Purgatory Ridge (40 page)

Grace knelt, then went down on her butt, and slid to where shards littered the old wood planking. She lay on her side, rolled a bit so that she could sweep her fingers across the floor. “I’ve got one. It’s pretty fragile, I think, but the edges feel good and sharp.”

“Grace, I’m going to lie down with my back to yours. I want you to try to cut the tape that’s around my wrists.”

Jo maneuvered herself to the floor and edged backward until she felt Grace Fitzgerald’s bound arms touch her own. She repositioned herself—careful of the shattered glass under her—so that her wrists were even with Grace’s hands. She waited. “Well?”

“Jo, I’ll be cutting awfully close to your wrists. I’m afraid if I slip—”

“Do we have a choice?” Jo broke in.

“All right. But, Jo, if it goes wrong… I’m sorry.”

“You’ll do fine, Grace.”

She made her words sound strong and positive, although she knew that the skin at her wrists was very
thin and the glass very sharp and it wouldn’t take much of an error for an edge to slice right through to an artery.

“Here I go.”

Jo closed her eyes. A moment later, she felt the prick of a jagged edge. “That’s me,” she told Grace quickly.

“Sorry. How’s that?”

“I don’t feel anything. You must be on the tape now.”

The process was awkward and slow, mostly because Grace was reluctant to put a lot of pressure against the duct tape. As it turned out, she wasn’t concerned just about Jo.

“Are you all right?” Jo asked, hearing small, painful grunts from Grace.

“I may be doing more damage to my fingers than the tape,” she answered. “The glass is getting slippery. And I don’t think it’s from sweat.”

“I can feel the tape beginning to give. Can you stay with it?”

“I’d cut off a finger if I thought it would get us out of here. Unhhh.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Mom?” Scott called out with concern.

“I’m fine. Just fine. How you doing, kiddo?”

“Feeling a little sick.”

“Hang on, sport. We’ll all be out of here in a minute.”

Grace took a deep breath. Jo felt again the cut of the glass on the tape, and the grip around her wrists loosened dramatically. She forced her hands apart, breaking
the last of the tape that held her. She sat up quickly, picked up a piece of broken glass, and cut her ankles free.

“Now you,” she said to Grace.

The light had faded almost completely. The fish house was filled with a deep, dismal gray that was all the narrow windows would admit of twilight. Although color was nearly impossible to tell, Jo knew that in a stronger light, the dark that dripped over Grace Fitzgerald’s right hand would have been bright red.

“Oh, Grace,” she whispered gently.

“Just cut me loose.”

Jo did, carefully and quickly. “Let me see.”

Deep slices scored Grace’s palm and fingers. All the wounds bled freely and all looked severe enough to require stitches to close them. Under normal circumstances, her injuries would have been at the center of concern. As it was, she pulled her hand back and said, “Now my ankles.”

Jo cut the last of the bonds that held Grace prisoner, then freed Scott and Stevie. Before she turned her attention to LePere, she tore a wide strip of material from the tail of her blouse and gently wrapped Grace’s bleeding hand.

“Thanks,” Grace said.

“No. Thank you.” Jo put her arms around Grace and thought how, aside from Rose, she’d never felt such love for another woman. “You’re remarkable.”

“Just desperate,” Grace said with a smile. “Come on. We still have to get out of this damn place.”

Jo set to work on the ropes that bound LePere. Stevie snuggled next to her and took hold of the loose
tail of her torn blouse for comfort. She paused a moment in her cutting and gave her son a kiss on the top of his head. “We’ll be home soon,” she promised.

When he was finally free, John LePere sat a moment rubbing where the ropes had bit deeply into him. Although he was a little wobbly, he stood and headed quickly for the door. He tried his shoulder as a battering ram.

“I just finished making this place like a fortress,” he told the others. Then he cursed himself.

“The windows,” Jo suggested. “Maybe we can squeeze through.”

LePere looked doubtfully at the nearest window. “There’s only five or six inches between each bar.”

Jo glanced down at Stevie, who still clung to the tail of her blouse. He was so small for his age. “What if one of us
could
get through? Is there a key to the lock?”

“In a drawer in the kitchen.”

Jo knelt and spoke to her son quietly. “Stevie, you know how I sometimes call you a little monkey?”

He nodded.

