The Red Hot Fix (23 page)

Micki slammed her brakes and swerved seconds from missing two cruisers forming a barricade behind the silver Camry parked in front of room 8 of the Skyline Motel. Mort jumped out of the car even as Jimmy pulled up beside him.

Mort was glad to see Joe Thompson on scene. The seasoned pro described the situation while keeping his eyes trained on the motel door and his hand on his sidearm in case the artillery already aimed proved insufficient. “That door is the only way in. One small window in the back. Rest of the rooms have been evacuated. We’re in contact with a woman inside via the room phone. Insists she’s not coming out till she speaks to you.”

Mort ran to Robbie’s rental car. He looked inside and felt a wave of relief. No blood. He prayed the same was true about the room behind the door.

He yelled back to Thompson, “Any sign of anyone else in there?”

Thompson shook his head. “Just the woman.” He pointed to an officer holding a cell phone. “She’s seen you. Says she’s ready to talk.”

“Talk, hell.” Mort pulled his sidearm. “I’m going in.” He stalked past officers poised with guns trained. “You boys hear a shot, open fire on anything female.” He pounded on the sheet metal door. “This is Detective Grant. Stand clear.”

Mort didn’t wait for her response. He reached for the knob and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. He stepped back, braced his left leg, and kicked his body weight against the low-bid hardware. The door casing splintered. Mort peered in and saw nothing but a cheap bed wearing a threadbare blanket. He steadied his gun in two hands and entered the room.

“Robbie?”

“He’s not here, Mort.” Nancy Mader stepped out of the bathroom holding the cordless room phone against her chest. Her grin tested Mort’s trigger finger.

“Where is he?” Mort saw she was unarmed. A spool of twine sat on the pressed-board dresser next to a noose fashioned from bright wool. He kept his gun trained. “Where’s my son?”

Nancy Mader, or Trixie, or whatever her name was, said nothing. Her eyes gleamed and her smile struggled to seduce. Mort called for officers to enter. He only lowered his gun once they had her hands cuffed behind her back. She was read Miranda rights and Mort informed her she was under arrest for eight counts of murder in the first degree. An officer grabbed the arm of the still-silent woman and escorted her out. They were three feet out of the room when Mort grabbed her other arm, twisted her free, and kicked her legs out from under her. He forced her face into the damp gravel, planted his foot on her neck, and shoved the muzzle of his gun into her ear.

“Where’s my son?” he yelled. “Tell me now or you’ll never see the inside of a jail.”

“Mort!” Jimmy warned from ten feet away. Mort jerked his attention away long enough to see Bruiser bounding from where Jimmy stood.

The furred behemoth raced past the drama of Mort and his prisoner and jumped on the rear of Robbie’s rental car. He slammed his body again and again against the trunk lid. A bullet to the throat had robbed the dog of his ability to bark and Mort knew this was a dog who wanted to rant as long and as loud as he needed to get their attention.

“Somebody open that damned trunk!” Jimmy bellowed. “Get a fucking crowbar or sledgehammer. I see some jackass reach for his gun and I swear to God I’ll blow his head off before he clears his holster.”

Mort lifted his foot off the neck of the serial killer in the gravel. He ran to the Camry and pushed aside the young cop pressing his weight on the crowbar. Mort shoved once, twice, but the lock held. Jimmy came up beside him and added his heft to the thrust. The trunk door groaned. Mort side-kicked the lock. The door popped open and bounced on its hinges.

Mort moaned when he saw his son. Arms and legs akimbo in the trunk. Face drained of color. He looked for blood and saw none. He reached in and grabbed Robbie’s head in both his hands. Warm. He held a finger under his son’s nose and felt a small wisp of air.

“He’s breathing,” Mort whispered. “Get an ambulance, damn it!”

Mort gave the guy behind the counter ten bucks and told him to keep the change.
One thing about Seattle
, he thought.
You can get a great cup of coffee anywhere. Even a hospital cafeteria
.

The day had started with the two of them sharing breakfast. Now he was trudging back to his son’s hospital room to say good night. If life was like a box of chocolates, he thought he’d just as soon take a pass on this particular piece.

