Call Of The Witch (19 page)

“
Friend is right,” I said.
“You gotta know I never meant for you to hear that, but you also
have to understand when a gorgeous young thing like that meets a
rich older guy she––”

“
That gorgeous young thing
is my fiancée, Tony. I’ll appreciate it if you refer to her as
Lauri or Miss Shullit.”

“
Of course, Carlos. I only
want you to be happy.”

“
I am happy. Lauri makes
me happier than I’ve been in a long while.”

“
That’s good, but listen,
you don’t have to run off and get married. You’ve only known each
other a few months. Don’t rush into anything.”

“
We’re not rushing. We’re
going to wait.”

“
Till when?”

“
Until she’s
twenty-one.”

“
She’ll be twenty-one next
month.”

“
Yes, and she’ll stay
twenty-one for a year. Then she’ll be twenty-two.”

“
I give up. Carlos, you
know I’m happy for you. I sincerely wish you and Lauri nothing but
utter happiness for the rest of your lives. I mean it.”

“
Thanks, Tony. I
think.”

“
Me too,” said Dominic,
and he went up to shake Carlos’ hand. “It’s a wonderful thing. I
can’t wait to meet her. Maybe you two can start having babies right
away, and Tony and Lilith too. Then all our kids can play and grow
up together. Wouldn’t that be great?”

I pushed past the two of them with my head
down and my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, great,” I said, though
mostly under my breath. “Everyone wants freakin` babies now. Let’s
just have a shitload of kids and start our own daycare, why don’t
we.”

As I left the room, I heard Dominic say,
“What’s eating him?”

Carlos’ answer came in a hush. I didn’t hear
what he said, but Dominic’s reply was simple. “Oooh.”

Lionel Brewbaker was just coming downstairs
as I was crossing the foyer. I stopped him at the bottom and asked
him where his wife was.

“
I don’t know,” he
answered. Carlos and Spinelli came up behind me but kept their
distance to within earshot.

“
What do you mean, you
don’t know? Your child’s been kidnapped, and your wife has better
things to do than to stay here and help us work for her release?
What’s wrong with that woman?”

Brewbaker shook his head. “Please, Detective,
I’m not trying to make excuses for her, but she and I don’t do well
in each other’s company. Truth is she can hardly stand to be in the
same room with me any more.”

“
Well, you know that’s
just too damn bad.” I turned around and pointed at Carlos. “Call
Mrs. Brewbaker. Tell her to get her ass back over here this
minute.” I returned to Lionel. “And you. Tell me why your wife lied
to me yesterday about when she last saw Kelly.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
She said she hadn’t seen
Kelly since she dropped her off at the house last weekend. That’s a
lie, because Dmitry Kovalchuk told us your wife picked Kelly up at
his dance studio Thursday night.”

“
Yes, Thursday night.
That’s right. Didn’t she say that?”

“
No, Mr. Brewbaker. She
didn’t.”

He put his hand up to stop me. “Okay. You’re
right. She did pick Kelly up this past Thursday. I asked her
to.”

“
Then why lie about
it?”

“
Because I didn’t want you
to know I was too drunk to pick Kelly up myself.”

“
Come again?”

“
I was drunk, Detective. I
was drunk, and I passed out on a cot in my office at the Danvers
store. Kelly tried calling me….” He shook his head in disgust at
himself. “I didn’t wake up, so she called her mother. Amanda went
and got her and brought her home. I was ashamed to tell you that,
so I asked Amanda not to mention it. I didn’t see how it was all
that important.”

“
Not important? Mr.
Brewbaker. Someone has your daughter. Every little thing you can
tell us may be important. This is no time for modesty. Your child
could be dead right now. Jee-zus! What’s getting into
everyone?”

Carlos called out, “No answer on Amanda’s
phone, Tony.”

“
Great. Mr. Brewbaker.
Where does your wife live?”

“
She keeps a little place
up on Edgewater. Here, I’ll write the address down for
you.”

