I’d been straining to identify his voice. I was sure I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place it, muffled and distorted as it was on the cellular phone.
“The letters are in my briefcase,” I said. “Now what?”
“Now,” he said, “if you continue to do exactly as you’re told, you shall have your reunion with young Mr. Duffy.”
“You get the damn letters and I get Ethan, right?”
“If all goes well, Mr. Coyne. It’s up to you.”
L
eave your office this instant,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “I’m going. I’ve got the letters. We’re all set.”
I was standing beside Julie’s desk, and as I talked into the cell phone, I took her phone off its cradle so that it was lying faceup on her blotter. I hit the numbers 911. I didn’t dare put Julie’s phone to my ear. But when I heard the 911 operator’s voice answer, I bent close to Julie’s phone and said into the cell phone, “Ethan Duffy better still be alive when I get there.”
“If you’re not back in your car in two minutes,” said the voice on the cell phone, “you can forget about the boy. Get moving.”
“I believe you,” I said. “I know you’ll kill him. I’m moving.
I hastily printed the words. “Horowitz State Police” on a scrap of paper and left it on Julie’s desk.
As I moved to the door, I heard the voice on Julie’s phone asking for my name.
I didn’t dare say anything else.
I left my office door ajar, exited the building, and headed to where my car was parked on Huntington. I hoped that what I’d said on Julie’s phone would be recorded and the number would be traced. Then if that 911 operator was on the ball, she’d send a police cruiser to check out the office. He’d find the door open, see my note, and contact Horowitz.
As I chattered away on the cell phone, I looked up and down the street. A siren would be disastrous. So would police officers stopping me and asking me questions. My only hope would be to head them off by pointing to the cell phone at my ear, putting my finger to my lips, and hoping they’d get the picture.
A few cars and taxis were gliding along Huntington Avenue, but none of them slowed down to check me out. No police cruisers, no foot patrolmen, no SWAT teams, no helicopters.
I unlocked my car, climbed in, and put the briefcase on the seat beside me. “I’m back in my car,” I said. “I’ve got the letters. Now what?”
“Now you drive,” he said.
I reached under the seat, found my .38, and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I started up the car.
I reminded the voice that I was on Huntington Avenue, heading outbound, and he told me to keep going. Slowly and sedately, he said. And be sure to keep talking.
A minute later when I reported that I was approaching Symphony Hall, he told me to turn left on Mass. Ave. and then take a right onto Columbus Avenue. Then I found myself driving into the heart of Roxbury—not the most hospitable community for a middle-aged white man in a shiny
new BMW to be passing through at two o’clock on a summer morning.
A little way past Madison Park High School, he told me to take a left, and then a right, and I figured he was trying to twist me around and disorient me. He was doing a good job of it. I didn’t remember the last time I’d been in this part of the city. He kept directing me to make lefts and rights, and I found myself traveling on narrow residential streets lined with parked cars and trash barrels. I passed through neighborhoods of three-deckers and brick apartment complexes perched close to the sidewalks. Here and there clusters of young African-American men wearing baggy pants and backward baseball caps were gathered under streetlights, talking and smoking and listening to their earphones. Elderly men sat in twos and threes on their front steps, and when I drove by, they lifted their heads and watched me pass without expression.
I kept glancing into my rearview mirror. I hoped to see headlights a safe distance behind me, traveling at the same speed I was. Following me. Watching over me.
But every time I took a turn, whatever car might have been in my mirror kept going.
After fifteen or twenty minutes, I emerged onto Blue Hill Avenue, which cut through the heart of Dorchester—another Boston community that still bubbled with deep-rooted racial hostilities.
I’d been keeping up a running commentary on the cell phone as I drove. The voice said nothing except when he wanted me to make a turn.
“Franklin Park Zoo on my right,” I told him. “Am I getting close?”
“Patience, Mr. Coyne. Left at the next traffic light.”
And then I was gliding through more neighborhoods, taking lefts and rights that struck me as utterly random.
“That light ahead of you,” he said into the cell phone, “is Washington Street. Go left.”
“Okay,” I said. Then, “I’m on it now.”
