15 Seconds (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

T
he evening was sticky and warm and Vance Hofer waited in his car, hidden off the dirt road that led to the trailer. He kept his car lights off.

There were two vehicles parked in front. One was a beat-up, red pickup he had seen around his house a dozen times, which he knew belonged to Wayne, the waste of good spit Amanda thought of as her boyfriend. The other was a silver Kia with an “I Heart Daughtry” decal on the back and a pair of pink felt dice dangling from the inside mirror.

For a while Vance had heard sounds of laughter coming from inside. Music. A party going on. Something crashing onto the floor. More laughter. It made his blood curdle.

Then, for the longest time, he heard nothing at all.

He sat there, feeling his life's futility coursing through his body, to the tips of his rough, workman's hands. How things hadn't quite worked out the way he planned, yet he smiled, thinking the story wasn't quite over yet. He needed only one thing—something clear and fixed in this world of uncertainties—and that one thing was that someone take responsibility for what had gone down. At the end of the line, someone had to pay for what had happened to that poor girl and her baby, not to mention Amanda, and what was happening tonight might only be the first step. When it was all over, the person he would likely find would be the one who had profited the most.

From what had befallen his little girl.

That was what was wrong with life, Vance thought, how no one ever did . . . pay. The ones who bore the guilt. Those people always squirmed their way out, with reams and reams of legal arguments, hiding behind oily lawyers. The banks, who had taken his home; the functionaries who had pushed him out of his job; the fools in Washington and on Wall Street, even those people out in Hollywood—they did just fine, while the rest of us had no career, no home, no insurance. You were just a cipher, left with nothing. Just silt running through your hands. Only the little people had to pay. While the rest went on . . .

And for a man who was brought up knowing what happens when right and wrong collide, this was a heavy cost.

There is wheat and there is chaff, the Bible says. Wheat and chaff.

And it was simply a matter of separating the one from the other: those who had been harmed from those who were responsible. You didn't need no fancy degrees or badges or fitness hearings.

Someone just had to own up. That's all he was saying.

His little Amanda was just at the end of the line.

Vance just kept his eyes on that trailer, knowing pretty soon the door would open.

Wheat from chaff.
He flexed his fingers. Someone had to own up and it would start right here.

That's all.

Chapter Fourteen

I
pulled into a McDonald's off the highway certain that after fleeing the Hyatt half of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department that hadn't been actively looking for me before was probably looking for me now.

I felt Mike's phone vibrate.

I dug it out and looked at the screen. It was Liz. Thank God. She sounded off the planet. I figured I knew why.

“Henry, I just heard on the news.
What the hell did you do up there?
”

“Someone set a trap for me, Liz. I don't know if you heard the whole story, but—”

“Henry, I told you to give yourself up if they found you again! Not to resist.”

“I couldn't give myself up! Liz, I have something bad to tell you. Don't freak out. Have you heard from Hallie? In the past few hours?”

“
Hallie
? No. Not since lunch yesterday. She was going riding.” I could hear her grow nervous. “Why are you asking about Hallie?”

“Because I received a call. In the lobby of the Hyatt, Just before the cops there spotted me. Liz, don't freak out. Hallie's been taken.”

“Taken?
” I could feel tears rushing into her eyes. “What do you mean
taken,
Henry? By whom? How do you even know?”

“Because I heard from her, Liz. It's the person who did these things today. Who killed Mike and that cop on the road. He called me at the Hyatt before the police found me. He has her.”

“
Has her?
Oh Jesus, Henry, no . . .” I could almost feel the blood rushing out of her face. Knowing that someone who was fully capable of cold-blooded murder had taken our daughter. I heard her sniff back sobs. This was awful. One minute she was just trying to help me out of a mess. Now she was in it herself. Up to her eyeballs. Same as me. Then she said the only rational thing she could say. “We have to go to the police. You got a partial ID on that car. They might be able to trace it!”

“No, Liz. There are things I have to tell you. That's exactly what we can't do.
We can't go to the police
.”

“Henry, I'm sorry about what's happening to you, but some madman has our daughter . . . !”

“Liz—listen! Hear me out! I went to the Hyatt because I knew someone there who I hoped could get me off the streets until you negotiated some kind of deal. But I got a call in the lobby, just before the police saw me there. He put Hallie on and she sounded okay. Scared out of her mind, but I got the sense she hadn't been harmed. But the guy who took her, who's doing this, he said if I went to the police on this—if I turn myself in or even if I get caught, or if he hears on the news that Hallie's missing, he's gonna kill her, Liz. Just like he did Mike. And Martinez. I won't even tell you what he said he'd do. Just that the longer I stay out, the longer she lives . . . That's why I had to run. It was one in a million that I even got away. That's why we can't go to the police!”

