Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz) (24 page)

“Why do you even care?” she asked.

Knowing how lame my request sounded, I was prepared for her question. “I’d like to profile the owner about what it was like finding their car gone.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just wait for it to snow again and stand out by the impound lot. You’ll have your pick of folks to interview.”

“Believe me, I agree, but my boss wants me to do it this way.”

“It would be much easier if you had the plate number,” she said.

“I know, but can you break down the citations by time or location?”

She messed around on her computer for a few minutes before
giving up. “I can give you a digital list of all the tickets issued that day, but you’ll have to make sense of it yourself.”

I wrote a check for the file, she gave me a receipt and emailed me the information in an attachment.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Malik asked.

“I’m not sure.”

Malik dropped me outside the newsroom door while he parked in the basement. I rushed over to Xiong’s desk and found him hunched over his keyboard.

“Surprise,” I told him. “We might be able to put your license plate program to the test.”

I filled him in on the mechanics and forwarded the email to his account.

“You want these citations arranged chronologically?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Then we’ll take the ones from this ten-minute time period and look for any towed vehicles from this street and see if we find a silver Toyota Camry among them. That will give us a specific license plate.”

“Whose car are we looking for?”

“Jack Clemens’s, I hope.”

T
his vehicle fits all your criteria,” Xiong said. “But it is registered to another party, not Jack Clemens.”

“David Johnson?” I asked.

“No.” He handed me a piece of paper with a different name, address, and phone number. “This data is a couple years old, so might be out of date.”

It was worth a try. I dialed the phone number and a woman answered. “Hello, Mrs. Basch? I’m calling from Channel 3. Do you own a silver Toyota Camry?”

She informed me that her husband, Ed, had sold the vehicle on Craigslist List a month ago.

“Do you remember the buyer’s name?”

She didn’t, but thought her husband might. “He won’t be home until late afternoon. The man who bought the car was supposed to change the title to his own name. Is there a problem?”

“No. The vehicle was towed during the storm, and I’m tracing its ownership for a potential story. Either the driver didn’t turn in the paperwork or the state records haven’t been updated yet. Did you by any chance see what the man looked like?”

She recalled him being bald.

That was all the confirmation I needed. I told Xiong to run the plate number through his license database. “I want to know where that car’s been, and where it might be now.”

•  •  •

I drove around a popular residential neighborhood near the University of Minnesota with Xiong, block by block, looking for a silver Camry with Jack’s plate number. The area was a mix of frat houses, student apartments, and professional condos. The computer records showed the vehicle had been spotted in the vicinity six times during the last month. We hoped the pattern held. Once we found it, we’d let the cops stake it out.

But it would soon be dark, and with the traffic and stoplights, I decided we could make more progress on foot. So we pulled over and split the territory.

“Xiong, you head east, I’ll go west while we still have some daylight.”

I combed an apartment parking lot in case Jack lived there. No luck. So I set out down the street, checking cars in front of a grocery store. After all, everyone has to eat. Nothing. So I moved on past homes, schools, and parks, searching for silver cars. But none had the correct plate.

Twenty minutes later, Xiong called me. “I have finished my section and have not located the vehicle.”

I sensed his disappointment. He really wanted to see his computer skills applied to news-gathering on the street. Instead, it was proving to be a bust.

“I’m almost done, too. No success. Let’s meet back at my car and regroup.”

I was walking down a narrow side street toward University Avenue when the silver Toyota we were looking for drove past me. The make and model caught my attention first, and then my eyes dropped to check the plate number. Turning around to
double-check the license, a sense of déjà vu hit me. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. The driver and I both stopped at the same time.

The vehicle backed up, the window rolled down, and a man wearing a blue-stocking cap called out to me.

R
iley Spartz,” he said. “What a coincidence.”

“David?” I faked ignorance of his true identity. “I didn’t recognize you without your beard. What happened with our meeting? You didn’t show.”

“Get inside and we’ll hold our meeting now.”