I started following him to a sideboard
cabinet in the foyer when a doorbell chime changed my direction. I
answered the door. Detective Olson entered, carrying in a tray of
coffee and donuts like the one I brought in earlier. Carlos helped
himself to a coffee. I relieved her of the tray and set it on the
sideboard.

“
How’d you ring the bell
with your hands full like that?” I asked.

“
Magic,” she said. I
almost believed her.

“
Come on.”

“
Okay, I used my
elbow.”

I smiled at her. She smiled back in that way
women do sometimes when they’re not telling the truth, but they’re
not exactly lying either.

“
So, any word from the
kidnappers?” she asked.

“
Nothing,” I said.
“Dominic and Carlos have been here all night. I just arrived a
little while ago.”

“
That’s strange.” She
scanned the room as she spoke. “I’d have thought they’d call by
now.”

“
Yeah, me too.”

“
Where’s the
phone?”

“
Hmm?”

“
The phone. Who has
it?”

“
Mr. Brewbaker?” I
said.

“
No.”

I looked to Carlos. “You got it?”

He lifted his shoulders and dropped them
flat.

“
Dominic?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have it.”

I think all our faces went pale about then.
Dominic pulled his phone out and dialed Brewbaker’s number. Seconds
later, we heard a muffled ring across the room.

“
The sofa!” I
said.

The five of us ran to it. Dominic plowed his
hands in between the cushions and fished out the phone. “There are
three missed calls,” he said. He looked at Carlos. “You were
sleeping on the phone.”

“
That explains it,” he
said. “I kept dreaming that my alarm was going off.”

“
That’s not funny. Tony,
he slept right through it. They tried calling, but Carlos
slept––”

“
It’s okay, Dominic. I
know. What’s done is done. They’ll call back.”

Olson asked, “Did they leave a message?”

As Dominic held the phone up to look, it rang
again in his hand. “It’s them!” he said.

I pointed at it. “Put it on speaker.”

He did, and then handed it to Brewbaker.

“
Yes.”

“
Where were you?” asked
the caller, the digital voice scrambler making him sound
alien-like.

“
I fell asleep. The phone
got wedged in the cushions. I didn’t hear it ring until just now
when––”

“
Silence! Listen
carefully. You will make the drop this morning at nine o’clock in
Freedom Park. On the west end of the park by the fountain you will
see a trash can. Put ten thousand dollars in a brown paper bag and
drop it in the can. And remember, no police.”

“
But what if someone sees
me putting the money there? Hello? Hello?” Brewbaker handed the
phone back to Spinelli. “He hung up. What do we do now?”

“
We make the drop and get
your daughter back,” I said. “Dominic? Do you still have a team
standing by?”

“
Just waiting on the
word.”

“
Consider this it. Get
them over there early enough so that the kidnappers don’t see them
coming.”

“
Roger that.” He pulled
his phone out, turned his back to us and made the call.

Brewbaker grabbed my forearm and pulled me
toward him. “Detective, the caller said no police.”

I pulled my arm free. “Of course he did. They
always say that. Don’t worry. These guys are plainclothes. They’ll
blend into the scenery. Now then, you have the money?”

He gestured a nod upstairs. “In the
safe.”

“
Go get it. Carlos, you
have the invisible ink highlighter?”

“
I think Brit’s got
it.”

I turned to Brittany. “I’m on it,” she said,
and she started upstairs after Brewbaker.

Dominic said, “Team’s on their way.”

“
Okay. Good. You want to
go upstairs and help Brit ink the money.”

“
Sure.”

“
Mark only the back lower
right hand corners. And while you’re at it, jot down as many serial
numbers as you can.”

“
I’m on it.”

With the other three upstairs and out of
sight, I turned back to Carlos. “You know earlier in there,” I
motioned toward the dining room. “I really was out of line. I have
no business judging Lauri. I don’t even know her. I’m sure if you
love her then I––”

“
Wait.” He put his hand up
to stop me, and I swear I thought he was going to tell me to go to
hell, but he didn’t. I guess after all these years; I should know
him better than that. “Tony, I know you didn’t mean anything by
it,” he said. “Truth is I thought you dating Lilith was a big
mistake.”

