“How did you persuade her to do something so stupid and dangerous?”
“Persuade her? She volunteered! Every time I tried to warn her, she just raved about how much fun she was having! She was digging up dirt on everyone. I asked her just to find out who was angry with John, but then she got this bee in her bonnet about Walter D’Agnosto, who is a very senior partner, and who runs the money end of things. She is very sure he’s been stealing funds that are routed through him. She said she had printouts that would prove it. I tried again to warn her, but she just laughed and hung up on me, and I was scared to call her back at work for fear someone might figure out what she was up to—I made no secret of it that I went there to find another suspect in John’s murder. Mike, I want to talk to her, can I talk to her?”
“Sure, you can chat away all you like, but she won’t hear a word you’re saying. She’s unconscious, remember?”
“Are you sure she’s going to be all right? How long has she been here? When did you check on her last? I want to go ask at the desk, all right?”
“No, stay in that chair. I’m not done with you yet. She hasn’t been here two hours yet. I’ll go see if she’s awake. Now listen to me, you stay put, you hear?” He pointed a finger at her as if it were a pistol.
“All right, yes.”
He went out, closing the door sharply, as if to remind her that she was not to open it. She rubbed her upper lip, trying to get her whirling brain to settle down and think.
Maybe it was one of those chance things, some rapist picking a victim at random? Where did he wait for Susan? Parking ramps had a reputation as places criminals lurked.
Wait a minute. It had been nearly ten when Mike called, and nearly ten thirty before she came in here. Mike said Susan had been here “not two hours yet.” That meant she’d been picked up off the street some time after eight. She worked until five. Where had she been for three hours? No matter who had grabbed her and thrust her into the trunk of his car, he hadn’t been driving around the Twin Cities for three hours. He could have been in Duluth in three hours, or halfway to Chicago in that amount of time. Why hang around here, when there’s a person you want to lose? Even if the purpose had been rape, it wouldn’t take three hours to find a place to take her.
Maybe David Shaker and Walter D’Agnosto were in an illegal partnership, and one had to wait for the other to show up.
Maybe the grab had been an impulse and now the grabber had to think up a complex plan.
No, neither of those sounded right. If you wanted to get rid of someone, the idea was to get rid of them, not drive around with them in the trunk. That was even more dangerous than leaving them alone. Attorneys could always think up excuses for anything short of being actually caught with a body in the trunk.
Betsy had, for awhile, been a fan of the television show
Cops,
and had been greatly amused at how people reacted when drugs were found in their cars. “That’s not mine,” they’d universally say. Even when a cop would reach into a pocket and find drugs. “That’s not mine.” One had gone so far as to insist the underwear the drugs were found in were not his, either.
Not my car—was that going to be the defense?
Where was the car? Had it been stopped? Was the driver in custody?
Suddenly Betsy had more questions for Mike.
The door opened, and he was back, the answer to her prayer. She stood.
He raised a hand against her questions. “She’s still unconscious, though they think she may start waking up soon. They’re pretty sure she has a concussion, and you know what that means.”
“I do? No, I don’t.”
“People who wake up with concussions don’t remember how they got them. They lose at least a few minutes and more often several hours of memory.”
“So even if she saw her attacker, she may not be able to remember him?”
“Very likely she won’t remember him.”
She sat down again. “Mike, do they have the car she fell out of?”
“No. Someone was driving behind when she came out, she almost ran over your friend. She had a cell phone, and called for help.”
“Susan must have been conscious to have opened the trunk. Did she tell the woman who stopped anything?”
“Nothing useful. She just said, ‘Help me.’ The witness said the car Ms. Lavery fell out of was silver, that’s all she remembers about it.”
“Mike, I was thinking—”
“Always a dangerous thing.” He grimaced and turned his face away, then back. “No, that’s not true. I apologize. What were you thinking?”
“She gets off work at five. She fell out of that trunk at what, eight? After eight? Where was she taken from? Did she work late? Was she in the parking ramp? Her driveway at home? Oh, and where’s her little boy?”
