Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (9 page)

Chapter 16

Wednesday, Late Afternoon and Evening

I’d been driving about five
minutes when my phone rang in through my stereo system.

“Badger.”

“Hi, Uncle Jake, it’s
Heather.”

“Hey, kid, what’s up?”

“Uncle Jake, I’m twelve years
old. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Of course, you’re not.
You’re an amazing young woman. So what’s up?”

“I have a problem.”

The truth was, I wasn’t in
the mood to hear about my twelve-year-old niece’s problem. But she wouldn’t
understand that. I doubted that my sister had even told her kids that I had a
friend named Monica who had been abducted. So, since I was her uncle and since
she had chosen to confide in me, thinking I could help her, I needed to listen
and try to help.

“Really,” I said, “and you
think I can help with it.”

“I’m sure you can. In fact, I
think you’re the only one who can.”

“Sounds serious. Tell me what
the problem is.”

“Linda Anderson’s brother.”

“Linda Anderson’s brother,” I
repeated. “What does that mean?”

“Linda Anderson is a skank in
my class.”

I wasn’t sure what skank
meant to a twelve-year-old girl, but it didn’t sound complimentary.

“She’s thirteen. I’m sure she
was held back a grade somewhere along the way. Not real bright, if you know
what I mean. Anyway, she’s already having sex. I told her that was a slutty
thing to do and she slapped me. So I slugged her right in the face and knocked
her down.”

That made me smile. She’d
inherited some of the same genes I had.

“She hit me first,” Heather
said. “So I hit her back. Anyway, we both got sent to the office and Mr.
Harrington, that’s the principal, called our parents. Mom had to come down and
listen to him go on about how unacceptable my behavior was. It was so lame.
Anyway, Linda and I both got a three-day suspension. This was all last week. So
then, on the first day we were back, she says I should watch my back ‘cause I’m
dead. She says her brother’s
gonna
teach me a lesson.
So I tell her that she’s full of it and that I’m not scared of her brother. And
I called her a skank.”

I was hoping Heather would
get to her point soon.

“So,” Heather said,
continuing her saga, “the next day after school, Linda’s brother, Ryan, he’s
seventeen, stops me as I’m walking home. He called me a bunch of dirty names
and said he was
gonna
do sex stuff to me if I bothered
his sister anymore. It was scary, Uncle Jake. I tried to act like I wasn’t
afraid, but he scared me.”

“Did anyone else witness this
exchange?”

“Sometimes you talk like a
lawyer, you know that? No, no one else was around.”

“Did he touch you?” I asked,
ignoring the lawyer crack.

“No. He just said stuff to
me.”

“Did you tell your parents?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll call the
school about it and everybody at school will hear about it and it will be
awful.”

I knew what she meant. When I
was in the fourth grade, a couple of sixth graders had targeted me for what
they considered a little fun. I hadn’t hit my growth spurt yet and two guys who
were bigger and stronger was beyond my ability at that time. I put up with
their bullying for weeks before I’d finally had enough and told my mother. She
did the usual mother thing, calling the principal. I had to go explain what the
two bullies had done. They, of course, denied it. Soon, word got around school.
All of the fifth and sixth grade boys sided with the two sixth graders and
began referring to me as the crybaby. Made my life a living hell. I remember
wishing my older sister had been an older brother who could have handled the
bullies for me. That would have been easier all the way around. I understood
what Heather was concerned about.

“What do you want me to do,
Heather?”

“I want you to kick Ryan’s
butt for me. I want to you scare him like he scared me.”

Crap. I didn’t have time for
this. Monica was missing and I didn’t have time to chase down teenage bullies.
Still, a seventeen-year-old boy scaring a twelve-year-old girl with sexual
threats was not something you ignored. What if the kid decided to make good on
the threats? Something needed to be done. But did I need to be the one doing
it?

“Heather, I understand your
concern. But I’m not sure I should be the one to deal with it. I think you
should talk to your father.”

“My dad? Are you serious? All
he’ll do is call the school and maybe the police. He’ll just make it worse.
He’ll tell me that I’m supposed to be a young lady but that I’m behaving like a
hooligan.
That’s what he’ll say, hooligan.
He’ll say
that girls aren’t supposed to fight.
That they’re supposed to
be refined and delicate.
Is that what you think, Uncle Jake. Do girls
have to be sissies?”