“
Really?”

“
Yeah, and I’d have told
you, too, if I wasn’t afraid of what Lilith might have done to me.
The point is we’re friends. We look out for each other. We watch
each other’s backs through thick and thin. And you know I wouldn’t
have it any other way.”

“
You mean it?”

“
Of course I do. But you
know, to prove you’re wrong about Lauri, I’m going to do
something.”

“
What?”

“
You’ll see. And when the
time comes for me and her to get married, you’ll be more than happy
to be my best man.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Yeah.”

He put his hand out to shake, but I wouldn’t
have it. Instead, I wrapped him in a bear hug so tight I nearly
squeezed the life right out of him. It’s all in the timing, really.
You gotta catch him on the exhale.

I can’t say enough about Spinelli and his
ability to get things done on a scale Carlos and I never dreamed
possible. I guess in our hearts, we’re still just a couple of old
school cops in a new school world.

Carlos first partnered with Dominic after I
retired and moved to Florida, nearly a year before Lilith took me
through the rite of passage ceremony that made me young again. At
the time, I suppose Carlos thought he was getting a neophyte
detective, one he could mentor and mold into his own image.
Fortunately for all, that wasn’t the case.

In the few years Dominic’s been with us,
he’s introduced more new-aged technology and modern principles of
law enforcement into our lives than we could ever have hoped for.
That’s not to say the technology, equipment, and training had not
been available to us. It had. It’s just that Dominic had the
ability to embrace it, take it all in, and present it to us in a
way that Carlos and I could assimilate. And his ability to do so in
a way that didn’t make us feel obsolete, was uncanny.

His orchestration of the stakeout at the drop
point was a prime example. He had nine officers, counting Carlos,
Brittany and myself, planted at various vantage points throughout
the park. Six of us concealed, either in vehicles, behind shrubbery
or on rooftops and three others dressed as ordinary civilians. One
posed as a mother with a baby stroller, one as a park maintenance
worker picking up litter with a stick, and a third as a student on
a bench listening to music on her iPod.

We positioned ourselves in our designated
sectors early, some, like the rooftop snipers, a full forty minutes
ahead of the planned drop time. Once settled in, we maintained
general radio silence. It was almost nine o’clock when I heard
Carlos’ voice come over my earpiece. “Charlie Romeo to Papa Tango,
do you read me?”

I came back, “I read you Carlos.”

“
Tony, it’s Charlie
Romeo.”

“
Right. Charlie Romeo. I
read you.”

“
Just checking. You in
position?”

“
I’ve been in
position.”

“
How `bout you, Delta
Sierra? You in position?”

Nothing.

“
Delta Sierra, you read
me?”

Nothing.

I came in, “He’s talking to you,
Dominic.”

“
Oh, sorry. I’m in
position too, Carlos.”

Nothing.

“
Carlos?”

“
Try Charlie Romeo,
Dominic.”

“
Charlie Romeo. I’m in
position.”

“
Roger that, Delta Sierra.
Bravo October, you read me? I repeat Bravo October. Do you read
me?”

Dominic said. “Tony, who’s Bravo October? Is
that Brittany?”

“
Yes, it’s Brittany.
Carlos can we cut the crap? All sectors, check in
please.”

“
Sector one.
Check.”

“
Sector two.
Check.”

“
Sector
three….”

I waited for all sectors to check in before
acknowledging my sector. The clock on my dash read
eight-fifty-seven, and exactly as planned, Lionel Brewbaker’s car
pulled into a parking space in the west side lot closest to the
fountain. He stepped out of the car, tugged the wrinkles out of his
coattail, and then reached on the front seat for the paper bag. I
watched him check out his surroundings, trying to look
inconspicuous, and failing miserably.