Taking Liberty (37 page)

___________________________

In my vocabulary, the C-word is
coincidence
.

The guy having a relaxing smoke break behind Cornsilk’s van was unmistakably George, my son.

One of those jaw-dropping moments where the Universe reminds you you’re not as smart as it.

I’d recognize my own flesh and blood from a mile away.

He was looking toward Hollywood Boulevard, to where Snakeskin was standing on the street corner, facing Richard Schaeffer in his blood-red Santa suit.

The breath solidified in my throat.

This was the first time I’d seen my son since our fateful face-off in the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas almost a year ago. That cold winter’s night, he’d vocalized his hatred for me. Told me in not so many words exactly how he blamed me for his momma’s death. Told me it was his mission to make me suffer.

That world-changing night, George had taken two bullets from Sonny Maxwell’s gun – one to the shoulder and another to his thigh – before BASE jumping to freedom through a thousand foot to the glittery streets below.

He’d been badly injured, but he’d survived. I didn’t know how he’d got patched up. Sonny had checked with all the emergency rooms and clinics in Nevada, and none had reported anyone harboring a pair of gunshot wounds. I didn’t know where he’d gone, or how. Ashamed, I’d given Sonny a fake description; she’d only seen him from behind, as it was. George had used an alias, or several. I’d misled her through sheer embarrassment and denial. George had taken flight and disappeared in the wind.

Last I’d seen of him.

Later, I’d heard his voice over the phone. He hadn’t finished with me yet. He wanted me to suffer more for his loss. I’d tried explaining how I‘d lost everything, too. That in some ways I had lost much more than he had. Not interested. Compared to his, my inner turmoil was negligible.

Sooner or later there would be blood.

Probably mine.

And then Cornsilk had killed him.

Burned him to a cinder on that bleak Alaskan beach.

Killing any plans George had had for mortal revenge.

Yet here he was: a week ago, with his killer in Los Angeles.

Nothing made sense.

How had he come to be in Cornsilk’s company?

I was still chewing the fat as the Gulfstream jet landed at LAX. I stuffed the phone in my pocket and crossed the apron to a black Suburban with its headlights on. I was totally preoccupied. Juggling all the possibilities and afraid to drop any.

I pulled the door open and fell into the passenger seat.

There was a big guy shoehorned in behind the steering wheel. And I mean
big
. Seven-foot-tall, three hundred pounds, big. Only just fitting in the seat. A bald head and a face folded up like a wet beach towel. Didn’t look like your typical federal suit.

He was holding a stun gun at his hip, aimed at my chest.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, a split second before lightning struck twice.

___________________________

Word must have gotten around: the Celebrity Cop reacts negatively to electrocution.

I had no idea how long I was unconscious. Long enough to stiffen neck muscles and form a crust of dried dribble in the crack of my lips. I landed with a thud that jolted open my eyes and mouth, both at the same time.

I was lying on my side on the backseat of a vehicle. The Suburban. Knees pulled up. Wrists and ankles bound with plastic tie wraps. The vehicle was moving through night-washed city streets, at a steady rate. Alternating bands of light and dark flowing through the cabin. Elvis Presley was singing from the car stereo, lamenting about bruised love at Christmastime. I could see the back and part of one side of the big brute’s head. See his rack-of-ribs hands tapping along to
Blue Christmas
on the upper curve of the steering wheel.

He had the interior mirror angled so that he could see me, I realized. Sink-hole eyes filled with shadow.

I coughed up a knot of phlegm and spat it out. “I take it you’re working with Cornsilk. So what’s the plan, partner? Where we going?”

I saw a hand leave the wheel and reappear in the gap between the two front seats, armed with the stun gun. Saw the twin prongs snake out.

Not much in the way of a talker.

White fire slammed into my eyelids. Skeletal muscles barbequing on bone. The world flipped over, then crashed in flames, fizzled and went away again.

Only so many knockouts a man can take before his heart throws in the towel.

___________________________

I don’t recall sleeping, but I must have.

A dreamless length of nothingness, uninterrupted and as dull as dishwater.

No doubt, I needed it.

When I surfaced a second time it was daylight. Midday, judging from the lack of shadows. I was still on the backseat of the Suburban, aching from head to toe. The SUV was stationary. No signs of Brutus squeezed in behind the steering wheel.

My wrists and ankles were still bound with tie wraps. A seatbelt was wound around my legs and plugged in, preventing me from achieving a seated position. All the same, I managed to push myself up on one elbow, enough to see out at least.

The Suburban was parked in woodland. It looked tended. Possibly a picnic area. Tall pines glistening with raindrops. More residual moisture on the windows. I pushed higher and glimpsed a steely blue lake through the long boughs. Cold and damp. Not Los Angeles. More like northern California. Maybe even Oregon.

