Kirk Russell - Shell Games

Where the creek dropped off a three-foot ledge, both sets of tracks cut into the topsoil, digging in as they made a hard turn and climbed away from the creek bed. They’d skinned the dry grass down to bare soil trying to climb up the slope. He climbed rapidly toward the ridge, having no trouble following the tracks. The driving had been rough. The lead vehicle had ploughed through low brush on the steep slope, tires tearing at the soil, and he guessed they’d been afraid of stalling and had pushed it hard, kept the engine revved. He neared the ridgeline, saw blue sky low at the tree bases and knew he was close to getting a wider view. At the top was a rock outcropping and looking down, he saw her blue 4Runner.

Standing on the outcropping, looking out on the ocean, he got through to Cairo and worked his way down to her truck while talking to him. The driver’s window and the back were open and the truck was empty. Droplets of blood had spattered on the dash and on rocks outside the truck and he told Cairo they’d need dogs. He clicked off the radio, yelled for her, and tried to follow the blood, but it petered out quickly. He smelled gas leaking from the truck and saw where the suspension had hooked on a rock. She’d been chased. It was a gutsy thing she’d been trying to do to get down this slope. Without doing anything to disturb evidence, he tried to think it out. If she was injured, bleeding, and still trying to get away, she’d take off in the easiest direction, or take up a posi-tion with her weapon. The bleeding was concentrated around one area of rock. Why had she stood in that spot? Held at gunpoint? Told to stand there? Or she got out of the 4Runner hurt, but with something pressed against the wound, dazed and trying to stop the bleeding before trying to escape. She’d go down the slope, try to reach the trees and lose herself. That was the next place to look.

From below, it was easier to see what had happened. It looked like the right rear tire had dropped off the side and when the truck started to slide off it had bottomed out. With enough time she would have freed it and he took that as another sign that someone was right on her. She didn’t have time to get the truck free and had gotten out. She must have been outnumbered or wouldn’t have run.

He kept working his way down. Berry bushes grew in damp ground at the base of the outcropping and there was low brush in front of the trees. Then the slope dropped away and he searched in the trees and brush until he heard engines grinding above him.

By mid-afternoon, close to forty people and bloodhounds from Santa Rosa searched the surrounding terrain. Her car was dusted inside and out for prints and a cast taken of the other vehicle print. Marquez watched the dogs work the scent back up the hill, then went up to talk with the big-bellied man who was working them.

“This is as far as she went,” he said. Marquez laid a hand on the head of one of the dogs. “My money says she got in the other vehicle,” the tracker said. “Or let me put it this way, that’s what my dogs think.”

“Your dogs think she walked up here and no further.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Got in a vehicle?”

“More than likely. She didn’t walk any farther than where we’re standing.” He pointed at one his hounds. “They don’t come any better than him and he picked up her trail immediately and this is where it stopped.” Marquez had watched the dogs work. He’d seen the same thing. The houndsman picked at a tooth and turned toward him. “You ask me, they brought her up here at gunpoint and carried her away.”

The search continued on the slope until well after dark and the decision had already been made to go out to the public. They put out a photo of Petersen and her truck and were already getting some response. A couple who’d been picnicking on a cliff above the ocean remembered seeing a white van turning up Teague Ranch Road, its tires squealing. But they didn’t remember the 4Runner and couldn’t say what time in the afternoon the van had gone up the road.

Marquez gathered the team together near midnight at the cold house and they walked through the search plan for tomorrow. Ten wardens would arrive in the early morning to help and he wanted to widen the search in the area where her truck had been found. They’d walk the whole slope, every inch. Pieces of broken taillights and samples of both paint colors had been taken from the dry creek bed and from the trees the vehicles had scraped, but he wanted to walk everything again. They’d find something they’d missed. He polled everyone for other ideas and then broke up the meeting.

Before sunrise the next morning he drove to the Harbor Motel where Petersen’s husband, Stuart, was staying. Stuart had asked to go with them this morning and his motel door opened now as Marquez pulled in. He watched Stuart walk over.

“Just tell me she’s alive,” Stuart said, after they’d started driving.

“We don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me why anyone would abduct her. What do they want?”

He couldn’t answer Stuart’s fear or his own. As they drove through town Marquez’s phone rang. He started into a U-turn before Keeler had finished talking.

“That was my deputy-chief, Stuart. A ransom note has been e-mailed to headquarters.”

“What do they want?”

“My chief forwarded a copy to me. I’ll plug in my computer in your room. We can read-”

“Oh, God, oh, God, she’s alive.”

“They’re asking for two million to be delivered tomorrow to a location they’ll provide in the next e-mail.”

Stuart seemed stunned a moment, then talked as if he was alone, repeating over and over, “I can do it.” His head turned abruptly. “Where does it go?”

“You won’t have to come up with the money, Stuart.”

Marquez raced back through town, phoning Alvarez on the way, asking him to let the rest of the team know. He pulled into the motel lot alongside Stuart’s car. In the motel room he plugged into a phone jack and powered up the laptop. He clicked through the passwords into his e-mail with his heart pounding. Stuart stood over his shoulder and read.

She is alive for now. John Marquez delivers $2,000,000 tomorrow. Instructions to follow. Respond via Marquez at 12:00 noon 22 September.

Stuart adjusted his wire rims and folded his arms across his chest, then sat down on a chair. “You deliver,” Stuart said, and unfolded his arms again. “They can trace this. The FBI can locate where this was sent from. They have that Carnivore technology and all kinds of stuff now.”

Marquez glanced at him, doubted he knew a whole lot about that. He reread the e-mail. It had been addressed to CalTip@dfg.ca.gov. and had arrived in the middle of the night. It was lucky anyone had found it this early in the morning, but maybe the FBI had tipped headquarters to watch for an e-mail ransom demand. He knew Douglas had already read it and would be working on a response and wanted to talk with him about it, but wasn’t sure he wanted to do that with Stuart in the room.

“How do they know your name if the unit is supposed to be covert?” Stuart asked.

“It may be someone I’ve come up against before.”

“I wanted her to quit last week. I should have made her. Oh, God, this can’t be happening.”

Marquez tried to keep his voice calm, the tension out of his inflection. He laid out a scenario where they paid the ransom and got her back. When he’d finished, Stuart shook his head vigor-ously, his imagination already forming another conclusion.

“I think they got your name from Sue. You see, two million is the exact amount I got from a lawsuit settlement. I won a big case against a railroad and they know what I got and they’re asking for it. It’s somebody up where we live who knows what she does for a living and followed her here. The amount is too coincidental. It has to be that.”