Little Girl Gone (27 page)

W
HO
wants the last slice of pepperoni?” Max asked.

“Me,” Bagin said. He gazed across the conference room table at Afton, put a hand to his mouth, and stifled a burp.

“Go ahead and take it,” Afton told him. “In fact, you're welcome to it.”

It was practically nine o'clock on Friday night. Afton, Max, Thacker, Jasper, Bagin, and a half dozen others had hung around police headquarters, talking nervously, waiting for Darden's phone to ring, finally ordering out for pizza.

Darden sat at the far end of the table, looking miserable. He didn't eat; he didn't talk to any of the others; he just stared at his cell phone as if willing it to ring.

It hadn't.

For the second time in two days, techs had attached a microphone and miniature tracking device to Darden's clothing. They'd debated at length about fitting him with a tiny camera, but had decided against it.

Privately, Afton feared that the kidnappers might have abandoned their original plan to collect a ransom. She worried that the Darden baby might have died, accidentally or otherwise, so there wasn't going to be a phone
call. But here she was, just the same. Waiting, hoping to beat the odds, sweating bullets along with the rest of them.

“You should go home to your kids,” Max said. He'd told her that twice already, as if she were the only person in the room who had kids at home.

“They're fine,” Afton muttered. “Why don't you go home to yours?”

Max shrugged. “It's snowing outside, you know?” Four inches had filtered down this afternoon. More snow—an even larger and more dangerous weather system—was already barreling through the Dakotas and heading their way.

“Yeah,” Afton grumbled. “It's snowing. Tell me something I don't know.”

Max held her eyes for a few moments, and then broke off his gaze. He knew she was just as invested in this case as he was. Just as frustrated by the lack of inertia.

Another twenty minutes crept by. Detectives, FBI agents, and uniformed officers came and went. They made urgent, whispered phone calls, rattled candy wrappers, slurped coffee, and tried not to alarm Darden any more than they already had.

Darden, for his part, was not holding up particularly well. No longer looking like a male catalog model for Brooks Brothers, he was dressed in blue jeans and a droopy plaid shirt. He was also chewing his fingernails ragged, muttering to himself, and taking endless trips to the men's room.

Privately, Afton thought Darden might be ready to crack. It had been forty-eight hours since the first phone call had come in from the kidnappers. And there'd been nothing since. She suspected his nerves were pretty much frazzled.

Bagin tossed a half-gnawed hunk of crust into the pizza box, where it clunked loudly and bounced a few crumbs around. He flipped the lid closed, and then stood up slowly and stretched. Reached down and scratched his belly.

Max lifted an eyebrow. “You got a personal problem?” he asked.

Bagin slid a hand up and touched the area just below his throat. “I think that damn pizza gave me a case of heart—”

And that's when the phone rang. Not any sort of melodic ring tone, but a shrill, startling ring. A ring that said,
Okay, boys and girls, time to pull it together and get down to serious business.

Darden stared at his cell phone as if he couldn't believe what was happening. As if an inanimate object had suddenly started speaking to him.

There was a flurry of officious footsteps and then Thacker's voice barked out, “Answer it.”

Darden reached gingerly for his phone and pushed the On button.

“Hello?” he croaked. He sounded like a ninety-year-old man who'd lived in a cave for the last ten years.

Thacker snapped his fingers for everyone to shut up. He wanted Darden to answer the phone, listen carefully, and ask a few gently rehearsed questions. The cell phone had been adapted so that any conversation would be recorded. They would all hear the call in its entirety in a matter of minutes.

Darden bowed his shoulders forward and said, “Yes, I understand.” There was more conversation on the other end of the line and he said, “Okay, but it's going to take me a while to get there.” He listened some more, his mouth going slack. “Absolutely.”

When he hung up, he looked like he'd been sucker punched in the gut.

“We gotta listen to the call!” Max boomed.

They all raced down the hall and crowded into a smaller room, which held a myriad of audio and video equipment. Dick Boyce, the tech guy, hit a button on a piece of equipment and the conversation crackled to life.

“Hello?” They were hearing Richard's voice, just as they had a few moments earlier.