“See Murray’s Liquors on your right?”
“No. Wait. Yes, there it is.”
“Just past it there’s a gas station.”
I saw it. There were orange barrels along the street, and piles of dirt were mounded around the island with the gas pumps.
“It appears to be under repair,” I said.
“Renovation, to be precise,” he said. “A major corporation, internationally notorious for oil spills and for the irresponsible disposal of toxic waste, and which spends millions of dollars annually to lobby for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico and in pristine Alaskan wilderness—headed, of course, by its team of fat-cat lawyers—has mobilized its customary arsenal of legal technicalities to squeeze out the local owners of this little neighborhood enterprise, and it is presently closed for renovations. You probably own stock in that corporation, Mr. Coyne.”
“I hope not,” I said.
He chuckled. “How irresponsible is that?”
“What?”
“Not knowing what vile enterprises you support with your investments. It’s all about the money, isn’t it?”
“I never thought of it that way,” I said.
“No, of course you didn’t. You’re a lawyer. That’s not how lawyers think. Okay. Just past the orange barrels there
on the right you’ll see a place where you can turn in. Drive around behind the building. You’re just about there.”
The front of the gas station was lit by a streetlight, but the area in the rear lay deep in shadows. As I pulled around to the back of the building, my headlights flashed on some heavy machinery parked against a ten-foot chain-link fence—a backhoe, a front loader, a bulldozer, a dump truck. There were two steel sheds the size of double-wide trailers flanking a big gas-powered generator, and in the corner stood a portable toilet.
“Park beside the Porta-Potty,” he said.
I did.
“Good,” he said. “Turn off the ignition and step out of the car. Leave your briefcase on the seat. Oh, and you better leave that revolver there, too. We don’t want an accident now, do we?”
I looked around. He was watching me now, for sure, if he hadn’t been all the time.
“You don’t get the letters until I’ve got Ethan,” I said into the phone.
“And you don’t get the boy until I check the contents of your briefcase,” he said.
“Sounds like a stalemate to me.”
“Hardly,” he said. “I will continue to live without those letters. But if I don’t have them, Ethan Duffy will die. That is not my idea of a stalemate.”
“What about me?”
“You, Mr. Coyne, are free to drive away right now. If that’s your choice, I suggest you do it immediately.”
“And if I do?”
“Leave the letters for me and Ethan Duffy’s fate is in my
hands. Hm. I wonder what I’d do.” He chuckled. “Drive off with the letters, and I’m sure your friends with the FBI will drop by to tell you all about it tomorrow.”
I let out a breath. “Okay,” I said. “The briefcase and the gun are on the seat. I’m getting out. Now what?”
“Try the shed on the left,” he said. “Be gentle with the door.”
I went over to the shed. It had a solid steel door and two rectangular windows.
I lifted the heavy latch, pulled the door open, and stepped inside. The sudden odor of gasoline slapped against my face. The fumes burned my nose and eyes. I staggered for a moment as a wave of dizziness hit me. I leaned back against the wall, fumbled for my handkerchief from my pocket, wiped away the tears, and then held it over my mouth and nose.
I looked around. The only light in the shed came from the half-open door and the two windows, and at first all I could see were the shadowy shapes of what looked like stacks of building materials.
Then I heard something . . . a human noise. A grunt or a sob or a groan.
“Ethan?” I said. “Is that you? Are you in here?”
I heard the noise again, a little louder this time. I blinked away the tears in my eyes, then squinted into the murky darkness, waiting for my night vision to kick in.
I heard the moaning sound again, and I followed it to the back corner of the shed. Then I saw him. He was sprawled on the floor leaning against a stack of wooden crates. His chin was slumped on his chest.
It was Ethan.
“Are you all right?” I said.
He lifted his head, groaned softly, then dropped his head. I saw that a strip of duct tape covered his eyes. His wrists and ankles were bound together in front of him, also with duct tape.
I put the cell phone on top of the crate, then knelt beside him and slapped his face gently. “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. It’s Brady.”
He took several deep breaths, then whispered, “Gasoline.”
