Out Of The Smoke (15 page)

Chapter Eleven

As night fell, Alan’s pacing began to wear a hole in his living room rug. Jake and Meredith had arrived almost immediately after the police. Renae close on their heels.

The responding officer, Brown, was the same one who’d just questioned Alan yesterday in response to the possible abuse. It would have been almost comical if the situation hadn’t been so serious. It helped that Detective Brown was at least marginally familiar with Liz’s history with her husband.

And so the questioning began.

“How do you know she was kidnapped and didn’t just run off?” The detective had started out quite leery.

“Her handwriting. Look.” Alan dashed into his office, motioning for Brown to follow. He grabbed several papers off his desk. “This is the note Liz supposedly left me this morning.” He held out the scrap of paper and cringed at the thought her ex had put into the ploy. The bastard had actually rummaged around Alan’s house to find a pen and paper. “And this is the page I ripped from her address book this morning at her place.” The second page demonstrated a distinctly different penmanship, her rounded letters like those she’d left on the sticky notes on his desk. “I have other samples if you need them.”

“Naw, this is pretty clear to me.”

The good news was a neighbor had seen a suspicious vehicle in the driveway that morning when she went out to get the paper. She gave the police a description of the car. Black sedan. Avis rental. Newer model. She’d assumed Alan had out-of-town guests and didn’t readily question its existence. That was most helpful because within hours and multiple phone calls, it was confirmed that Matthew Martin had indeed come to town one week ago when the police informed him his wife had died. He’d willfully identified a Jane Doe in the morgue as his once-again dead wife and left the police station.

The pieces fell into place throughout the day as questions were asked of everyone even remotely connected to the crime. Low and behold, Mr. Martin had apparently gone around town asking people if they’d seen his poor amnesia-suffering wife, ending his search with one Dorenda Ikeman who’d unknowingly set the latest crime into motion by confirming Liz’s whereabouts. When the police returned to Liz’s apartment, Dory had positively identified Matthew from a picture they showed her of the man who’d questioned her on Monday.

Interestingly, he’d rented a car from Avis last week, but had reported it stolen this morning. Why?

The bad news was no one had any idea where Matthew had gone after abducting his estranged wife from Alan’s house, nor where he was currently located.

The clock was ticking. Matthew had arranged to transport the Jane Doe from the morgue on a flight back to New York tomorrow, a flight he too intended to be on. That meant whatever Matthew planned for Liz, it would happen before he got on that flight tomorrow afternoon.

“You need to lie down, Alan. Or at least
sit
down for a while. Eat something.” Renae’s soothing voice was barely a blip on his radar. He ignored her for the umpteenth time.

He could kick himself for his part in all this. He shouldn’t have left her alone in the house. Especially when she was feeling so poorly. He paced the floor what-iffing himself to death.

By midnight, the police still had nothing. An alert had been put out across the entire area about the abduction. Every police department in the Minneapolis area was on the lookout. The cops were very apologetic, but there was “nothing more they could do at this time”. When they left, the silence was deafening. Renae refused to go home. Meredith and Jake went back to their own place to wait.

Alan reluctantly slumped onto the couch, laid his forehead in his hands, and cried for the first time in more years than he could remember. Renae said nothing. Instead, she sat next to him, rubbing his back and consoling him.

After a bit, she said, “You really love her, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, inhaling deeply.

“They’ll find her. Let’s not lose hope.”

However, eight hours later, hope waned. Alan racked his brain torturing himself with the statistical odds of finding Liz alive. All he knew for certain was that those odds went down with every hour that passed.

He’d slept on the couch only sparingly off and on throughout the night and early morning hours. A sharp trill began to poke into his consciousness. Was it real or part of his dream? Alan bolted upright and stared into the space of his living room, so he almost didn’t react when more ringing filled the silence. His brain was slow to acknowledge the sound of the phone, but then adrenaline kicked in and he grabbed for the receiver beside him.

“Yes?” He only had one question. Would only accept one answer.

