F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (39 page)

She stood over her, waiting for her
to get up, but she didn’t move. And as suddenly as it had come, the red
rage was gone.

Poppy turned and hurried back to
Katie. She swept her up in her arms and carried her toward the stairs.

“C’mon honey bunch.
We’re getting out of here.”

She’d parked the truck across
the street in a church parking lot. The place was plastered with no parking
signs but she’d left a note on the dashboard about engine trouble and how
she’d gone to get a mechanic—Please, please, PLEASE don’t tow
me! Risky, yeah, but she hadn’t wanted to get trapped in one of these
multilevel garages if she had to make a fast exit. Like now.

Poppy belted Katie into the
passenger seat and pulled out onto Pacific.

Not sure yet where she was going,
she gunned past the medical center and headed up to Atlantic.

A sign said no right on red there
but she made one anyway, just to keep moving.

As she braked for a stoplight at
Kentucky, she turned to Katie who was still sobbing softly.

“You mad at me for hitting
your mother?” Katie sniffed.

“No. I’m glad. She hurt
me,” she said, holding her reddened cheek. “She always hurts
me.”

“Yeah? Well she ain’t
never hurting you again.”

“That’s what my daddy
said, but she did.”

Your daddy’s not too good at
keeping promises, is he, Poppy thought. If he was, this never would have
happened.

But in a way she was kind of glad
things had gone wrong. It was like a sign.

Poppy didn’t believe much in
signs and all that religious mumbo jumbo, but Jesus, if something was supposed
to be a signal that Katie was better off with her than with her own folks, that
little scene back there in the garage was it. A totally major-league sign.

And that’s fine with me, she
thought, glancing over at Katie. I’ll keep you for the rest of my life.
I’ll raise you just like I’d‘ve raised Glory. You’ll
never have a lonely moment, and you’ll never ever have to worry about
getting hurt.

Jesus, what was it with people?
Kids were supposed to be precious. They were helpless. They depended on big
folks for like everything—food, clothes, a roof over their heads. And
safety. Big folks were here to protect little folks until they could protect
themselves. That was what it was all about. So what kind of a world did a kid
see when she had to be afraid of the very people who were supposed to like
protect her.

She leaned over and ever so gently
kissed Katie’s cheek.

“There. Does that make it
feel better?” Katie stopped sobbing, but the tears looked ready to run
again at any second.

“You still don’t look
too happy. What say we get a Happy Meal the first McDonald’s we see?
How’s that sound?” She nodded and—finally—a smile.

“And I think you could use a
big hug too, Katie. How about it?” Another nod. Poppy snapped
Katie’s seat belt open and gathered her into her arms.

“You’ll never get hurt
again, Katie. I promise you that. From now on you’re gonna have a safe
and happy home. Just like mine.” The truth of that struck her like a
blow. She’d had a very happy home growing up. Things had been iffy in the
money department sometimes, but she’d always felt safe and wanted. And
with her dad having all those brothers, there’d like always been lots of
family around.

And they were still there, still
living in Sooy’s Boot. Maybe they’d take her back. Maybe if she showed
up with Katie and said This is my little girl… this is your brother
Mark’s granddaughter—maybe they’d let bygones be bygones and
welcome her back.

Yeah. Go back to the Pines.
Nobody’d think to look for her there. And even if they did come looking,
they’d never find her.

“Katie,” she said.
“How’d you like to see where I grew up? You want to meet all my
uncles and aunts? I know they’d love to meet you. You wanna do that? We
can—”

The car behind them honked. Poppy
glanced up and saw the light was green. Quickly she belted Katie back in and
started moving.

“Yeah,” Poppy said,
getting more psyched by the minute. “Let’s do that.”
Let’s go home.

Snake was cruising Atlantic Avenue,
mostly because it was big and wide and seemed to be A.C.‘s main drag. He’d
been up and down the side streets all afternoon, looking for a white panel
truck, looking for a woman with a little girl. He’d seen plenty of those,
but none of the women had burgundy hair, and none of the little girls looked
like the package.

He had the Jeep’s radio tuned
to a local station, listening to A.C. news. He wasn’t sure what he was
listening for, but if something relevant happened, he wanted to hear it.