There was a white van parked alongside. Black windows pebbled with rain.

Cornsilk’s van.

I could hear muffled voices. All male. Two, or possibly three. Sounded like I was missing out on a heated discussion.

I twisted against the belt and managed to shimmy along the seat a little. At a push, I could see over the center console and into the front of the cab. There was a bunch of loose change and parking receipts in a cup holder. A discarded Happy Meal box in the passenger foot space. Keys dangling from the ignition. And what looked like my FBI-issued cell phone wedged in a slot in the dash.

Could I be so lucky?

I moistened my lips and whispered: “Find a fed.”

The phone remained unresponsive.

Maybe I was hoping beyond hope. Maybe the phone was off or the battery was dead.

I took a deep breath and repeated it more loudly.

Suddenly, the phone lit up.

“Thank you for using Find-A-Fed,” the synthetic voice shrilled. “Please speak the name of the agent you wish to contact.”

“Mason Stone.”

A pause, then: “Please repeat the name of the agent you wish to contact.”

“Mason Stone,” I growled, this time louder, with a silent expletive in the middle.

“Thank you. Dialing Special Agent in Charge Mason Stone.”

The phone began to bleep through the numbers.

I began to feel wildly optimistic.

Then the door behind me swung open and someone grabbed me by the hair. Yanked, hard enough to pop follicles. I heard someone holler
give him the shot
in the same moment something stung at my neck.

The last thing I saw before darkness enveloped was a big hand reaching for the phone and disconnecting the call.

___________________________

After that, reality returned in brief bursts. Over and over. Like time-lapse photography. Glimpses of darkness or daylight. Snapshots of myself in the third person. Skittering along like a puppet on wires.  Impressions of movement or stillness. Sometimes a thundering silence. Sometimes a whispering din. Dislocated sensations of eating, drinking, toileting. Never more than a few seconds of blurred awareness between the blackouts. No way to keep track of time or to hold a single coherent thought before the darkness rushed in and swept it into oblivion.

I woke sometime much later, curled in a fetal position, with the worst hangover in recent memory. At first, no idea where I was, when it was, or even who I was.

Everything blurry. I blinked until the world hardened.

I was on a bunk bed. Bottom one of two. The wooden unit was built into a nook in a short passageway. Smooth white walls trimmed with varnished pine. Looked like molded fiberglass. I had a sensation of slight movement. A camper van? No sound of vehicular traffic. Not a road vehicle, then. A boat? Too clean for a fishing vessel. A pleasure cruiser.

I stretched stiff muscles. Winced as the tie wraps chaffed skin already made raw by the handcuffs and Jefferson’s weight. I was still bound like a hog. Still stuffed in my jacket, jeans and sneakers. Yesterday’s clothes smelling musty. Skin in need of showering.

I was cold. I could see my breath, I realized.

Footfalls coming down the passageway.

I braced myself – not much of anything else I could do – as a man in a long wax coat came into view. A big guy pushing eighty, with a thick garland of white beard fringing his ruddy cheeks.

“Paul?”

There was a big serrated blade in his hand. Black steel. Looked military, and about as friendly as a rabid Doberman.

“Your turn,” he said, without acknowledging my surprise.

For a moment I thought Engel was going to gut me like a fish, here in his motor yacht. Spoil the bed linens and spatter me all over the wipe-down walls. But he stooped and sliced the ties fastening my ankles together instead.

He nudged me with his hand. “Come on, get to your feet. And no funny business, you hear? Or I’ll dice you into little pieces and feed you to the halibut.”

I was stunned, bruised brain trying to decipher what my eyes were seeing. “Paul? I don’t understand. What the hell’s going on?” I was having a hard time connecting Cornsilk with Engel, other than the obvious.

The knife flashed past my face and came away with blood on it. A surgical strike. Hot liquid running down my cheek.

“That’s for trespassing in my home,” he growled. “Now no more talking. Get to your feet and do as I say, or the next swipe will take your nose off.”

I did as I was told. No choice. Engel held all the aces.

He pushed me ahead of him, roughly. I moved on stiff legs. Head dizzy.

The passageway ended in wooden steps leading up through an open hatchway. Through it I could see a block of inky black sky dusted with stars. Nighttime when Brutus had picked me up from LAX. Midday when I’d been needled with the tranquilizer at the picnic park. Now it was night again. At least a whole day traveling with me out of it. Possibly two.

“Move it.” Engel’s impatient fist knuckled against a kidney.

I climbed the steps, awkwardly, out into the freezing night air. Breath condensed from my lips.

Immediately, I recognized where we were, and a shiver ran down my spine as I gazed across the dark expanse of Deadman Bay.

