MULTIPLE MOTIVES (The Kate Huntington mystery series Book 1) (28 page)

“Got it. Thanks for doing this, Fran.”

“No thanks necessary. I adore Rob….” Fran cleared her throat. “I’m glad I can do something to help, and so is the rest of the staff. Pauline’s here, too, answering phones.”

“Tell them…” Kate’s own throat closed. Her eyes stung. “Tell them that they’re all wonderful people,” she finally managed to get out.

“I will. Hang in there, Kate.” Fran disconnected.

She took a moment to collect herself, then she called Rose.

“No note at your house,” Rose said, “or any other sign that the perp’s been around here. Only one neighbor reported seeing anyone. Short, stocky guy in a suit knocked on your door earlier this morning.”

“Phillips.”

“Yup. I’m at Rob’s firm now.”

“Go see Fran. She’s got a lead for you from the hotline.”

Kate disconnected, then called her own cell number. Her father answered and whispered that Shirley was at work. They were in the diner parking lot, and Ben was having a wee nap in the backseat of the car.

As she disconnected, Liz said, “Nada on your guy. No complaints or arrests.”

“Thanks.” Kate took the Joe sheet to put it in the possibilities section of the box. Then she carried several files over to Liz. “See what you can find on these guys.”

Kate went back to reading files.

Two hours later, she had passed along several potential leads from the hotline to Rose and Skip, and she and Liz had narrowed the possibilities pile down to ten cases. Liz had tracked down current addresses for them.

Kate dropped the last file she’d been reading into the box at her feet and sat back in her chair. She had no idea what to do next.

Why hasn’t the kidnapper contacted us again? What if Rob’s already dead and his body’s hidden somewhere, the killer long gone?

Kate struggled to push that thought, and its attendant array of overwhelming feelings, out of her mind.

Liz broke into her reverie. “Now what do we do with ourselves?”

Kate glanced at her watch. It was only a little after two. She shrugged. “I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“How about a jigsaw puzzle,” Liz said. “Samantha has a bunch of them. That would keep us occupied for awhile.”

“Beats staring at the walls.”

And conjuring up horrible scenarios.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang. Kate got there first since a glare from her caused Liz to stop and grab her crutch. It was Fran with another lead. A bit of a long shot but probably worth pursuing. She called Rose and gave her the information.

Kate and Liz spent the next few hours alternating between trying to focus on the puzzle and answering the phone. Kate had brought the portable over to the table. Most of the calls were from Fran. Kate passed the more plausible of the possible Rob sightings on to Rose or Skip.

One call was from John Bennett. He had been calling or stopping by at least once a day to check on them. He too expressed gratitude that they were able to do something to help.

