Swift Justice (35 page)

As we drew closer to the blip representing Lloyd’s truck, I began to wonder if he’d dumped it. He could have switched cars, caught a taxi to the airport, hopped a bus. I was willing to rule out Jet Skis and gondolas, but any other form of transportation was still in play. I clenched and unclenched my hands as Gigi, following the directions of the sultry GPS voice, swung off 1-25 and trundled along a service road. “There.” She pointed.

A couple of acres of cars, trucks, and vans of all descriptions surrounded the twenty-first-century shopping mecca: Walmart. Sun glinted off chrome, mirrors, and highly polished paint jobs, bumping the temperature at least five degrees. The heat rose off the asphalt and vehicles in a visible, shimmering wave. Maybe it was all a mirage? I groaned at the prospect of locating Lloyd’s truck in the huge lot. I felt like Horton trying to find the thistle with the Whos on it in the thistle field. My hope dwindled because I was sure Ian had abandoned the car, assuming no one would notice it. I just couldn’t imagine a kidnapper stopping off to pick up groceries at discount prices.

As I worried, and tried to gin up another plan for finding Lloyd and Olivia, Gigi cruised down the aisles, keeping one eye on the GPS display. “It should be in the next row,” she said, her voice breathless with excitement. “What kind of car are we looking for, anyway?”

“A maroon F-150 with a camper top,” I said, pulling up an image of the truck from my visit to the Lloyd home. “Maybe there’ll be a clue in it to tell us where he’s headed,” I said with faint hope. “It’s—”

“Look!”

My eyes followed Gigi’s outstretched arm. I couldn’t believe it. The maroon truck, its door ajar, squatted between a yellow Mini Cooper and a rusted-out El Camino that was once red. A man who might have been Lloyd had his head and torso inside the passenger compartment, apparently trying to load something into the seat.

“Park him in,” I ordered Gigi, grasping the dashboard.

She bounced on her seat, tore down the aisle like a drag racer, and stopped with a lurch directly behind the F-150. Due to the size of the Hummer, she was also blocking the Mini Cooper’s exit, but that couldn’t be helped.

“Perfect,” I said, unbuckling and jumping to the ground. I hesitated for a moment; if Lloyd was armed, I might be putting the baby in danger by confronting him. Maybe now that we had him cornered, I should wait for the police to show up. I was sure Montgomery had talked Melissa into cooperating by now. A baby’s wail jolted me forward. Relief tingled through me at the auditory evidence that Olivia was alive. I felt Gigi’s bulk crowding me from behind.

“Hey, you can’t put that baby in the front seat,” she said indignantly before I could motion her to silence. “It isn’t safe!”

With a muffled “Damn,” Ian Lloyd pulled his head out of the front seat, banging it on the roof. His cursing escalated; a passing shopper hauled her toddler into her arms and cupped her hands over his ears.

Rubbing the bleeding gash on his forehead, Lloyd looked from me to Gigi, wild-eyed, as Olivia continued to screech.

“Let me have that baby,” Gigi said, elbowing past Lloyd to reach into the truck. “There, there, honey, it’ll be okay,” she soothed, working mother magic on the car seat straps and gentling the squalling infant against her bosom. “Phew, you’re a stinky, aren’t you? No wonder you’re so unhappy.” She shot an accusatory look at Ian. “Diapers?”

“In the bag.” He nodded toward a Walmart bag on the pavement at his feet. A scowl twisted his face. “That’s why we stopped. Well, for that and the car seat. She couldn’t sit up so I couldn’t use the seat belt on her and she was rolling around on the seat so I had to drive with one hand holding her so she wouldn’t fall. Then she pooped and I don’t know what Mel’s been feeding the kid, but it stank like a herd of pigs had crowded into the cab, I kid you not, and then—”

“You mean you drove that poor baby all the way from Monument to here without a safety seat?” Gigi’s horrified voice brought stares from interested shoppers.