“I want you to be a little monkey for me, okay? I want you to squeeze through that window”—she pointed—“and help us all get out of here. Can you do that for Mommy?”

Stevie stared up at the high window. His face was full of fear. “I don’t want to.”

“I know you don’t,” she said softly. She smoothed his hair. “But there’s no one else who can do it. And your daddy will be so proud of you when we tell him how brave you were and how you saved us all.”

“I don’t want to,” he said again.

“Maybe Scott,” Grace suggested.

LePere reached up and used the span of his hand to measure the distance between the bars. He used that same measure to assess the width of Scott’s head and chest. “I don’t think so.” He looked down at Stevie. “As it is, it will be tight for him.”

Jo hugged her son and spoke calmly but seriously. “The man who wants to hurt us all will be back soon, Stevie. Unless we get out, he
will
hurt us.”

“He’ll kill us,” Scott said.

Jo stared into Stevie’s dark, frightened eyes. “Yes. He will kill us. But you can help us. And you’re the only one who can. All you have to do is climb out that window. I know you’re afraid, sweetheart. We’re all afraid. If I could do this, I would. But no one can do it except you. Can you do this for me, little monkey? And for Daddy and Aunt Rose, who are waiting for us to come home?”

She hated herself for putting such pressure on her small son, hated the whole situation, but none of this was of her choosing, and there seemed no other way. She held Stevie close to her and she whispered, “Please.”

She said no more. Stevie was rigid in her arms. Finally he whispered back, “Okay.”

LePere raised the window glass. All that lay between them and freedom were the bars and the question of Stevie’s ability to slide through.

“I’ll lift you up to the window, son,” LePere told him. “All you have to do is squeeze through. Then I’ll tell you what to do from there.”

Jo kissed her son, then gave him over to LePere,
who picked him up easily and lifted him to the window. Stevie took hold of the bars and pulled himself toward them. His head made it through. LePere supported him while he turned his body to align his shoulders and chest with the gap between the bars. He began to wriggle forward. He’d gone less than a foot when he stopped.

“What’s wrong?” LePere asked.

“I’m thtuck.”

“I’m going to give you a little push,” LePere told him.

“Owww!”

“Wait.” Jo grabbed LePere’s arm. “Stevie, we’re going to pull you back.” To LePere, she said, “Gently.”

“Owww!” Stevie cried as LePere drew him back. “I can’t get my head out.”

LePere supported Stevie with one hand and reached up with the other to assess the situation. “It’s his ears,” he reported to Jo. “They won’t come back through the bars. He’s stuck. Really stuck.”

“Hang on, Stevie. We’ll get you out.”

Jo tried to keep the panic out of her voice. Fighting against anger, frustration, fear. Fighting against time. She looked up into the dark gathered above her, descending, and she spoke in a bitter whisper as if someone there were listening.

“Why?”

T
HE CALL CAME AT NINE-TWENTY-SEVEN P.M
., after dark had swept over most of the sky. There was still a narrow strip of washed-out blue along the western horizon, more like the memory of light, but it would soon be gone. Cork stood at the window looking across Grace Cove as Lindstrom reached for the phone.

“This is how it will be,” the voice—masked electronically, as it had been during each previous call—said over the speaker. “Take your cell phone and the money and get into your Explorer. No cops along for the ride, understand? Drive south. Keep your speed at forty. I’ll direct you as you go. Try anything—hide a cop somewhere, screw me over in any way—your family’s dead. And O’Connor’s. Dead, dead, dead. You have five minutes to be on the road.”

As soon as the caller hung up, Kay asked Arnie Gooden, “Did we get a trace?”

“1911 Cascade Trail, Yellow Lake, Minnesota. Phone’s in the name of Minda Liza and Robert Levine.”

“Yellow Lake. Ten miles south of Aurora,” Cork said. “Wally used to be the police chief there. You know these two?”

“Yeah. She’s Latvian. He’s gay. Odd couple, but nice folks. They spend a lot of time in Europe buying expensive art. Whoever this guy is, I’m guessing he broke in and used the phone.”

“He’ll be gone by the time we get there, but let’s
send an evidence team down anyway,” Kay said to Schanno. “Mr. Lindstrom, it sounds as if all this is going to go down on the run. Don’t worry. We’ll be behind you, but far enough back not to be spotted. You have the cellular I’ve given you so we can be in communication the whole time. If anything happens, if we get out of touch, we’ll still be able to track you and the money via the transmitter. I want to reemphasize that you will not attempt anything on your own. Make the drop and go. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Everybody ready? Let’s go.”

