Spencerville (33 page)

As he undressed, she sat on the bed, cross-legged, the teddy bear in her lap, and said to him, "I'm not on the pill. Did I tell you that?"

"No. We didn't get around to the preliminaries last time." He said to her, "I should have told you I had an exit physical before I left D.C. I'm okay."

"I assumed... but I guess I was supposed to ask beforehand... I'm not used to... I mean, I don't do this."

"No, you don't."

She nodded in understanding. "When I realized that he... that he had other women, I had some tests done, then I had my gynecologist tell him I couldn't take the pill, and I couldn't wear a diaphragm, so he had to wear a condom. It was humiliating. He got very annoyed, but he understood what it was really about... do we have to talk about this?"

"I think that about covers it." He smiled. "Did I get you pregnant?"

She smiled, too. "I hope so. Do you want to try again?"

Keith got into the bed, moved the teddy bear away, and they sat face-to-face, their legs wrapped around each other, and they fondled, kissed, and massaged, drawing out the foreplay as if they truly had all the time in the world, as if there were no possibility of a knock on the door.

She moved closer to him, raised herself up, and came down on him, never taking her mouth off his.

For the next half hour, without acknowledging it, they were adolescents again, without prior experience — feeling, exploring, touching, probing, experimenting with oral sex, mutual masturbation, and pretending to discover new positions for intercourse. She said, "I haven't been fucked like this since that guy I told you about. Where'd you learn this stuff?"

"From a sixteen-year-old. I was seventeen."

"I'm glad you haven't forgotten any of it."

"No, and I never forgot her."

They lay on the bed, on top of the sheets, holding hands. There was a mirror on the ceiling, and they both made jokes about it, but Keith thought she'd been a little embarrassed. He stared up at the mirror and saw her beside him, her hair fanned out on the pillow, her eyes closed, looking very contented with a smile on her face. Her image in the mirror was like a quiet dream, he thought, her breasts rising and falling, the thick bush of pubic hair, the slightly parted legs, and her toes wiggling, which was something he remembered from long ago. In fact, this was how he remembered her on the morning he left, and he recalled saying to her then, "See you later."

Keith sat up slowly and looked around the room. It was sparsely furnished, and what there was, was bolted down, including the TV set and the wall-mounted bed lamps. He'd have liked to put something against the door, but there wasn't even a chair in the place. It occurred to him that, if the Westway Motel customers were the sort who would load tacky motel furniture on their pickups, they were also the sort who needed more identification and security than twenty-nine dollars up front. With that in mind, it also occurred to him that the clerk probably went outside and took down license plate numbers, which rarely, or never, matched the ones on the registration form. He hadn't parked the Blazer in front of the door, but there weren't that many vehicles parked outside to begin with. In the plus column, the Blazer hadn't been there more than ten minutes before they'd gotten rid of it. There was no use worrying about it. He'd been taught two mutually exclusive things: never underestimate the police, and never overestimate the police. The bottom line on this situation was not life and death, or the end of the Free World — it was a trip to the local police station, some messiness and embarrassment, and eventually a reasonable and hopefully happy resolution. Keith didn't want a trip to the police station to be part of their memories, but if it happened, it happened. Meanwhile he rather enjoyed outsmarting Baxter and wanted that as part of their history. He looked at his watch on the nightstand. It was eleven thirty-five. So far, so good.

She said to him, "This is the happiest I've been since our last summer together in Columbus."

"Me, too."

"Do you mean that?"

"I do. I really do."

"Do we live happily ever after?"

"Yes, we do."

She stayed silent a moment, then said, "But we have to get through tonight and tomorrow, don't we?"

He didn't reply immediately, then looked at her and told her, "No matter what happens tonight or tomorrow, even if we're separated for a short time, remember that I love you, and know that we'll be together again. I promise."

She sat up and kissed him. "You remember that, too."

"I will."

She put her head on his chest. "I feel like a kid again, like it hasn't been twenty-five years, but twenty-five hours, and everything that happened between that morning you left in Columbus and now, didn't happen."

"That's a nice thought."

"Good. Let's pretend. There's no world outside that door, it's just us again, like it used to be."

"How in the name of God did I let you go?"

