The Girl on the Yacht (20 page)

Ten minutes earlier, Michael pulled in next to an industrial building. His iPhone vibrated an unusual cadence in his pocket. He hurriedly pulled the device from his cargo pants and read the screen––
Home Security System Transmitting
.

“Nancy’s in my office––how? Damn it.”

He tapped the camera icon.

“Who the hell are you?” He stared at the tall, slender woman on the screen moving slowly into his room. He fumbled for his earbuds in his shirt. Then he saw her holster a weapon. He immediately tapped the remote exterior camera symbols and panned the front and rear yards. He watched four people, dressed in black, exit the front door and run down the street. “SWAT. No way.” He returned to the picture from his office camera. “Who’s the woman?”

He brought her back on screen and watched her move around with confidence. He put his earpiece in. She disappeared from his room. He flipped back to the front of the house and waited for her to come running out. He waited. No woman. Instead, a man about fifty with longish black hair came strolling up the sidewalk and slipped inside the back door. “Must be her boss.” He waited. Nothing appeared from the front or rear entrance cameras. “Where are you?”

He toggled back to the room. They were searching through his stuff. Then the guy said something he didn’t quite catch. He hit rewind and played it again. He heard the man say that Nancy is pissed off about the explosives, and that Michael will never see his kids again.

The bitch let them in. I’ll kill her and take the boys where they’ll never find us. Why are the police in my house? There’s no way they connected me to the murders. No way. It must have been Nancy. Think.

The woman on the screen peered at the laptop on his desk.
Had she seen that it was on?
He focused in on her while she stood staring at the unit. He heard her name mentioned.

“West, Cameron West,” Michael said the name out loud. She’s the detective on the woman’s murder.
But, how?

He started pacing. It wouldn’t come to him.
There’s no way they know who I am––but they’re in my house.
He looked down at the screen and watched Investigator Cameron West follow the cables from his computer to the camera. His attention deflected to the doorway where a bomb tech appeared in his armor-plated suit.

“What are you two doing in here?” came the muffled voice through the visor.

Michael continued to put the pieces together.
They’ll be on to me in minutes
.
How can they track me––the phone?
He tore the back off it and threw it on the ground and stomped on it.
The car––they’ll pick up the OnStar soon––I’ve got to ditch it and get new wheels. Credit cards.
He pulled out his wallet and took out two items and the cash––three hundred and change. He scanned the area around him and then tossed the wallet on to the roof of the building.
What else?
He jumped into the car and headed west. For the first time, he was glad to be some distance from the house. I need to get to somewhere overcrowded to get lost––then it came to him.

Cameron glared at the bomb squad tech. “Screw that. I’m not leaving until I figure out where this guy is.” Instead of heading out, she made a beeline for the laptop.

“What are you doing?” The tech’s voice elevated as she reached for the cables and the power cord.

She yanked them out before he could utter another word.

“Are you crazy,” he shouted, more of a statement than a question.

Cameron picked up the computer and tossed it to Little Horse.

“You don’t need to be in here.”

“Damn,” the tech was yelling, “I don’t need to be here, either, if you’re going to pull something like that.” The green blob duckwalked out through the open door.

Little Horse nodded at her. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Take a hike––that’s an order.”

“Orders don’t seem to mean much today.” He didn’t move.

“You need to make sure that computer gets to forensics right away, and tell them it’s urgent that we find out what’s on it––now! Tell Dianne that I’ll have John look at it if she can’t do it. That should light a fire under her.”

“I’ll send it over, but I’m staying on scene—we’re in this together,” Little Horse said.

“Thanks. Just get that computer on its way.”

“You sure you don’t want me to hang around in here and go up in smoke with you?”

“No. We need to find this guy.”