“Listen carefully, Mr. Darden,” came a male voice. “If you want to get your baby back alive, you are to drive to the corner of Sims and Weide in Saint Paul. Do you understand?”

Afton frowned. This wasn't what she'd been expecting. She'd thought that the doll lady or the pizza guy would be calling. This was a man, same as the other night, with a fairly cultured voice. What was going on?

“Yes, I understand,” came Darden's voice.

“Bring the two million dollars,” said the voice. “When you arrive, you will be given further instructions.”

“Okay, but it's going to take me a while to get there,” Darden said.

“Come alone. No police.”

“Absolutely.”

*   *   *

WAS
this the same guy who called the other night?” Thacker asked. Everyone was clustered around Darden, staring at him as if he were a class biology project.

“I think so.” Darden coughed and cleared his throat. “I'm pretty sure it was.”

“This person sounds very controlled,” Jasper said. “This is a guy who's thought things through rather carefully. He's not going to be easy to deal with.”

“Shouldn't I get moving?” Darden quaked. He looked terrified, like a man about to face a firing squad. At the same time, he seemed anxious to be on his way with the ransom money. To get it over with.

That was when the mad scramble began. Everyone started talking at once while the tech guys double-checked the tiny tracking devices and microphones attached to Darden's clothing.

“I still think we should put a camera on his jacket,” Thacker said. “Maybe stick it on his lapel?”

“You sure you want to do that?” Max asked.

“Positive,” Thacker said. “We need eyes. We can't take any chances.”

“We're already taking chances,” Afton said. To her, job one was getting Elizabeth Ann back safely. After that, she didn't care if they shot the kidnapper with a high-powered rifle or dragged him to jail behind a fleet of squad cars.

But Thacker and Jasper were explicit in their plans. Darden had his tracking device, as well as a broadcast mike and a miniature camera. They wanted to know what was happening every second of the way. Vehicles carrying the FBI and two SWAT teams would follow Darden closely on
parallel streets, and a helicopter would track his every move from overhead. The Saint Paul Police Department was standing by on alert, ready to jump in if needed.

Afton pulled Max aside. “What are we going to do?” In all the planning and furor, they hadn't received a definite assignment. In fact, they'd effectively been sidelined. Everything was now in the capable hands of the FBI and the MPD hostage and rescue professionals.

“We'll go, too,” Max said in a low voice as they slipped down the hall. “We'll tuck in behind the FBI and SWAT guys.”

*   *   *

DO
you think the caller was the same guy from the other night?” Afton asked.

“Darden thought so,” Max said. He was driving his Hyundai, following five minutes behind the dark, unmarked car that carried Jasper, Thacker, and Bagin.

“So who is he? I mean, it's not the doll lady and he's obviously not the kid I tangled with, the one we suspect is the pizza guy.” Afton hung on for dear life as Max drove full bore down I-94. He was hitting speeds of almost seventy miles an hour, blowing past cars and trucks that crawled along tentatively on the snow-clogged freeway. Had they passed the unmarked car carrying Thacker and company? Maybe not. That car had been going like a bat out of hell, too.

Max's knuckles were practically white from his death grip on the steering wheel. “There must be three kidnappers, working in concert.”

“Doesn't feel right to me.” Afton fiddled with the radio equipment they'd been issued. Besides Max's police radio, they had a special radio that was linked directly to Darden's microphone. It would allow all parties concerned to listen in on any commentary that Darden made. More important, it would let them eavesdrop on his face-to-face confrontation with the kidnapper.

“Nothing feels right to me,” Max said. “Turn up those radios, see if anybody's saying anything yet.”

Afton did. But Darden remained silent. And the police radio just carried
the usual squeal. She peered through the windshield. “Damn, this snow just keeps coming down.”

“More tomorrow,” Max said. “Weatherman is predicting some kind of superstorm. They're saying maybe eight more inches.”

“Think this will all be over by tomorrow?” She meant a resolution to the kidnapping, not the bad weather.

Max stared straight ahead, fighting the wind that buffeted his car back and forth, trying desperately to stay in his lane. “I don't know.”