Kate thanked him, then went back to filling holes in the picture of a running horse evolving on the table.

~~~~~~~~

Gray light filtered through the window.

Rob’s head ached. He drifted in and out until a cramp ripped through his gut. When the pain finally eased, he told himself he should get up and do something. But he had no idea what. He’d tried everything he could think of.

His body felt so heavy. His brain was numb. Images swam into his mind’s eye. Liz’s face crumpled in grief, his daughters holding each other and sobbing. Kate with that same stunned look she’d had the day Ed died.

He told himself he owed it to them to keep trying to escape. Still he didn’t move.

Something about Kate was nagging at the edges of his tired brain. He closed his eyes, praying for sleep, or better still… His eyes flew open.

Kate!

The killer was keeping him alive as bait to lure her to him. If he didn’t get out of here, she could end up dead.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position on the edge of the cot. The room was spinning. He focused on the doorknob, or rather the deadbolt where the doorknob should be. After a few minutes, the spinning slowed and his vision cleared.

A surge of determination had him up and stumbling across the room. Where had the metal shelf bracket gone? Then he remembered it had broken off. He saw half of it on the floor. Leaning over to pick it up, he almost nose-dived into the smelly bucket.

More carefully, he crouched down and retrieved the strip of metal, then managed to get upright again. He tried to work it into the crack between the door and frame. It was too short. His thumb throbbed with renewed intensity.

His forearm against the door, he hung his head and stared at the floor for a moment. His eyes stung, but there was no moisture for tears. He beat his other fist feebly on the wall next to the door, once, twice, in slow motion.

Rage at his captor exploded in his chest. He swung his arm back and slammed his fist against the wall.

The fist went through it, all the way up to his shoulder.

He froze, stunned, his mind trying to process what had just happened.

Slowly he pulled his arm back out and looked through the hole. Dim light, gray walls. The rest of the basement. At the far end was another glass block window and three cement steps leading up to old-fashioned basement doors, the kind that push upward.

He wasted only a second berating himself for not checking out the wall sooner. What could he use to break through it?

The bucket!

He picked it up and put both fists inside, oblivious to the urine that spilled down the front of him. He rammed the bottom of the bucket against the wall. Wallboard broke loose and fell away.

Within a few minutes, he had knocked out a sizeable hole between the two-by-fours that served as studs for the poorly-constructed wall. He squeezed through it, then stumbled across the basement and scrambled on hands and knees up the steps below the doors.

He stood up carefully. Now was not the time to lose his balance and end up unconscious on the basement floor. A metal latch on the doors held them firmly together. Praying they weren’t locked from the outside, he opened the latch and pushed. The doors moved upward a bit and a sliver of grayish light shone between them.

Thank you, God!

He shoved with both hands on one of the doors. It flipped open, clanging against the ground outside. Rob scrambled out.

Shielding his eyes until they adjusted to the light, he tried to figure out what time of day it was. The overcast sky gave him little to go on. It could be any time from morning to dusk.

What the hell was he doing standing here? He needed to get away.

He staggered out into an alley and down it to a street. It was lined with red brick row houses, their marble stoops grayish-white in the gloomy light.

Baltimore City
, his mind registered. The city was well known for such neighborhoods of solid working folks.

He lurched toward some people on the sidewalk down the block, but as he approached, they averted their eyes and moved out of his path. He reached out to the nearest one.

The man jumped back.

Rob staggered forward. “Please help me!” But the sounds coming out of his dry mouth were “iz el mm.”

The pedestrians gave the shirtless, incoherent man, reeking of urine and sweat, a wide berth.

~~~~~~~~

Just before six, the phone rang again.

“Found the bozo,” Mac said. “Didn’t try too hard to cover his tracks. He’s in Pennsylvania. Runnin’ a summer camp.”

Restless, Kate got up and paced across the room. “He must have charmed them so they didn’t check his credentials very carefully.”

“It’s over two hours, here to Towson. Be hard for this guy to be watchin’ you and Rob. He’s been at work every day. Camp counselors say he’s breathin’ down their necks all the time.”

“So Wagner’s probably not our perp.” Kate dropped down onto the sofa. “How about calling in an anonymous tip regarding his whereabouts, then come on back.”

“Will do. See ya in a bit.”

The phone rang the second after Kate disconnected. She jumped a little.

It was Fran. “Calls are beginning to taper off. Hopefully it’s been a slow news day and they’ll run John’s press conference appeal again tonight. But I’ve got one lead that sounds promising.” She gave Kate the information.

Kate called Rose with the lead, then dropped the phone on the sofa as she picked up the TV remote from the end table. Liz joined her. They waited impatiently through the six o’clock news for coverage of the press conference.

Luck was not with them. The Baltimore metropolitan area had had its usual violence-prone Saturday. The litany of gory homicides and other crimes pushed Rob’s disappearance to the end of the program. There was no footage of the press conference, only a few seconds of Rob’s picture as the anchorwoman asked anyone who had any information to call the number on their screen.

Discouraged, Kate and Liz got up off the sofa and went back to their puzzle.

~~~~~~~~

Rose and Skip drove to West Baltimore in Skip’s Explorer. This was the most promising lead they’d received so far from the hotline. A man answering Rob’s description had been seen staggering down Monroe Street, mumbling incoherently. The woman who’d called it in had said that at first she’d assumed he was a homeless drunk, but then she’d remembered the story from the noon news.

Skip parked his truck. They got out and started knocking on doors, dragging people away from their suppers to shake their heads at the photo of Rob.