"Shhh. You didn't. I'm here. I've always been here..." She patted his heart. "Here, where it counts. I never left your heart, you never left my heart."

Keith nodded and started to reply, but couldn't find his voice, then, for the first time in over two decades, a tear formed in his eye and ran down his cheek.

Cliff Baxter sat in the front seat of the two-car convoy. Sergeant Blake drove. In the car behind them were Officer Ward and Officer Krug.

Sitting on the dashboard in front of Cliff Baxter was the location finder. It wasn't a state-of-the-art device — the city council hadn't liked the price of the big model that had to be mounted in a van with a big rotating thing on the roof and all kinds of screens and gadgets. This was a simple line-of-sight, VHP radio receiver that just beeped within a mile or so of the planted transmitter and got louder as you got closer. Still, it worked for what he bought it for — keeping track of his wife. The unit came with two small transmitters, and he'd used the second one a few times as sort of a fun thing to keep track of other people, but mostly the spare sat in his desk until he got the idea of putting it in Landry's car on Friday.

Of course, he'd cruised past the Landry farm early in his search for the Lincoln, and since each transmitter had a different channel, he knew long before he pulled into Landry's driveway that the Lincoln was there and the Blazer was not. At that point, he knew exactly what had happened.

They drove into Toledo Airport. This was the logical place to start, he thought, and they cruised the parking lots, but they didn't need the location finder because the place was nearly empty. They drove to the rental lot and cruised up and down the rows of parked cars.

Blake said to him, "I don't see his car."

"Nope. Okay, we go out on the highway and turn right, toward Toledo."

"Right."

The two Spencerville police cars headed east on the airport highway.

Cliff Baxter picked up his mobile phone and called headquarters. Officer Schenley was acting desk sergeant, and Baxter said to him, "Hear anything?"

"No, sir. I would've called..."

"Yeah. You would've called. I'm making a goddamned communications check."

"Yes, sir."

"And like I told you, if anybody calls from the state police, or anyplace, you don't mention where I am."

"Yes, sir."

"Just call me, and I'll get back to them. Don't bullshit with them."

"Yes, sir."

"Stay awake." He hung up and said to Blake, "Hey, pull into that Sheraton."

Blake pulled into the Sheraton parking lot and commented, "We're not getting a sounding here, Chief."

"Shit, I don't trust this thing. I trust my eyes and my ears. Pull up to the lobby and let me off, then cruise the lot."

"Yes, sir."

Baxter got out and went into the lobby. He approached the desk clerk, an attractive young woman, and said, "How're you tonight, darlin'?"

She smiled. "Pretty good. Yourself?"

"Could be better. Lookin' for a bad guy, ran off with a woman. You know about that?"

"Sure do. Seen it on TV."

"That's good. I hope you seen it come across your fax, too."

"I did." She rummaged around and found a piece of paper behind the counter. "Got the descriptions here, names, make and model of the car..."

"And you ain't seen them."

"No, I told the state trooper that about an hour ago. I'll keep an eye out."

"You do that, sweetheart."

She looked at his uniform and asked, "Spencerville? Isn't that?.."

"Sure is. That's where the kidnapping took place. Hey, if you ever get down there, you look me up."

"You're... you're the Chief Baxter whose wife..."

"That's right."

"Hey, I'm real sorry. I hope she's all right — I know she's going to be okay..."

"She'll be fine as soon as I find her. She'll be real fine. See ya."

Baxter went outside and met the cars. He got in, and Blake said, "Negative here."

"Negative there. Let's roll."

They continued on down the highway, passing several motels. Blake asked, "Want me to stop?"

"No, we're gonna cruise right into Toledo and see if that damned noisemaker goes off. If it don't, we'll double back and start checking motels. Jesus Christ, I never seen so many motels."

"You think they're here?"

"Don't know. But if I was him, and I just missed a flight, I might hole up in the area, especially if I was listenin' to the radio and found out there was a bulletin out on me. And if he don't know that, then he'll find out when he gets pulled over. He ain't gettin' too far either way."

"Right." Blake thought a moment, then said, "I don't understand how he thought he could get on a plane with her, without somebody noticing that she was being held against her will."

"Why don't you just fucking drive?"

"Yes, sir."

"He had a gun on her. That's how. And probably got her drugged up."