Liz was silent. I needed her to be rational, yet I knew that what I'd just told her violated every rational instinct she had. Her daughter had been abducted and we couldn't even report it to the police!

It was killing me too.

Liz lashed out. “What have you done, Henry? What have you done to put our daughter's life in danger this way?”

“I haven't done anything, Liz. I don't know what's going on.”

“So what do you want me to do? You tell me this insane story about cops pulling you over and putting you in cuffs. Then everywhere you go people are being killed. And now our daughter's been taken by this . . . this person who's got some vendetta against you. Who's killed people! Goddammit, Henry, why don't you just tell me what's going on?”

“Please, Liz, don't go there on me. I need you to understand. I need you now too. You know damn well I'm not capable of anything they said I've done. I don't know why this is happening! I'm up here for a conference. I'm supposed to deliver a speech tonight. I got pulled over for a traffic violation I didn't commit. The rest . . .” My voice started to crack. “I don't know what's happening, Liz!”

“And you're saying we can't even do the one sensible thing that could save our daughter's life! You can't be serious, Henry! What do you expect me to believe? What else should I believe?”

“I am serious, Liz. Deadly serious. I heard him. He'll do it, Liz. He's already done it. We can't.”

I just let her sob it out for a while.

Finally Liz said, “He's doing this for a reason. What does he want from you, Henry?
Money?
There's got to be something he wants.”

“I don't know what he wants yet—other than to watch me suffer. Other than to enjoy seeing me completely trapped.”

“So what are you saying? We just let him keep her and do nothing. I don't know if I can do that, Henry . . .”

“You have to, Liz. For Hallie's sake. I don't know who this person is or what he thinks I've done, but he's targeted me. I think Hallie will be okay, for a while, crazy as that sounds. He needs her to get to me.”

“You're willing to put our baby's life on the line . . . I'm not.”

“We have to, Liz. I don't see any other way. I can try to find that car . . .”

“You don't even have a clear memory of it, Henry. A blue car. From South Carolina. You don't even remember the plate number! It could be chopped up to parts, repainted, hidden in some garage for months for all you know.”

She was right. “But there's that gamecock thing . . .”

“Gamecock?”

“The image I saw on the shooter's car. The mascot. From the University of South Carolina. I saw one on the back window of Mike's car too.”

“Mike's car?”
Liz paused. “Do you think your friend is connected to this?”

“I don't know.” I had run the idea around in my head. But no one knew Mike and I were even getting together. Only my assistant, Maryanne. And she'd been with me for fifteen years. I'd trusted her with much bigger things than this. “I don't see how. We have to come up with a cover, Liz. For Hallie. In case people worry at school. We have to say she came home . . .”

She sucked in a harried breath. “All right. All right.”

“At least for a day or two . . .”

“Okay, I'll think of something. Henry, I'm scared. We don't even know what we're doing. Hallie's life is on the line. What do we do if he just kills her and we're . . . I don't know if I can live with that.”

“Liz, if you break down, they're just going to use it as a way to get to me. The guy's not going to do anything now. He won't. I'm telling you, he wants
me
. He told me to get a disposable cell phone so he can contact me again. Maybe we'll know more then. In the meantime, don't contact me. The minute they find out about Mike . . . this phone will only lead them to me.”

“I know.” I felt her about to start weeping.

“You just stay strong, Liz. I'm gonna find our girl, Liz, and bring her home. He's not gonna hurt her until he can get to me.”

“This is bad, Henry. Isn't it?”

“Yeah, Liz,” I said. I was trying not to think of it. “Let's not pretend any other way. It's bad.”

Hanging up, I suddenly felt about as alone as I'd ever felt in my life. In spite of trying to pump up Liz, I really didn't know what my next step was going to be, other than finding that car.

That car was the only thing that could save my daughter's life.

And Liz was right. We were way, way out of our league. What resources did I possibly have? On the run. In a stolen car . . .

I flipped on the car radio, and it didn't take long to hear the account of my escape from the Hyatt.

They had my name, but I didn't hear any description of the car I'd escaped in. Which was good. With any luck, the owner might be on the golf course for a couple more hours, so for the near term I could get around.