There was a special note of urgency in that last question, so Mike answered it first. “He’s with a neighbor, he’s fine. She’s taken him in before. She’ll get him off to school in the morning with her own kids—they go to the same school.”
Betsy gave a little sigh of relief. “Good,” she said.
“Now, about the other questions. We have retrieved tapes from cameras in the parking ramps near where Ms. Lavery works—I don’t suppose you know where she normally parks? Or what kind of car she drives?”
“No,” said Betsy, unhappy that she couldn’t be helpful.
“That’s all right,” said Mike genially, glad to prove his side superior in this matter. “We have other sources. One will be able to tell us so we can look for her car when we run the tapes.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s good. But it’s odd that someone thought to drive around for hours with her in the trunk, isn’t it? And not going somewhere—or is that true? Where was the car when she fell out?”
“On Cedar Avenue near Lake Street. Only a block from a police station, as it happens.”
“Going toward or away from the freeway?” asked Betsy. Cedar Avenue going north ran directly into—your choice—35W going north or 94 West.
“North.” Mike nodded. “I’d say he was headed out of town.”
“I think that means he’d picked her up shortly before that,” said Betsy. “I don’t know where Susan lives. Is it anywhere near Cedar Avenue?”
“Not really. It would be much quicker to go from her house to 494 than to take city streets all the way over to Cedar.”
“What’s in the area where she was taken?”
“Now, we don’t know where she was taken from. Could be miles from where she fell out.”
“But not from downtown, surely. I mean, you can get from Cedar Avenue going north to a quick exit back downtown. If he was coming
from
downtown, he’d be going south.”
A twinkling sound came from Mike’s suitcoat pocket, and he pulled out a cell phone. “Malloy here,” he said into it. He listened for awhile. “Fine, that’s good,” he said at last. “Right, I’ll keep you posted.”
He folded the phone up and put it back in his pocket. “Susan Lavery drove a two-year-old Nissan, dark blue. She always parked it on level three or four of the Marquette Avenue Ramp. We have videotape of her getting into her car and driving away at five-fifteen this evening. So she wasn’t taken from work. I think that points away from either of the two people you think might be suspects in this kidnapping.”
“Possibly. It also might show he has the brains not to take her from a place that could put suspicion on him.”
“Or,” said Mike, “it could mean she was taken by chance, by a stranger.”
“True. But does either David Shaker or Walter D’Agnosto have a silver car?”
Mike smiled tightly. “As it happens, they both do. Shaker has a silver BMW, and D’Agnosto has a silver Audi.”
Betsy smiled admiringly back, acknowledging that Mike was, after all, a professional police investigator, not some low-IQ jerk. He also had the resources of several law-enforcement jurisdictions behind him. That could get things done in a hurry. “Well done,” she said.
“Now, what we need to do next—”
The door opened, interrupting him. A man in white scrubs stuck his head in. “Sergeant Malloy?”
He turned. “Yes.”
“We think Ms. Lavery is about to regain consciousness.”
“I’m coming, too,” announced Betsy.
Mike sighed, but shallowly. “All right.” As they started out the door, he asked, “What’s in the bag?”
“My knitting.”
This time the sigh was deeper.
Susan lay perfectly flat on her hospital bed, a heart monitor beeping on one side, something clear drip-dripping from a plastic bag down a tube that led to a needle taped to the back of her left hand. Her head was wrapped in cloth with strands of that uncommonly-red hair poking over and under it. Her eyes were closed—the lids looked swollen, somehow—and there were scrapes on her left cheek and forehead. Her left elbow was bandaged, with a betadine stain visible a little above it. A thin woman, it was hard to see the shape of her under the sheet and coverlet; she might just have been a chance set of rumples.
“Ooooh,” said Betsy softly, coming up to the bedside.
Mike went to the other side, and the doctor went to stand beside him. “Speak to her,” said the doctor to Mike, but Mike looked at Betsy.
“Susan, can you hear me?” There was no response, and Betsy reached under the coverlet for her right hand. “Susan? Susan, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”
Was there the merest movement in those long fingers?
