general
direction of the camera,
holding the cord in plain view at the center of his hand while trying not to let
the display appear contrived. With his other hand, he carefully performed the sign
of the cross on his forehead, and then stood up on top of the bucket. He worked his
fingers along the ceiling until he found one of the long pipes he had tried to pry
loose before.

He carefully threaded the cord through the narrow gap between the pipe and ceiling.
It took a little work, but he eventually forced it through.