But what I did hear, which suddenly seemed like a path for me, was a public hotline number to call with any tips related to the crimes.

Chapter Fifteen

A
t the sheriff's office downtown, Carrie was manning the tip line.

She'd taken six or seven calls. A couple of them were clearly bogus. One had Steadman held up in a high school with a cache of ammo. Another had seen his Cadillac speeding away and caught his plates, info they already had. A cabbie had called in, saying he'd dropped off someone resembling Steadman at an unspecified street corner in Avondale. That one they sent a team to check out. Several others called in from the Hyatt, having witnessed the shooting in the lobby. One caller had Steadman going from room to room on the thirty-third floor, terrorizing guests. Another had him sneaking away, dressed in a waiter's uniform.

When the lines went quiet, Carrie logged online and checked out Steadman's website. She watched a clip of him from
Good Morning, South Florida
describing the pros and cons of Botox. Steadman was handsome. Sharp cheekbones. Intelligent blue eyes. Stylishly long brown hair. He had a successful business. And a fancy Palm Beach address.

Not exactly the profile of your usual fleeing cop killer. The guy even spent his vacations fixing cleft palates and helping to build schools in Nicaragua. Lots of group shots with happy villagers. Some of the photos were taken by his daughter. It was hard to connect that image with that of some crazed killer who had put two shots at point-blank range into a policeman.

A light flashed on the message board and Carrie picked up. “Sheriff's office. Officer Martinez tip line. This is Carrie Holmes . . .” she said into the headphones.

“I have some information on the killer,” the caller said.

“All right, go ahead . . .” Carrie grabbed her pen.

“I didn't do it. Any of it. I swear, it wasn't me.”

Carrie's heart came to a stop, as if an electrical wire sent a jolt through it. Silently, she snapped her fingers, trying to catch the attention of one of the other detectives to get on her line.

She put a hand over her speaker.
“It's him!”

“What do you mean by
any
of it?” Carrie said back, hoping to engage the guy. She pushed the record button. She also routed a message to Akers's secretary:
Get him over here!

“There's more . . .” the caller said, his voice trailing off. “You'll see.”

The whispers of
“It's him
!
Steadman!”
crackled around the floor and a crowd of detectives gathered around Carrie's desk. The chief of detectives, Captain Moon. Carrie's boss, Bill Akers. Even Chief Hall, who had just come back from the shooting scene. Carrie's heart began to beat loudly and she could feel everyone in the room silently urging her with looks and signals to keep Steadman on the line.
Three minutes,
Carrie knew from training. Three minutes and they should be able to triangulate a fix on where he was.

“Who am I speaking with?” she asked him. “I'll need your name and some proof of who you say you are. You can imagine, there's a lot of people calling in on this . . .”

“I think you know exactly who you're speaking with,” the caller said. “Martinez had a bullet wound in his left temple and another higher up on the skull. His driver's window was down. He probably still had my driver's license in his hand . . . You want my Social Security number? I think that's sufficient.”

Carrie's adrenaline shot through the roof. She knew she had the killer on the line.

She tried to get him to keep talking. “You said
any
of it, Dr. Steadman. And you said, ‘there's been
more.
' Has there been another incident?”

Steadman didn't answer. Instead, he waited a few seconds and changed the subject. “Are you a detective, Carrie?”

The question took her by surprise. She glanced around, at the elapsed time on the screen. Going on a minute. Why not tell him the truth? Sometimes people in these situations just needed someone to talk it out with. “No. I work in community outreach,” she said. “I just agreed to man a phone. It's actually my first day back from being away for a while.”

By now several of the staff were listening in on the call.

“Well, I bet the community outreach department has a lot more company at the moment than it's normally used to, right, Carrie?” Steadman said with a chuckle.

“Yeah,” Carrie said, holding in a smile herself. “This is true.”

A minute fifteen.

“You mind if I ask you something?” he asked. His next question threw her for a loop. “You have kids, Carrie?”

More than threw her for a loop.
Where was he going with this?
It was almost like he somehow knew what was going on with her. Today of all days, bringing up kids. She hesitated for a second, not sure if she should give away anything personal like that, but Bill Akers nodded for her to keep engaging him.
Ninety seconds
.

“Yes,” Carrie answered. “A son. He's nine.”

“I have a daughter myself,” Henry Steadman said. “Hallie. Super kid. She's an equestrian. She almost qualified for the Junior Olympic team last year. She's finishing her first year of college. At UVA. She's the world to me. Just like yours, I bet?”

