Claire Gulliver #06 - Carnage Goes Coastal (7 page)

“A better question is, how did they track you? You didn’t see that guy on the plane with you, did you? What about in New York? Could someone have slipped that bug on you then?”

Karen shook her head. “I didn’t see him in New York.”

Claire suddenly realized how uncomfortable Karen must be, and said, “You can climb up in the seat now. I think we’re far enough away so we won’t risk running into Tan Jacket now.”

Claire moved into the outside lane and slowed the SUV a little while Karen maneuvered herself into the seat. Karen sighed, stretched her legs out and then fastened the seat belt so the warning light on the dashboard went out.

“That was a little tight with my stomach. The baby was kicking a lot. She was probably annoyed at being squeezed.”

“Well, speaking of the baby, that was a surprise. In fact, I didn’t identify you when you arrived because of your stomach.”

Karen nodded, her embarrassment clear even in the dim light. “Yeah, well, I suppose I should have mentioned it. Then, for sure you would have recognized me right away. But frankly, I have a hard time remembering I’m a pregnant lady, and I was stressed when I was talking to you, so I guess that’s why I just forgot to mention it.”

Claire nodded. “Well, your father has been worried about you. Last time he talked to you he thought something was wrong. That’s why he was determined to go visit you. But I guarantee he had no clue as to what the problem was.”

They were both silent for a while, Claire concentrated on driving as they moved through the valley and then merged on to Interstate Five. As they headed up the mountains past the big amusement park she asked, “Are you hungry? Do you need to stop?”

Karen shook her head. “Not now, probably later. I seem to have to visit lots of restrooms these days.”

Then she turned her head and looked at Claire. “I just don’t understand how they found me.”

“You didn’t use your credit card, did you?”

When Karen shook her head, Claire asked, “What about a bank card, did you go to an ATM?”

Karen’s eyes widened while she shook her head. “I didn’t use an ATM, but I did go to the bank before I called you. I needed money, you see. I didn’t have much with me and I had lots in my account. I was afraid if they thought I was dead they’d freeze the account and then I couldn’t get it. And I needed it.” She looked at Claire. “I shouldn’t have done that, should I? Somehow they knew about my withdrawal. That’s how they knew I was alive and planning to leave, wasn’t it?”

She wailed, “Oh, how stupid of me. You know the woman at the bank didn’t want to give me cash, they wanted to give me a cashier’s check, but no, I insisted. I was afraid they could track me when I cashed the check and I didn’t want to take that chance. I insisted on taking the money in cash.”

“You were right. They would have been able to see where it was cashed.” Claire nodded. “They must have had some flag notice on your account, so they saw the withdrawal. They didn’t know where you were going, but because they were looking, they saw your name appear on the manifest on a flight to Los Angeles.”

She risked a glance at Karen and said optimistically, “Well, Los Angeles is almost five hundred miles from where we’re going and there are oodles of people in every direction between here and there. They’ll have a job of it, tracking you to Bayside. And now we’ve been warned that they have access to bank records and airline passenger lists, so we just have to be very careful not to use your name on anything official. Then they won’t be able to locate you.”

The traffic was thinning out, and the businesses were appearing further apart. Claire’s old SUV labored on, higher into the mountains, before heading down the Grapevine into the great long valley which stretched through the interior part of the state. Karen let her seat back and closed her eyes. The droning of the motor, the late hour, the stress she had been under was affecting her. Her eyes closed and she was soon asleep, while Claire’s mind was churning with all she had learned.

Traffic Alert:

A deadly multiple vehicle accident has closed the Four-Oh-Five Freeway, southbound at the juncture of the Long Beach Freeway until further notice. Traffic is advised to take alternate routes.

A white van swerved in front of a tanker truck, which was entering the Four-Oh-Five from the Long Beach Freeway on ramp causing a collision with multiple fatalities.

Witnesses reported seeing a black SUV sideswipe the van causing it to swerve into the path of the truck. Another car following the truck could not avoid the pileup. The cars following the van somehow managed to avoid the collision.

Witnesses reported the black SUV didn’t slow down and didn’t stop to assist the victims. No one was able to obtain the license number of the SUV which caused the accident.

The freeway was closed to allow life-flight helicopters to land and take the injured to the nearest hospitals. The freeway will be reopened when the vehicles have been removed and the oil has been cleared from the road surface.

Names of the fatalities have been withheld until the next of kin are notified. The highway patrol urges witnesses to contact them with additional details.

It was almost midnight before Claire pulled into the Comfort Inn she had used before when she headed home after packing up at the end of the annual travel conference at the Crown Plaza. She didn’t wake Karen until she had registered them and pulled around to the back entrance.

“Karen, wake up. We’re staying here the rest of the night. Come on, grab your shoes and purse.”

Karen, still half asleep followed Claire through the locked door to their first floor room off the main corridor.

“Take your choice of beds. It will take us another six hours to get home and I’ll never make it without getting some sleep.

It took only a few minutes for Karen to use the bathroom, change into her pajamas and crawl into the bed she chose. Claire was sound asleep only moments later. It was the sound of the shower that woke her in the morning. Karen was obviously awake and already getting ready to leave.

They were on the road by nine, even though they only drove for five minutes before pulling into Claire’s favorite truck stop where they were each able to put away a truckers’ breakfast. Eggs, bacon and ham, hash brown potatoes, and pancakes were piled high on gargantuan plates, and they both managed to eat much of it.

This time when Claire pulled back onto the freeway, she set the cruise control, sat back and said, “Okay Karen, let’s hear the whole story. Start at the beginning and tell me every detail. We have plenty of time to talk and I want to know everything.”

They were many miles down the road when Karen finished. They were both silent as they processed the story.

