Witness (15 page)

“Positive.”

“You…want me to get on 95?” Petra’s voice shook, and she hated that. For years she had hidden her fears and regrets successfully.
Lord, make me strong now, when I really need it!

“No!” She flinched at his sharp voice. “Just keep going straight for a while. We’ll drive back roads. It will take longer, but there’s no sense putting ourselves out there where people might start looking for you.”

She followed his instructions to the letter, but even so, he seemed to enjoy touching the muzzle of his pistol to the back of her neck now and then. Funny, she’d always thought a gun barrel would feel cold against the skin. Evidently, he’d hidden in the hot car long enough for the metal to warm.

Her lower lip twitched and she bit it. Berating herself for her stupidity did no good. She’d been so worried about securing her house and making sure he didn’t enter it again that she’d given little thought to her car. But now that the case was breaking, she supposed he’d decided he had to get rid of the one witness, whatever it took.

She looked at the console and swallowed hard. “I’ll need gas, if we’re going far.”

He leaned forward and she felt his face close beside her right cheek. She arched her spine away from him.

“You’ve got enough for a while,” he snarled. “We’ll find a place later, when we get out of town.”

She continued driving west on Route 25, into a residential area. When he sat back a little, she could tell. His body heat no longer reached her. She tried to picture a map of the area west of Portland without success. Where was the auction hall Nick and Joe were visiting? She had an idea it was north of the city. But they were probably done there. Was Joe’s car sitting in her driveway? Was he pacing the front yard right now, waiting for her? In her purse on the seat beside her lay her phone. How much of a chance would she have to reach it and dial for help without her abductor realizing what she was doing?

The hard metal touched her neck again and she knew the answer. No chance at all.

N
ick threw his transmission into Park. “Okay, breathe, Joe. I’m going to call some backup. Then we’ll go into the E.R. and talk to her coworkers and see if anyone knows where she was parked. Someone coming on duty may have seen her get in her car.”

Joe wanted to hit something. No, not something. Someone. Rex Harwood, to be precise. “Put out an alert for Petra’s car.”

“License plate?”

Joe put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He’d followed her home twice. Why couldn’t he picture it?

“Not a vanity plate, I take it,” Nick said.

Joe sighed. “It had a six in it.” He felt stupid. How many times had he mentally flogged a witness for not being able to give an accurate description of a vehicle or a suspect? He prided himself on his memory for detail. Now, if Nick had asked him for the particulars of Petra’s appearance, he’d have had it down to the precise angle of her bangs and the length of her eyelashes.

“Where’s the whiz kid when you need him, eh?” Nick smiled. “Don’t worry. The computer will find it for us.”

“Right. Harwood stole her extra car keys when he broke into her house to poison the dog.”

“She told me yesterday. You think he poisoned the dog to get rid of her alarm system?”

“I do. He intended to kill the mutt. And when he fiddled with Petra’s gas stove, he intended to kill
her.
That didn’t work, so he’s taking a more direct approach.”

Nick nodded grimly and reached for his radio transmitter. As he made the calls, Joe fought back his fear and tried to think. No sense dwelling now on all the things he should have done. He stared out over the acres of cars in the parking lot. Where would Rex Harwood take his next victim?

“I’m having his vehicle impounded,” Nick said a minute later. “So now what?”

“He dumped Harriet’s body in the woods.”

Nick eyed him for a moment, then asked softly, “You think he’ll do the same to Petra?”

“I don’t know. Not in the same spot, that’s for sure. He knows Harriet’s been found, and he’ll stay clear of there.”

“Right,” Nick said. “But he left Harriet’s car at the airport.”

Joe sat up and stared at him. “You don’t think he’d do that again?”

Nick shrugged. “Doubt it. Still, it worked once.” He turned on his blue lights and drove toward the international airport, at the same time speaking into his radio for backup.

Joe sat still, trying to think. Harwood was too smart to leave Petra’s car the same place he’d left Harriet Foster’s. But he couldn’t come up with a better place to look.

A few minutes later they rolled up to the small booth where clerks took money and tickets from the patrons who parked in the airport’s parking garage and outdoor short-term lots. Joe and Nick jumped out of the car and walked over to the building. An officer who drew duty at the airport as his regular beat met them at the door where the clerks entered for their shifts.

Nick greeted him and held up his badge. “I’m Detective Wyatt.”

