It was hard not to see the marks once they were in view; there was nothing subtle about them. There were two hand-prints imbedded deep into the metal on the front passenger’s side. The metal had crumpled around the indentations, and the paint had been lifted completely away, as if it had adhered to the hands that struck the side of the car.
“What the fuck?” He moved closer, crouching next to the door to study the deep dents. “I mean, damn. Should we get the fingerprint kit out?”
Coswell snorted his laughter. “Yeah, kid. Lemme just yank that outta my ass for ya.” He rolled his eyes and started back toward the cruiser. “I’m gonna see what’s taking the damned detectives so long.”
Freemont glared at the other officer’s back, and looked again at the car in front of him. The sheer force of the blow that would have left a mark like what he was staring at now would have been enough to shatter the bones in any person’s arms like they were cheap glass. It might explain why the car had been abandoned. No one would want to stay around to face the police if they’d smeared someone all over the side of the road. The police seldom understood about that sort of thing. They tended to suggest a few years in jail as a good method of getting over the guilt.
The longer he looked, the more puzzled he grew. He looked at the trajectory of the car and studied the ground leading to the crash site. The skid marks were obvious for only around four feet and then they left the road a good fifty feet or more from where the vehicle now rested. It was either going at an incredible speed on the back road or . . .
“No fucking way.” He scowled and walked up to the road and the deep black rubber trails that were obviously new enough to associate with the crash.
Brian Freemont was not stupid. He might not have been a rocket scientist, but he’d studied hard to get through the academy and he’d also studied on the side as well, learning all he could about accident scenes and forensic pathology along the way. One day he planned to get back to school and learn enough to get himself set up as a coroner. It was an elected position and technically you didn’t even need to have a medical degree, but he wanted to do it right. He had dreams, and they didn’t end with a little college-grade pussy on the side of the road now and again. His conquests with the girls were strictly a bonus, not a life-long ambition. The point being that, even though he was hardly the most honorable man, he knew what he was looking at with better than average knowledge.
The skid marks never even turned away from the course of the road. The vehicle had never swerved. It had been driving along nice and easy—probably at around 30 miles per hour too fast for the road conditions—and then it met something that hit it hard enough to push it off the asphalt and through the air, at least fifty feet.
And that something had hands.
Brian looked the evidence over again, ignoring Coswell as the man came back from the patrol car and stared hard at him.
“You look like you ate a bug. What’s wrong?”
Brian looked over at the sergeant and thought about giving him a straight answer. “I just can’t get this. It doesn’t add up.”
“Yeah? That’s why you’re not a detective. Leave it to the professionals, Brian.” The slob seemed to think the whole thing was a joke, but as much as he wanted to respond that it was a serious situation, he bit his tongue instead. He had enough shit going down in his day without adding anything else to his list of bad events. Coswell was exactly the sort of sorry asshole that would take any comments he made and turn them around on him later. He was a prick.
His cell phone vibrated in his pants pocket and Brian answered it without even considering that he wasn’t supposed to carry the damned thing on duty. Screw Coswell on that one, at least. He knew the man was carrying a phone of his own.
“Hello?”
The voice from the previous morning spoke into his ear. “How has your day been, Officer Freemont?”
He looked at Coswell. The man was busily scratching his nuts as he looked at the marks on the car again.
Brian walked away from the site, wanting to make sure his sergeant didn’t hear any of the conversation.
“What did you do, you son of a bitch?”
“Nothing that I can’t fix.”
“Then you better get to fixing it!” He forced himself to calm down. It wasn’t easy. As of nine A.M., Brian Freemont had discovered that he had no checking accounts, no savings accounts, and was two months behind on his house payments. His finances were in ruins. He had to come to work and act like nothing was wrong in his life, but everything was wrong. Every single damned thing was very, very wrong.
