It took only minutes before they found themselves behind a familiar black Chevy, following precisely the same route as before, only this time the driver was seemingly oblivious to the tail. And this time Dan had a cell phone.
"We should call the police," Dan said.
Shohei didn't take his eyes away from the road. "I can get a lot of information before the police arrive. I won't have to break a single bone or do anything permanent."
"What will you do?"
"You don't want to know, and I don't want to tell you."
"I've got to call the police." Dan dialed the phone. "This is Dan Young, attorney. A bomb just went off at my law firm. We're following a suspect."
"We know. Get the license number. Don't follow."
"They'll be stolen plates. They were last time. Besides we haven't gotten close enough to observe them."
"What's your location?"
''Old Mountain Road, just past the fork to Browns Point.''
"You're in the mountains."
"That's affirmative."
"We'll have a squad car catch up with you. Don't approach the vehicle. We have a report from Maria Fischer, who advises that she is also following a suspicious van."
"Van?"
"That's affirmative."
"Where is she?"
"Last we heard she was at the marina. She is not answering her cell phone. We have a patrol car there now."
"Understand," Dan said. "We'll wait for a squad car." Dan turned to the bodyguard. "We gotta run that car off the road now. If that's not Cory Schneider, that means Maria followed her to the marina, and that means this is the wrong car."
"I thought you were against taking the law into your own hands."
The big sedan surged forward, quickly hitting eighty miles per hour. It took only a few seconds to pull alongside the Chevy. It tried to accelerate but Shohei adroitly pulled ahead. Once in front, Shohei slowed, checking the Chevy's movements so that it couldn't pass. When they were down to forty and the Chevy driver was laying on the horn, the Chevy swerved, turning off onto a logging road. Instantly the big sedan did a sliding reversal and was laying rubber. Again they quickly caught the Chevy. The car twisted and turned rounding corners.
"I can't pass," Shohei said.
"Something will happen."
The Chevy took a corner too fast and careened into a tree. They jumped out, and Shohei tackled the young woman in the bushes. Dan could hear choking sounds and ran to them.
"Stop."
The bodyguard ignored him. "Tell me about the van and I will let you breathe. Where was it going?" He released and she spit in his face. Again he choked her. "You killed a man tonight. You don't have to die."
Dan watched in sick fascination.
"I don't want to die." The woman choked out her answer when Shohei let her breathe.
"Tell me."
There was silence, horrible choking, then a gurgled scream. "Corey was in the van. She was going out to sea in a trawler. That's all I know."
Dan called the dispatcher. "Did they find Maria?"
"Haven't heard. I'll check."
"Let's go," said Dan. "Take her with us."
Dan sat beside her in the backseat while Shohei drove at full speed.
"They haven't found Maria Fischer. They're still looking," the dispatcher said.
"Look for a boat. The suspect she was following was leaving on a trawler," Dan said.
"I'll pass it along."
"Call the coast guard. Look for any trawler exiting the jetties in the last hour," Dan continued. "What were they doing with the trawler?'' he asked the woman next to him.
"I got no idea."
"Right. What did it look like?"
"A big fishing boat, that's all I know. It was dark."
They pulled up into the parking lot. Two empty police cruisers had their lights flashing. At the far end they found an officer on foot.
"We're looking for Maria Fischer," Dan said.
"So are we. She's disappeared."
''What about the coast guard? I told the police dispatcher to look for a fishing trawler."
"There are dozens of boats out this early. Cruisers, shrimpers, crabbers, long liners, draggers, and trawlers. They need a description."
"This woman was at the scene of the crime. She knows about the boat."
"Ma'am, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney."
"I want to exercise my right to remain silent. That man choked me."
"It was to apprehend her, I expect?" the officer said.
"That bastard got me on the ground and choked me unless I talked."
Dan left them for the piers.
"Where you going?" the cop called.
"Look for Maria," Dan said, with Shohei just behind.
They trotted down the gangway. A friend of Dan's, who also happened to be his doctor, owned a fast sportfishing boat that was docked in the harbor. By virtue of a few salmon fishing trips, Dan had learned where his friend hid the key.
Dan started the boat. A quick study, Shohei had the lines free in seconds. And then they were boiling up the bay to the jetties and the ocean bar.
The night was thick with fog and salt. Dan didn't know what he was searching for, but he had to try. He turned on the GPS navigator and the radar along with a bright searchlight on the bow.
On an electronic display Dan found their boat shown superimposed on a chart, its location heading and speed over the ocean bottom plainly visible. He accelerated to eighteen knots but suspected he didn't have the visibility for that speed. Frustrated, he slowed to sixteen knots and watched the radar. Crossing over the sandbar at the entrance to the bay, he saw three targets moving away from the jetties.
He took a bearing on the closest target, which appeared at the six-nautical-mile ring, also traveling out to sea at about ten knots. He could chase them down in less than forty minutes if he maintained his current speed. The fog could get no thicker, though, or he would have to slow even more.
33
Maria could taste her own death. She imagined the water closing over her nostrils and contemplated the agony of sucking the ocean down her throat. Whatever waited in the depths spawned its own peculiar terror. Death wanted to fill her mind, to crowd out reason and love and hope. The contemplation of her gruesome dying threatened to erode even her will to survive.
Groiter and Kenji looked groggy, drifting in and out of consciousness on the back of the fishing boat, each with his feet buried in quick-dry concrete and hands shackled at the wrists. Maria worked feverishly at the line on her own wrists, which, unlike the men's, were tied behind her. She had made little progress, and Corey checked her bindings regularly. Maria knew that at any moment Corey could kill her and reduce her workload by one. The only impetus for keeping her alive, Maria suspected, was Corey's desire to exert her power and watch her drown in some macabre grand finale.
Everything was wet from the mist, the ocean oily calm. Large deck lights poured over the black-painted aft deck, and stout halogens bolted to the spars shone over the deckhouse, illuminating the sea and making the bow wake sudsy white against the dark velvet of the Pacific.
"I'm cold," Groiter said.
''I wouldn't worry about the cold-you'll be dead soon,'' Corey said.
Kenji just stared at the dreary darkness and the ghostly mist.
"You want to go over the side dead or alive?" Corey asked. "Your choice. Bitch here goes over hog-tied and alive so I can watch her struggle. But you guys are going down like bricks."
The line around Maria's wrists had cut off the blood flow. A shark glided through the wake as if it knew that the ocean was about to be fertilized. On the black gunwales the moisture was shiny slick, making it seem as if they traveled on the devil's own vessel. The muffled horn at the harbor's mouth sounded regularly in the distance; occasionally a startled seabird leaped out of the water before the prow and glided through the air.