We just did that yesterday. Seems like a year ago. I miss them so much.
She slipped Brian’s ring over her left thumb.
I miss you too, sweetheart. What happened that day? Where did you go? How did Teddy get your ring?
The radio went silent. The driver made a lurching left turn that slung Sara sideways and then he slammed on the brakes, pitching her forward into the grating. Without the benefit of vision, it was impossible to tell when she needed to brace herself.
“Ouch
,
” she said, rubbing the impact spot on her forehead. “How about a little warning, asshole?”
“Sorry,” he said, shutting off the car.
“Did you just apologize to me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Five seconds passed. Ten. He shifted in the front seat. Fingers tapped on the steering wheel. Not being able to see his reaction unnerved her.
He said, “Guilt.”
“Guilt? Guilt for the knot on my head or guilt for what you’re doing?”
“Both.”
“So you
are
human.”
Another long silence, then a dejected, “Sometimes.”
With her heightened sense of hearing, Sara picked up on the regret in his tone. She wondered if nudging it along would help. She needed an ally. “Why’re you doing this?”
“Because.”
“Because?
Because?
What kind of answer is that? What if it were your children? Do you have kids?”
Tap, tap, tapping on the steering wheel. “One.”
“Honestly? And you’re doing this to me?”
“Sorry,” he said. It came out laced with frustration, and she didn’t want to push him too far in the wrong direction.
“Boy or girl?” she asked.
“Boy.”
“How old?”
“Eight.”
“It’s a good age. I remember when my girls were eight. We had so much fun together playing dress up and watching Disney together. They’re twins, though. Quite a handful. My son, he’s five. Typical boy, you know? Dirt and lizards and monster trucks. What’s your son’s na—”
“Quiet.”
She was getting through. She could feel it.
Delicate, Sara. Don’t go too far. Push too hard and he’ll turn on you.
She said, “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t need to know.” She leaned forward, softened her voice. “Aren’t little boys the best? What’s your favorite thing about him?”
“Smile.”
“Don’t you love that mischievous grin they get? Mine has the cutest dimples. And he has this thing he does—”
“Enough,” the driver said.
Sara heard his car door open and the warning chime of the keys in the ignition. “Wait,” she said. “I’m sorry. Don’t—”
Her door opened and then a rough, gloved hand wrapped around her upper arm. He squeezed, hard, dragging her out of the car. He was strong, and for an instant she was airborne before she hit the ground, face-first, getting a mouthful of dirt, busting her bottom lip on a rock. She spat out a mixture of earth and blood. She tried to get to her feet, felt a foot on her ribs, shoving her back down.
“Stay,” he said.
She complied, rolled onto her back, hands up in submission.
She listened to him walk away, heard both car doors slam shut, and then receding footsteps.
I can run.
You have no idea where you are. He has a car. You’ll never make it.
And Teddy might punish the kids.
Might?
Sara ran her tongue across her lip, felt the swelling. More blood leaked into her mouth. She swallowed, afraid to move. Afraid he would hurt her if she disobeyed.
The sun warmed her face, and from above came the sounds of rustling leaves as the trees creaked and swayed in the wind. Somewhere nearby, a stream crawled its way across some rocks. A bird chirped.
You went too far. You had him.
He said he felt guilty.
Guilt can turn on you.
She heard the approaching sounds of heavy boots on gravel. She lay still.
What if I surprised him? Kicked the bastard in the nuts?
Then what? What if he has a gun? If you’re dead, what happens then?
What if I got the gun from him? Forced him to take me to the kids?
He may not know where they are. Bad, bad idea. Too many things could go wrong.
I can do it. I’m sure I—
Her scheming ended when felt a hand in her hair, tugging her up from the ground. It hurt, but she refused to scream, refused to show any more signs of pain.
Sara heard what sounded like the crackling of a paper bag, then felt him shove it into her hand.
“Go,” he said, whipping her around, shoving at her back.