“I know,” I said. “Are you okay?”
He groaned. “Awfully sick.”
“I’m going to get that tape off you,” I told him. “Brace yourself. Here goes.” I grabbed a corner of the tape that covered his eyes, gave it a quick, hard pull, and ripped it off. Pieces of his eyebrows came off with the tape.
Ethan barely reacted. I wondered if he’d fainted.
“Sorry,” I said. “You okay?”
He looked up at me, blinked at his tears, and nodded. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Then I went to work with my pocketknife on the tape that bound his ankles and wrists. Duct tape is tough stuff, and it was a minute or two before I managed to free him.
When his hands were loose, I gave him my handkerchief, and he held it against his face. For a minute he just sat there, taking quick shallow breaths.
I held my hand over my nose and mouth. Even so, the fumes burned my lungs.
“He soaked me with gasoline,” Ethan said. “He drenched everything. There’s dynamite in here. Be careful. One spark will blow us up.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.
Ethan nodded. “I’m awfully scared.”
The fumes were poisonous. I wondered how many minutes we had before they overtook us. I was feeling dangerously light-headed and nauseated.
“How long have you been in here?” I said to Ethan.
“Don’t know,” he mumbled. “I puked. Awfully dizzy. Must’ve passed out.”
“Come on,” I said. “You’ve got to stand up. Let’s go.”
“I’m wicked sick,” he said.
I bent down, got my arm around his back, and started to haul him to his feet. . . and that’s when the door slammed shut.
An instant later I heard the unmistakable click of a padlock snapping shut on the other side of the steel door.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Ethan. “Keep breathing through the handkerchief.”
I let go of him and went to the door. I couldn’t open it. I slammed at it with my shoulder. It wouldn’t budge.
The effort made me gag. The damp heat in the steel shed was overpowering. I was drenched with perspiration. Another wave of dizziness hit me, and I had to lean against the wall to keep myself from falling down. I pulled the neck of my sweat-soaked T-shirt up over my face, held it tight over my mouth and nose, and took a few shallow breaths. They tasted warm and humid. But the odor of my own body’s sweat and adrenaline was stronger than the smell of gasoline, and after a minute my head cleared.
I went back to where Ethan was sprawled. “He locked us in,” I said.
“We’re gonna die,” he said. “That’s what he does. He kills people.”
“Who?” I said. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “He never let me see him.”
I groped around and found the cell phone where I’d left it on top of the crate. “You got the damn letters,” I said into it. “Now let us out of here.”
All I heard was static.
“Hey!” I yelled into the phone. “Answer me.”
He didn’t answer. Either he’d disconnected, or I’d lost his signal.
The hell with him. I dialed 911.
But there was only static.
I
visualized the arsonist, the murderer, the lawyer-hater somewhere outside. Setting up his video camera, focusing on the shed where Ethan I were trapped, preparing to detonate the dynamite, to catch it all on tape.
“Is there a back door or a trap door or anything, do you know?” I said to Ethan.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I can’t . . .”
He turned his head and vomited.
Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but I felt bile rise in my own throat. I swallowed it back. My head was spinning and my lungs and throat and stomach burned. I was drenched with sweat, and my breaths were coming fast and shallow.
I pulled my wet T-shirt over my face and breathed through it. It didn’t help much.
“We’re gonna die,” mumbled Ethan.
“Nobody’s going to die.” I knelt beside him. “You hear me?”
He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed and his head was slumped on his chest.
I slapped his face. “You’re pissing me off,” I said. I slapped him again. “You are not going to fucking die on me. Got it?”
He blinked and looked up at me. “Okay, Brady. I’m sorry.”
“And stop apologizing all the time.”
He laughed softly. “It’s how I was raised.”
“We’re going to get out of here,” I said. “And you’ve got to help.”
“I just feel shitty. I can’t help it.”
“Stay right there,” I said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I wasn’t feeling so perky myself. I went to the front of the shed and looked up at the two rectangular windows. They were about a foot-and-a-half tall and three feet wide, and they were covered with some kind of screening material. They were a couple of feet higher than my head. Evidently their purpose was ventilation.