The patrolman nodded at him and Joe. “I’ve spoken to the parking lot manager, so he knows what’s up. We’ll distribute the license tag number and description of the vehicle to all the security personnel we can muster and see if the car’s here.”

“Great,” Nick told him. “You should have at least four more uniforms arriving to help you.”

“In that case, we should be able to cover this area and the long-term lots in less than an hour. Red Toyota Avalon. Should be easy to spot if it’s here.”

“What would be the easiest place to leave a car?” Nick asked.

The patrolman’s eyes narrowed. “I’d have said right out here until yesterday, but since we found a suspicious car and the owner’s missing, we’ve had security checking out any short-term parking tickets issued and not turned in within six hours.”

“Well, this one wouldn’t have been here that long yet,” Nick said.

He and Joe opted to cover a section of the lot farthest from the terminal, as it seemed the least popular portion of the lot.

“If I didn’t want to be noticed, I’d park out here in the hinterlands,” Joe said as they cruised the rows of vehicles.

“Then what would you do?” Nick asked.

“Walk out to Congress Street and call a cab.”

Nick nodded. “Then they wouldn’t recall picking you up at the airport.”

“I’ll bet that’s what Harwood did when he dumped his sister’s car here.”

Nick circled until they’d checked every vehicle in their area and met a patrol car searching the next section of the lot. They met the airport on-duty officer at the ticket booth once more.

“We haven’t found any vehicles matching this license number,” the patrolman reported. “There was a red Avalon in section C, but it had a different plate. We checked it on the computer, and it’s legit. The owner came out of the terminal while we were running the plate, and she said she’d come to pick up her son and daughter-in-law. Everything checks out.”

Nick turned to Joe. His blue eyes took on the same troubled gray hue as the waters of Casco Bay. “What now?”

Joe scowled as he looked back toward the terminal once more, thinking. Petra was in danger, and he had failed to stop it. He sent up a desperate prayer.

“Harwood didn’t leave his stepsister’s car here until twelve hours after he’d killed her,” he said.

Nick nodded. “And it’s only been a couple of hours since Petra got off work.”

They walked toward Nick’s car. Many thoughts collided in Joe’s mind, but one came into focus. “Harwood drove out of Portland to dump Harriet Foster’s body. Then he brought her car back here.”

“Okay, but he killed her before he left town. I think we can assume Petra got into the car with him alive.”

Joe got into the passenger seat and buckled his seat belt. “Rex used to live above Augusta. He won’t take Petra to the same place he took Harriet. He knows the police have found that site, and he’ll stay away from there.”

Nick started the engine. “You think he’s headed to territory he knows well from his younger days?”

“Could be.” Joe scratched his jaw. “Petra has friends in the neighborhood who know she was moving to Waterville this weekend. When I went to check her house tonight, a sweet old lady told me all about Petra’s plans.”

“The grapevine strikes again.” Nick nodded. “Okay. So he may have known about her plans to move this weekend and stepped up his timetable on silencing her. We know he didn’t wait for her at her house on Acton Street. He ambushed her when she left work. It’s unlikely he’d take her back to her house or his, but I’ve got men keeping a watch on those places.”

“Makes sense. But let’s say he grabbed Petra and headed north. That seems the most likely scenario to me, given his history.”

Nick turned toward the nearest on ramp for I-295. “But he might…Joe, I don’t like to say this to you, but he might kill her, dump the body and then take the car someplace else to divert the police.”

It hurt to inhale, but Joe knew he had to face reality. “Right. But her car is the only lead we have right now. Let’s go.”

Nick winced and looked away.

“What?” Joe asked.

“It’s getting late and…”

“Oh, your shift is over, so you’re quitting?”

“No, not at all. I’ll stay on this with you. But we can’t just take the car a hundred miles away. I’ll have to ask for permission.”

“We’ll take my car.”

Nick nodded. “Probably best. I’ll call in and tell my sergeant I’m going to Augusta with you.”

“Sidney,” Joe corrected him.

“Sidney?”

“That’s where Harwood grew up. Have the state police on the lookout in Sidney. It’s Harwood’s home turf. I’m banking on a secluded road, off in the woods. Something off River Road or Pond Road in Sidney.”

“I’ll drop you where you left your car, and you pick me up at the station.” Nick put the lights and siren on.