Toxicology showed Robbie was loaded with enough Rohypnol to put three people to sleep for a week. He’d be fine, but the doctors wanted to observe him overnight. The ER attending told him Robbie would be of no help with any investigation into how he ended up in the trunk of his rented Toyota.

“Once he swallowed the drug, it was lights out.” The doctor had been kind but blunt. “That’s why the frat boys like it so much. Fast acting and no trace of memory afterward. You might end up with your panties on backwards or you might end up in a car trunk. Either way, you have no clue.”

Mort recalled Charlotte’s description of Nancy handing Robbie a cup of coffee before they left.

The doctor assured Mort Robbie showed no signs of physical trauma. He flashed back to the tools of Trixie’s trade sitting on the dresser in that cheap motel room and knew that was only a benefit of lucky timing.

If we’d been ten minutes later …
He banished the thought. Robbie was here. He was safe.

And Trixie was parked in a downtown holding cell.

Mort walked into his son’s room and handed L. Jackson Clarke one of the two Styrofoam cups he carried and thanked him again for sitting with Robbie.

Larry nodded to the chair behind Mort. “We have another visitor.”

Mort turned to see Charlotte sitting in the corner, her face a study in worry. He set his own coffee down and engulfed her in an embrace.

“You didn’t have to come.” Mort had forgotten how it felt to hold on to a good woman when times were dark. “But, damn, I’m glad you did.”

“I know it’s ridiculous, but I feel somehow responsible. Larry tells me he’s going to be fine.”

“He is indeed.” Mort summoned a lightness he didn’t feel. “By the time his next book
hits the stores, this will be nothing more than a colorful story to tell at signings.”

There was a stirring in the bed and all three of them froze. Robbie opened one groggy eye and then the other. He stared at them, flopped his head to one side, and blinked.

“What the … What time is it?”

“Leave it to a bestseller to avoid the cliché.” Larry laughed and moved to Robbie’s bed. “It’s 6:32 p.m. You’re in the hospital, dear boy. It’s pouring outside. I’m sure your father can’t wait to tell you how you’ve spent your day.” The Nobel-winning scholar leaned down, draped his linebacker shoulders across Robbie, and gave him as close an approximation to a hug as the IVs allowed. “Welcome back to the land of the confused and hopeful.” He looked across the bed to Charlotte. “What do you say we give the Grant men a chance to catch up?”

Charlotte smiled down at Robbie and told him how glad she was to see him. She gathered her jacket and purse, squeezed Mort’s arm in goodbye, and followed Larry out.

Mort pulled a chair close. He reached for his son’s hand and relished the warm lifeblood coursing through his veins.

“Start talking, Dad.” Robbie’s voice was gravelly. “I was on my way to an interview. Now I’m hooked up to drips. What the hell happened?”

Mort began at the beginning: the last memory Robbie would have before he drank the drugged coffee. He took him through his own discovery that Nancy Mader was Trixie and the massive display of police power that descended on CLIP headquarters.

“When Charlotte told me you were with her, I’d have made any bargain the Devil wanted to get you back to us.”

“I’m here,” Robbie croaked. “Whatever you did worked.”

Mort revealed Act Two. Tracing the rental car, surrounding Nancy in the cheap motel, his mortal fear when Robbie wasn’t inside. His awareness that Nancy intended Robbie to be Trixie’s next victim.

“She wanted to jazz up the game.” Mort rubbed his hand over his son’s arm, careful to avoid the IV. “See how I’d react if the lead investigator lost his own son to the serial killer he couldn’t find.”

“But you found me. Riding to my rescue like you have my whole life.”

“Actually, that credit goes to Bruiser.” Mort provided the details of the canine save.

“Sirloin for that dog for the rest of his life,” Robbie declared. “On me.”

“You let me handle that.” Mort leaned back in the plastic chair. “You need to take care of Claire and the girls. I figure I’ll let you make the decision on what to tell them.” Mort had protected Edie from plenty of close calls throughout his career. “You want me to get them on the phone?”