Instead, he heard the Reverend
Whitcomb.

“… and how do we know
President Winston’s really in the hospital for a checkup? How do we know
he isn’t in there to kick a drug habit of his own? Maybe that’s why
he’s so hellfire bent on legalizing this poison!” Suddenly furious,
Snake turned him off.

Idiot! Drugs didn’t put
Winston in the hospital! Snake put him there! He’s not there for detox!
He’s there because of me!

He was crossing Kentucky then, and
glanced left at the sound of a horn.

A red panel truck had stalled at
the light. Same model as he was looking for—too bad it wasn’t
white.

He slowed. Shitty paint job…
almost as if it had been spray enameled.

He checked out the driver. A punky
brunette hugging a little boy with reddish hair. Nothing like what— And
then the brunette turned to check her side mirror and he saw more of her face.

Poppy!

Snake yanked the Jeep into a quick
U-turn that earned him a couple of angry horns—fuck’em—and
gunned it back across Kentucky just as the light changed.

He started out three cars behind
the panel truck, then two. He fondled the Cobra in the front pouch of his sweatshirt.
Nothing he wanted to do more than pull up alongside that truck and Swiss cheese
the cab with all six rounds in the cylinder. And if not for that goddamn tape,
that was what he’d be doing right now, cherishing every pull of the trigger.

But he’d have to delay that
pleasure. And maybe that wasn’t so bad. Delay it until he could truly
savor it. Get wired on the anticipation, then get her where he could look her
in the eyes. Rip off his bandages and show her his wounds.

Look at what you did to me, bitch.
Thought you killed me, didn’t you. But Snake doesn’t die easy.
Snake rose from the dead. You won’t. And then he’d watch her head
explode.

Oh, yes. It was going to be good.
Very good.

But he had to get the tape first.

He focused on the panel truck ahead,
keeping two cars between them. He had her in his sights—all he had to do
now was be patient and wait for the right moment to make his move.

He noticed the Maryland plates had
been switched for Jersey’s and smiled.

A complete makeover, eh. Poppy? New
paint job, new plates, new hair for you and the kid. Think you’ve got
everybody fooled, don’t you. And maybe you do. Everybody but me.

“It’s for you.”
Bob Decker stepped across the trailer office they’d set up as a
coordinating center on a vacant lot off Indiana Avenue. Canney’s voice
came through.

“We found her.”
Bob’s heart leaped. Thank God!

“Katie?”

“Uh, no,” Canney said.
“Sorry. I guess I should have phrased that a little differently. I meant
the woman. We know who she is.”

“Oh.” Bob tried to keep
the disappointment out of his voice. For a moment there he’d thought this
was over.

“Who is she?”

“Poppy Mulliner. She was
picked up twice in New York about three years ago. Once each on shoplifting and
solicitation. Suspended sentences on both. Stayed pretty clean since then.”

“Sure. She moved into
kidnapping.” Bob had listened over and over to the tapes of this Poppy
Mulliner’s calls to Vanduyne, and he’d found it difficult to
reconcile the caring in her voice with someone who’d kidnap a child.

“Looks that way. I got her
photo faxed down and we’re passing it out to everybody we’ve put on
the boards. Unless she’s changed her style, I don’t think
we’ll have any trouble spotting her. A real looker, but weird.”

“Great. Get one over to me
here. Anything else?”

“We’re trying to scrape
up more on her. One thing I can say about her is she’s pretty bad at
keeping appointments.”

Bob glanced at his watch.
“Yeah, I know. It’s three-ten and she hasn’t called.”

“You don’t think she’s
just stringing this poor bastard along, do you?”

Poor bastard is right, Bob thought.
Vanduyne must be going through hell on that boardwalk.

He imagined himself up there,
hanging onto the phone, praying for it to ring…

He was glad he’d joined the
Secret Service instead of the Bureau. He wasn’t cut out for kidnappings.
He was getting emotionally involved.

“Somehow, I don’t think
she is,” he told Canney. “You heard her on the tapes. She ripped
off a drugstore to make sure Katie wouldn’t be without her medication.
Someone who cares that much for that little girl isn’t going to torture
her father.”

“Maybe she cares too
much.”

Bob hadn’t considered that.
“You mean she can’t let go?”