~~~~~~~~

Rob stumbled down yet another street, trying to tell those he encountered who he was and what had happened. But his words came out as nonsense syllables, and everyone veered away from him.

A cramp in his gut forced him to sit, doubled over, on one of the small marble porches. As the cramp was easing, the overcast sky opened up. Rob raised his face blissfully to the cooling rain, then leaned back and opened his mouth to catch the raindrops.

A sound behind him. He twisted around. A woman, in house dress and curlers, was looking out at him through her screen door.

Rob reached out a hand to her as he tried to stand up.

She screamed.

The world tilted. He sprawled across the gleaming marble.

~~~~~~~~

If the woman had said, “There’s a man lying unconscious on my front stoop,” the dispatcher would have sent an ambulance as well as the police. But when she said, “There’s a drunk passed out on my front stoop,” the dispatcher relayed the message to the beat cop.

The beat cop arrived, saw what he expected to see and radioed for the prisoner transport wagon. When the van pulled up, the driver got out and helped the beat cop lift and shove the semi-conscious man into the back of it.

“He’s a big un,” the driver grunted. He closed and locked the door.

“Can’t have been on the streets too long,” the beat cop said. “He’s still got a good bit of flesh on him. Usually these guys are pretty scrawny, and they’re wearing layers of old clothes, not half naked.”

“Might not be homeless. Maybe he had a fight with the missus, went out and got stinkin’ drunk, and then couldn’t find his way home.”

“Gonna be tough for him to explain to her how he lost his shirt and shoes.” They both laughed.

“Well, he’s gonna have to sleep it off in the drunk tank tonight,” the driver said as he climbed back into the van. He drove away in the gathering dusk.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When the troops finally returned to base, Kate was plugging the last pieces into the puzzle of the running horse while Liz hobbled around the kitchen, laying out a platter of cold chicken and salads. Mac arrived a few minutes after the others.

Kate asked Lou to eat in the kitchen. Everyone else filled their plates and settled into seats in the family room.

Rose and Skip gave their reports. All the potential Rob sightings had been a bust. But Skip had found a woman who’d seen a pick-up truck Tuesday afternoon, in the back of the parking lot behind Kate’s building. And fortunately she had taken note of the license plate. “It stuck in her mind,” Skip said, “because she’d thought it odd that an old truck would have a plate that said ROYZTOY. Unfortunately, she didn’t notice the make, just that it was a dark color and rusty.”

“I ran the plate. Perp’s not too bright.” Rose shook her head. “Swiped a vanity plate off a BMW sports car.”

Skip grinned at Kate. “Told ya criminals are dumb.”

She wasn’t sure whether she found that reassuring or frightening. Dumb people were more likely to panic.

Liz hobbled over to her computer. “Give me the full names of our top suspects, Kate. I’ll check the MVA records. See if any of them owns an old truck.”

After carrying those files to her, Kate informed the others, “We’ve now got the likelies down to four, including Shirley.”

“Stopped by Lennox’s address this afternoon,” Rose said. “Nobody home. But a neighbor confirmed he still lives there. We were headed for Marshall’s place when you called about the homeless dude downtown.”

Kate looked at their tired faces and hesitated. Every minute counted, but they’d been going full-tilt for days and then taking turns on guard duty at night. Shrugging to loosen the tension in her shoulders, she said, “Tomorrow I want to put these other three under surveillance. Anything else before we–”

“I’ll take one of ’em tonight, Kate,” Mac said.

Kate looked at the tough little man, debating.

“I’m okay, sweet pea.”

Kate reached into the file box to retrieve the address of James Marshall, another batterer whose wife had refused to drop the charges against him. Marshall had convinced the judge he’d seen the error of his ways and would get counseling. He’d gotten off with probation and a stern warning from the judge to stay away from his wife. He’d made it into the likelies pile because that trial had occurred just one week before a truck tried to run Liz over.

As Mac headed for the slider, Skip echoed Kate’s earlier thoughts. “I wonder why the kidnapper hasn’t tried to contact us again.”