He led her along, tightening the grip on her upper arm. She tripped over something, felt like a root, and he lifted her upright. They trudged downhill, then up again, tree limbs scraping her skin. A ragged, broken limb gouged a chunk out of her thigh. Blood trickled down her leg.
“Faster,” he said.
The voice rained down from above, miles and miles above her head. She tried to remember how tall the guy was at the Rose Gardens, the one who had taken her van. She had no way of knowing until he removed the blindfold, but her sixth sense
felt
that he was the same man.
Tall. Dark hair. Blue eyes
.
The thought sparked a memory from earlier in the day.
The guy. The guy, the guy, the guy. The tall one in the grocery store? Was he following me? Was that why he was checking me out?
Should I ask if that was him? Throw him off? He won’t expect me to remember.
He pulled her to the right, leading her in a different direction. She took a chance, saying, “It’s such a shame.”
“What?”
“You seemed nice in the grocery store.”
He didn’t respond, but the faint, halting hitch in his step was enough.
CHAPTER 13
DJ
DJ and Barker stood in front of the Rutherford home, watching the paramedics load the young woman into the back of the ambulance. They drove away with instructions for the doctor to call as soon as she was stable and coherent. DJ had tried to talk to her while Barker was inside, tried to ask her what had happened, but her delusional ramblings had made no sense.
He said, “I don’t know, Barker. She was out of it. Kept saying something about how this woman told her she’d be okay.”
“A
woman
?”
“She kept repeating, ‘She said I’d be okay.’ Over and over.
She
said she’d be okay. Nothing about a
he
. Nothing about Rutherford.”
“And?”
“And what, Barker? You don’t find that strange?”
“That I do, cowboy, but from the looks of her, I doubt that girl could tell you what day it is.”
“Doesn’t make any sense, that’s all I’m saying. You find anything in the house?”
“Possible signs of forced entry on the back door. Single chair down in the basement. I figure that’s where she was being kept. Managed to get herself loose. Other than that, the place is clean. Nothing like a weird torture room or crazy sex toys. From the looks of it, dude has more money to spend than he has sense. You should’ve seen the size of the boob tube.”
“Forced entry on the back door, you said?”
“Wasn’t much. Closed. Not locked, but it didn’t look like somebody beat it in with a sledgehammer. More like it’d been pried open with a screwdriver. Figured Dumbo locked himself out at some point.”
DJ looked at the house. Something didn’t feel right. “What’re we missing here? Where’s the disconnect?”
“The disconnect?”
“We got a suspect in one kidnapping keeping another vic in his basement,” DJ said. He pinched his earlobe, thinking. “But then there’s a possible forced entry and the girl mentioning a
she
.”
Barker studied him. “I ain’t following.”
“What if she was planted here?”
Barker laughed. “God almighty, DJ. And you say I come up with some cockamamie ideas.”
“I’m assuming you’ve heard of the word ‘hypothetical’ before.”
“Look here, cowboy, when I say explore the possibilities, I don’t mean for you to put Elmore Leonard to shame with your plotlines.”
“Then what’s your theory?”
“Whoever
she
is,” Barker said, “she partnered up with Rutherford. Conned our vic with some sweet words, brought her back here.”
“Still doesn’t feel right.”
“Occam’s Razor. Simplest explanation.”
DJ put his hands behind his head. “Say we disregard my left field idea, make it a non-factor for now...if Rutherford and this mystery woman are working together, there has to be at least a third person, maybe more, right? He was at the LightPulse office until ten o’clock, and the Winthrop kids went missing around nine at separate locations. So while he was at the office, the rest of his team was out doing his dirty work.”
“Now you’re getting somewhere. And who knows how long that poor gal was down in the basement.”
“But why, though? We don’t have a ransom note. We’ve got a random woman in her twenties and three kids of a coworker. What’re they doing?”
“I told you earlier we were dealing with a sociopath. Now it might be two. And if they ain’t trying to ransom, what they’re doing,” Barker said, “is collecting trophies.”
Trophies
, DJ thought.
That would tie in with the idea of making Sara play a game.
“Horseshoes and hand grenades, but it’s all we’ve got,” he said. “And I hate to ask, but where’s the husband in all this? You give up on him?”