“We have a lead on a car,” Brown’s voice replied. “Don’t get too excited just yet. It doesn’t mean anything. It could simply be that he traded it in at that location. The plates don’t match. But the make and model is the one he rented.”

“How? Where?”

“About a half hour west on Highway Twelve. A woman called it in because it seemed suspicious. It’s presumably parked behind her motel. She said they get that sometimes, abandoned vehicles behind the building. The area is kind of off the beaten path. A great place to dump a car.”

“Wait—what do you mean presumably? Have you seen it or not?” Confusion clouded his brain.

“I’m on my way there now. I don’t know what kind of evidence might have been left behind yet. Naturally, we’ll begin combing the area when we arrive and match the VIN number with the rented vehicle.”

Alan grabbed his keys and his cell and ran for the door.

“Where are you going?” rang out behind him. He’d all but forgotten about Renae.

“They think they found the car,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“I’ll drive.” She sped right by him, tearing his keys from his grip.

“Sir,” he returned to the phone in his hand, “what’s the address?”

“Why don’t you wait…what we find…scene before…drive…” Brown’s voice cut out as Renae sped away from the house. Alan pulled the receiver from his ear and stared at it when the line went dead.
Damnation
.

Renae glanced over at him. “Alan? That’s your house phone.” She smiled, eyebrows raised when he glanced her way.

The half-hour trip to get to the motel would be long. If there was going to be a search in the area for Liz—he couldn’t bring himself to think the word “body”—he wanted to be there. Maybe, just maybe, they’d get lucky. Maybe he hadn’t killed her yet.

Alan leaned forward to pull the officer’s card from his back pocket and redialed the number.

“Brown here,” he began in a hurried voice.

“Sorry about that.”

Brown actually chuckled. “I figured it out quickly. I hope you have someone with you. You’re not thinking too clearly.”

“My sister.”

“Good. I’ll call you when I get there and let you know the specifics. Take exit twenty-seven. Gotta go, other line…” He hung up.

Alan was so antsy his legs were bobbing up and down, his hands sweating as he rubbed them on his jeans.

Silence filled the car while he waited for Brown to call back. Renae didn’t say a word. Just drove as fast as possible.

The minutes ticked by. Alan stared at the screen. Were there enough bars? Was it charged? Did he have a signal? He flipped the phone open and closed over and over to make sure it was still working.

He saw the lit screen indicating a call was coming in before it even rang and yanked it open. “Yes?”

“Just got here. It’s the motel on the right about a half mile off the exit. You can’t miss it. The area is blocked off. Local police are checking out the car. You won’t be able to get very close yet.”

You wanna bet?
“Okay. Be there in a few.”
Please, please, God, let her still be alive
.

Alan closed the phone and stuffed it in his pocket. “Can you drive any faster? Two more exits.”

“I’m getting there. No need for us to get in an accident on the way.” Renae never took her eyes off the road. She was indeed driving very fast, her hands gripping the steering wheel as though they would fly off the road if she let up the pressure.

Knees jiggling, Alan gripped the door handle.
Come on
. His heart raced and his breathing was so heavy he could hear it over the din of the car.

Finally, the exit and then a quick jaunt down the outer road to the obvious disturbance. Three police cars were on the scene, lights flashing, no sirens. Alan jumped out of the car before Renae even had it in park and ran toward the scene.

“Whoa there, Mister. Where are you going?” A cop stopped him with his palm.

“She’s my girlfriend. Have they found her yet? I have to get through.” He spotted Brown across the parking lot with four other officers.

“Brown?” The brusk man with his hand still on Alan’s chest yelled over to the only cop Alan knew. “He the one you’re expecting?”

Brown nodded and motioned Alan over with a wave of the hand.

Alan ran the short distance like it was a track meet he needed to win. He could see the sedan in question behind the building, the only car in the rear.

“You’ll need to stay out of the way, McCarthy. Let us do our job.”