Cameron turned back and started examining the fragments on the desk. “Why were you making a bomb?” she asked. Her eyes swept across the components and came to rest on a small blue box labeled, “Bondo.” She picked it up and read the front panel. It was an adhesive putty used to attach something underwater. She rolled back on her heels thinking of Laura Douglas and the marina.
You were going to blow up her boat if you hadn’t killed her that night on the dock––that was your backup plan?
Her mind drifted to nearly a week before. He started making it last week and didn’t need it. She let out a deep breath of air.

She dropped the box of underwater stickum on the desk. From somewhere near the box’s bottom flap, a folded piece of paper fell out, and she gave it a cursory glance. A local marine store’s logo highlighted the top of the receipt. She picked it up and her eyes casually noticed the day and date. When she saw the time stamp––6:38 a.m.––her brain clicked like the tumblers on a combination lock.
Today––this morning
.

She grabbed her radio and turned it on. There was no chatter. Had they all left? She keyed the mike. “Little Horse,” she said.

“Get your ass out of there!” her captain responded. “West, you’re on thin ice here. The bomb squad is pissed off, and the neighbors and the media are asking all the wrong questions. Get out and let them do their job.”

“Is the safe cracker here yet?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That bomb squad guy knows they’re not moving this safe––it must weigh a couple thousand pounds. They need a safe cracker.”

The other end was silent. The captain came on again. “They’re sending for a guy––maybe an hour. Get out of there.”

“Let me talk to the wife,” Cameron demanded.

“Get out of there––now!”

“Cam,” Little Horse responded. “I’ve got her here. What do you need to know?”

“Ask her if Michael left the house early this morning?”

After a minute, Little Horse came back. “He went out at around six to get some coffee––took him over an hour. He left again around 8:30––right before we got here––said he needed to get something. That’s all she knows.”

Cameron clicked off the radio and turned back toward the desk. “Why are you making a bomb today?” She stopped in her tracks and turned the radio back on. “Captain, he’s going to kill someone else. He started making the bomb this morning.” She paused, and the radio remained silent. “Little Horse, tell them to hurry up with that computer.”

“Boss, they just found his phone,” her training investigator, Purdy, came on. “It was in pieces on MacArthur just off the 405 freeway––maybe twenty minutes away.”

“What about his car?”

It’s traveling north a few blocks from the phone’s location.”

“Little Horse, you and Purdy get going––I’m right behind you.”

She made an Olympic dash out the front of the house and raced toward her Prius at the end of the street. From off to the right, she spotted her captain heading to cut her off, and she blasted by him.

“Keep up if you’re coming,” Cameron yelled while hitting her full sprint stride.

He gave her a dirty look and pulled up. “I’m not chasing you. We’ll have our talk at the station,” he shouted while she jumped into the driver’s seat.

Cameron threw her light on the dash and floored it. The small hybrid did its best to accommodate her demands but fell short as it slowly picked up speed. “Come on,” she shouted. Within a block, she was all lights and siren sailing up the freeway when her phone rang in her pocket. She tapped it on.

“We found the car in the South Coast Plaza Shopping Center,” the sergeant said. “He’s abandoned it––just like the phone.”

“I’m a mile away. Start a canvas––see where he went.”

“Got ten deputies on it.” He paused. “Northeast part of the parking lot.”

“Be there in two minutes.”

Michael adjusted the heavy backpack on his shoulder as the elevator doors opened on three. He stepped out to an earthen-red marble floor that seemed to end at the tall blue-tinted windows along the west side of the high-rise office building. He moved up to the glass, three stories above the corner of Bristol and Sunflower and studied the acres of South Coast Plaza parked cars. Off in the distance, the patrol cars, red lights flashing, had corralled his Chevy Suburban.
How had they picked up his scent—what did they have that drew them to his house?

Two men, obviously plain-clothed detectives, had their faces to the glass of the SUV, shading their eyes with hands over brows, trying to peer inside the smoke-tinted windows.

Michael stood contemplating his next move when a white Prius, its solitary red light spinning on the dash, swung into the mall parking lot and came to an abrupt stop at the heels of the men.