“Of course,” Carrie said, feeling a flutter go through her.

“Then you'll understand what I'm about to say . . . though you probably won't believe me.
None of you,
” he said, firmer, “since I assume there's a bunch of you crowded around by now.”

Carrie didn't answer, but she smiled.

“But
I swear—
on my little girl—'cause I still think of her that way—and right now she needs me more than anything in the world—that whatever it looks like, whatever anyone may think, I had
nothing
to do with what happened to that policeman today . . . I was back in my car, waiting for him to finish up my ticket, when a blue sedan pulled next to him and someone shot him through the window. It sped away and I went after it—to try and ID it—that's all—which was the reason I left the scene. You understand what I'm saying, Carrie? This is exactly the way it happened.
On my little girl
!”

“That's bullshit,” Captain Moon said dubiously. “Five different people saw him coming out of Martinez's car.”

“And not to mention that
I
was the one who called 911 . . . It was a blue sedan. I don't know the make or the model, but I do know something about it. It had South Carolina plates. You've got to find that car.”

“What make was it, Dr. Steadman?” Carrie asked, glancing again at the clock. They had been on two minutes now. “The car. Were you able to make out the plates?”

“No, not the numbers. But they were definitely South Carolina. I'm sure . . .” He stopped himself. “And I have no idea what make,” he said with a sigh of frustration. “I would only put you in the wrong direction . . .”

“Just keep him going, Carrie,” one of the detectives whispered, pointing to his watch.

“I hear you, Dr. Steadman. But all I can say is—and I think I'm giving you pretty sound advice here—whatever you've done or haven't done, you have to turn yourself in. Everything can be sorted out then. I promise you, you'll be treated—”

“I think you know exactly how I'll be treated.” He cut her off. “You all know what happened today, as I was trying to head back peacefully to the scene. And at the Hyatt. You want to help me, Carrie, look for that blue sedan. The plate number began with
AMD
or
ADJ
. . . There must be security cameras around somewhere that would've spotted them. There has to be some way.”

Two and a half minutes.

“And remember what I told you. On my daughter, Carrie. I know you'll know what I mean. I wish I could turn myself in. I wish . . .” There was a long pause and Carrie almost thought he was about to share something. He finally said, “Just look for that car. I think it's already clear, whether I turn myself in or they eventually catch me, no one there will look.”

“Dr. Steadman . . .” Carrie pressed. “What did you mean by—”

The line went dead.

Carrie sat back and blew out a breath for the first time. Almost two and a half minutes. A phone number had come up on the screen, but it wasn't for Steadman's; it was for a completely different phone. A White Fence Capital. Steadman had likely stolen the phone from somewhere.

“Excellent work, Carrie,” Chief Hall said. “Certainly a lot of excitement, no, for what I understand is your first day back?”

“Yes, sir,” Carrie acknowledged. Though she found herself wanting to ask if they should follow up on the blue car.

“Well”—he squeezed her on the shoulder—“you did just fine . . .”

Then suddenly someone shouted from the detective's pool. “There's been another shooting!”

Tony Velez, one of the homicide crew, ran up. “In Avondale! This must be what Steadman was just talking about. Victim's name is Michael Dinofrio. His wife came home from exercise and found him dead at his desk. Two in the chest. His car's gone. A silver Jaguar. And the kicker is . . . guess who Dinofrio was supposed to be playing golf with right about now . . . ? At Atlantic Pines.
Steadman,
” Velez finished, looking around the table.

“I took a call from a cabbie,” Carrie said, suddenly remembering the location, “who claimed he drove someone resembling Steadman from the Clarion Inn near Lakeview to an address in Avondale . . .”

“That's about a half mile from where Martinez was killed,” Bill Akers said.

Frantically, Carrie checked back on the call screen, locating the time of the call and drop-off point. 11:02
A.M
. “33432 Turnbury Terrace.” She looked up. “That's only a block away.”

Suddenly she knew what Steadman had meant when he said, “You'll see, there's more . . .”

Then Sally Crawford, who'd been tracing Steadman's call, said loudly, “The phone Steadman just called in on . . . White Fence Capital. It's a real estate partnership here in town.” She turned to face the chief. “Michael Dinofrio is the CEO.”

Carrie felt a flush of embarrassment come over her. If there was any doubt before about Steadman's connection to these murders, there wasn't one now.

The son of a bitch just called in on the second victim's phone.