“Are you crazy? Time is ticking. What if she’s alive somewhere around here?”

“Look, she’s not likely to be here at all. He probably traded the car and abandoned this one in the night. We’re checking it for prints now.” Brown put a calm hand on Alan’s shoulder, but it didn’t lesson his anxiety. His hands itched at his side. He kept making fists and releasing them as though he would punch the first person to piss him off. And he would.

Two officers headed for the car and began dusting it for prints. They peered inside, but shook their heads in indication that nothing was in there.

“
Hey
.” An officer hurried over toward them. In fact, he began to run, as he grew closer. “Get back.
Get back
,” he yelled to no one in particular. He waved his hands frantically in front of him.

Confusion marred everyone’s faces as they slowly took a step in the indicated direction.

With his arms spread wide to encompass all five people in the cluster, the officer yelled, “
Move
.
Now
…
Back
.” He pulled his gun and turned toward the building, aiming it back and forth while he spoke. As they all jogged in the indicated direction, Alan kept his gaze on the enraged officer with the pistol.

“What happened?” Brown asked the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

“There was a mistake. Some confusion.” The cop was breathless, his gaze everywhere at once. Others pulled their weapons. Alan stood behind them, concern overwhelming him. What the hell was happening?

From the vantage point of the group Alan was with, he could see both the front and the back of the motel. They were backing away from the side of the complex. A woman ran from the office in the front of the building, an officer close on her heals.

“What confusion? Carson, what’s this about?” Brown demanded. In an intricate practiced display of precision, the five police all had their weapons drawn by now, each in a row scanning for whatever hidden danger only one of them was privy to.

“That woman is on morning shift,” he spoke low and deep, breathing still heavy. Angling his head toward the frantic lady dashing across the parking lot, he continued, “She arrived as the night manager was leaving and they didn’t really speak. Apparently he was cross with her for being a few minutes late.”

“And?” Brown was impatient.

“She didn’t think there were any guests. None were marked on the register. So when she saw the car out back as she took out the trash, she assumed it was another abandoned vehicle. Called the cops. But she was wrong.”

“It isn’t abandoned? What, man?” Brown spoke, but Alan was thinking the same thing. What the fuck was happening?

“There
is
a guest. He’s in number six, presumably. Unless he left on foot.”

The meaning started to sink in even before Carson continued.

“If that car belongs to your kidnapper, then he’s most likely still behind that door over there.” Carson motioned again with his head toward a room on the front, near the office.

“But where’s Liz?” The voice was Alan’s, spoken without him realizing it until he heard himself.

No one answered, but several seemed to remember he was even with them. Brown turned in his direction, his gaze flicked back and forth between the motel and Alan. “You really must get back. This is a crime scene. I don’t want you to get hurt. We don’t know what Martin has planned, or if he has a weapon.”

Alan nodded his head in agreement for no apparent reason. There was no way in hell he was going to step back.

More police vehicles arrived, sirens blaring now. They skidded up to the scene and Alan noticed Renae way off to the side behind the line of cars. Her hands were both covering her mouth in shock, but she was a safe distance away.

A booming megaphone jerked Alan back to the front, causing him to jump. With his chest pounding as if he’d just run a mile instead of a hundred yards, he listened to the speaker.

“Come out with your hands up.”

Nothing.

“You are surrounded. There is nothing you can do but surrender, Martin. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Did the curtain move?

The officers fanned out, pressed Alan back more than he would have liked. Why were they moving away instead of closer?

Is Liz in that room with him?

Alan couldn’t breathe. He took short steps back, staying just barely behind the line of officers. A U-shaped arc formed around the front of the motel, pressing Alan closer to the rear.

“Martin, this is over. Let Elizabeth go. Don’t make this any worse for yourself. Come out with your hands up.” The megaphone made Alan jerk every time he heard the words booming from its wide cone.

Silence. A woman was sobbing. Alan glanced over to see it was the one who’d run from the building moments ago.

The door to the room eased open and a man stepped out with his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed.”