Robbie turned his eyes to the ceiling. Mort let him have his time, thinking,
It’s tough
trying to come up with the right words to tell a wife you’ve narrowly escaped death at the hands of a deranged serial killer
.

“I’ve really screwed things up, haven’t I, Dad?”

Mort hated the regret in his son’s voice. “We’ve got her, Robbie. Trixie’s done.”

Robbie shook his head and groaned at the effort. “That’s not it … My ego’s been jacked up pretty good this last year. TV interviews. People standing in line to tell me how great I am and smiling like Christmas when I sign their book. Young girls wanting to buy me a drink and who knows what if I’ll pass their manuscript along to my agent.” He turned to his father. “It’s all a crock of shit. None of it means anything unless I can share it with Claire and our girls.” He groaned again. “I’ve been a world-class asshole.”

“I wouldn’t say world-class.” Mort laid his hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “Look … we all get a little full of ourselves. The trick is to recognize it and reel back in before any damage is done. And there’s nothing like family to fix an inflated ego.”

The Grant men listened to the beeps and churns of hospital equipment.

“When do the doctors say I can leave?” Robbie finally asked.

“Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

“If that’s the case, I’m packing my bags second thing. I want to be with my girls in France.”

Warmth spread through Mort’s cold and weary bones. “Close your eyes now, son. I’ll sit here until you fall asleep.”

It was nearly nine o’clock when Mort opened the door to the interview room in the basement of the King County jail. She was already there. Bright orange jumpsuit. Hair brushed back and face pale following the standard delousing shower. Mort lost all memory of the gentle loveliness she’d displayed when he’d first met her. A heavy leather belt anchored a short length of chain and locked her to the floor-bolted stainless-steel table. Another seven-inch chain separated her ankles. That too, was bolted to the floor.

Mort took a seat across from her. He knew she hadn’t uttered a word since they brought her in.

“Let’s start with your name.”

Her smile was calibrated to wholesome earnestness. “So many to choose from, wouldn’t you say, Mort?” The tilt of her head may have been meant as playful, but the harsh glare of the overhead light cast ghoulish shadows across her face. “Which do you prefer? Nancy? Trixie?”
She leaned forward the three inches her chains allowed and winked. “Just don’t call me
dull
.”

This is the woman who planned to kill my son
, he remembered.
To strangle him, truss him up, and dump him in a cheap motel with a bright red kiss on his forehead
.

“No record of you anywhere in the system. How’s that happen?” he asked. “No passport. No arrest record. Not even a dog bite. You gotta be, what? Thirty-five? Thirty-seven? How’s it happen that the first fingerprints we get from you is when you’re arrested for multiple homicides?”

She tossed her head as though trying to swing her hair, but cheap jail shampoo left it dried against her skull in a crusted helmet. “That’s a conversation best had over an expensive bottle of Pinot Noir. What d’ya say, Mort?” She ran a slow tongue over her lip. “Wanna buy me a drink? After the rusty piss water in your bubblers, I could use a sip of something costly.”

Mort swallowed the acid rising in the back of his throat.

“We got you, Trixie.” The trashy name the media had given her suited her. “DNA, fingerprints, and the Chief of D’s son found in the trunk of a car you were driving.”

“Robbie tell you I put him in that trunk?”

Mort noted her square jaw and high cheekbones. Wide-set blue eyes. Flawless skin reddened by scratches courtesy of the gravel grind back at the motel. More than attractive if you could overlook the canyon-deep ugliness of her soul.

“That your plan, Trixie? Refute the evidence? Look at the judge all dewy-eyed and swear there’s been a terrible mistake?”

Ice ripped down Mort’s spine as the light in her eyes morphed into a dangerous leer.

“Don’t worry about my plan, Boss Man Detective.” Her hiss was more cobra than human. “It’s enough to know I have one.”

“You’re gonna need a lawyer, Trixie. And he’s gonna need a name. Look up your background so he can weave a sob story about a past deprived of a mother’s love. Make the jury cry about the poor little girl who had no other choice but to act out her aggression against a daddy who did her wrong.”