Irresistible Force (17 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Damned if I know.”

James ducked out from under the hood of her car. “You say the check engine light was on earlier?”

Shay nodded quickly, her arms wound tightly about herself against the autumn chill. “I guess I should have believed it.”

“Well, I can’t jump it and you have gas. I’m sorry but you’re going to have to get it towed.”

He watched her face fall. “I take it you don’t have Triple A or something. But your insurance should cover it.”

She looked down and didn’t reply.

“You don’t have insurance?”

She glanced across at him, misery making her eyes appear almost black in the dim light of the parking garage. “Liability and bare-bones collision.”

“Okay.” He closed her hood. “This is what we’re going to do. The car should be okay overnight, but take all your belongings. In the morning, I’ll call Raleigh police and get a reputable tow.”

“Okay.” Shay bit her lip. No point in telling him she couldn’t afford a tow, much less a repair bill.

James watched her collect what amounted to very little from her car and then opened the passenger door to his cruiser for her. Her anxiety made him want to tuck her under his arm and promise her that bad things would never again happen to her as long as he was around.

But life wasn’t like that. He couldn’t stop all the big bad wolves from coming to her door, or anyone else’s. But he was feeling the urge to try.

*   *   *

“I’m really sorry about this.” Shay sat uneasily in the passenger seat of the cruiser. She had given him directions to her neighborhood.

“No problem. I’m a door-to-door kind of date guy.”

Bogart stuck his head through the front hatch between them, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and slurped the side of Shay’s face.

She laughed nervously and pushed him away. “The waitress was right. Your kisses need some work.”

James glanced at her. “I assume you aren’t talking to me.”

Shay turned to look out the window so that he wouldn’t see her face. She liked him, really liked him.

They drove northwest out of the main part of town. Shay had directed him to avoid the 440 Loop traffic though it took them away from the most direct route to her apartment. Plus, maybe she didn’t want to say good night yet, though she was definitely going to leave him at her door.

A little nerve jumped at the corner of her mouth. The problem was, she didn’t want to leave him on her doorstep. Or the living room. What would he do about that?

As they left the main part of the city a soft misty rain began to fall. James turned on the radio. To her surprise, it wasn’t country. Pink was singing one of her plaintive songs, something about getting up and trying again.

Suddenly, out near Crabtree Creek, the brake lights of the traffic ahead all leaped into brilliance at the same time. The sound of screeching brakes and squealing tires accompanied them.

“Uh-oh.”
James stepped on his brake and they rolled to a stop behind a double line of cars. “Did you see anything?”

“No, I wasn’t paying attention.” Shay craned her head forward to gaze between the pulsing windshield wipers.

Moments later a man came running toward them, arms waving. James let down his windshield an inch.

“You a cop?”

James nodded.

The man pointed back up the line of cars. “Car went off the road up ahead. Blew a tire, I think. Jumped the guardrail and went down the incline. There’s a creek down there.”

“You call 911?”

“Yeah. I’m a trucker. But we need to get down there, pronto.”

“Right. Let me move out of the traffic lanes.”

Turning his flashing lights on, James drove his cruiser up over the curb and onto the grassy shoulder and carefully edged forward. He didn’t move forward all the way to where the railing was because he knew other law enforcement and emergency vehicles would need the space.

Shay eyed him cautiously. “You’re going to help?”

He put the car in park before he turned to her. He’d almost forgotten she was with him. “That’s right. I want you to stay in the cruiser with your seat belt on. I’m leaving the lights on but there’s the chance of being rear-ended because some driver may come along who isn’t expecting a sudden stop.”

James got out and rushed forward following the trucker. The lights of the stalled traffic lit up the angled beginning of a guardrail. He noted it was bent and scraped. The car must have catapulted over it. Farther ahead, several passengers had emerged from their cars and were looking over the railing above the creek into the darkness below.

As they reached the rim of the incline that led down to the creek bed, James and the trucker paused.

Two men in business suits carried a half-conscious woman up the grassy incline, her body sagging between them. James winced. Good Samaritans often moved people who should not be moved until they’d been examined. But it was too late to point that out.

