Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

“Debra who?”

“The woman you kidnapped in the SmartLots parking lot.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’ve got you on security camera footage. Those cameras were installed after your dad started abducting women. Ironic, isn’t it, Detective?”

“How so?” Bledsoe asked.

“Vaughn taught his son how to kidnap and murder women, but one thing he didn’t teach him about was how not to get caught.”

Vail advanced on Harrison and handcuffed him.

“Where’s Debra Mead?” Bledsoe asked. “And don’t give me any bullshit like you don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

Vail twisted him to face her. “Look, asshole. If she’s still alive, you’d better tell us where she is. It’s cold out there. She’s diabetic and if she doesn’t get her medication” — she glanced at her watch — “in the next thirty minutes, she’s gonna die. Then it won’t just be reckless endangerment. You’ll be tried for murder. Unlike the feds, Virginia puts its convicted killers to death.”

More complicated than that, and Mead isn’t diabetic — but what the hell.

“Yeah,” Bledsoe said, getting in his face. “Like your daddy tonight. We were there. Saw him take his last breath.”

Harrison narrowed his crooked right eye.

“The way she’d been taken,” Bledsoe said, “we knew it was someone he’d coached. So we asked him who took her. Right before they injected him, that’s when he gave you up.” He paused to let that sink in. “We compared your DMV photo to our video clip in the parking lot, and bang. There you were. We put a name with a face.”

“And here we are,” Vail said. “Case is open and shut. You help us find Debra Mead, we’ll recommend that the prosecutor cut you a good deal.”

Harrison twisted his lips as he thought.

“Twenty-nine minutes left,” Vail said. “Then Debra dies. Her diabetes medication—”

“She’s in an abandoned shack in Hill County.”

“Address?”

“Don’t know. House is owned by a guy named Ed Malicki.”

Vail got on the phone to X-ray and told him to head toward Hill County and mobilize deputies to the property of Ed Malicki.

She flicked Harrison on his left cheek. “Ed help you out?”

“He don’t know anything. I just borrow his shack. Store stuff. He never asked what I put there.”

“You know what, Harrison?” Bledsoe yanked him back to face him. “You’re a piece of shit like your father.”

Harrison spit in Bledsoe’s face.

Vail stuck her hand on Bledsoe’s fist and stopped him before he brought it forward into Harrison’s nose. “He’ll get his time, just like Vaughn.”

Bledsoe groaned, then shrugged his jacket back into place. “I’m not good with delayed gratification.”

“Let’s get him outa here,” Vail said, grabbing Harrison’s left arm.

“You... you’re gonna recommend the deal, right? To the prosecutor?”

Vail feigned surprise. “Of course I’ll recommend the deal. Just like I said, Harrison. I’m a woman of my word. But the prosecutor, she hates my guts. Never takes my advice. Does the opposite, usually.”

They pushed through the doors to the outside, where the air was bone-chilling cold.

Bledsoe blew on his left fist. “Temperature dropped about ten degrees while we were in there.”

He sat Harrison on one of the metal chairs in the center of the breezeway in front of the theater, then double handcuffed him to the table while they waited.

Vail pulled out her phone.

“Who you calling?”

“With X-ray looking for Debra Mead, we don’t have a ride. I’m getting an Uber.”

Bledsoe gave her a look of consternation. “We can’t transport a prisoner in—”

“Relax. I’m calling a local deputy I know, see if he’ll come pick us up.”

Minutes after loading Harrison into the rear of one of the responding police cruisers, their phones buzzed simultaneously. A text from X-ray:

meads alive

medics got a pulse

weak thready

but shes alive

airlifting to hosp

catch you latuh

running on fumes

sipping fuel

“Thank God,” Vail said.

“Your vic’s gonna be okay?” the deputy asked.

“Looks like it.”

“You lucked out,” Bledsoe said, elbowing the prisoner seated to his right. “Hear that, Harrison? You got lucky. Twenty-five to life instead of death row.”

Harrison did not respond. By now he probably figured he had been played.

Bledsoe turned to Vail. “Maybe it was us who lucked out. We got to Debra Mead just in time.”

“Luck? Skill? Who cares. Sometimes our job’s a mix of both. I’m just glad that Stephen Raye Vaughn is a footnote in American history. And his son’s gonna be behind bars before he could do too much damage.”

Bledsoe sighed heavily, then looked out the window at the pitch blackness, pinpricks of stars winking back at them. “Bastard was one bad dude.”

“Congrats. You win the award for understatement of the year.”

Bledsoe stole a look at his watch. “Damn, it’s friggin’ late. Why is it that the dregs of society come out when everyone else is asleep?”

Vail shrugged. “Better time to ply their trade.”

“Yeah, well, in my experience, nothing good happens after midnight.”

“And yet,” Vail said with a grunt, “tonight it did. Twice.”

Ed McKinnon was pee-shy. No help was the fact that, at age fifty-nine, his prostate was about the size of a bowling ball. He hated using public restrooms. But sometimes it became necessary — as it did on that December evening, in the middle of Christmas shopping at the downtown Seattle Nordstrom.

Usually, he took care of these things before leaving the house. But the shopping expedition dragged on longer than he’d anticipated — what with the endless lines and cashiers who didn’t know how to send gifts. Most of Ed’s purchases were going to his brother’s family in Phoenix, and he always sent his ex-wife Fran something, too. She lived in San Francisco. One of the cashiers had mentioned that he might find it easier to shop and send gifts online. Ed had told the woman that he wanted to support the brick and mortar stores. But considering how much his send-purchases seemed to piss off the clerks — as well as the customers waiting behind him — he figured he’d shop online next year. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with all the obnoxious shoppers — like the ones who stood side by side on the escalators, blithely blocking everyone in back of them; or the idiots who decided to stop and text someone at the top or bottom of the escalators, creating more blockage; or the moron who thought bringing her dog (on a ten foot leash, no less) into Nordstrom during the Christmas rush was a brilliant idea. No one had “situational awareness” these days; most people were totally oblivious to everything and everyone else around them.

Ed lived alone in a three-bedroom house in Seattle’s trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood. It had been his home for over two decades. The house was currently decked out for Christmas, very tastefully, too. He took pride in the place, and kept it immaculate inside and out. He led an orderly life. A dripping faucet was cause for alarm. But he easily repaired things like that. Ed was mechanically inclined. He worked for thirty-two years in the Union Pacific Railroad car repair shop, and took an early retirement last year. He kept active with bi-weekly visits to the gym, and spent hours every night in his basement “lab” tinkering with various inventions. He held thirteen different patents, but nothing he’d invented had taken off yet. He’d come really close with his idea for a touch-activated faucet, but somebody beat him to the punch.