She had me smiling again.
“One of my very best friends,” I said, “is a woman, and is one of the toughest
people I know. She was in the army. She’s brave and tough, and she can fight
and shoot. But she can also be gentle and kind and be a lady. There’s nothing
wrong with a woman being strong and capable. But I agree with your father, a
young woman shouldn’t be a hooligan. Hooligan’s a good word. She shouldn’t go
around starting fights, which includes calling people names.” I imagined
Heather
rolling her eyes at that comment. “But if someone
slapped my friend, she’d do exactly what you did … she’d put her, or him, on
the ground.”

“That’s what I think, Uncle
Jake. I knew you’d understand. That’s why you need to be the one to help me.”

“But
Heather
,
your father should be the one …”

“Please, Uncle Jake, my dad
will just make it worse. Please just help me with Ryan. Then I can deal with
Linda myself.”

I knew what she meant about
her father. Fenton was a world-class wimp. He was smart and an excellent
lawyer, but ask him to do something physical and he was less than useless. My
sister would be better in a physical confrontation than her husband. In fact,
if Della knew what Ryan had said to Heather, she’d probably hunt him down and
kick his butt herself—or at least try. The problem was, Ryan was an
unknown factor. I didn’t know how capable or stupid he was. He might be a big
kid, an athlete capable of doing some damage to someone who didn’t know how to
fight. Heather was right. Her father was not the guy to handle this. Calling
Heather’s school would be a wasted gesture. Ryan would just deny what Heather
said. Without a witness, it was her word against his. Calling the local police
would be just as useless. There had been no assault, only an alleged verbal
threat, which Ryan would deny. Still, I didn’t have time for this.

“Heather, I …”

She must have heard it in my
voice, because she cut me off.

“Uncle Jake, please. You’re
the only one who can help me. It won’t take very long. I can show you where he
works after school. I’ll even go with you. In fact, I’d like to go with you. I
want to watch you make him wet his pants.
The big jackass.
Picking on a girl half his size.”

She had a point. But still …
I sighed. I knew she wasn’t going to let this go. She was like my sister in
that regard. When Della decided that something needed to be done, she’d find a
way to make it happen. As Heather entered adolescence, it was obvious that she
had inherited a good deal of her mother’s personality.

“Okay,” I said, “but listen
to me. I’m right in the middle of a big case. It’s very important and there’s
some danger involved. Maybe I can find a few minutes tomorrow afternoon. Okay?”

“Thank you, Uncle Jake. I
knew I could depend on you. You’re the best.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. I’ll
try to call you tomorrow. It’s not a guarantee. It depends on what happens with
this case I’m working on. I’ll try. And in the meantime, don’t go anywhere by
yourself. Always have someone with you. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“And don’t pick anymore
fights with Linda. Don’t do anything to aggravate the situation. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, sounding
somewhat annoyed. “She’s such a skank.”

“Yeah, well, just leave the
skank alone.”

“I will. Thank you, Uncle
Jake. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Great.
Just
what I need.
A seventeen-year-old idiot who hasn’t got enough sense to
let two little girls work out their own problems.

Chapter 17

Wednesday, Late Afternoon and Evening

We were standing next to
Alex's desk. Susan had gone home. It was just the two of us, and Wilson, who
lay on the floor with his chin on his paws, watching us closely. Alex put on
gloves and took the note out of the plastic baggie I'd put it in.

“The return address is
probably fake,” Alex said, as he looked at it. “L.A. postmark.” He opened the
envelope, took the note out and read it. He looked at the paper and the envelope.
“Looks pretty standard. Can probably buy it just about anywhere.”

Mostly he was talking to
himself. Then he looked at me and said, “The note itself isn't going to give us
anything.”

“I know.”

“But the fact that there is a
note ...”

“Tells us that Monica is
being used as bait,” I said, finishing his sentence. “Whoever's got her wants
me to find her.
”

“Why?” Alex asked.

