John Lutz - The Ex

Her arms went limp. She stopped struggling and stepped back, looking at him as if he were a stranger who didn’t interest her. The outburst and attack had left her mind and body exhausted. Her eyes seemed to stare at him from inside a final sanctuary where pain could no longer penetrate. He knew he’d done this to her, reduced her to this. He had to make it up to her and he could!

“Come on!” he implored. “I’ll show you! Please, Mol. come with me!”

She continued to stare vacantly at him, emotionally and physically spent.

He gripped her arm just above the elbow and moved toward the door. She didn’t resist, but he almost had to drag her as she accompanied him zombielike downstairs to the lobby, then out into the street.

He saw a taxi pass at the corner with its rooflight on and raised an arm, but it drove by without the driver seeing him.

Then a cab turned at the opposite corner and came toward them, rooflight glowing. Still with a grip on Molly’s arm, supporting her, David waved his free arm wildly and saw the taxi swerve and coast toward them.

Salter saw the Joneses get into the cab. The husband seemed to be in a frenzy, the wife as calm as if she were drugged.

He started his unmarked car and steered it into the flow of traffic, staying well back of the cab but keeping it in sight. He was good at tailing cars; that’s why Benning had assigned him to watch the hotel. The parents were always suspects when a child disappeared, so what had just happened wasn’t a complete surprise.

It was, in fact, the kind of move Salter had been expecting. He was a twenty-five-year veteran and had developed the kind of radar for deception that only a gray and grizzled longtime cop possessed. He was fifty-seven and damn near too fat for the job, but his brain was better than when he was thirty-seven. It had struck him from the beginning that Mom and Dad were hiding something-especially Dad. The Joneses’ instructions had been for at least one of them to stay in their hotel room at all times so they could field a ransom call if it came in and was patched through to them. Now here they were hightailing it away from the hotel together, Salter suspected to meet their partner or partners in the phony kidnapping.

He skillfully maneuvered the unmarked through traffic, then at a red light used the cellular to get in touch with Benning. It was always a possibility that the players on the other side were monitoring the regular police radio bands.

As the light went green and traffic pulled away, Benning came on the line.

Salter explained what had just occurred.

“Stay with them,” Benning said. “There’s been another development. A woman from where the father works was found dead in her apartment. Deep penetration puncture wounds made by a large instrument.”

“God help the kid,” Salter said.

“There might not be a connection,” Benning cautioned him.

“Yes, sir,” Salter said, knowing better. People in less extreme circumstances than the Joneses had murdered their own children. Or maybe whoever they were in this with-

“When they reach their destination, let me know,” Benning told him, interrupting his thoughts. “If this is a phony snatch, we want them all in a neat bundle and we try to keep the kid from getting hurt.”

“If he’s alive,” Salter said, tapping the brake, then cutting off another cab to round a corner and keep the Joneses’ cab in sight. The cabbie behind him leaned on the horn. Salter wished he’d lay off; he didn’t want to attract attention.

“Keep the line open,” Benning told him. “I want to know what’s going on, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Salter said again, “God help the kid.”

But softer this time, so Benning wouldn’t hear.

They sat in the back of the cab, not touching each other, the varicolored light from outside playing over their faces in patterns of brightness and shadow created by motion. Something in the trunk rattled each time they hit a bump. There was a strong, spearmint scent in the cab, as if the previous passenger had been chewing gum.

On the other side of the cab’s windows, heavy traffic, bright lights, flashed past rapidly in the night. David’s face was tight with strain. Molly’s was an emotional blank; she’d had more than she could bear and her system had shut down.

Tires screeched and a horn blared. The cab rocked as it veered, but it didn’t slow. Momentary fear passed like a shadow over Molly’s face.

Traffic at the next intersection was lodged in gridlock. The taxi reduced speed, then threaded its way through the maze of barely moving cars and miraculously found the clearance to accelerate with a roar as it jounced in a back-breaking race over the pot-holed pavement.

Salter pushed with all his might on the horn buttons, but the horn was silent.

“Piece of crap!” he said loudly. “Fucking city budget!” Too many of the unmarkeds were junk.

He cranked down the window. “Police! Out of the way!”

The well-dressed guy driving the Mercedes that had cut him off merely stared at him.

“Police!” Salter screamed again, and made a motion as if to flash his badge.

Now the guy in the Mercedes nodded and rolled down his own window. “I thought you said ‘Please,’” he explained, before slowly driving into a narrow space between a truck and the curb and allowing Salter to pass.

Salter hit the accelerator and peered through the wind-shield at the street ahead, but he couldn’t see the cab. The driver must be Mario Andretti or some such whiz.

“Shit!” Salter said, slapping the dashboard hard enough so that something broke loose inside it and tinkled down to make a sound like a coin revolving lopsided on a hard surface. The FBI was slated to enter this case in the morning. They’d love to hear about how the missing kid’s parents got in a cab and disappeared.

He noticed there was noise coming from the cellular and picked it up.

“What the hell’s happening?” Benning asked.

“They’re gone. Jumped ahead of me in heavy traffic and I lost sight of them.”

Salter expected to hear curses on the other end of the line, but Benning was silent. Maybe thinking about the FBI.

“I got the hack number,” Salter said. “We can get the cab company to contact the driver.”

“No,” Benning said immediately. “Not yet. We don’t want anything to happen that might spook these people while they’re in the cab. We’ll give them time to reach their destination, then have the cab company contact their driver and we can learn where he dropped them. Give me the cab’s number.”

Salter did, then said, “Still want this line kept open?”

“Why? So you can give me more bad news?”

Salter thought he’d better not say anything else.

He broke the connection and continued driving in the direction the cab had been going when it disappeared.

David gripped the back of the front seat and leaned forward to speak through the opening in the Plexiglas panel. “Faster! Can’t you go faster?”

The driver, a swarthy man with a bizarre haircut bunched mostly on the top of his head, ignored him. In the strobe-light effect of passing lights playing over his face, there was an ominous glint in his eyes.

“Faster!” David urged again.

The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Don’t understand. Faster? I go fast. Can’t fly, go fast.”

David squirmed with frustration. “Oh, Christ!”

The mirror showed another glance from the driver. “Pardon you. Not English, please.”

David drew a deep breath, then exhaled and sat back in the seat, accepting the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to communicate with the driver. “Okay, okay. Sorry. We’ll get there when we get there.”