“Susan, it’s Betsy Devonshire. You’re in the hospital, but you’re going to be all right. You’re safe here. Can you open your eyes?”
Betsy bent over the still form. Susan’s eyes fluttered, but didn’t open, and her lips moved as she appeared to be trying to say something. Betsy leaned closer.
“I believe she’s singing!” said Betsy. She turned her ear toward Susan’s mouth and listened hard. “She is singing, it’s . . . I don’t know.”
“Uh,
uh,
uh-uh-uh uh uh,” sang Susan very quietly.
Mike Malloy, his head near Betsy’s, chuckled, startling her. “It sounds like the theme they play at the Olympics,” he said.
“You’re right, that’s what it is!” said Betsy. “Susan, are you singing the Olympic theme?”
The song stopped, and Susan’s eyes opened. Betsy found herself staring into those big green depths from a distance of about four inches and hastily straightened. “Hello, Susan,” she said. “I’m here, and a police sergeant named Mike Malloy, and Doctor er—”
“Dr. Behr,” said the doctor.
“Dr. Behr,” finished Betsy.
Mike stepped aside while the doctor became professional with Susan, looking into each of her eyes with a little flashlight, taking her pulse, asking her to wiggle her toes.
“Hi,” murmured Susan at him, wiggling obediently.
“Glad to have you with us,” he replied, smiling at her.
When he was finished, Betsy asked, “Do you remember what happened?”
Susan thought briefly. “I guess not,” she said. She was speaking quietly, not at all like her normal ebullient self. “Last thing I remember, I was exercising.” She frowned. “My head hurts. Did I fall? Did someone drop a weight on my head?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Mike.
She moved her head slightly so she could look at him. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Sergeant Mike Malloy, I’m with the Excelsior Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Susan looked at Betsy. “Are we in Excelsior?”
“No, HCMC in Minneapolis.”
Susan nodded and winced. “Good, I didn’t think Excelsior had a hospital. I am in a hospital, right?”
“Yes, Hennepin County Medical Center.”
“Good. Otherwise, you have very peculiar taste in bedroom furnishings.” She looked over at Dr. Behr. “Who’s he?”
“Doctor Behr. He works here at the hospital.”
“All right. What happened to me? My head hurts.”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said Betsy. “You were riding around in the trunk of a car, and somehow opened it, and fell out.”
“I was not—” she began indignantly. “Oh, wait a minute, the handle glows in the dark, but I had to use my toes.” She moved the hand Betsy was holding. “How’d that happen?”
“How did what happen?”
“My hands were fastened together. Behind me.” She moved slightly, but as if to replace them behind her back.
“Lie still,” said Dr. Behr.
“Who are you?” she asked, frowning at him.
“My name is Dr. Behr,” he explained, just as if he hadn’t already answered that question. He looked at Mike and then Betsy. “Short-term memory problems, common in concussion.” He leaned toward Susan and said, “You were injured when you fell out of a car. You are at the Hennepin County Medical Center, and you are going to be just fine.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Susan. “Where did he go?”
“Where did who go?” asked Betsy.
“The man who put me in the trunk. Where did he go?”
“Do you know who it was who put you in the trunk?”
Susan frowned. “No.” Then she smiled. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“I forget.” She said this sadly, looking slightly ashamed for forgetting. Her eyes closed. “Tired,” she explained, and fell asleep.
Twenty-four
BETSY sat in the chair with the cushioned plastic seat and back, knitting. She was on the second sleeve of the entrelac sweater, decreasing every three rows as she neared the end. All she had to do after this was the knit two, purl two ribbing around the neck, sleeves and bottom. It was then she realized she hadn’t brought along the gray silk yarn she’d selected for the ribbing. Well, never mind. She put it away. The sweater had been fine, except for all those picked-up stitches. She disliked picking up stitches, there didn’t seem to be any rule for doing it properly, you just reached in there and grabbed.
Malloy had gone down the hall for more vending-machine coffee. How he could drink that stuff was beyond Betsy.
On the bed, Susan sighed deeply and opened her eyes. She saw Betsy, blinked once or twice and said, in a rusty voice, “Well, hello there.”