The hippie van’s front bumper was twenty feet from sending Buster to doggie heaven. I was too far away to save him. All I could do was watch.
Then I had a thought; maybe Buster could save himself.
I clapped my hands and yelled his name like we were playing a game of fetch. We did that every night on the deserted stretch of beach outside the Sunset; it was Buster’s favorite thing to do.
His upper lip curled up in a doggie smile, Buster’s back legs accelerated just as the van was about to take him out. I extended my arms and kept yelling encouragement. I was going to end up getting killed if I wasn’t careful. Yet it felt like the right thing to do. Then Buster did something I’d never seen him do before: He jumped off the ground, and flew through the air like a Frisbee dog on Animal Planet, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. I caught him in midflight, his body knocking the air out of mine. The van was right behind him. I dove between a pair of cars, my dog in my arms.
“Good boy,” I said.
Buster licked my face. Mouse angrily blared his horn as he flew past.
I rushed into the aisle with my dog still cradled in my arms. Mouse had driven through the exit and was burning down A1A toward the city of Hallandale. Sara Long was in the back of that van, and it tore at me to think I’d gotten this close, and hadn’t saved her. I pulled out my cell phone and punched in 911.
“This is nine-one-one,” an operator said. “What is the nature and location of your emergency?”
The operator’s voice sounded familiar. Back when I was a cop, I’d made it a point to know all the operators, and to send them small gifts on their birthdays.
“This is Jack Carpenter. Who is this?”
“Well, hello Jack. This is Edie Burgess. It’s been a while. What’s wrong?”
Edie had been with the department over twenty years, and there wasn’t much she hadn’t seen. I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of everything that had happened.
“My, haven’t we been busy,” she said.
Hollywood was God’s waiting room, and there were always ambulances on call. EMS showed up a few minutes later, and a pair of medics attended to Officer Georgian before loading him into an ambulance. I stood nearby with Buster still in my arms.
One of the medics asked me if I’d seen Georgian’s assailant. I started to tell him that a sociopathic giant was responsible, then realized the medic might want to take me away for a psychiatric evaluation. Instead, I shook my head like I didn’t know.
Georgian was loaded into the ambulance. His eyes were shut, and I said a silent prayer for him. I’d been hospitalized several times as a cop, and more than once I’d seen a dark, ethereal figure hovering over me while in an emergency room. It was the kind of experience that forever changed a person. I knew that it had changed me.
I lowered Buster to the ground and went to the curb. Fluid still trickled out of the soda machine. I wrenched the door open, and removed an unexploded can of Coke. As I sucked it down, a siren broke the stillness, and a police cruiser raced across Hollywood Bridge and down the exit ramp. Trailing the cruiser was a black Toyota 4Runner with tinted windows and Virginia license plates. Linderman.
The cavalry had arrived.
Linderman pulled up to the curb and jumped out of his vehicle. His face was flushed, his eyes betraying a tinge of desperation. Traffic in south Florida could turn the sanest people into lunatics, and he looked ready to rip the head off a live chicken.
“What happened?”
“They got away. I called the vehicle make into the Hollywood police. They’re running them down right now,” I said.
“How long ago was this?”
“Five minutes.”
I was trying to sound optimistic. The Hollywood cops were as good as anyone at running down a stolen car, but Mouse and his partner were proving far more elusive than I would have guessed.
A pair of uniforms had gotten out of the cruiser and were coming toward me. I was in luck. They were both cops I knew.
“I need to talk to these guys,” I said.
“Be my guest.”
I gave the uniforms a blow-by-blow account of what had transpired while Linderman searched the garage for clues. While one of the uniforms scribbled down my story in his notepad, his partner examined the broken soda machine lying on the sidewalk.
“Someone threw this at you?” the uniform asked incredulously.
“That’s right,” I said. “He was on one of the elevated levels of the garage, and tossed it down.”
“What do you think this thing weighs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe four hundred pounds,” I said.
“Was this the same guy who beat up Officer Georgian?” the uniform asked.
“Yes. He’s a crazed giant, and unbelievably strong.”
The uniforms exchanged funny looks that told me my sanity was once again being questioned. They took a statement from me, and asked for a phone number in case they wanted to follow up with more questions. Then they left.
The sun had broken out from behind the clouds, and the pavement was baking. I ducked into the shade and waited for Linderman to come out.
I stared at Linderman’s car. The FBI agent had been living in Miami for over a year, but still hadn’t bothered to change his plates. Although he’d never said so, I’d assumed that once he found out what had happened to Danielle, he planned to move back north.
Linderman came out of the garage. The frantic look had left his face and his brow was gleaming with sweat. His jacket and tie had to be killing him, only I knew from past experience that he wasn’t going to take them off.
“Take a look at this,” he said. “I found it on the second floor.”