“Either, they’re after me,” I
said, “or they want both of us and are using Monica to get me.”

Alex nodded. “I agree. And
either way, whether they want you or both of you, right now, you're the target.”

I nodded absently, struggling
with the inevitable question that no one had asked yet. I was aware that Alex
was on the phone, asking someone in the forensics lab to come to his office. He
hung up and I looked at him.

“We haven't discussed it yet.
And I appreciate you not bringing it up. But it needs to be said.”

Alex laid the envelope down
on his desk, took the gloves off, dropped them in his
waste
basket
, and sat down. I walked to his eleventh story window and stared
out toward the ocean miles away.

After a moment, I said, “They
may have killed her already.”

Alex remained silent.

“But I don't know that,” I
said, “and my gut says she’s still alive.”

I turned back to Alex.

“So I have to keep looking.”

Alex got up and came over to
me. He put his hand on my shoulder. “
You
don't have to keep looking.
We
have
to keep looking. And we won't stop until we find her. I believe she's still
alive. And I believe we'll find her.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I
was on an emotional roller coaster, either too angry or too frightened and
worried.

Alex said, “The hard part
will be keeping them from killing you while we're rescuing Monica.”

“I need to go to Utah,” I
said, “to see Gretchen Petersen. Can you focus on who sent the shooters until I
get back?”

“Of course. But the note said
we were looking in the wrong place. That could mean that people from Monica’s
past is the wrong place.”

“It might,” I said. “But it’s
an ambiguous message at best. The note doesn’t define the parameters of the
wrong place or tell us where the right place is. We have to continue to follow
up on all the possibilities.”

Alex nodded and then said,
“If you were making a list, who would you put at the top?”

“Either Esposito or someone
related to Pipestone,” I said.

“Be on my list, too,” he
said. “But while I'm looking into that and you're questioning Petersen, we also
need to try to figure out what the note means.”

“Sure,” I said. “If we've
been looking in the wrong places, where's the right place?” It was a rhetorical
question.

Alex ran his hand through his
hair and down his neck, squeezing and rubbing his neck. “Maybe the kidnapper
will take pity on us,” he said, “and send us some additional clues.”

I thought about that for a
moment and then asked, “Have you thought about how the kidnapper knows we've
been looking in the wrong places?”

“He's been watching?” Alex
said.

“How?” I asked. “How close is
he? How does he know where we've been looking?”

“Good question.”

I called Mildred and asked if
I could bring Wilson back by. She said I could. Then I called and booked a
flight to Salt Lake City, Utah. From there I could rent a car and make the hour
drive to Provost. I found a flight that left LAX at seven p.m. That would put
me in Salt Lake City at nine. I called Alex and asked if he could get me a gun
in Salt Lake City. He made a couple of calls and got back to me. He knew a
place where I could pick
up a .
357 and some ammo.
Since I had a Utah permit to carry, having the gun wouldn't be a problem. Then,
on my way back, I could drop it off with the FBI in Salt Lake City and they
could ship it to Alex. He and I had done that sort of thing before.

I put my Kevlar vest and my
empty shoulder holster in my carry-on and once through security, went into the
men's room, took off my sport coat and shirt, put on my vest and shirt, and
slipped into my shoulder rig.

Once the small jet took off,
I tried to read to distract myself. But thoughts of Monica kept intruding. I
remembered the first time we’d worked together. She was working a case that
involved the recovery of personal property. There had been a divorce and early
on in the disintegration of the marriage the husband had made off with a number
of expensive items: paintings, jewelry, an old manuscript, some antique
pottery, a couple of antique German clocks. The kind of stuff you’d expect to
find in a museum. He’d hidden the items and wouldn’t give them up. The wife had
hired Monica to find them. She had tracked down the items. They were in a high
priced storage unit in Beverly Hills. But in the process of finding them, she
had encountered the angry ex-husband who had made threats in an attempt to warn
her off. If she went near his property, he’d told her, she’d regret it. Monica
wasn’t afraid, but she was prudent. She didn’t want to be opening a storage
unit and be attacked from behind. So she had asked me to watch her back. PIs
sometimes do those kinds of favors for each other. I was happy to do it.