“Wouldn’t be the first
time.”

“Or maybe she spotted us.
I’d hate to think we kept that man from getting his little girl back today.”

“We’re pretty well
camouflaged. The DEA guys Dan set up for us are good at blending in.”

“Let’s hope so.”
Another glance at his watch: 3:12.

Come on, lady. Call. Let that poor
bastard off the hook.

Snake followed the panel truck as
it turned left on Delaware and hit the White Horse Pike.

She’s leaving town, he
thought. Perfect. The thinner the population, the easier this would be.

He hung back for a few miles until
she turned into a McDonald’s in a town called Absecon. He pulled onto the
shoulder across the highway and watched her get on the drive-thru line.

What do I do now?

His aching head crawled with
questions and possibilities. Where was she headed? A motel? The tape could be
in the truck now or back wherever she was staying. If she had a room somewhere,
the best thing to do was follow her there and settle everything at once.

But what if she was heading back to
D.C.? If she got on 95 and didn’t make another stop, he might not get
another chance at her. This could be his last best shot at retrieving that tape.

But how do I work this?

And then Snake realized that the
mother thing Poppy seemed to have with the package—the thing that had
screwed up this whole gig—could be used to his advantage.

He watched a car pull up behind the
panel truck. With another in front of her, she was locked in the drive-thru
lane.

Now or never.

Snake pulled the Cobra from his
sweatshirt pouch, hit the gas, swerved into the McDonald’s lot, and was
already opening his door as he jerked to a stop. He leapt out, yanked open the
truck’s passenger door, and grabbed the kid. In one move he clapped a
hand over her mouth as she started to scream, and pressed the muzzle of the
pistol against her head, careful that no one in the other cars could see.

Then he looked at Poppy who sat
frozen at the wheel, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, gaping at him. She looked
stupid.

Even the mild exertion had made his
head pound harder, but Snake forced a grin.

“Surprise, bitch! I’m
still around!”

Poppy’s mouth worked, but no
sound emerged. She reached for the kid but Snake pulled her back.

“Don’t even think about
it. Just give me the tape.”

“Tape?”

“Don’t fuck with me!
I’ll blow her head off as soon as look at her. And you know it.”

“I-I don’t have
it!” She wasn’t lying. Snake could see the terror in her eyes. She
was damn near paralyzed with fear that he’d hurt the brat.

“Where the fuck is it?”

“I left it—” Her
eyes seemed to unfocus, as if she was trying to remember.

“You got a room somewhere? You
left it in some fucking motel room?” How could she be so goddamn stupid?

And then he realized she probably
had no idea what was on the tape. The truck had no tape player. Where would she
get a chance to listen to it?

“Yes,” she said, her
voice a hoarse whisper. “I left it…”

“Then we’re gonna go
get it!” Snake said. He pocketed the pistol but kept a stranglehold on
the kid. “You lead the way. Me and the kid’ll follow.”

“No!” she cried,
reaching for her. “Please?‘

Snake yanked the kid out the door
and carried her toward his Jeep. He glanced around—couldn’t see
much with only one eye—to check if anyone was paying much attention.
Probably looked like a family spat. One thing he knew for sure: Poppy
wasn’t going to be calling the cops.

The Jeep door was open, the engine
still running. As he lifted the kid to push her inside, a weight suddenly
slammed against his back. A high, insane screech filled his ears as fingers
reached around from behind, raking at his eyes, the good one and the bad one,
yanking at the bandage.

Had to be Poppy—could only be
Poppy—but it was like being mauled by some wild animal.

Snake shouted as bolts of pain
spiked through his right eye socket. He forgot about the kid. Suddenly the most
important thing in the universe was to get those fingers away from his eyes,
from his head. And then something—a fist, an arm—whacked the right
side of his head square on his sutured scalp wound. Not a powerful blow, but it
might as well have been a sledgehammer.

The explosion of pain drove him to
his knees, retching as the world rocked and spun.

Dimly through the roaring he heard
a child crying, heard Poppy saying, “Come on, baby. I’ve got
you,” then retreating footsteps.

She was getting away, but it was
difficult for Snake to care. He had to cling to the pavement, fearing
he’d tumble off the whirling earth if he let go.

