Time to Steal (2 page)

Chapter One

C
arter Janssen hadn't moved from the spot there in the parking lot, and when the police cars arrived, they came as a six-pack. Warren Michaels was first to step out onto the concrete.

“You missed them!” Carter shouted. He was furious.

Warren said, “I got a radio report from one of our men on the front door. He told me that you had tried to get them to come along.”

“They wouldn't,” Carter said.

“They should have,” Warren said. “This is the only thing that made sense. Somehow they knew we were coming. Did you see them?”

“I talked to her,” Carter said. He closed his eyes and saw that look of confusion in his daughter's face all over again. “I tried to convince her to stay, but she went with him anyway.”

“What were they driving?” asked the lieutenant.

“A Honda,” he said. “Red, I think, but it might have been blue. They were gone before I could get a tag number.”

“Don't worry about it,” Warren said, reading his thoughts. He squeezed Carter's shoulder then let it go, a gesture of commiseration. “Besides, Ward is a smart guy. Chances are, he's already switched those plates out for someone else's.”

“I tried to yell to you,” Carter said, a little calmer. “There in the hallway, but I couldn't get your attention.”

“I understand. The good news is, there can only be but so many Hondas out on the street tonight. We'll put the word out on the radio and stop every one of them if we have to. We'll get 'em.”

Carter closed his eyes and tried to push away the approaching headache.
Please just let it be that simple
. “What did you find in the room?”

“They were definitely there,” Warren said. “And they left quickly. All that formal wear and such, they left it all behind.”

Carter sighed. “I guess that's good news.”

“But there's bad news, too, I'm afraid.”

The tone of the cop's voice caused a spear of pain to pierce Carter's body. As the cop reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out its contents, the pain blossomed even more. “These bottles have Nicki's name on them. I suppose they're important?”

It was all of her meds.
All
of them. “Oh, my God,” Carter said.

* * *

Nicki watched with amazement as Brad went to work.

The Honda lasted all of five miles, zigzagging from the highway off onto back streets, before he slowed to a crawl in a residential neighborhood.

“We need new wheels,” he explained. “Your dad's probably got the license number, and even if he doesn't, at this hour, the cops'll be stopping anything that looks like a Honda.”

“So you're just going to steal another car?”

Brad shrugged. “What difference does one more make?”

“So, when the owner wakes up in the morning, he's going to report his car missing, and when that happens, we're right back where we began.”

Brad laughed, just a chuckle at first, and then a real laugh, like one you'd hear at a comedy club.

“What's so funny?” She wasn't sure why, but deep in her gut, Nicki felt offended.

“Think about it. You've got a fatal illness, you're wandering through the night with a convicted murderer, we're both probably gonna die in a hail of gunfire, and you're worried about getting caught stealing a car. It really is pretty funny.”

Nicki was not amused. “Maybe I'm just too tired.”

“Your head is in the right place, though. The trick is to find a car that no one will notice is missing.”

“How do we do that?”

Brad stopped the Honda and pointed past Nicki at a house on their right. “Like this,” he said. “Look at this place. The people aren't home.” And sure enough, there was an old Toyota parked alongside the curb.

Nicki followed his finger, but couldn't follow the logic. “Brad, there's a light on in the house.”

“Exactly,” he said, pulling into the driveway. He killed the lights on the Honda. “What's the last thing your father does before he goes to bed at night?”

“How should I know?”

“Think about it. Before he goes upstairs for the last time, what's the last thing he does?”

Nicki pondered the question, but the answer wasn't there. An ember of anger started to burn.

“He turns out the lights, right?”

She thought about it. Yes, that
was
the last thing he did.

“It's the last thing
everybody
does,” Brad explained. “But what does he do before he goes on vacation to make people think there's someone at home?”

Now she really did see it. She smiled. “He turns on a light.”

He slapped his thigh triumphantly. “Exactly. Not just any light, mind you, but a light downstairs. I've broken into my share of houses, and I've got to tell you, at three in the morning, the ones with lights on are the ones that are empty.”

“How do you know somebody's not sick?”

“If they were, then an upstairs light would be on, or maybe the foyer light. But look there. That's like a living room light. You can tell because of the bay window.”

Nicki released a chuckle. “You know, there aren't any rules for that stuff. You could be wrong.”

He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture and made a face. “I'm never wrong.” He opened the car door and got out, leaving the Honda running in the driveway.

Nicki followed. “What are you doing?”

“I'm making a trade,” he said. As he approached the driver's side of the Toyota, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring of what might have been keys, but from what Nicki could see, they all had an odd shape about them.

“What are those?” Nicki asked.

Brad scowled and brought a finger to his lips. “One of the first lessons in thief school is not to shout, okay? We call it stealth.” He stooped to the side of the door and stuck one of the thin black objects into the lock, while his other hand stuck a tiny Y-shaped strip of metal into the top and bottom of the key slot. “These are lock picks,” Brad explained. His tone was that of a master explaining to an apprentice. “I stick the pick in the lock while holding tension on the cylinder with the tension bar.” He raked the pick in and out of the slot, then withdrew the pick and reinserted it. “These older Toyotas aren't as hard as some of the other cars. This is a 1992, I'd guess. Beginning in '95, the lock technology got pretty tough.”

“What are you scraping?” Nicki asked.

