Reflex (28 page)

What do I want to do with him?
She thought about dropping Padgett in D.C. and calling the FBI but she wasn't sure that would help get Davy back. There were certain things that the FBI
couldn't
do when interrogating a prisoner. Of course, legally, nobody could do those sorts of things, but Millie, at this point, was willing to break the law—she just wasn't sure she
could
hurt anybody.

Well, she wasn't sure she wanted to struggle with the injured Mr. Padgett, even if he was bound hand and foot. She thought about the inhalant in the apartment.
Right.

She gave up on the respirator pretty quick. Padgett's face was larger and a different shape than hers and no matter how hard she clinched the mask straps, it still leaked.

"Okay," she said aloud. "Better not to have to carry the weight, anyway."

She jumped back to Padgett and found him wiggling across the lawn.

Can't be
that
injured.
She took hold of the belt around his ankles and tugged.

He yelled.

Oops. Perhaps he is.

"Ankle?"

He swiveled around and bared his teeth at her. "Bit of trouble with my knee." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "Bitch!"

She looked around to see if anyone was responding to his yell. No one yet. "Really, Mr. Padgett. Language!" She stooped and grabbed him by his upper arms. He was too big for her to pick up, but she thought if she held on hard enough... She took several deep breaths, then jumped into the condo.

He yelled again when he found himself on the floor of the living room and she wasn't sure if it was surprise or she'd wrenched his knee again. She wasn't going to open her mouth to ask, either.

Padgett shut his mouth almost immediately and she could tell he was holding his breath. Even without breathing, the harsh reek of the anesthetic reached her nostrils. She doubted that Padgett could hold his breath very long after yelling as he had. She released him to slump onto his side.

Millie felt the need to breathe herself, nothing desperate, yet, but she'd known her destination. She reached across Padgett and tapped his upper stomach with the heel of her hand in the same place she'd previously kicked him. The air left him in a spasmodic gasp and he began wheezing again, then coughing.

She jumped back to the Aerie and took a deep breath, but the anesthetic that swirled around her was still strong enough to make her dizzy. She took several steps away from where she'd appeared before breathing again.

So, how much oxygen is in the condo?
Had Padgett displaced all the air or was the anesthetic mixed in? She wanted him unconscious but she didn't want him dead.

She looked at her watch. When she'd entered the condo unaware of the gas, it had taken less than a minute to render her unconscious.
I'll give it three minutes.

She jumped to the swimming hole. That's what she called it, anyway. It was a deep pit a few miles from the Aerie with a spring-fed pool in its bottom, a small island in the center. In the beginning of August, when the sun beats down on El Solitario like a hammer upon a forge, Davy would jump her there to swim. The water was cold and clear even in the hottest afternoons.

Davy had mixed feelings about swimming there. His first use for the pit had been to deposit aircraft hijackers. One of them had been wearing a bomb and blew himself to chunks, which Davy had laboriously removed. Later, Davy had imprisoned Brian Cox and Rashid Matar, the man who'd killed his mother, on the island. It was also here that he'd finally stood up to his father.

But, then again, that was ten years past, and since that time there'd also been many lovely summer afternoons, swimming naked and doing things that had very little to do with swimming and everything to do with being naked.

It was cold in the pit and dark, the high rock walls cutting out the moonlight. You could hear the wind blowing above, whistling though the rocks among the rim, but down here the air was still. There were hard, glinting stars directly above, and the western lip of the mouth of the pit caught a sliver of moonlight, but down on the bottom it was like the poem by Henley:
Out of the night that covers me Black as the pit from pole to pole.

She took several deep lungfuls of air, then held her breath before returning to Padgett at the condo. He was limp, his mouth slack, drool dripping down his cheek. She put him on the island in the pit and, using a flashlight, emptied his pockets, and patted him down. She found a thinner automatic pistol in a second holster inside his waistband at the pit of his back. She stared at it like it might bite her, then searched him all over again, before unlocking the handcuffs.

In the light of the flashlight, lying slack-jawed on the cold sand, he looked pathetic.

She covered him with an old sleeping bag.
Oh, well. I can always give him to the FBI if this doesn't work.