“That’s illegal!” piped up a skinny woman holding a snotty-nosed toddler of indeterminate gender by one hand.

“Enough.” I made shooing motions, and the bystanders who seemed inclined to linger proceeded reluctantly toward
the store. “Take the baby to the Hummer, Gigi,” I suggested. The unrelenting caterwauling was driving me insane. Even Lloyd looked like he thought it was a good idea. Gigi scooped up the bag with the Huggies peeking out the top and stalked to the car muttering, “The stupid man’s got the car seat in backwards, and I’ll bet he didn’t even get wipes or powder for your sweet little bottom.”

I put a hand on Lloyd’s arm as he started to inch away. “Uh-uh. You and I can sit here and have a nice conversation while we wait for the police.”

“The police!” He looked around as if searching for SWAT personnel behind lampposts or under the plastic swimming pools displayed by the store entrance.

“Kidnapping’s a crime, in case you didn’t know, and so is murder.”

“It was an accident.”

“Which? The kidnapping or the murder?”

“Both. Well, Beth’s death.” His brown eyes beseeched me.

I let out a long breath compounded of sadness and relief. At least he wasn’t going to deny it. “She’s your baby, isn’t she?”

“Olivia? Yeah.” His gaze drifted toward the Hummer, where Gigi had the baby laid flat on the seat—my seat—and was efficiently changing her diaper. The smell drifted to me. I was not riding back in the Hummer. “I wasn’t going to hurt her, you know.” He seemed anxious that I believe him. “I was going to take her to New Mexico or Arizona and leave her at a fire station or hospital. I just needed to get her away from here.”

“Because she linked you to Elizabeth.”

He nodded. “But I wouldn’t harm a baby. I couldn’t.”

“I think interrupting the kidnapping to buy a car seat will count in your favor,” I said, unable to totally despise the man. I believed him when he said he wouldn’t have hurt Olivia. On the other hand . . . “How did you hook up with Elizabeth?”

He sighed heavily and wiped a hand down his face. “I met Beth soon after she started working for Melissa, and she was . . . well, no one would’ve guessed she was only sixteen. I bought her story about her husband being deployed and everything. You won’t believe this, but—”

“She came on to you, didn’t she?”

He arched his eyebrows into the shock of sandy hair dropping across his brow. “Yeah. How did you know?”

I shrugged, leaning back against the warmth of the truck’s hood. Lloyd followed suit. “Lots of the folks I talked to knew she was trying to find her birth mom—your wife—and a few of them seemed concerned about her motives. It seemed to me that maybe she was looking for revenge?” I turned my head to watch his reaction.

He looked at me as if I were a psychic. Just call me Madame Carlotta and cross my palm with silver.

“That’s what she said! When she called me after the baby was born—I was in Arizona—and told me she needed money. She threatened to tell my wife about our affair and called it ‘delicious revenge.’ When I asked her why the hell she wanted revenge on Melissa, who’d never been anything but kind to her—giving her sewing work and all—she told me about Mel being her mom. I was floored. I had no idea. Mel never said—”

The look of betrayal on his face made me almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

“She spit out all this stuff about Mel abandoning her and
her father getting killed on 9/11 and her stepfather being abusive. She blamed it all on Mel. When I tried to make her see reason, she slapped me.” He put a hand to his cheek as if still feeling the blow. Pale tan freckles sprinkled the back of his hand. “When she hit me, I lost it. I hit her back.” His hands shook, and he clenched them together in his lap. “She fell and—” He pointed down to a dent in the metal bumper directly beneath where we were leaning. I scootched away.

“Would you please move that tank? I need to get out.”

The owner of the Mini Cooper, a woman in a turquoise jog bra and nylon shorts that showed the tanned, corded legs of a marathoner, stood impatiently behind Gigi. Her tapping Pearl Izumi–shod foot and tight jaw told me she needed to try a little meditation or yoga to relieve her stress. Or maybe a Valium.