Monica had rented a truck and
we were loading the items in question into it when the ex-husband showed up. I
was carrying a large Ming vase; Monica had an antique clock. He’d been waiting
in an interior hallway, around the corner from his storage unit. We walked past
the corner, lost in conversation, paying attention to each other instead of our
surroundings, and he ended up behind us with a gun. It was the kind of mistake
a couple of rookies would have made. But neither of us were rookies. We were
distracted. At least, I had been distracted. I hadn’t been interested in women
since Elaine had died. But Monica had distracted me. I’m not sure I realized it
at the time, but now, looking back on it, I was very distracted.

The ex-husband had said we
should continue to load the truck. Then he would drive off with his stuff. He’d
stash it in a new location and then abandon the truck. If we cooperated, he
wouldn’t shoot either of us.

We put the vase and the clock
in the truck and as we went back toward the storage unit, we had to walk past
the ex-husband. Having the gun made him overconfident. He let me pass by too
close to him, within arms reach. As I walked past, I shot a quick jab into his
nose. He staggered back into the wall. I stepped in and took the gun. Monica
cuffed him and called the police.

Later, we went to a Marie
Calendar’s for pie. We sat and talked and laughed for an hour and a half and
became good friends. I enjoyed being with her.

The landing gear coming down
brought me back to the present and I realized I was smiling.

It was nearly eleven before I
found the Peek-A-Boo club. It was about ten miles outside of town on a lonely,
dark road. The blinking neon sign on the old building was of a girl lifting her
skirt and winking her eye. There were fourteen vehicles in the lot. Nine of
them were pickups. I parked and went in with my new .357 snug under my left
arm.

The Peek-A-Boo club was like
a thousand other strip clubs across the country. A naked girl dancing on the
stage, and nearly naked girls on the club floor, serving drinks and giving lap
dances. I’d seen too much of it lately. It was getting boring, annoying even.
It was just a distraction for men who had nothing important in their lives. The
music was too loud. I wondered why that was. Was anyone there to listen to the
music? Maybe the girls liked it loud. Maybe it helped distract them from the
pointlessness of it all. But maybe it wasn’t pointless for them. Maybe it was
how they put food on the table. I didn’t really know and I didn’t really care.
All that mattered was finding Monica.

The bar was on the far right
side of the club. You could walk around the edge of the club and get to the bar
without negotiating the tables. Despite being tired, I managed to reach the bar
without tripping over anything.

The bartender was a friendly
looking woman in her late thirties. She had a pretty face and a firm body. Her
brown hair was cut short. Could be Petersen. She wore a pair of tight shorts
and a tank top.

She came over to me. “What
can I get you?” she asked.

“Diet Coke.”

She nodded, went to get it
and brought it back. I paid and tipped her. “You can also give me a piece of
information if you have it.”

She waited for me to explain.

“I'm looking for Gretchen
Petersen.”

“Why?”

I gave her my card.

She read it, and her eyes
came up slowly to meet mine. “What are you investigating that
has
anything to do with Gretchen?”

“Someone she knew has
disappeared. I just need to ask her some questions.”

“Who disappeared?” she asked.

“Who's asking?”

“Gretchen would want to know,”
she said.

I took a sip of my Coke and
studied her a brief moment. “I suspect I'm talking to Gretchen now.”

Her eyes held mine, giving
nothing away. She'd be a good poker player.

Without admitting that she
was Gretchen, she asked again, “Who disappeared?”

“Monica Nolan.”

Now her eyes hardened.

“I'll tell Gretchen. Though I
doubt she'll have anything to say to you.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I know her well. She's never
mentioned any Monica Nolan. I don't think she knows her.”

“We both know you know who
Captain Monica Nolan is, Gretchen. And we need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to
you. Go away.”

Her eyes flicked past me for
a moment and then came back. In a moment a rather large man walked up beside
me.

“There a problem here,
mister?” he asked.

There were two other guys at
a nearby table watching closely.

I took a deep
breath. There was no point in tearing up the bar and hurting people. I turned
on the barstool and looked up and him and said, “No problem. Just a case of
mistaken identity.” I stood, looked him in the eye, and said, “I'll be going.”