Buster jumped into my car and I drove to the address Burrell had given me.
Ten minutes earlier, a 911 call had come from the Happy Days motel in east Davie. According to the caller, a customer had tried to leave without paying his rent, and the motel’s owner had confronted him in the parking lot. A fistfight had ensued, with the owner getting his nose busted and some teeth loosened. The customer had gotten away.
As 911 calls went, no big deal. People skipped out on their motel bills all the time. What made the call notable were two things. It had come two minutes after Burrell’s interview on FOX had aired. And the customer in question had been driving a Jeep Cherokee.
By exceeding the speed limit and running several red lights, I made it to the Happy Days in five minutes flat. Had I been able to make my car fly, I would have willed it to do so as well.
I pulled into the Happy Days’ lot with tires squealing. A police cruiser was parked in front of the manager’s office. A man with a bloodied face leaned against the cruiser, giving a statement to a beefy uniformed cop with a bored look on his face.
I parked and got out with my dog. The uniform shot me a look that said not to interfere. I approached him anyway.
“I’m Jack Carpenter,” I said. “Detective Burrell sent me.”
“Who?” the uniform asked.
“Candace Burrell. She runs Missing Persons. With your permission, I’d like to case the place.”
The uniform scratched his chin. It was a known fact that the local police did not look for high IQs when fielding new hires. Occasionally, someone smart slipped through the cracks, but the majority of the officers were like the big lug standing before me.
“Well, okay. Just don’t touch anything,” the uniform said.
“I won’t,” I replied.
I did a quick tour of the grounds. The motel was an L-shaped building with a sagging roof line and window AC units. It was painted tropical pink, the color washed out by the sun. Twelve units faced the street, each with a car parked in front.
Something didn’t feel right. Normally when the cops were called to a disturbance at a motel, people came out of their units to see what was going on. Not here.
I walked around to the back of the motel. A dozen more units faced a retention pond. Each of these units had a car parked in front as well. I banged loudly on several doors, but no one answered.
Then it hit me what was going on. The Happy Days was a hooker hangout, or what cops called a hot-bed joint. It was against the law for motels to rent by the hour, but that hadn’t stopped the practice. There were streetwalkers in every one of these rooms, and they weren’t coming out unless the doors got knocked down.
One room did not have a vehicle parked in front. It was at the very end of the building, and its door was ajar. I rapped on the door frame.
“Anybody home?”
I pushed open the door with my toe. The interior was darkened, and I found the light switch on the wall, and flooded the interior. The room had a king-size bed and some junky pieces of furniture. I stared at the pieces of white rope tied to the bed frame that had been used to hold Sara Long captive.
My breath caught in my throat as I entered.
– – I quickly inspected the room. The TV was turned onto FOX, the volume a whisper. On the floor in front of the TV was an open box of Animal Crackers. I glanced inside the box without touching it. It was filled with crumbs.
The closet and under the bed revealed nothing. The garbage can by the door was more helpful. It contained take-out bags from Burger King and McDonald’s. I dumped the bags’ contents on the floor and unfolded the wrappers. Mouse and the giant seemed to exist on a diet of greasy hamburgers and french fries, while Sara continued to eat fish sandwiches.
I checked the bags for sales receipts. I was guessing that Mouse had purchased the meals from drive-throughs. Many fast-food restaurants employed call centers to process their drive-through orders, and these centers used hidden cameras to snap photos of the driver placing the order, along with the driver’s license plate number. If I was lucky, a receipt would lead me to the license for Mouse’s vehicle.
The bags did not contain any receipts. I cursed under my breath.
I inspected the bathroom last. It was the size of a phone booth, and just as inviting. The walls were peeling paint, and the shower stall looked like a science experiment gone bad.
Buster brushed past my leg, and stuck his head into the garbage pail beneath the sink. I pulled his head out of the pail, and found two items. The first was a cotton swab covered in blood, the second a plastic syringe with the needle still attached. The blood was fresh, and had not congealed. Every piece of information was helpful in an investigation, and this was no exception. Either Sara was being drugged, or one of her abductors was an IV drug user. Or they both were, and shared the same needle.
I brought the pail into the bedroom, placed it on the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed. I called Burrell on my cell phone, and heard her pick up.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Stuck in my office,” Burrell replied. “The switchboard has gotten fifty phone calls from drivers on their cells who’ve spotted suspicious Jeep Cherokees. I’ve got half the cruisers in the county tracking them down.”
“Tell the cruisers to concentrate on the Davie area,” I said.
“Why? What did you find?”
“They were at the Happy Days motel, and took off. I’m sitting in their room. They left the ropes they used to tie Sara to the bed.”
“Do you know which way they went?”
“No.”
“How about the color of the Jeep Cherokee, or any distinguishing features, like a missing hubcap or a dent.”
“I’ll go ask the motel manager. You need to send a CSI team over here and have them check out the room they were staying in. They left lots of evidence behind.”