“I can’t. I have to head back to work. I’m parked just a couple blocks over. Do you live near here?”

I knew getting in a car with a fugitive was a poor idea. I had more to lose than he did. And once those doors closed, I’d be vulnerable to any sort of chilling abuse. I tried to keep things cordial. “Can we get together later?”

“I don’t think so.”

That’s when he pointed the gun at me. It looked like a .38 caliber revolver. I thought about turning and running, but I remembered the hunting trophies that’d been sold at the auction and knew he was a crack shot. And at this range, even a lousy shot could kill me.

I mumbled something about there being a misunderstanding.

He leaned over to open the car door, not wavering in his aim straight at my chest. “Get in.”

Even though I knew it was a mistake, I didn’t see much choice. I was settling into the front seat when he immediately asked to see my cell phone. My guess was he didn’t want me secretly
pocket-dialing for help. I handed my cell in his direction, but he shook his head.

“Throw it outside, Riley.”

That told me he didn’t want anyone using the GPS coordinates in my phone to locate me and stage a rescue or, I worried, to find my body. So at gunpoint, I tossed my phone in the snow, wishing for a miracle as he put the vehicle in gear and the doors automatically locked with a foreboding click.

“Buckle up,” he ordered. “I saw you with the feds last night. You were setting me up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, David.”

“Stop calling me that. I’ve been watching the news. Everybody knows who I am now. Sure, I stood you up. But you stood me up, too. I waited by your house last night, but you didn’t come home.”

I didn’t answer, but was glad I’d slept on Nicole’s couch. I thought my best chance at survival was pretending we were pals. It’s harder to pull a trigger on a friend than a foe. The sky was turning dusk, and I worried he might drive to some isolated corner.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

On one level—the part of my brain that didn’t want to believe I was on the road to my own murder—found his words reassuring. But on another level—the common sense part of my brain—my instincts told me that dying while trying to escape might be a better death than whatever torture lay ahead.

Looking over to gauge his sincerity, and admire his ability to drive while holding a loaded gun, I noticed he was wearing a tan puffy coat, like the hooded figure from the post office surveillance footage. My bizarre journey was now full circle to the package of bloody teeth. My jaw ached, but I knew not to bring up Leon’s name.

Jack Clemens wasn’t just a white-collar criminal: he was a psychopath. And it’s never good to tease an armed psychopath. So I lied and told him I trusted him.

“Take me to the fish painting,” he said. “And then I’ll let you go.”

That’s when I realized I was safe, temporarily. He wouldn’t kill me until after he got the account numbers.

“I just need to look at the art,” he continued. “You can keep the painting.”

“Does this mean I don’t get the two thousand dollars?” I was trying to keep the mood light.

“You should have sold it to me when you had the chance. Then we could have avoided all this drama.”

Him needing the painting gave me power. I didn’t have to just wait to see where he took me. I could pick our destination. But if I told him the FBI had the picture, he’d probably execute me on the spot. I could tell him the answer was on my cell phone. But once we retrieved that, he wouldn’t need me anymore.

My home turf would give me the edge for our showdown.

“It’s at my house,” I said.

“It wasn’t there the other day.”

“So that was you, huh?” I acted surprised. “The painting was hanging in my office at the station, but I brought it home the other day.”

“You better not be lying.”

“I’m not,” I lied.

He turned onto the freeway entrance and headed toward south Minneapolis in rush-hour traffic. Occasionally he needed both hands, and gripped the gun against the steering wheel. I considered trying to unlock the door and jump out, but figured a semitruck would probably flatten me.

I was tempted to make conversation, but under the circumstances reckoned the less I knew about any hidden money or plans to leave the country, the more likely I was to get out of this jam alive.

Traffic stalled ahead and we crept along slowly, making it easy for him to keep a bead on me with the firearm.

“Don’t even think about trying to escape,” he said. “We have a deal. The painting for your life.”

That was hogwash. He couldn’t risk me calling the cops. He had too much at stake. He’d have to kill me. He must have thought I was stupid, which made him stupider. And made me determined to outthink him.