"Yeah, that's it."

That wasn't it, and just about every cop in the state knew that by now, Baxter thought. The truth was, he didn't see a real good future for himself or his career after this. But for the time being, he had the power, he had the law on his side, and he had the balls to do what he had to do as a man. By morning, it would start to come apart, so he had to find them before then. And because he was finished as a cop, he could do whatever he wanted to do to them when he found them.

They continued on another few miles and saw the high-rise buildings of downtown Toledo in the distance.

The receiver on the dashboard beeped, a faint sound, followed by silence.

Blake and Baxter glanced at each other but said nothing. False readings, especially in built-up areas, were common. A minute later, the receiver beeped again, then again, then got louder and more continuous, until the beeps ran into one another and made a continuous electronic squeal. "Pull over."

Blake pulled onto the shoulder, and the police car behind them did the same.

Blake and Baxter sat listening to the electronic noise. Baxter looked around outside, then said, "Go ahead. Slow, on the shoulder."

Blake drove slowly on the inside shoulder. The intervals between the beeps decreased, then the sound itself grew fainter.

Baxter said, "Make a U-turn and go back."

"Right."

They swung onto the highway, then turned at a break in the median. The beeping got louder and steadier.

Baxter looked up ahead and saw it. "Well, I'll be... hey, Blake, where do you hide a needle?"

"In a haystack."

"No, in a box of needles. Pull in there."

It took them a few minutes to locate the dark green Blazer, and even then they couldn't be sure it was the right one because it had no license plates. Baxter reached under the right rear fender and pulled off the magnetic transmitter. He looked at the rectangular device, about the size of a pack of cigarettes with a short antenna projecting from it, and smiled. "Well, well, well..."He shut it off, and the beeping from the car's receiver stopped. "How about that?"

Blake was beaming, and Krug and Ward stood looking at their chief with admiration. Everyone would have been a lot happier, of course, if the Blazer had been found at a motel, a rooming house, or a restaurant. Obviously, Keith Landry and Annie Baxter were not at the Chevy dealership. Blake was the first one to point this out and asked his chief, "Where do you think they went?"

Baxter looked around, up and down the highway, and said, "Not far."

Blake pointed out, "They could have stolen a car here, Chief."

"They could have... but they took the plates off this one. Now, why'd they do that if they was in another car hightailing it to Cleveland or someplace? No... I think they're close by, walking distance, and they didn't want this car connected to them." He looked at his three men. "Anybody got any other ideas?"

Krug said, "They could've gotten a taxi or bus from here, Chief. Could be in Toledo."

Baxter nodded. "Could be." He looked around again at the immediate area. "Taxi or bus. Could be. But I don't think so. I think they got a motel, one of them fuck places, dumped their shit, then went out to dump the car. The guy got lucky and smart when he saw this Chevy place. Yeah. They're a little walk from here. Maybe campin' out, but most likely a fuck place, or a roomin' house, where they don't need to use a credit card. Yeah. Okay, Krug, you and Ward take this side of the highway and start checkin' the motels back toward the airport. Blake and I'll start back near the airport and do the eastbound side of the highway. If you get anything, you call me and nobody else. Use the mobile phone. Let's roll."

Blake and Baxter began at the airport, drove past the Sheraton, and approached a Holiday Inn. Baxter said, "Keep goin'. We're only gonna stop at the small ram-it-inns."

"Right."

They continued on.

Baxter thought about things. Keith Landry was an asshole, but a lot smarter asshole than Baxter had figured. But maybe not smart enough. Baxter realized that he'd been out of touch with real police work for too long, but after almost three decades on the force, he'd learned a lot, remembered some, and recognized, grudgingly, that he was dealing with a pro. He wondered what Landry had done for the government and decided that it had nothing to do with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But what Landry hadn't reckoned with was Chief Baxter's innate predatory instincts. What Baxter lacked in formal training, he made up for in intuition. Out in the woods of Michigan, Cliff Baxter was the best hunter of any of his friends. He had a sixth sense for locating an animal, for smelling its blood and reading its mind, for guessing if it was going to break and run, go to ground, turn and fight, or simply stand frozen, waiting for its fate. Humans, he'd decided, were not much different.