A woman shot from the driver’s seat and immediately started to scan the massive parking lot. Michael recognized her from his house video. He watched the plain-clothed officers give their report to Cameron West.
She’s in charge
.

On the sidewalks below, people were starting to congregate to see what excitement awaited them. A single sheriff patrol car and two Costa Mesa PD cruisers had pulled at angles against the curb, and the officers were out of their vehicles working their way through the mass of people.

The officers hadn’t thought or been directed to canvas the buildings yet.
That would come soon enough—stay alert.
To the south, near the freeway entrance, another sheriff’s car had blocked the roadway, effectively shunting traffic to a single lane. The officers were out of their cars examining the occupants of the slowed vehicles that made their way up the overpass.

Finally, he spotted two additional sheriff’s cars just arriving on scene as they headed slowly into the parking lot of the mall and meticulously slipped along the lanes of the parked cars. A total of eight vehicles, ten uniformed officers, and three detectives.

Three stories up––he created a plan that would get him out on foot, if it came to that––race down the stairs and disappear out one of the six exits.

After climbing out of the Prius, Cameron made a thorough scan of the expansive lot of more than a thousand cars. She turned back to Little Horse and Purdy who were still trying to see inside the Suburban.

“Freeway bordering the south side of the property,” Purdy pointed in a slow sweeping arc. “Indoor mall to the west––high rise office buildings to the east, and north along Bristol and Sunflower.”

Cameron studied the area. “I’d pick this place, too,” Cameron said in a soft voice. “We were minutes away. We’ve lost him.”

“You don’t think he’s up there watching us, do you?” Purdy asked while Cameron stared at the high rises that faced the intersecting streets in the distance.

“I’d be long gone.” Her eyes continued to scan the tall buildings down to the street level. She let out a whimper of acknowledgement, “Hmmm.”

“What do you have?” Little Horse’s instinct caught that something was on her mind.

She pointed to the long queue of buses waiting to pick up passengers on Sunflower. “That’s how I’d go.”

Michael’s attention focused back on the woman––she was in charge, no doubt about it. She had put her hands on her hips and slowly examined the outlying areas, the streets, and finally the structures. Her gaze came to rest on the glass high-rise office building. She started at street level and scanned to the top of the building and back down until she seemed to focus on the third floor. He caught himself staring back at her.
Your days are numbered––I can’t leave you out there chasing me.
Michael thought their eyes met as he watched her from behind the blue curtain of glass. Suddenly, she shifted her focus to the bus stop. For a few moments, she stared as if pondering a thought.

“Come on, you’re smart. What’s your next move?” Michael said under his breath. It was clear that she thought he left on the bus. He grinned at his deception. She faced a couple of choices––chase or stay. He watched her key her radio.

“So far, so good. You’re using your head. Keep going.” He seemingly coaxed her along.

Her focus never wavered from the line of busses while she spoke into the radio—she waited for a response to her inquiry.

Cameron was on her radio. “Patch me into the Orange County Transportation authority’s dispatch supervisor.” She waited.

“Dispatch––Sharon Davis.”

“This is Cameron West with the Sheriff’s Department Homicide Division.”
That always got their attention.
“I need you to put out a call to all of your drivers that have picked up passengers at Bristol and Sunflower in the past thirty minutes––make that a radius of ten blocks from here. We’re looking for a huge man––six-five, two-forty, chestnut hair.”

“Hang on.” The line went silent for all of five minutes. Just when Cameron was about to hang up and call her back, Sharon came on the line.

“Your guy asked my route fifty-seven driver which bus to take to the airport. He told him to wait for the bus number seventy-six.”

“When did that bus leave from Sunflower?”

“Thirteen minutes ago. It’ll be at the airport in seven minutes.”

Cameron shouted to her team, “He’s headed for the airport.” The doors on the cars slammed in cadence, and the sirens wailed while six police cars shot down the 405 freeway toward the airport offramp.