“It’s a Humvee, not a tank,” Gigi said instructively, her attention still on the baby kicking her legs on the front seat. “Tanks are tracked vehicles, not wheeled, like—”

“I don’t care what you call this mountain of steel that only an irresponsible, ecologically careless criminal would drive. Just move it! My lima beans are defrosting.” She flung a hand toward her Mini, piled high with bags of groceries.

I stepped toward the woman, poised to grab her by the shoulders if it looked like she was going to turn violent. I couldn’t altogether blame her; shopping at Walmart had that effect on me, too.

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Gigi said, bringing Olivia to her shoulder and patting her. “As soon as I put the baby in her car seat”—she nodded toward us and the truck—“I’ll—Charlie!”

The warning in her voice made me turn in time to see Ian Lloyd sidling between parked cars two aisles over. Shit! Cursing for letting myself be lulled by his penitent manner, I took off after him. His legs were longer, but I was more maneuverable, threading my way through parked cars and startled shoppers like an agility dog on uppers. Lloyd reached the edge of the parking lot before I did, cast a glance behind to check on my progress, and broke into a sprint that took him around the side of the Walmart. By the time I rounded the corner, breathing heavily, he was climbing into the cab of a Fluffy-Wip truck that had been off-loading crates at the dock stretching the length of the Walmart. Several other trucks cozied up to the dock like piglets to a sow, and a forklift shifted pallets from one with a Del Monte logo. The Fluffy-Wip truck’s driver, sprawled on his butt where Lloyd had apparently yanked him out of the cab, was scrambling to his feet.

I pounded toward the truck, determined not to let Lloyd escape. The truck driver in his red and white uniform jumped for the door handle and missed as Lloyd engaged the gears and pulled away from the loading dock. A scraping, tearing sound was drowned by a metallic clatter as the truck’s ramp fell from the dock and began to drag across the asphalt, sparks flying as Lloyd picked up speed. I debated standing in the truck’s way but decided I couldn’t count on Lloyd to stop. His face, through the windshield, was set in grim lines, his brows drawn down and his lips thinned. I was suddenly not so sure Elizabeth’s death had been an accident.

I was contemplating running up the ramp—but how could I get to Lloyd once inside the refrigerated truck?—when the Hummer squealed around the corner, Gigi gripping the wheel
in white-knuckled hands. What had she done with Olivia? The thought barely had time to whip through my head before I saw her steer the Hummer onto a collision course with the truck.

“Gigi, don’t!” I yelled. I watched helplessly as the two vehicles growled toward each other. The space between them shrank rapidly. When it seemed like they must collide, both drivers chickened out. The Hummer skidded to the right, leaving thirty-foot-long rubber marks on the pavement, but the trailer of the delivery truck, a victim of its own momentum and the sudden turn, came gradually up onto two wheels and then, as if in slow motion, listed toward the ground with a wrenching sound of wounded metal. With the popping of caps and a pressurized hissing, whipped cream oozed out of the trailer. The air filled with a sugary smell.

I dashed toward the cab, still upright, and pulled a dazed Lloyd to the ground. He came unresisting, all fight drained out of him. “Olivia?” he asked, his eyes tracking toward the Hummer.

“I hope not,” I said, steering him toward the Hummer with his arm twisted up, none too gently, between his shoulder blades.

“I couldn’t risk hurting her,” he said. “I had to stop.”

The man had some semblance of a conscience if he was willing to give up his break for freedom to avoid injuring the baby that might have been in the Hummer; maybe Elizabeth’s death was an accident. I’d let the courts figure it out.

The pink-tiger-striped Gigi emerged from the Hummer, hands patting her hair into place, as we drew within ten feet.

I peered around her into the front seat. “The baby?”

“With Melissa,” she said.

“Melissa?”

“She drove up with Detective Montgomery just as you took off after the baby-napper here. I came after you because I thought you might need some help.”