“Listen to me carefully. Listen to the numbers I’m going to read to you, and pay very close attention, Officer Freemont.” Brian held his breath. “Are you listening? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Good, because I want this over with as much as you do.” The man started talking, firing off a litany of numbers that Brian knew very well. They were the numbers for his car note, his mortgage, his different bank accounts. His blood seemed to slow down in his veins as he listened and he had trouble catching his breath. The voice read off his Social Security number, the policies for his life insurance, for his vehicle insurance, for his retirement accounts. By the time he was done, Brian Freemont was sweating bullets.
“Okay. Okay. What do you want?” He could barely recognize his own voice.
“You have files at your home, or hidden away somewhere else. I’m guessing you have a lot of files; police files that could cause a lot of trouble for a few friends of mine.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The voice on the other end did not suddenly break into laughter, but he heard humor when it spoke again. “Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. We’re not mentioning names yet, Officer Freemont. I could. I could give you several. But we haven’t reached that level of unpleasantness.”
“What do you want?” His chest was burning, and Brian had to wonder if he was having a coronary.
“I have five things to say, so listen carefully. One: I haven’t even hurt you yet. The worst thing you have going so far is a bounced check fee or two. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Number two: I can hurt you. I have everything that makes you a person in this country. I can have you audited by the IRS. I can have your back taxes examined with a microscope and make sure you pay interest on every penny that you ever earned. I can make sure that all proof you ever paid any taxes goes away as easily as your bank accounts did. I can ruin you so badly that Humpty Dumpty will look good next to you. Do you understand?”
“Yeah. Yes, I do.” Had he ever wanted to cry so badly? His hands were shaking and the world had bleached to a dark pulsing gray in his eyes.
“Three: one of the girls you did wrong is pregnant. She wasn’t with anyone but you. That means she’s carrying your baby, and that means you are going to lose your wife if you aren’t very, very careful about how you handle this. She doesn’t want your child, but she’ll carry to term if I ask her to because she knows she can ruin you like you did her. Do you understand?”
“Oh. Oh God.” His voice was cracking and he couldn’t feel his legs. “Oh, please, don’t do this to me.”
“Be quiet. We aren’t done yet.” The voice spoke without malice and that made it worse. “Number four: You get off work at seven P.M. tonight. By eight P.M., I want you to gather all of the evidence from all of the girls you did wrong and I want you to bring it to the edge of the Cliff Walk, right next to the spot where you’re parked now. I want you to set that evidence down and I want you to go back to your home and wait for a call from me. Do you understand me, Officer Freemont?”
He nodded, forgetting that he was on the phone for a moment.
“I have spoken to several girls about you. You will bring all of the evidence packets, because if you miss one of the girls I spoke to, I will carry out every threat I just made. Do you understand me?”
“Yes. Yes, I do understand.” His mouth felt so dry, so painfully wretchedly dry, that he could barely make the words form properly.
“Number five: If you do everything I just told you to do and you follow my instructions exactly, I will give you back your life. This is your one warning, Officer Freemont. If you deviate from what I’ve told you in any way, I will ruin you.”
The phone went dead in Brian’s hand. He barely noticed. His body shook and his face glistened with sweat, but he was unaware. His mind went numb for several minutes. When he could think clearly again, Coswell was talking to the detectives and they were looking over the crash site carefully.
Brian Freemont had planned to discuss the tire tracks with the detectives, but the idea had slipped his mind.
He only had one thought that didn’t escape him. He had to get those damned files down here by eight o’clock or he was royally fucked.
At least as fucked as every girl he’d set up for a little fun.
The irony was not missed by him, but it was most assuredly unappreciated.
II
Ben had experienced two of his favorite things the night before and well into the morning. He’d had a wonderful conversation that covered the whole spectrum of discussions, and he’d spent time with Margaret, no, with Maggie Preston. The worst of the morning breakfast crowd had overrun the diner and then left for other places by the time they left the diner, and he’d felt so bad about it he’d left Sally an embarrassingly large tip. Funny, she didn’t seem at all embarrassed. She just smiled and told him to come back any time.