Petra drove northward by a winding course. They stopped in a small town, and Rex instructed her to pull in at a self-service gas station. When she put the transmission in park beside one of the gas pumps, he said, “Turn off the engine.”

She did, wondering how he would work things. Was this her chance to summon help?

“Give me the key ring.”

She hesitated, and the gun barrel grazed her neck again.

“Now.”

She pulled the key from the ignition and held it up near her shoulder without looking at him. He snatched it.

“And your purse.”

Petra’s heart sank. She heard him rummaging through her things.

“Don’t try anything,” he said a moment later. “I’ll have you covered every second.”

He got out on the side near the gas pumps and slid a credit card into the self-pay slot.
Probably my card. He’s too chintzy to bankroll his own crime.
The thought chilled her. Until now, she’d refused to think she might be minutes away from death, but she had to face it. There was only one reason Rex Harwood had kidnapped her at gunpoint. Harriet Foster’s body had been found, and he saw Petra as the only link back to him. He didn’t know Joe had already traced his extended family and confirmed that the dead woman was Rex’s step-sister. And he didn’t know Joe and Nick were fast digging up his motive.

She sneaked a look over the back of the seat. The contents of her purse were strewed across the backseat and on the floor. Her cell phone was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t thought to turn it on as she left the hospital. What if it was still in the side pocket of her leather bag?

Rex had the nozzle in the gas tank port and the numbers on the pump whirled. Forget the cell phone. If she opened the passenger door, could she hope to reach help? The only other customer pumping gas got in his car and drove away. Her heart sank. No one else was outside. The storefront was at least ten yards away. She had to try.

She unbuckled her seat belt stealthily and turned in the seat.

A tap on the glass of the passenger window startled her and she jerked around toward the sound. Rex was leaning in against the side of the car staring at her. The muzzle of the pistol touched the glass eight inches from her temple.

Her chest constricted. She hadn’t even moved over toward the other door. He wouldn’t shoot her here in the open. Would he?

She glanced around. The paved area in front of the little store was still empty except for them. She supposed he could shoot, shove her over and drive off without anyone seeing a thing.

Rex’s face clenched in a harsh glower. Maybe he was desperate enough to take a chance. For the first time, she looked past the gun barrel and noticed that he was wearing flesh-colored surgical gloves. She swallowed hard and turned around in the seat to face the steering wheel and buckled her belt.

Joe was glad he was driving. He just wished he had a light bar and a siren. Nick said nothing about his excessive speed, but spent the first half hour of their northward journey on the phone. As they approached a bridge undergoing repairs, traffic slowed to a crawl. Joe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and imagined ways they could get through faster. Maybe if he leaned on the horn and Nick held his badge out the window…At last they pulled away from the construction zone.

“Take it easy, Joe.”

“You want to drive?”

“No. You’d go bananas if I drove your car.”

You got that right.
“Harwood knows the area well. You got plenty of manpower out there?”

“They’re arranging a roadblock on I-95 at the Augusta-Belgrade and Sidney exits. Everyone’s watching for Petra’s car. The Augusta, Waterville and Oakland P.D.s will help the state police cover all the back roads in the Sidney area. And they sent an emergency bulletin to all the TV stations, but we don’t know if any of them will broadcast it before the late news. I don’t know what else we can do.”

Joe glanced at his watch. “Another hour or so of daylight. Think, Nick!”

“What about?”

“The professor. When he killed Harriet Foster, he put her body in her car, drove it to Durham and dumped it. Then he drove the car back to Portland and put it in the airport lot the next morning.”

“He must have left it somewhere overnight.”

“Maybe. Unless he was driving around most of the night looking for a good spot to leave the body. His wife was away, and she wouldn’t have known when he came in.”

“He could have waited until the busiest time in the morning, so the airport personnel would be less likely to remember him being there,” Nick said.

“Maybe. And he could have left Harriet’s car in a different parking lot while he went home for a few hours’ sleep,” Joe said. “No one was looking for it then. But what’s he going to do with Petra’s car?”

Nick shrugged. “It could be anywhere right now except the airport.”

“Right. What if he wants it to look like Petra’s heading home? He might abandon her car in Waterville, near her sisters’ house or their store, which is right beside my office.”

“Okay. I’ll ask Waterville P.D. to pay extra attention to those streets.” Nick opened his phone.