From his hand dangled a white paper bag with the McDonald’s logo printed on the side. He tossed the bag to me. Opening it, I found myself staring at an assortment of greasy fast-food wrappers and crumbled paper napkins. One of the napkins caught my eye. It was smudged with pink lipstick. Kneeling, I dumped the bag’s contents onto the ground, and began sorting through them. I was certain that Linderman had already done this. Now, he was waiting to see if I drew the same conclusions.
The bag contained ten fast-food wrappers. Nine of the wrappers were for Big Macs, the wrappers stained with the secret sauce that made Big Macs so tasty. The other wrapper was for a fish sandwich. There was also a french-fry container with a few loose fries stuck to the bottom. And a receipt containing the time the food had been bought, and the amount paid. I was staring at the remains of last night’s dinner.
My eyes kept drifting to the napkin with the lipstick stain. Picking it up, I saw tiny bits of food stuck next to the lipstick. I sniffed them.
“Smells like fish,” I said to Linderman.
“That was what I thought,” Linderman said. “Do you think she’s talking to them?”
That was what I wanted to think. Only I needed verification before I jumped to any more conclusions. Removing Karl Long’s business card from my pocket, I called his private number on my cell phone.
My call went through and rang several times. Then I heard a man’s voice that was unmistakably Long’s. Harsh and loud and no pretense at being friendly.
“Who is this?” Long demanded.
“Jack Carpenter.”
“I’m on the other line. Let me call you right back.”
“Hang up the other fucking line. This is about Sara.”
Long gasped. Maybe no one had talked to him like that in a while. Or maybe he wasn’t expecting me to be getting back to him so soon. I didn’t know and didn’t much care.
“Hold on.” Long went away, then came back. “I’m here. What did you find?”
“Let me ask the questions,” I said. “I need to know what Sara likes to eat.”
“How can this be important?” Long asked.
I looked at the lipstick-smudged napkin still in my hand. Please let this be Sara’s lipstick, I thought. Please.
“Answer the goddamn question,” I shot back.
“All right. Sara’s been a vegetarian since she was in high school. She hasn’t eaten red meat or chicken for years. She’s into healthy organic food, sometimes drives me crazy she’s so picky. Does that help?”
I found myself smiling. “Does she eat fish?”
“Yes, it’s one of her favorite things.”
I had been in a McDonald’s recently, and visualized the menu that hung over the checkout. There were many different sandwiches and burgers. The chance that Mouse had bought Sara a fish sandwich on a whim was slight. More than likely, he’d asked Sara what she liked, and Sara had told him that she wanted a fish sandwich.
“Are you still there?” Long asked nervously. “Please tell me what this means. I have to know.”
Normally, I didn’t share information with clients during investigations. It was a mistake to raise people’s expectations or give them false hope. But I’d brought Long into the process, and didn’t see how I could shut him out without giving him a heart attack.
“One of Sara’s abductors bought food last night at a McDonald’s, and got her a fish sandwich,” I said. “They couldn’t have known that Sara liked fish without Sara telling them.”
“And why is that important?”
“Two reasons. The first, which is the most important, is that her captors aren’t experiencing buyer’s remorse. That sometimes happens during abductions.”
“Buyer’s remorse? What the hell is that?”
“The goods aren’t what you’re expecting, so you get rid of them.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Long whispered.
“The second reason is that Sara’s abductors could have just bought her a burger, and shoved it down her throat. That’s what the majority of abductors do. They don’t care about what their victims like, and just feed them whatever they happen to be eating. Sara’s abductors are different. They asked her what she wanted to eat. That means Sara is talking to them, and has established a line of communication.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It depends upon what the line of communication is,” I said. “If a victim is constantly whining and complaining, then no, it’s not good. In this case, I think Sara has established a positive line of communication, and gotten on her captors’ good side.”
The napkin was still in my hand. One of Sara’s captors had used it to wipe Sara’s mouth after she’d finished eating her fish sandwich. It was as compassionate a gesture as I could envision between a victim and her kidnapper.
“Now I need to go,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
“Wait!” Long said. “I have something to tell you.”
I glanced at Linderman. The FBI agent had his cell phone out and was talking to someone. The frown on his face was so deep it almost looked permanent.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I was just talking with the guy who runs my company,” Long said. “I’ve instructed him to put all of my people at your disposal. That includes my two bodyguards and my driver and my helicopter pilot. They’re yours, if you need them.”
“You have a chopper?”
“Yes. Call me anytime you want to use it.”
Linderman had finished his call and was shaking his head in disgust. To Long I said, “That was smart thinking. I’m sorry I cursed you earlier.”
“I’m used to it,” Long said.
We exchanged good-byes, and I put my phone away. To Linderman, I said, “What’s going on?”
“The Hollywood police just found the van burning in a deserted lot in Hallandale,” Linderman said.
“Any sign of Sara or her captors?”
“Not a trace.”