After that he walked Maggie home, the conversation slowing down only because both of them were tired and even all the extra cups of coffee only went so far to keep them conscious.
“I had fun.” She stretched and smiled as she spoke and Ben found himself smiling right back.
“Me too. It’s nice to meet an insomniac with a personality now and then.”
Maggie laughed and her hand moved over to squeeze his fingers for a second. Then she leaned in and kissed his cheek. A moment later she was pulling out her apartment key and slipping through the door. “See you in class, Ben.”
He’d walked numbly into his own apartment, and sat down on the couch. The smile lingered long after he sat down and he was almost certain he’d never wash his cheek again. Well, not for a while at least.
And now, one day later, he was still amazed by the kiss on his cheek. Maggie had gone to school and he had seen her there, but once again she was strictly there to study. She smiled and waved, but beyond that there was no contact. Not that he had expected any.
The policeman on the other end of the line was not at all happy to receive the call. He sounded stunned when he heard that Ben knew where he was. The chances were decent that he’d even looked around the area in a panic, trying to figure out where Ben was hiding. It wouldn’t do him any good, because he’d never even seen Brian Freemont and he certainly hadn’t gone out into the woods to watch for him. All it took was listening to the police radio broadcasts to know where the man was.
Ben smiled when he thought about the desperation in the sick bastard’s voice. He forced the smile to go away. He couldn’t take this as a game. It was serious business.
He turned off the cell phone and started wiping it clean. That was the second phone he’d used, and it was going into the trash.
Somewhere across the way, Maggie was probably sound asleep. He was thinking about getting some rest himself, as he had a test to study for later and his eyes were dangerously close to crossing. He wasn’t going to do himself any good if he didn’t catch up with the Sandman at some point.
And then Maggie walked out of her apartment and he was wide awake again. She was dressed in a simple gray skirt and silk blouse, with a matching jacket, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He watched her as she left, amazed by her as always. It wasn’t something he could define; it went beyond her obvious looks, but whenever he saw her, his day was made more complete.
“Romantic pabulum.” He sighed and turned on the CD player near his laptop. He had a paper to finish and it wasn’t going to write itself. Norah Jones started singing songs directly into his soul and he let her.
He wrote, just as he was supposed to, but in the back of his mind he was looking forward to being out near the accident site where he’d called Freemont. There would be packages waiting for him and he intended to go through them meticulously.
Danni Hopkins was a sweet girl, and he intended to make sure she got her life back. He also intended to make a few phone calls to the other victims of Freemont’s game and let them know that they were free and clear.
Then, and only then, he’d consider giving the crooked cop back his life.
III
Kelli walked into the nurse’s station at the elementary school with a frown on her face. Teddy was lying back on the small cot they had in the corner, his hand over his eyes. He was asleep, but it was a fitful slumber at best.
“Teddy? Sweetie?” She moved over to him and sat on the edge of the cot, careful not to knock them both through the air. It was hardly designed to have a grown-up sitting on its edge.
He looked as pale as death and for a second, even knowing that he was breathing, she thought he was dead.
Then Teddy opened his eyes and smiled apologetically at her. “Hi, Kelli. I’m sorry.” His voice was weaker than she’d heard come from him in the past and it bothered her a bit.
“What for, honey?”
“You have school today.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re way more important.” She ran her fingers through his hair and smiled at him. He closed his eyes and his face relaxed a bit. “Why don’t we see about taking you home, okay?”
He nodded his head, and closed his eyes as he waited for her to speak with the nurse.
A few moments later, the portly woman who worked as the school’s medical expert sat down with Kelli and they had a brief discussion. Ellen Cranst was in her late thirties, if Kelli had to guess, and while her face was heavy and her hair was pulled back in a harsh bun, she had a pleasant demeanor that took away from her otherwise harsh appearance.