I’d seen dumb guys often swayed by the fairer sex and decided to gamble. “You’re an intelligent man.” I paused to whisper his name slowly. “Jack. You outsmarted the feds in that prison switch. Maybe, wherever you’re going, you should take me along. As a partner, not a hostage.”

“You’re not serious.” He clearly wasn’t buying my proposal.

“I have a passport. They’ll be looking for a man traveling solo. Being a couple is a good disguise.”

“You don’t have to act like this. As long as I get what I want, I won’t harm you. I’m not violent, just unscrupulous.”

Because of the evidence of his puffy coat, I had no faith in his promise not to kill me. Also, the homicide of the fake Jack in prison had all the makings of a murder for hire. I didn’t have any evidence, but I figured Jack had something to do with his impostor’s death.

Jack was trying to keep me upbeat, all the better to catch me off guard when he made his final move. My jaw hurt, and I just hoped he didn’t have a pair of pliers in his glove compartment.

“We could relax on a beach in some country that doesn’t extradite to the United States,” I suggested.

Jack ignored my offer.

“All I need to do is pack a bag, and we can be on the road,” I said.

“I’ll think about it.” He didn’t seem to trust me enough not to blurt out his identity to airport security.

“Or we could hole up at my place for a while.”

We exited off the freeway, turning left. He didn’t need any directions to find his way to my house. I wondered how long he’d been stalking me from the shadows after work.

Patience, I reminded myself. Within minutes, I would have the home court advantage. Even though it was nightfall, there was always a chance a neighbor might be outside. Or Jack might slip and fall on my icy sidewalk, accidentally discharging the gun into his chest and wasting himself—wishful thinking on my part.

He parked in the driveway by my garage, obviously not wanting to be seen at the front door. Anybody glancing out their window would assume from the taillights that I’d just gotten home from work. I was fine entering from the back. That would put us in the kitchen; a rack of knives was on the counter. The problem? A bullet moved faster than a blade.

Jack turned off the engine, tucked the key remote in his pocket, and held the gun steady. “I’m going to get out of the car. Then I’m going to open the door for you. We’ll walk to the house together. You first. Me, on your heels.”

A cold wind blew from the north. Under the moonlight, snow sparkled on the ground as I unlatched the gate to the fenced backyard. The sidewalk hadn’t been shoveled, so I moved cautiously toward the rear house light, being careful where I stepped, trying to keep my balance.

Jack watched me sliding and followed behind me, seeking more secure footing. He cursed because he was wearing fancy loafers with smooth soles rather than winter boots with traction.

My stomach grew tense because in another ten steps or so we’d be at the back porch. Once inside, it wouldn’t take long for him to discover there was no fish painting. Our deal would be void, and I’d learn firsthand whether he’d lied about not being a violent man.

I wasn’t sure how the next few minutes might unfold. Jack stayed close, making it impossible for me to beat him—or a bullet—to the other side of the door. Instead of hurrying to my fate, I stalled.

“I’m looking for the house keys.” I pretended to search
through my pockets before pulling them out. “I don’t want you breaking the glass again or my landlord will raise my rent.”

“Keep moving.” He pressed the gun muzzle hard against my back and, despite my bluster, I felt like a soft target, defenseless against the whim of a madman.

T
hree steps later, Jack howled as he went down. This was no routine slip and fall. His scream was so loud I was certain someone else would hear his pain and rush to lend assistance. But the surrounding houses were apparently well insulated or the inhabitants devoid of curiosity.

Jack clutched his foot in agony as he rolled in the snow, caught in a metal body-gripping trap.

When he collapsed, the gun flew from his hand and slid across the ice toward the garage. I rushed to retrieve it, and breathlessly pointed the barrel at him and cocked the trigger. Just that faint clicking sound put me in charge of our fate.

I didn’t like guns. I had good reason. But I knew if I had to, I could blast my adversary. Let him worry about my marksmanship. So I faked being comfortable with the firearm.