“Will do. Call me back once you know something.”
I hurried from the motel room. Outside, I nearly collided with an overweight Hispanic woman pushing a cleaning cart. She was heading for the room I’d just left. My wife was Mexican, and I knew enough Spanish to carry on a conversation.
“You can’t go in there,” I said in Spanish.
“Gotta clean up the room,” she replied in broken English.
“Leave it alone.”
“We got to rent it out again. Boss’s orders.”
She started to enter the room. I pulled a business card from my wallet, and shoved it into her face. Then I drew my Colt, and showed it to her in a nonthreatening way.
“I’m with the police,” I lied. “Stay out of the room.”
“Okay, okay,” she said.
She left. She would probably return once I was gone. I went into the room, and snatched up the garbage pails and the box of Animal Crackers. Walking to the front of the building, I found the slowwitted uniform sitting in his cruiser, filling out a report.
“Where’s the motel manager?” I asked.
“In his office. He decided not to file a complaint.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“He suddenly got amnesia.”
“You need to put the heat on this guy. A woman’s life is in danger.”
The uniform continued writing his report. I’d planned to give him the evidence so he could turn it over to the CSI team when they arrived, but he impressed me as someone who might just toss the stuff away.
“Do you mind if I go talk to the manager?”I asked.
“Be my guest.”
I put everything I’d found into my Legend along with Buster. Then I entered the motel manager’s office. The room was small and stifling hot. I rang the bell hard.
The manager appeared from the back with a Scotch in his hand. He wore his hair slicked back like a mobster, and sported a pencil-thin mustache. His face was busted up, with a little purple pig below his left eye.
“I need to ask you some questions about what happened,” I said.
“I already told you-I didn’t see nothing,” the manager declared.
“You called in the make of the car they were driving, a Jeep Cherokee. Did you bother to write down the license plate?”
“Nah.”
“What color was it? You must remember that.”
The manager took a swig of his drink and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Look, it’s over. I don’t want any more trouble.”
“Listen to me. Those guys were holding a young woman hostage in their room.”
“It’s a sick world.”
No longer being a cop had its advantages. For one thing, I didn’t have to respect people’s rights, especially when those people had just crawled out from beneath a rock. Reaching across the counter, I grabbed the manager’s shirt and lifted him into the air. His teeth chattered in his skull as I shook him.
“You’re hurting me,” the manager cried.
“I’m just trying to jog your memory.”
“I remember now!”
I dropped him on the counter without letting go of his shirt. His drink hit the floor. “Start talking,” I said.
“I think it was black. Or maybe navy blue,” the manager said.
“Make up your mind.”
“Okay. It was navy blue with tinted windows. Hadn’t been washed in a while. The rear bumper was dented, and someone had keyed the driver’s door.”
“Which way did they go after they left your motel?”
“Right.”
“You mean west?”
“Yeah, they headed west. I ran into the street after them. I wanted my money, you know? The driver was heading toward 595.”
I released his shirt and patted him on the head.
“See how easy that was?” I said.
I went outside. The uniform was long gone. I called Burrell and got voice mail. I left a message and asked her to call me back. After a few minutes had passed, I started calling the other detectives in Missing Persons whose numbers were in my address book.
On my last try, Detective Rich Dugger picked up. I had hired and trained Dugger. With his school-boy face and calm demeanor, he could extract more information out of a witness than any cop I’d ever worked with.
“Hey, Jack, what’s shaking?” Dugger asked.
“I need to speak to Burrell. Any idea where she is?”
“She’s racing down the shoulder of I-95. I’m in a car behind her.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s a Jeep Cherokee in the median, and the driver is refusing to get out. Two highway patrol cars have the vehicle surrounded, and traffic is backed up in both directions. We think it’s Sara Long’s abductors.”
It was not uncommon for vehicles to pull into the median on I-95 when they had mechanical problems. “What’s the color of the Jeep in the median?” I asked.
“I’m driving on the shoulder, and can’t see the car yet,” Dugger said.
“The manager at the Sunny Days motel made the getaway vehicle. Sara’s abductors are driving a navy blue Jeep Cherokee with a dented rear bumper and a scratched driver’s door.”
“Shit! Now the traffic’s stopped dead.”
“Can I make a suggestion? Climb onto the hood of your car, and try to see the Jeep that’s stuck in the median.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll call you right back.”
The line went dead. I let Buster out of the car, and watched him chase his shadow. Finally my cell phone rang. It was Dugger calling me back.
“The Jeep in the median is blood red. It’s not them,” Dugger said.
“You need to turn around and get everyone back here. Sara’s abductors are heading west on 595.”
“I can’t. The highway patrol officers are pointing their guns at this guy. We’ve got to deal with this. Later.”
Again the line went dead. Sara’s abductors were in Broward, and I couldn’t get a cop to help me find them. I kicked my front tire in anger, then jumped into my car.