The woman came to life as they tried to lay her in the grass.

“My baby! My baby!”

She twisted away from them and began trying to crawl back the way they’d come. One of the men reached to restrain her by the shoulder. “It’s okay, ma’am. We’re going to send someone back down there in a minute.”

“No! No! No! My baby! Got to get my baby!”

James stepped forward. “How old is your child?”

The woman’s eyes darted from one to the other until they came to rest on James. “Mariah. She’s six months old. Oh God! Something happened. I just lost control. Oh God! Please! Please! Make her okay!”

James glanced at the two men trying to restrain her without hurting her. “You searched?”

“We checked. It’s dark down there.” One of the men shook his head. “There’s a car seat but there’s no child in that car.”

“Yes there is! Oh God, Mariah’s in there! You’ve got to believe me!”

James knelt down to bring his face even with hers. “Her name’s Mariah. She’s six months old. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” The woman’s eyes widened until the whites showed all around. “Please help her.”

“Where was she riding?”

“She’s in the backseat. In her seat.” She grabbed James’s sleeve. “Someone must get her out of there!”

“Yes, ma’am. If she’s down there, we’ll get her.”

Out of breath, the woman sagged back weakly, sobbing.

James looked up at the trucker. “You got traffic cones?” The man nodded. “Okay, make a perimeter. I’m getting my partner to help search for the child.”

As he rose to his feet he heard sirens but they sounded a good way off.

As he jogged back toward his cruiser, Shay exited the car. “What can I do?”

James looked back at the frantic mother. “The driver is a woman. She says there was a baby girl in the car but the men who went down to help couldn’t find her.”

“Oh my God!”

He opened the trunk and took out some things. He put them either in his pocket or tucked them in his belt: a pair of boots, a muzzle, and Bogart’s tracking harness. “If there’s a baby down there in the dark, Bogart has the best chance of finding her.”

“Can he do that without a scent?”

James nodded as he bent to exchange his shoes for heavy tactical boots that zipped on. “It’s a search, not a track. As far as we know, the baby is the only one down there.”

“Oh.” Shay watched him with expanding appreciation for what they did.

Bogart barked, a high excited bark Shay had never heard before as James strapped on his harness and attached his leash.

“He knows he’s about to work, doesn’t he?”

“Right. Don’t touch him. He’s in the zone.”

“Is that why you’re muzzling him?”

He nodded. “There’s a crowd of excited people milling around. I don’t want him to bite anyone in the confusion.”

Shay backed up, hugging herself as the mist gathered in her eyelashes. “What can I do?”

“You can help see to the mother. Anything to calm her. And don’t let anyone move her again until the ambulance gets here.”

“Do you have a blanket?”

He nodded. “In the trunk. Roof compartment.”

Shay ran to the back and pulled out a lightweight dark gray blanket. As she came around the cruiser, James lifted a hand in salute. “Be careful!”

He then bent over to stroke Bogart, who was visibly excited. “
Gute Hund.
Let’s go.”

He moved forward quickly, Bogart straining forward as if he already knew what the command would be. James kept him on a short leash to work him past the ever-growing crowd of onlookers. A couple of men had begun voluntarily directing traffic but that was not his concern. There was the possibility of a missing baby out there in the dark.

As he neared the crowd he gave warning. “Stay back!”

His shout made a few young men in lumber jackets and gimme caps look back at him. “There’s a kid down there.” One man pointed. “We’re going to look.”

“No!” James flashed his badge. “K-9 police. You’ll get in the way. But you can warn local law enforcement police when they arrive that there’s a K-9 unit on duty down there.”

He glanced at the others. “If any of you have high-beam flashlights, I could use your help shining some concentrated light down there.”

Several of them jumped back toward their vehicles.

James lit his high-performance flashlight to illuminate the darkness below. The misty rain made gauzy globes of the streetlights, dimming their effectiveness. There was no breeze. The heavy dampness, however, might be a help in their search, holding any human scent close to the ground for Bogart to follow. With nothing better to go on they proceeded directly toward the wrecked car.