“It all sounds so stupid,” Karen admitted, her voice trembling with disgust. “I mean I was so convinced he was my soul mate and now, just listening to the story I realize I was totally out of my head. I was delusional, wasn’t I? He’s right! I had to have known he was lying, it’s so obvious now.”

Claire shook her head. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Why should you expect someone you care about to tell you lies, or to string you along like that? You’re a nice person, you expect people to be nice, to be honest, in return. And really, Karen, not everyone in the world behaves as this man did. Don’t believe that. He’s the aberration, not you.” She glanced at Karen waiting until she finally saw her straighten up and nod her head. “So do you have any clues as to why he was so devious? Do you have any ideas about where he came from or who he is? For instance, did he always stay at the same hotel? Did he have a favorite restaurant?”

Karen gloomily shook her head. “I thought I knew him so well and then I found I knew nothing about him. That was a real shocker.”

They were both quiet for a while and then at Karen’s request, Claire took the exit for the rest stop posted on the highway. After that short break, when they resumed their journey, Claire responded to Karen’s questions about how Claire met her father. Claire told her about that time her bookstore co-sponsored Lucy Springer’s tour to England. That tale got them all the way to the exit for Pea Soup Anderson’s restaurant where they stopped for lunch.

During lunch Claire told Karen of her second meeting with Jack. That was when she went to Washington D.C., and of course, by then she already knew Jack worked for the CIA.

After lunch she had some questions for Karen. By that time she had processed Karen’s story and felt there were some gaps that needed to be filled in. They were getting closer to home now, and Claire spent the last part of the ride telling Karen about her bookstore, her mother and her life, preparing Karen for what she would find in Bayside.

“Come in,” I responded to the knock.

“It’s Mr. Hampton,” the maid reported and then, seeing my nod, she pushed the door wider and stepped back so Mr. Hampton could enter.

He exuded confidence, as he should, considering how much he was charging me. He sat down in one of the chairs in front of my desk and only then I could see a gleam of anxiety in his eyes that warned me his news wasn’t going to be good. Still he seemed determined to play his role to the end, so I prepared myself for the wait.

He glanced at a leather notebook in his hands and began his report. “We received notification from the bank that the account was accessed at eleven- fifteen Monday morning. Obviously the target was alive when she withdrew twenty-seven thousand, seven hundred dollars in cash.

“That told us her remains weren’t going to be found in the ashes of the apartment building. Somehow she was not in the building at the time of the explosion. And the withdrawal suggested to us she needed the money, because she intended to flee. We immediately sent our agents to the local airports armed with pictures, but they didn’t locate her. So we tapped into the airlines’ reservation systems and at six p.m. we found the listing. She had purchased a ticket and was onboard a United Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, arriving there at eight p.m. local time.

“We were able to have two of our best West Coast men waiting at LAX when her flight arrived. One of them managed to slip a tracking device into her pocket on the concourse, so we were confident we could follow her out of the secure area.

“Our man temporarily lost her where the hotel courtesy buses load. He got on a bus with her, but somehow when the bus left, she was still on the curb.”

He paused to examine the expression on my face and then hurried on.

“We still had the bug on her. So our men were able to track her to the Crown Plaza hotel. However, she did not check in to the hotel. Our agent was searching the public areas of the hotel when his partner alerted him the tracking equipment showed she had just left the hotel in a private van. They followed, of course.”

He paused, blinking rapidly. “There was a terrible accident on the San Diego Freeway where it intersected the Long Beach Freeway. The freeway was closed for many hours and several people died, more were seriously hurt and hospitalized,” he reported soberly.

When I saw the perspiration beading on his forehead I knew I wasn’t going to like this. I said sharply, “Well, was she one of the ones who died?”

He shook his head.

“What? She was injured? Surely you could take care of her while she was in the hospital.”

He shook his head reluctantly.

“What kind of amateurs are you guys? How did you miss her?” I could hear my voice was getting a little screechy so I tried to modulate it, but I was furious. I wanted this matter resolved. I wanted it finished. And these ‘best West Coast men’ who Mr. Hampton, of Hampton Security Associates, assured me would take care of it had not done their job.

He sat back watching me uneasily. “It turned out she wasn’t in the van, although apparently the bug was.” He sat back, staring at me, as if daring me to complain.

“You told us she would be an easy target. Just a naive clerical person, who wouldn’t have any idea of the danger she was in. Well, she’s been acting very professional, more like a well trained agent. We would have approached this whole assignment differently if we had known we were dealing with someone at that experience level.”

His tone was accusatory, trying to blame me for the fiasco. I stood up abruptly, throwing the letter opener I was toying with down violently as I stomped around the desk. “This is ridiculous. You and your men have managed to mess up this fairly simple assignment until now we have a major problem. I wanted this whole thing, the woman and the baby to just go away before the baby was even born. I told you to make it look like an accident. Somehow you’ve managed to turn that simple request into coast to coast carnage. How many are dead now? Six at the apartment building; how many on the freeway?” I glared at him with disgust, declaring, “If anyone somehow makes the connection between these incidents, no one will think these deaths were accidental”

Mr. Hampton turned awkwardly in his chair to look at me where I was now pacing behind him. He didn’t look so confident now. Sweat was dripping off his forehead, and he kept swallowing nervously.

I didn’t try to control my anger. “This is a joke; your people are incompetent. And you dare brag about tracking her to Los Angeles where your best men planted a bug on her, and yet they still lost her. She could be anywhere. She could even have doubled back to the City for all we know. That baby is due soon and I tell you, Mr. Hampton, this world is not big enough for both me and that baby. The baby has to go, and the mother, too!”

I paused, then turned and demanded, “What are you going to do to fix this mess, Mr. Hampton?”

“We’re going to find her. We’ll get her.” As he spoke he seemed to gain confidence in his ability to succeed. “We’re good at this!”