Michele Martinez - Most Wanted

“I agree completely. Let’s go.”

Once they were on the highway, Melanie pulled out her telephone and checked her voice mail. The missed call had been from Sophie Cho.

“Uh, Melanie, it’s Sophie. I’m in the park with Maya and we’re having a slight problem. Can you call me on my cell phone please? Oh, it’s just after eleven on Thursday.”

Sophie’s voice sounded quiet and anxious, giving Melanie a moment’s worry. Darn, Sophie didn’t leave her cell-phone number, and Melanie didn’t have it with her. She wished she were one of those people who programmed every number she ever came across into her phone. What could the problem be? Was Maya not feeling well? She’d been in perfect form a few hours earlier. Had Sophie gotten locked out of the apartment? Melanie’s mother had keys, and she should be arriving within an hour. But even though Melanie was sure it was nothing serious, Sophie’s message weighed on her mind. Without a way to reach Sophie, though, there was nothing Melanie could do except hope she would call back.

She closed her phone and leaned over to put her bag in the back. A large green trash bag sat on the backseat. It had not been there earlier when they drove from Otisville to Millbrook.

“What’s in that bag?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dan said offhandedly, like it had slipped his mind, “I opened the trap.”

“ What ?”

“The Road Runner trap? You know, in Benson’s car? I managed to get it open.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re gone for maybe twenty minutes total. In that time you manage to search the entire Benson estate, figure out the snitch is gone, and open the Road Runner trap? How is that possible?”

“Hold your horses, princess. I’ll tell you the whole story.”

To hear Dan tell it, his return to the Benson property had been largely uneventful. He drove back up the driveway to find the dog’s carcass gone and an eerie silence pervading the whole property. He drew his gun and kept his eyes open, moving stealthily around to the rear of the large house, until he found a sliding glass door on the terrace, already jimmied open by somebody else. Then he did a quick room-to-room search for the informant. He didn’t find him, but he found plenty of evidence that he’d been there. The place was ripped apart. Every drawer, every cabinet, every closet had been emptied, its contents scattered wildly across the floor. Furniture was upended and pictures torn off walls, presumably in search of hiding places. Sofa cushions and mattresses bled stuffing where they had been savagely slashed open.

“He was looking for something. Probably what I got out of the trap,” Dan said.

“I don’t get it. How the hell did you figure out how to open it?”

“Dumb luck. My specialty.”

The search of the house had taken no more than ten minutes, start to finish. Once he was confident the informant was no longer around, Dan, unwilling to give up on the Road Runner trap, sat down at the wheel of the SUV and fiddled with the controls, searching for the magical sequence that would pop it open.

“In the trap-recognition course I went to, they told you which vehicle functions can be used as triggers. You know, wipers, signal light, whatever. They said the Road Runner likes sequences of six, so I sat there and tried every sequence of six I could think of.”

“That’s practically an infinite number. I can’t believe you hit it-and so fast.”

“Fortune was smiling on me. I knew I got it right when I heard the hydraulic lock release. The sound came from under the backseat, so I got down on all fours and felt around in there. I found this little opening, maybe eight or ten inches across. You woulda never noticed it, it was carpeted so good. But I was able to get my fingers along the top and yank it open. The trap went back at least two feet under the rear compartment. And I found a lot of nice goodies inside. Three handguns-two Tec-9s and a Glock, all with defaced serial numbers. A pair of metal handcuffs, a bag with about fifteen grand cash in it. Oh, and some blueprints. You know, like architectural drawings? Those, I don’t really know what they’re doing in there.”

“Are you being straight with me?” she asked, eyes wide, mouth open with pure astonishment.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“How did you possibly manage to accomplish all that in the twenty minutes you were gone?”

“Fast hands, sweetheart.”

Coming from Dan, she almost believed an answer like that. Almost, but not quite.

Curious about what he’d found in the trap, she reached behind her and felt around inside the trash bag, extracting a long, shiny red cardboard tube. She pried off the inset plastic lid with her fingernails and held the tube up to her eye. A ream of grayish white onionskin paper lay coiled inside. Working it out with her fingertips, she unfurled it. There were at least twenty sheets of thick, spongy paper, smelling of ink and toner, bearing delicate blue elevations of the interior and exterior of a town house. In the lower left-hand corner was written Jed Benson’s address and the legend “Sophie Cho, architect.”

“Hmmm. These look to me like the blueprints for the renovation of the Bensons’ town house. A good friend of mine was their architect. I can ask her to take a look and verify that’s what they are. But isn’t that strange? Why would Benson hide blueprints in a trap?”

“Beats me. That one I can’t answer.”

She put them in her handbag, where they protruded from the top. The thought of Sophie made her anxious. She pulled out her phone again and called home. If her mom had arrived, she could find Sophie’s cell-phone number in the address book and read it to Melanie. But nobody picked up.

“Okay,” she said, turning back to Dan, “next question: Why was your snitch up here trying to open the trap in Benson’s car?”

“I wondered that myself. Why drive all the way to Buttfuck just for a couple of guns and some cash? They got plenty of that stuff in Bushwick. He musta been looking for something else.”

“Who the hell is this guy anyway?”

Her cell phone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” Dan said.

She answered it, hoping it would be Sophie calling back to tell her all was well.

“Hello?” she said.

“Melanie? Butch Brennan.”

“Butch! Are you still at the hospital? I’m just sick over what happened to Amanda.”

“No, we wrapped up a while ago. The bodies were discovered first thing this morning, couldn’t’ve been more than an hour or two after it happened. Real clean MO this time. One shot each, smack in the middle of the forehead.”

“Did you recover the bullets?”

“Yeah, in fact we got preliminary ballistics already. Gives us a ninety-nine percent probability the bullets were fired by the gun that killed Jed Benson. I’ll have final confirmation in a couple days. But it looks like the same killer.”

“No surprise there,” she said, then held the phone away and placed her hand over the mouthpiece. “Butch Brennan,” she told Dan. “He says the bullets that killed Amanda and Bill Flanagan came from the same gun that killed Benson. Presumably Slice’s.”

“But, hey, Melanie,” Butch called.

She put the phone back to her ear. “Yeah?”

“Why I’m calling is about your message last night. You know, about those latents on the accelerant can? The ones come back to Rommie Ramirez?”

“Oh, yes, right. What can you tell me about that?”

“Are you alone?”

“No.” She forced herself to keep her face blank, not to look over at Dan. She cupped the phone closer to her ear so Dan couldn’t hear Butch’s end.

“Who you with, O’Reilly?” Butch asked.

“Yes.”

“Look, nothing against O’Reilly. But I’d keep this to myself for now if I were you. Till you follow up and check it out more.”