Bogart, ears and tail high, led the way to the edge of the incline. Only then did his handler give the search command.
“Revier!”

Bogart scrambled forward and James hustled after him.

The drop-off was fairly steep, more so than he’d expected. Even with his light ranging before them, the gloom of the overcast night plunged the area outside his beam into blackness. The grass was slick from the light mist, making his boots slip and slide as he struggled to maintain balance on the way down. Bogart’s pants of excitement were the only sounds for a few seconds. Then the gurgling sound of moving water reached them from below.

He gave silent thanks that it wasn’t raining hard or they might have had a flash-flood situation to worry about. However, if the child had been tossed from the car, she could be anywhere, even in the creek.

He shoved that thought from his mind. The mother said the child was in the backseat, in a car seat. He and Bogart would start with that.

Overhead the sounds of emergency vehicles closed in. Red and blue lights flashed in the sky overhead. James didn’t pause. Survival often came down to mere seconds.

Finally, his flashlight picked up and gleamed off the rear bumper of the SUV. His spirits went into a nosedive at the sight. Hard to believe the mother had survived. And that a baby might still be trapped in the wreckage. The thought reengaged his focus.

He moved his light back and forth to pick up more details as they approached. The impact had smashed the front of the SUV and it had rolled onto its passenger side on the bank of the creek, its front bumper nosed into the water. The driver’s door winged open into the night, like a wounded bird struggling to right itself.

Bogart sprang toward the vehicle. They had tracked and saved accident victims before.

James pulled from his belt a handheld thermal-imaging device. If the baby was alive the device would pick up her body heat as an infrared image amid the twisted metal.

He held his breath for a second, listening alertly for sounds of life as Bogart nosed around. All he heard was the wet swoosh of the water ahead, and the distant sounds of traffic and overhead voices. Nothing remotely like a baby’s cry.

A second later, several slats of light forked down around them. A moment after that, a single big klieg light shattered the night, throwing him and the vehicle in stark relief like performers on a stage.

“Hey, fella! Stop where you are. Raleigh police!”

James glanced back over his shoulder into the blindness of white light and held up his badge. “Officer Cannon, Charlotte-Mecklenburg K-9 unit. My partner and I are searching for a missing baby. Permission to continue.”

Before he could receive a reply, Bogart jerked hard on the leash, almost toppling James as his feet slipped in the wet mud of the bank. He didn’t have to wonder. Bogart was onto something. Bogart didn’t lunge toward the vehicle but veered to the right, out of the ring of light made by the overhead beams. James tried once to correct him but Bogart was straining so hard on the harness that James decided to let him lead.

He hurried along behind his dog, moving quickly along the grassy bank to a place where some low-hanging tree branches obscured his view of the ground.

Then James heard it, faint sounds like that of a car radio heard across a parking lot. Bogart was moving toward the brush along the bank, some thirty feet from the wreckage. As James ran behind him, he aimed his infrared device in that direction.

An image appeared on the water’s edge. It was a small signature, smaller than Bogart’s form as the dog rushed forward to reach his goal. The image could mean the child, even if injured, was at least alive. Or it might be the signature of any of a number of nocturnal creatures that made the riverbank their home. The last thing he needed was for Bogart to get into a scuffle with a nutria or a raccoon.

As if he had read James’s thoughts, Bogart slowed suddenly, his steps becoming tentative as he approached his goal. That gave James time to switch out his image scanner for his flashlight, and aim it at the place Bogart signaled.

Dressed in a fluffy pink jumpsuit, baby Mariah lay in a pile of muddy leaves, looking dazed and unhappy.

James’s heart did a little squeeze of joy. “Got her! Get the EMTs down here!”

Bogart, for his part, immediately went up to sniff her and then turned to look at James. Mariah chortled in delight when she spied the dog, and leaned forward as if to try to grab for him.

He called Bogart away.
“Fuss. Da. Gute Hund! Platz.”
Bogart accepted the praise and then the order to sit and stay.
“Bleib.”