As they swept through Spaghetti Junction, the multifreeway tangle that cut through downtown Saint Paul, Afton said, “Thacker and Jasper and the rest of those guys probably got off at Sixth Street, right?”

“Had to,” Max said. “That would be the logical way. That's how we're going to do it anyway.”

They circled around the off-ramp and popped out on West Seventh Street. A Super America station was straight ahead; a warehouse sat directly to their right.

“Where are they?” Max asked. He scanned both directions, sounding surprised that they hadn't bumped up on Thacker and Jasper's tailpipe.

“Maybe we passed them. You were driving pretty fast.”

“Huh.”

“Darden was instructed to drive to Sims and Weide,” Afton said, consulting a hastily printed map. “In what's known as East Saint Paul. That would mean a left turn. Here on West Seventh. Then heading across a couple of bridges.”

“I don't know,” Max said. But he turned north anyway, heading toward Payne Avenue. They passed Red's Savoy Pizza on their left and shot across a freeway bridge.

Afton couldn't remember the last time she'd been over on this side of Saint Paul. The labyrinth of streets, the lack of sequential numbering, the lack of familiar landmarks made everything seem foreign. A former celebrity governor had once complained that Saint Paul's streets had been designed by “drunken Irishmen.” His pronouncement—while crude and not terribly politically correct—wasn't all that far off base.

“Where the hell are we?” Max muttered. His windshield wipers were struggling to keep up.

“Careful,” Afton cautioned. “We don't want to overshoot anybody.” What she really meant was,
We don't want to overshoot Darden and blow everybody's cover.

“Now what?” Max asked, clearly flummoxed. “You're the one with the map.”

“Left. Hang a left right here. We need to go up Payne Avenue.”

Max made the turn and swept north again, the whole of Swede Hollow Park, dark and deep, just off to their right. “Now what?”

“Now pull over,” Afton said. “Because Darden just started talking.”

Max pulled over to a curb that was delineated only by a huge ridge of plowed snow. “Hope we don't get stuck,” he grumped. Saint Paul snow removal was often sketchy at best.

Afton goosed the volume on their communications equipment. “Shush. Listen up.”

They put their heads together and listened.

Darden was talking now, his voice sounding low and cautious, giving a kind of play-by-play for the benefit of the FBI and SWAT teams.

“Okay, I just pulled up at the corner of Sims and Weide,” Darden said. “There's not a living soul here that I can see. Just a few houses, not many lights on. One quadrant of the intersection leads off toward a playground, although it's covered with snow. I think maybe a ball field.” He hesitated. There was the sound of his car door snicking open. “I'm getting out now.” There were slight crunching sounds. “Nothing. I think this might be . . . Wait a minute.” Now they could hear his breath sounds, hoarse and a little panicked. “I hear something.” More crunching. “There's a phone ringing. A pay phone over there.” Now there was wild excitement in his voice.

“Holy crap,” Max said. “That must be the last pay phone left in existence.”

“Kidnapper really plotted out the route,” Afton muttered.

“Hello?” Darden had answered the ringing phone, his voice high and reedy. “Yes,” he said. “I know where that is.”

There was more crunching and then the sound of his car door opening and closing. When he was safely inside, Darden said, “Same voice. This time he told me to head over to that old nightclub by the Wabasha Street Caves. I'm supposed to look around the parking lot for a pop can. Inside is supposed to be another set of directions.” He swallowed hard, and then said, “I hope you guys are listening in because this feels very dangerous. Like I'm walking into a trap.”

“We're listening,” Afton said, even though she knew Darden couldn't hear her.

Max shook his head. “This is like a bad scavenger hunt that . . . Oh, holy shit.”

“What?”

“I'll bet the kidnapper is leading him toward those old beer and mushroom caves.”

“It'd be hard for SWAT to follow him in there,” Afton said.

Max pounded a fist against the steering wheel. “No, it's going to be damn near impossible. That's a terrible place. Those caves are dug right into the hillside. You've got a bluff that rises nearly eight hundred feet high above them and is nearly impossible to scale. And the Mississippi River dips within fifty yards of those caves. It's mostly dense woods along there. There are no streets . . . no lights . . .”