Panting, trembling, more afraid
than she’d ever been in her life, Poppy dropped Katie in the passenger
seat, slammed the door, then ran around to the driver’s side. As soon as
she got behind the wheel, she yanked it hard to the right, jumped the
drive-thru curb, and roared out of the lot.

As she hit the highway she realized
that maybe she should have taken the time to run over Mac and put him out of
their lives for good.

Too late now. Just get away, go,
put miles and miles between them.

Screw the seat belt—she
hugged her sobbing, trembling Katie against her as she sped west along 30.

“We’re getting out of
here, honey bunch. Don’t you worry about that man. We’re going
someplace safe, Someplace where no one’ll ever bother us.” Jesus,
that had been close!

Mac… here in A.C. How?

He wanted a tape! What tape? The
only one she could think of was that cassette she’d tossed out in
Maryland.

What could be on it that—?

Aw, who cared? The reality was that
she couldn’t lead Mac to his tape, and that he’d do something
hideous when he realized that.

She’d been paralyzed by the
sight of that pistol against Katie’s head. And she’d almost died
when he pulled her out of the truck and started dragging her away. She’d
known right then if he got Katie into his Jeep, she’d never see her again.

That was when she’d stopped
thinking. Some blind, crazy instinct took over and she’d found herself
racing from the car and leaping onto Mac’s back, making animal sounds as
she clawed and pummeled him with everything she had.

She still wasn’t sure what
had happened back there, but the important thing was she had Katie.

About a mile down the road she got
a bad case of the shakes but didn’t dare stop. Finally they passed, and
suddenly she was exhausted. She wanted to cry. How much more of this could she
take? How much longer could she keep this up?

But she couldn’t cry right
now. Not in front of Katie. Poor thing needed to feel safe, and how could a
blubbering wimp make you feel safe?

Fine, she thought. But how do
I
feel safe?

Especially after Mac had found her
here. He shouldn’t have even known she was in A.C. She’d told only
one person.

Katie’s father.

The jerk. Who else had he told
beside Katie’s psycho mother? What a family! Good thing Katie was going
to stay with her from now on. Poppy had a good mind to— She glanced down
and saw the rented cell phone on the seat.

Yeah… why not? She had the
number of that pay phone. If Daddy was still waiting, she’d give him a
well-deserved piece of her mind.

Bob Decker paced the cramped
confines of the coordinating trailer. 3:42 and the woman hadn’t called.

Bob was going stir crazy in here,
but poor Vanduyne he had to be going through hell up there on the board walk.

The door at the far end opened and
Gerry Canney stepped in amid a blaze of afternoon sunlight. He wore bicycle
pants and a tank top. With his blond hair and muscular arms, he looked like a
surfer. Almost. He needed a tan.

“Don’t you look
comfortable.”

Canney smiled. “I’m
undercover, don’t you know.” He waved a sheet of paper. “More
info on our friend Poppy. She’s a Joisey goil. A native.”

“That makes two of us.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Grew up just this side
of the George Washing ton Bridge in a place called Hackensack.”

Canney shook his head;
“Hackensack… Sooy’s Boot. Weird names you’ve got here.
But how come you don’t sound like you’re from Joisey?”
Canney’s bad accent was beginning to get on Bob’s nerves.

“Because hardly any of us say
‘Joisey’ unless they were transplanted from Brooklyn.”

“If you say so. Our friend
Poppy sounds like she was transplanted from the South. Instead, she was born in
Sooy’s Boot, En-Jay.”

“Sooy’s what?”

“Boot. Sooy’s Boot.

“Never heard of it.”

“Neither did any of the maps
I checked out. Found a Sooy Place, but that’s not the same. Finally had
to call Trenton. Even they had a tough time, but they finally located it
northwest of here. Closest town to it on any map is a place called Chatsworth.”

“You got me there too.”

“Somewhere north of Wharton
State Forest. Looks like it’s in the woods—deep in the
woods.”

Bob suddenly had a flash. “In
the pines. I’ll be damned—she’s a Piney.”

“What’s that?”

“Means she grew up in the
Pine Barrens, a huge forest that takes up most of the center of the
state.”

“A Piney, huh?”