Back in the Aerie she popped her lips percussively as she examined her booty. "P-ilfering P-adgett's P-ockets Pr-oduces P-ossible P-ath to... to—"
Well, clues and shit.

His pockets contained a very sharp serrated single-bladed knife; a set of keys, which included an Enterprise Rent-A-Car key, a Schlage key of the kind commonly installed in the residential doors at her condominiums, and the handcuff key she had already used; six hundred and seventeen dollars in cash held together by a money clip; assorted loose change totaling sixty-three cents; and a thin leather wallet containing a Great Britain photo driver's license bearing Mr. Padgett's face but not his name, an American Express Card, a bank card, and a health insurance card. All the cards bore the name of one Robert Maurice Burke.

Well, Mr. Padgett, I suppose if I'd just shot an FBI agent, I'd avoid using my own name, too.

There was also a cell phone that had three telephone numbers stored in the recent call activity and nothing in the programmed memory.

Two of the numbers were in the 405 area code that included Stillwater, but she didn't recognize the exchanges. The 405 also included Oklahoma City, too, though. The first phone number had a 508 area code.

Where did I see that recently?

She scrambled back to where she'd dropped her dirty clothes on returning from Ten Thousand Waves. The yellow sticky she'd taken from the briefcase in Bochstettler and Associates was in the front pocket of the jeans. The area code was also 508. In fact, the area code and the exchange of both numbers were the same.

It was now after midnight on the east coast. She yawned and thought about Padgett, lying on the cold sand. Once the anesthetic wore off, which had probably already happened, he'd be pretty uncomfortable. If his knee truly was injured, it would be difficult for him to sleep.

Good.

She blinked, surprised at herself.
I had not thought myself such a
wicked
person.

But she must be for she fell asleep within minutes of putting her head on the pillow and not a thought was spared for the discomforts of Mr. Padgett.

She briefly checked on her prisoner in the early morning, peering at him through binoculars from above, on the upper rim of the pit. Sometime in the night he'd stirred himself enough to climb into the sleeping bag and zip it shut. The sandy island was poorly lit by reflected light, but she finally determined that, though his eyes were closed, the sleeping bag rose and fell with his breath.

She sighed with relief and put the binoculars back in the Aerie.

Her next stop was an internet café on the upper west side of Manhattan, where, by doing an area code/exchange search, she found out that the phone numbers in question were for Edgartown, Massachusetts. A query at a mapping website showed her that Edgartown was one of the townships on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
Oh, yeah. Davy and I bicycled there once. We had fried clams at that clam shack, uh, The Bite.
That was in Menemsha, on the other end of the Island.

She zoomed way out on the map until both Cape Cod, Nantucket, and a large chunk of mainland Massachusetts and Rhode Island were visible.
The two ambulances were abandoned in New England. One at Logan in Boston. One in Rhode Island.
Each was only a few hours from the Vineyard, though there was the ferry to consider. But they could've used a private boat or a private aircraft.
Or stuffed him in a car trunk.

On the chance that either of the numbers was a commercial listing, she searched on the entire ten digit number. The one from Padgett's cell phone came up nil but the number she'd found on the yellow sticky belonged to the Edgartown Golf Club. She looked at the sticky again. "egc tt 9/2 2:30." EGC-Edgartown Golf Club. Her father had golfed. TT-Tee Time? September 2, 2:30 P.M.

She felt a stab of disappointment. A golf date eight months previous. Why should it mean anything.

When all you have is straw, you clutch at straws.

She called from D.C., using her cell.

She got a voicemail system telling her that the course was closed for the season and would not open until the first of June and, as the course was a members-only facility, guests must be accompanied by a member. Then it gave her the option to talk with the facilities manager by pressing one.

"Tom here."

"Hello, my name is Nancy Burquist. I'm a bookkeeper assisting Mr. Kelledge's tax accountant."

"And who might Mr. Kelledge be?" Tom's voice was pure Yankee Vineyard. She hadn't heard the accent in years but it came right back to her.

"Mr. Kelledge is the executive director of Bochstettler and Associates in Washington D.C. I'm trying to straighten out some of his expense reports." She sighed loudly. "He's being audited by the IRS."