“The pin tumblers. There's a diamond-shaped point on the end of the pick, and as I push the tumblers out of the way, the cylinder turns a bit, and the tension keeps them from popping back in. When I get them all”—Nicki heard a distinctive
click
, and the lock turned all the way, raising the lock button just inside the window—“the lock opens.” He stood and pulled the door open, triggering the dome light inside, which he extinguished by turning a knob on the dash.

Nicki's jaw dropped. “I don't believe you know how to do this stuff.”

Brad beamed, clearly proud of his accomplishment. “But wait,” he said in a strange announcer's voice, “there's more.” He produced the Leatherman and again folded out the needle-nose pliers.

“First we have to unlock the steering wheel,” Brad said. Slipping into the driver's seat, he grasped the steering wheel with both hands and wrenched it violently to the right.

A loud
crack!
made Nicki jump.

“It's just a pin,” Brad explained. “A piece of plastic. Break that sucker off and you've got an unlocked steering wheel. Now, watch this.” Manipulating the pliers with only one hand, he grasped the ignition cylinder with the tool's jaws, and again broke something with a mighty twist. Grinning widely, he pulled out the whole assembly and brandished it for Nicki to see.

“Did you break it?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by breaking.”

Brad brought the pliers around to the ignition switch again, but with the steering column in the way, she couldn't see exactly what he did. Whatever it was, the engine turned and coughed to life.

“All you have to do is close the circuit,” he explained. “All of this other crap is supposed to make you feel more secure.”

Amazing, Nicki thought. Simply and utterly amazing. “So, what do we do with the Honda?”

“I need you to follow me in it,” he said. “We'll dump it a couple of blocks from here and then take off.”

Ten minutes later, they were done. It would have been even sooner, but Brad spotted a similar Toyota—later model but same color—parked down the street a ways, and he took an extra few minutes to swap the license plates.

“It's the little things that make the difference,” Brad explained when they were on the road again. “To be on the run and stay alive means thinking three steps ahead all the time. When you steal, steal from someone who won't notice, but then plan that they might. This car here? We're gonna have to dump it and get another one before too long, probably tomorrow. Meanwhile, if someone does notice that we boosted the car and they report it, cops on the highway are going to be looking for those old plates. If they see us on the road, they'll call in the plates we've got and find out that they belong to a silver-gray Toyota, and we'll be in the clear. Pretty cool, huh?”

When Nicki didn't answer, he craned his neck to get a look at her.

She was sound asleep.

* * *

Carter sat on the sofa of the Governor's Suite, perusing the accumulated evidence. Somebody named Vincent Campanella had one hell of a surprise waiting for him when he got back from his vacation in France. His car had been stolen and over six thousand dollars had been racked up against his credit card without his knowledge. Carter wondered if the gendarme would break the news in person, or if it would merely be handled through a phone call.

The Braddock County cops had found the Mustang in the Ritz Carlton garage, safe and sound, and even with a full tank of gas. There on the bed, Carter could see the assortment of clothes that his daughter had bought with money she didn't have.

“Under the circumstances, I think we can make a pretty good case for dropping any charges against your Nicki,” Warren said. “They didn't keep anything they stole. That's a little bit of good news, anyway.”

Carter forced a smile. “Somewhere under all that horseshit there has to be a pony, right?” he quipped, recalling the punch line from an old joke.

“We've got a BOLO out for their vehicle,” Warren went on, “and we've got word going out to all the hotels and flop houses. We've narrowed their lead to virtually nothing, so I think there's a lot of reason to be hopeful.”

Carter nodded because it was the thing to do, but he sensed that Warren knew, just as he did, that things were not nearly as rosy as he was painting them to be. In the first place, Brad Ward was proving himself to be resourceful. Carter placed the likelihood that they were still in the same vehicle at just about zero.

“You've got to have some faith,” Warren said. “Things have broken your way pretty well so far.”

“You know what?” Carter said with a suddenness that turned heads. “I think I need to be reunited with my car and take off on my own.”

“Where are you going?” Warren asked.

“South and east. Chris Tu, a detective on the force back home who's been working that end for me, told me that they talked in their e-mails about going to the beach.”

Warren's eyebrows scaled his forehead. “Specifically? I mean, if you think they're headed for a particular beach—”

Carter shook his head. “No, it's nothing that overt. Apparently, they just talked about the beauty of the beach in their e-mails. That was one of the things she wanted to do before she . . . Well, it's one of the things she wants to do.”

Carter eyed the brown pill bottles on the bed, the ones with his daughter's name on them. “I don't suppose you'd let me have those, would you?” he asked. “I know they're evidence, but if I happen to run into her—”

Warren scowled and shot Carter a look that said he was crazy. “Those aren't evidence at all, as far as I'm concerned.” He scooped the bottles up with one hand and gave them to the worried father. “No, like I said, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't even a crime scene anymore. We've got everything we need.”

Warren Michaels was doing Carter Janssen a huge favor here, turning away from Nicki's part in what clearly was grand larceny, if not worse. “Listen, Warren, I—”

“This doesn't begin to repay my debt to you, Carter. Nathan's debt to you. You just go and find Nicki, and be sure to give me a call if you need any help.”

“I'll do that,” Carter said. “Now how about a ride back to your house where I can get my car?”