“Yeah. Not always a
compliment. Sometimes it’s used as the New Jersey equivalent of redneck
or hillbilly, which probably isn’t too far off, from stories I’ve
heard. Pineys have been connected with inbreeding, bootleg liquor stills, and—”.

“Hey!” said Harris from
his seat in the corner by the monitoring equipment. “The phone just
rang.” He pulled off his headphones. “She’s on!”

“Put her on the
speaker,” Canney said. “And start that trace.”

“Thank God,” Bob
muttered.

But his growing sense of relief was
stalled by the angry tone that suddenly filled the trailer.

“You’re a real jerk,
you know that?” The woman’s words—John recognized her
voice—hit him like a blow to the head. He struggled for something to say.

“Is… is something
wrong?” That sounded so lame— of course something was wrong.
“Is Katie—?”

“Yeah, Katie’s
fine—except for a slapped face. No thanks to you. Daddy.” She spat
the last word.

“A slapped face?” His
stomach turned. “Oh, no. You didn’t—”

“Me? You stupid Appleton! I
wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head! But your wife—now that’s
totally another story!”

“My wife? Mamie? Oh,
God!” How’d she get involved in this? Had she got hold of Katie
somehow? The very thought made him ill. “She… she’s not my
wife. We’re divorced.”

“But not so divorced that you
don’t tell her about our A.C. plans?”

“I didn’t tell her.
She—”

“Yeah, well, I thought
it’d be safe to let Katie go with her mother, but then I see her
clobbering the poor kid. So I let her have it. But Mommy was the least of
Katie’s problems today. Mac showed up.”

“Mac?”

“The guy who snatched her in
the first place. He tried to get her again.”

“No!”

“Yes! You been talking when
you weren’t supposed to be. Daddy. And you been talking to all the wrong
people. It’s like you put up a billboard saying: ‘I’m getting
Katie back this afternoon in A.C.’ Well, let me tell you something.
Daddy. You ain’t. I’m keeping her. She’s better off with me
than with you and that bitch who’s supposed to be her mother. I sure as
hell know she’s safer.” John felt as if the boardwalk was crumbling
beneath him.

“No, please! You don’t
understand! I—”

“Cut the broken-heart act.
Daddy. You blew it. And you got no one to blame but yourself.”

“Poppy, please! You’ve
got it all wrong! Let me speak to Katie. Just once. I…” Something
had changed on the line. “Hello? Hello?” The line was dead.
She’d hung up.

John leaned against the phone
stand, feeling as if he were about to explode with grief. But another emotion
was mixing in…

“You been talking when you
weren’t supposed to be, Daddy. And you been talking to all the wrong
people…” But that wasn’t true. He hadn’t told a soul.

But that didn’t mean someone
hadn’t been listening.

“You blew it. And you got no
one to blame but yourself.”

No… not true. Someone else
was to blame. And he had a pretty good idea who.

And now the new
emotion—anger—began edging out the grief.

He still had a sweaty grip on the
handset. He lifted it and spoke through teeth clenched so hard that his jaw
ached.

“Did you get all that.
Decker? Is it all on tape? Then get this: I’m going back to my room.
I’m sure you know where it is. I want to see you there. If you
don’t show up, I’ll come looking for you in D.C. Face me now or
face me later, but one way or another, you’re going to explain
this.” He slammed the handset back into the cradle.

Bob Decker winced at the harsh
click echoing through the trailer.

Harris cut the speaker feed as
Canney turned to him. “Ouch.”

“Shit,” Bob said.
“What else can go wrong? We lost Vanduyne’s ex—who somehow
found Poppy Mulliner when we couldn’t. We can’t find this guy Mac
or Snake or whoever he is, but apparently he managed to find Poppy too.
We’ve got all these men running around and we haven’t had so much
as a glimpse of her. Dammit!”

A few minutes ago he’d been
fantasizing a triumphant call to the presidential suite at Bethesda, informing
Razor that his godchild was safe and he could head for The Hague free of guilt.

Now…

“How are you going to handle
Vanduyne? Stonewall him?”

Bob shook his head. “No. He
has a right to know. I’ll go see him.”

“You want me along?”

Bob smiled. “For
protection?”

“Don’t knock it.”
He pointed to the speaker. “That sounded like one angry man.”