The voice sounded mystified and mildly irritated. "And what would that have to do with the Edgartown Golf Club, Miss?"

"He played golf there, apparently. I've a record for a tee time last September the second for two-thirty in the afternoon. Don't know if you keep records that far back, but I need to know who he was playing with so my boss can justify the greens fee and cart rental to the auditing agent."

"Well, I might be able to find that. It won't be under Mr. Kelledge's name since I'm sure he's not a member. Can you give me a few minutes? I'll have to get last year's binders out of the cabinet."

"Take as long as you need. You're really doing me a favor."

Tom was back in two minutes. "You're lucky. We've already thrown out the first half of last year. You said September second?"

"Yes. Two-thirty."

She heard him flipping pages. "Here we are. Two-thirty—a foursome. Simons, Oh, my. Mr. Simons. Mr. Lawrence Simons."

"I don't recognize the name."

"Uh." Tom's voice changed, became more breathy, jovial. "Ah, I was mistaken. That was three-thirty. The two-thirty slot is for Jones. Hmm. Don't know which one, we have several in the club."

She frowned. "Could you fax me that page?"

The joviality drained from Tom's voice. "I'm afraid not. I should've remembered that it's against club policy to reveal this information. A violation of member privacy. You'll just have to ask your Mr. Kellog which Mr. Jones."

"Kelledge."

"Whatever. We're very busy here. Good-bye." He hung up without waiting for a response.

She went back to the Aerie and searched the tape archive for a jump site in Edgartown but the closest she could find was that spot in front of The Bite in the tiny village of Menemsha, on the other end of the island, almost as far as you could get from Edgartown and still be on the island. She went back to Manhattan and bought more computer time. A simple internet search revealed hundreds of Lawrence Simons but adding the search term Martha's Vineyard or Edgartown came up blank.

Still, it's an island. How far could it be?

MapQuest told her—15.21 miles.

She bought coffee and a bacon-and-egg sandwich at a deli around the corner from the internet café before jumping back to West Texas. Padgett was awake. He was seated at the water's edge, wrapped in the sleeping bag, and one bare leg stuck out from under the bag and lay in the water, wet to above the knee.

Millie shuddered. It must be like ice. She fetched the binoculars from the Aerie. The knee was definitely swollen, even without the distortion of the water. She returned the binoculars and fetched a bottle of ibuprofen.

She jumped down to the island, a good ten feet behind him, and put the coffee and bag down silently. She jumped to the rim again and, judging the distance, she tossed the plastic bottle of ibuprofen down. It hit the water two feet in front of him, splashing spray across his shirt and face.

Padgett jumped and swore as his leg splashed water into his lap. He looked up, but Millie had jumped to the far side of the rim and was now watching through a gap between two rocks.

Padgett picked the bottle out of the water and was peering at the label. He dumped several onto his palm and sniffed it. He put one of the pills on a rock and used another rock to crush it into powder, then used a wetted fingertip to taste the powder.

Millie tossed a rock, this time, to thud onto the ground behind him, near the Styrofoam cup and the foil-wrapped sandwich.

Padgett jerked his head around, his hand going to a fist-sized rock beside him. Millie wasn't sure, for a moment, that he'd spotted the food, but then he began scooting gingerly across the ground on his good leg and his arms, and she was satisfied.

On Martha's Vineyard, The Bite was closed for the season, and the wind eddied down Basin Road and cut through the sweater and button-down-shirt she wore like they weren't there. It really was above freezing, she assured herself, but the air was damp and harsh. She went back for Davy's leather jacket, gloves, and a hat.

Back on Martha's Vineyard she took the Route Four bus to West Tisbury. She had to wait almost an hour, there, to catch the Number Six down-island to Edgartown.

Here, the wind was worse than in Menemsha, fresh off Nantucket Sound and buffeting her as she walked. Looking across the mouth of the harbor toward the Chappaquiddick side, she could see good-size waves pounding onto the beach there. Where she stood, on Water Street, the wind whipped between buildings and carried stinging droplets that tasted of salt.