“I’m going with Karl,” Cork said.

“You heard the guy, Cork,” Schanno said. “No cops.”

“I’m not a cop, Wally. Not anymore.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea—” Kay began.

“Let him go,” Earl said.

Kay glanced at the BCA agent, then at Lindstrom. “Any objection?”

Karl Lindstrom had taken a money case from Lucky Knudsen. It looked heavy in his hand. “It’s his family, too,” he said. “He wants to come with me, he comes.”

“Yellow Lake,” Lindstrom said. “That means he’s not watching us.” They were heading south on County 11, per the kidnapper’s instructions.

Cork glanced at the speedometer. “He said to keep it at forty. He’s probably driven the route and timed it so that he can direct us blind. I’d bet he’s headed to the drop site right now.”

Lindstrom’s cell phone, which was sitting on the seat beside him, chirped. Lindstrom picked it up and listened. “All right,” he said, and broke the connection.
“We’re coming up on Bone Creek Road. We take it east.”

Cork looked behind him, but he saw no headlights. On the cellular supplied by Special Agent Kay, he tapped in the number she’d given him. “Bone Creek Road,” Cork said. “We’re taking it east.”

“We’re half a mile behind you,” Kay said. “Just keep the line open and give us the instructions as you receive them.”

The phone on the seat next to Lindstrom rang again. Lindstrom answered. “Yeah?” He held the phone in his right hand and the steering wheel in his left. The road dipped toward a bridge over Bone Creek. As the Explorer crossed the bridge, the headlights picked up the eyes of a deer frozen in the middle of the road.

“Christ!” Lindstrom dropped the phone and grabbed the wheel with both hands. He swerved left, just missing the buck, and nearly ran off the road. Cork slammed against the passenger-side door. The cellular Agent Kay had given him whacked the window hard. “My phone,” Lindstrom shouted. “I lost my cell phone.” While he brought the Explorer back under control, Cork was on the floor, groping for Lindstrom’s phone. He grasped it from where it had lodged under the accelerator pedal, and he put it to his ear.

“He’s gone,” Cork said.

“Shit.”

“Did you get the next instruction?”

“South on Shipley Road, I think.”

“That’s coming right up. There!” Cork hollered, and pointed at a narrow dirt lane almost invisible beneath a canopy of arching pines.

Lindstrom hit the brakes. The Explorer went into a
slide. He brought it around smoothly, however, in a clean one-eighty that ended with the nose of the vehicle pointed back in the direction from which they’d come. Without hesitating, Lindstrom leaned on the accelerator, hit the turn onto Shipley Road, and, to make up time, kept the speedometer just above forty.

Cork tried the cellular with which he’d been communicating with Agent Kay. He couldn’t get a dial tone. “It’s dead,” he said. “We’ve lost them.”

“Remember, they can still follow us via the transmitter.”

Cork considered the kidnapper’s directions thus far. “He’s working us southeast, toward the back side of the Sawtooths.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I wish I knew.”

They crossed a major road, County 13.

“Are you sure we weren’t supposed to turn there?” Cork asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say anything about it, but then I was worried about not killing us right about then.”

The phone rang. Cork was beginning to hate that noise. Lindstrom picked it up. “No, I didn’t hang up. We almost hit a deer, for Christ’s sake.” Lindstrom listened. “Yeah, I understand.” He put the phone down. “Next left. Private road.”

The wooden sign at the crossroads indicated they were headed toward Black Spruce Lodge on Goose Lake. Cork didn’t believe that was their ultimate destination. Too many people around. He was right. Within two minutes, the kidnapper called again.

“I understand,” Lindstrom said after he’d listened a
moment. He put the phone down. “Logging road on the right.”

It wasn’t much of a road, and keeping the speed at forty tested both the suspension on the Explorer and the durability of Cork’s spine. But they weren’t on it long. Lindstrom got another call, and in a moment, they turned onto a paved county road. Almost immediately they were confronted with a long bridge. Cork knew the place. The bridge spanned the Upper Goose Flowage, a wide, slow sweep of water that connected Goose Lake with Little Red Cedar Lake just south. Lindstrom pulled into the parking area of a small picnic ground along the flowage.