For some reason, Cornsilk had hooked up with Engel and together they’d brought me to Alaska. But why?

“I said keep moving.”

I stepped up onto the deck and made my way to the side of the boat. Engel’s flashy motor yacht was moored against the long jetty outside his mansion house on the snowy Alaskan shoreline. There were crates and boxes piled up on the pier – several already stacked on the open deck. Somebody was in the process of moving out.

The mansion house was in complete darkness. No garish lights blazing from all the windows. No thunderous music booming out across the bay. The only sound coming from the gentle swells lapping against the jetty’s supports.

I stepped down onto ice-slicked timbers.

“All the way to the house,” Engel said, emphasizing it with a fisted push. “We don’t want to keep them waiting.”

Dead man walking. That’s what it felt like. Bound wrists in front of me. Feet heavy. I wanted to ask all kinds of questions. Why had I been brought to Alaska? Why was Engel working with Cornsilk? What were their intentions? Where was Rae?

Someone was standing on the snowy beach, I saw, down the side of the jetty. A man, wearing a padded jacket and a fur ushanka.

Officer Locklear.

Hot hope flashed through my chest.

I’d asked the Kodiak cop to keep an eye on Engel’s place. To let me know the moment the old doc returned. Locklear must have been lying in wait. Come out to investigate the second he saw Engel’s boat glide up to the jetty. This time, he hadn’t let me down.

Engel was close behind me. Not sure if Engel had seen Locklear. Not sure if Locklear could see the combat knife pointed at the small of my back. But he could see that my hands were tied and was probably at a loss to explain what was going on.

 “He has a knife!” I hollered and fell into a sprint.

Engel was slow to react. I heard the blade slice fresh air, but I was already bounded along the boards, out of his reach. I saw Locklear fumble out his police-issue sidearm. I cleared the water line and dropped onto the beach. Sneakers slipping on the snowy shingle.

“Arrest him!” I shouted in Locklear’s face.

But he just looked at me down the barrel of his gun.

“He’s with me, you buffoon,” a gruff voice called from behind.

I twisted round to see Engel standing on the jetty, sniggering through his bushy beard. Freezing breath forming a halo around his head.

I twisted back to face the Kodiak cop. “You’re in cahoots with Engel? But he knocked you down during his escape.”

“It was staged,” Locklear said. “I told the doc to fake it. Make it look good. It worked.”

My dizziness was yet to clear. “You wanted him to escape?”

“More than that. We wanted you to keep your nose out of our business.”

Things were becoming clearer, now. “You didn’t check the house for the body, did you? You lied to me, Locklear. What do the two of you have going on out here?”

“Something that doesn’t concern you. And besides, you’re not going to live long enough to find out anyway.” Locklear motioned with his firearm:
get walking to the house and let’s finish what we started
. His arm was straight, at a right-angle to his body. The heavy gun held in one hand, unsupported by his other.

It was a foolhardy stance. He should have known better. I did.

I acted automatically. Years of police training triggering preprogrammed responses. Last thing Locklear expected.

I clamped both hands around his gun wrist and stepped into him, swiveling on my heels as I did so. Within a heartbeat I had my back up against his chest, his elbow locked, with the gun pointing away from me and out of harm’s way. Locklear wasn’t about to let me get away with it. His free hand came up to claw out my eyes. I head-butted him and heard nose cartilage crack. His hand stopped midway to my face, but it didn’t stop Locklear’s finger from squeezing the trigger and holding it there.

Bullets began to fly, impacting snow and ricocheting off shingle. Thunder crashing around the bay. The Kodiak cop tried to wrench his arm loose. I clung on and head-butted him again for his efforts. Bullets peppered the crisscrossing beams under the pier.

Up on the jetty itself I saw Engel pull back his arm, about to throw the knife directly at my face. No way I could avoid it in time. Engel’s arm swept forward in an arc. I ducked – all I could do – as cold steel whistled past my ear.

I twisted Locklear’s arm and his line of fire swept across Engel. The old doc twitched, twice, and he dropped to his knees. He gaped, then went down, face-first onto the decking. I grappled the gun out of Locklear’s grasp, then swiveled out of his embrace. Stepped back and took aim.

Locklear was unmoving, staring at me with one eye, the rubberized grip of Engel’s blade jutting out of the other. A thick splash of blood running down his cheek and chin. His jaw dropped as a ghastly groan leaked from his lips. His eye rolled up in the socket and he crumpled into the snow like a toppled statue.

Engel had killed Locklear.

My heart was racing.

I checked the gun’s magazine: empty.

Dammit!

One last bullet still in the chamber. It would have to do.

Holding the firearm between shackled hands, I scrambled up the beach, heading for the house and whoever else was waiting for me.