Barker shook his head. “Not yet. If he ain’t the main course, he’s a side dish.”
“You think he could be the third?”
“Hell, I’ve seen stranger things. C’mon, let’s get back to the station, see if that young lady was reported. Hospital might have an ID on her by the time we get back, and if there’s a connection between her and Mrs. Winthrop or Captain Ugly House here, we’ll get a better lead on the kids.”
***
DJ found Barker coming out of the bathroom, tucking in his shirt. He said, “Hospital got an ID on the girl. Anna Townsend,” and handed over her thin file. “Woke up long enough to give a name and then passed back out.”
“Can we go talk to her?”
“Doc said to give it a couple of hours.”
“What’s her story?”
“Anna Townsend...also known as Stardust.”
“Stardust?” Barker asked, flipping the folder open. “She a stripper?”
“Works the poles at this new club called Ladyfingers.”
“Heard of it. Never been.”
“Sure,” DJ said, dragging the word out.
Barker ignored him. “What do we got here...one prior...driving under the influence. Twenty-one years old. Let me guess, paying for college?”
“Nope. Not your average stereotype. Get this...according to her
husband,
they’re happily married with a one-year-old son.”
“No shit? They got an open relationship or something?”
“Sounded as secure as Fort Knox. High school sweethearts. Said she started stripping to help pay the bills once he lost his job. Money is too good for her to quit, so he’s a stay-at-home dad.”
“I’ll be damned. So why didn’t he report her missing?”
“I had to pry it out, but he said that she doesn’t get off work until around three in the morning. Once in a while, if some guy flashes big dollars, she’ll go home with him for a private show. No sex, just extra money, and she’ll get back around six or seven. He was worried because she wasn’t answering her cell, but knew we wouldn’t do anything until she’d been gone for twenty-four hours.”
Barker pushed his glasses up to his forehead, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m spitballing here, but I doubt there’ll be a link between a stripper and Mrs. Winthrop.”
“But,” DJ said, “a stripper and a guy with money—that’s a no-brainer.”
“Let’s go have a Q and A. One of the other girls might be able to give us some info on where she went last night.”
DJ agreed, but couldn’t escape the feeling that they were getting further and further away from Sara’s children, regardless of whether or not they were heading in the right direction by chasing down Teddy Rutherford and his mystery-woman partner.
It keeps getting deeper and deeper
, he thought.
Twenty minutes later, they walked into the Ladyfingers Gentleman’s Club, Portland’s latest addition to the growing cadre of strip joints that gave the city a higher per capita rate of naked dancer locations than Sin City itself. Some were prominent and popular; others were tucked away on side streets with little more than pink neon signs promising
LIVE NUDE GIRLS
. The market had yet to saturate, and doubtfully never would. If the world ran out of men (and women) willing to pay for the chance to see a woman in her birthday suit, it would be the end of times.
DJ had only been a paying customer once, a couple years back, for a friend’s bachelor party. The experience was awkward. He’d found it difficult to look them in the eye, difficult to stare at the parts he was supposed to be looking at, difficult to figure out what to do with his hands during a private dance that had set him back fifty bucks.
He and Barker had been a couple of times for on-the-job visits and it was easier to feel in control and not under the spell the strippers seemed to cast over every person desperately waving a single, hoping to get a closer glimpse.
And Ladyfingers was even more acceptable when the doors had just been unlocked and the stages were empty.
They stopped a couple of feet inside the doorway. No patrons yet, no bartender, no girls.
The same smell that came with every strip club hung in the air. Evaporated alcohol, girl sweat, and cheap perfume. It was thick and cloying. DJ knew it would get stuck in his clothes and made him think about having to do laundry. He glanced around at the dark walls, the mirrors, the strobe lights hanging overhead. Rows of liquor bottles stood at attention behind the bar. Across from it, the main stage perched three feet above the floor with a signature, shiny pole in the middle. Tables and chairs stretched all the way to the back of the room where two smaller stages occupied each side.