“If I die in a rented tuxedo, how long to you think they’ll keep charging my credit card?”
Phin rolls his eyes. “Christ, McGlade. Does it matter? You won’t have to pay it.”
“Yeah, but my wife will. If they don’t find my body, she’ll keep getting charged every month. It could run into millions of dollars.” McGlade doesn’t speak for a moment, then says, “I hope she’s okay. Jack too. You think they’re okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe they got away. Maybe they’re on their way to rescue us.”
“Maybe.”
“And maybe they’re bringing cool, refreshing beverages. And a toilet.”
This guy used to be Jack’s partner? Phin can’t understand how she let him live for this long.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, McGlade, but I can’t understand what the hell Holly sees in you.”
“I dunno. Love is blind.”
“Apparently it’s also deaf. And learning disabled.”
“Maybe Holly loves me because I’ve got so many layers. Like a big, sexy onion. I’m an enigma, wrapped in a mystery.”
“You’re an enigma, wrapped in an idiot. Layers? Harry, I’ve only met you twice, and you’re about as deep as a spilled beer.”
“You’re just jealous. Holly and I have something special. We have trust, and loyalty, and commitment.”
“Commitment? What commitment? You cheated on her four times last night.”
“They were midgets. If you add them together it only counts as twice.”
Phin doesn’t answer. This conversation is pointless. They need to think of some way to get out of here. He didn’t undergo months of chemotherapy to suffer and die in this abandoned warehouse.
But much as Phin pulls and stretches and strains, he can’t free himself.
There’s nothing they can do but wait.
CHAPTER 42
MY STOMACH HURT. I didn’t know if it was an effect of the tranquilizers, or the fact that I was burning up to do something but didn’t have anything I could do.
The Elk Grove police were called, but they really didn’t have much to do either. Our statements were taken. A few pictures were snapped. I explained to a nearly catatonic Holly what I suspected was going on with Bud and Lorna.
“So what now?” she asked. “We just wait around for them to contact us?”
“I’m going into the office, calling Indiana. Maybe they have some sort of idea where they’d go. Got someplace to go?”
“I’m going to stick around. Maybe something will turn up here.”
I looked at the twelve Elk Grove cops, standing around talking sports. Nothing was going to turn up here.
“Call me if you need me, Holly.”
She reached out to hug me, but it was stiff and mechanical; all of her life force had been drained from her. I explained to the uniforms I was leaving, and when nobody protested I hopped in my Nova and headed back to Chicago.
I spent most of the trip on the phone with the hospital, trying to ascertain Herb’s condition. First he was still in the OR, then he was in Recovery, then there were some kind of complications and they weren’t sure where he was. I asked for Bernice, but she couldn’t be located. By the time I got to the district house I was on my way to a total nervous breakdown, a feeling exacerbated by the two men waiting for me in my office.
“Hello, Lieutenant. We heard from the Elk Grove Police Department that you’d be here.”
“I’m really not in the mood right now, guys.”
Agent Dailey made a face that almost looked sympathetic. “We understand how you must be feeling.”
“I doubt it.”
“We lost two good men in Rosser Park when Lorna Hunt Ellison escaped custody,” Agent Coursey said. “They were friends of ours.”
“I’m sorry.”
Coursey looked at his shoes, which was the most emotion I’d ever seen from him.
“It should have been us. We were assigned to accompany Lorna. But when you cracked the Caleb Ellison case, we were ordered back to Chicago.”
“In a way, you saved our lives, Lieutenant.”
That was a karma debt I really didn’t need.
“Gentlemen, I feel bad for your loss, but I’d really like to be alone right now.”
“We’d like to help.”
“I prefer doing this myself.”
“Kidnapping is a Federal offense, Lieutenant. This is technically our jurisdiction.”
I shot venom out of my eyes. “Do you really want to play fucking jurisdiction games?”
“No,” Agent Dailey said. “We really want to help.”
I collapsed in my chair. I had no fight left in me.
“Fine.” I closed my eyes, tried to rein in some semblance of control. “What have you got?”
“We’ve created a new profile, with Vicky, of Lorna Hunt Ellison.”
“A new profile. Great. Does it happen to mention where she’s holding my friends?”
“Probably someplace close to Busse Woods, or perhaps in the woods themselves. We had a chance to interview Lorna before her escape. She’s a DO offender, impulsive, erratic, very low intelligence. Bud Kork has similar characteristics, plus he’s delusional and psychotic. They couldn’t have planned very far ahead.”
That had been my assessment. Luring victims to your house in the boonies and burying them in your basement, though horrible, wasn’t the work of a criminal mastermind. But escaping from prison, rescuing Bud, then grabbing Harry and Phin took some real intelligence. A DO – disorganized personality type – couldn’t muster that. It didn’t make sense.
“How did Lorna escape? Give me details.”
They ran it down for me.
“We recovered the derringer, and a plastic bag we believed it had been wrapped in. Lorna could have planted it there years ago.”
I didn’t like it.
“Then why wait until now to use it? She’s been locked up for twelve years. Why didn’t she pull this stunt a long time ago?”
Both Coursey and Dailey shrugged at the same time. It was eerie.
“She might have been waiting for the right moment,” said Coursey.
“Or she’d forgotten about it until now,” said Dailey.
“Or” – I reached for the phone – “somebody planted it for her.”
I caught Ms. Pedersen, the assistant superintendent for Indiana Women’s Prison, on her way out the door.
“This is a terrible time for us, Lieutenant. I feel partially responsible. I knew Lorna was capable of violence, but didn’t think she could pull off something like this.”
“None of us did. This isn’t your fault.”
“I appreciate that.” And it sounded like she did. “Can I do anything to help?”
“When I visited you the other day, I asked about Lorna’s visitors. You said she had none. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“How about phone calls? Prisoners are allowed calls, right?”
“Of course.”
“Do you keep records?”
“No. But I can talk to the guards. They’d remember if Lorna had received any calls for the last few days. Can I call you back?”
I gave her my number.
“What if Lorna had help?” I told the Feebies.
“You think she was coached?”
“Maybe someone planted the gun, and gave her instructions on how to grab Bud and kidnap Harry and Phin. The same someone who supplied her with the roofies, or whatever drug they used.”
“Caleb Ellison?” Dailey asked. “He was obviously an organized personality. Sending the videotapes, leaving no evidence-”
“You saw his house, right?”
They each nodded three times. I almost looked up, trying to see the puppeteer.
“It was a mess,” I continued. “Garbage and porn all over. And look at the sloppy way he broke into my partner’s house. How would you profile that?”