Voodoo Ridge (15 page)

“Crocodile Dundee it is. Now, if you would, please do me a favor and put her on the phone.”

“You’re not dictating terms here, mate. I am.”

“Put her on the phone or this conversation’s over.”

I was bluffing. The last thing I wanted him to do was hang up on him. But if I’d learned anything as an operator, it was that the minute you surrender authority to a killer or kidnapper early on in any negotiation is the minute you’ll always wish you could take back.

“Fine,” he said, “have it your way.”

A jumble of noise filled my ear—scratching sounds and agitated voices, muffled, like Dundee had put his hand over the phone. I heard him say, “Say hello.” Then I heard Savannah.

“Hello?” She sounded tentative and afraid, like she’d been crying.

“Don’t worry, baby. You’re gonna be fine. I promise you’ll be home before you can even—”

Dundee was back on the phone.

“Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

My whole body shook with rage. I took another breath and let it out slowly.

“You harm so much as one hair on her head, and I swear, after I find you, and I
will
find you, you’ll beg for death before we’re finished.”

He laughed dismissively. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, Mr. Logan. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

I could’ve told him the same thing, but I didn’t.

“What do you want?”

“You’ll be delivering a package for me,” Crocodile Dundee said. “By air. In your airplane.”

“What’s in the package?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Deliver it where?”

“We’ll get to that, mate. Right now, you only need to know three things: if you talk to the cops, your lady friend dies. If you tell anybody else about our little arrangement before it’s concluded, she dies. If you tamper in any way with the package to be delivered, she dies. Do we understand each other?”

I gritted my teeth.

“Affirmative.”

“Excellent. Now, here’s how it’ll go down: the package’ll be waiting for pickup at a predetermined location in the Lake Tahoe area. I will send you a text message with the location. Your phone can receive text messages, yes?”

“I assume so. I’ve never tried texting.”

“Then I’d suggest you practice beforehand. If you do not pick up the package within ten minutes of my text, or I smell a hint of bacon in the area, your lady friend dies. We clear?”

“Yes.”

“After you’ve picked up the package, you’ll receive another text. It’ll instruct you where to fly, the drop-off point. If the package doesn’t arrive within half an hour of the specified time of delivery—”

“—My lady dies. Yeah, I get it. When, exactly, are you hoping to pull off this operation? Because nobody’s flying in this weather.”

“The snow’s forecast to let up tonight. Clearing skies the rest of the week. You should be airborne by tomorrow afternoon at the latest, no worries.”

“You mind my asking a question?”

“You don’t get to ask questions, Mr. Logan.”

“What did it feel like to murder that kid from the airport? Was it worth it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, mate,” Crocodile Dundee said with a nervous little chuckle.

Then he hung up.

He knew exactly what I was talking about. He also knew exactly what he was doing. Whatever it was he’d removed from that airplane and committed murder over, was evidently so precious, or dangerous, that he wanted to minimize his risks at getting caught with it by having someone else transport it for him. With law enforcement officers watching the roads, what better way to get away with the goods than by air?

I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself meditatively, but it did no good. I wanted to kill Crocodile Dundee more than I ever wanted to kill anybody. I wanted to rip out his throat the way I’d been trained, to jam my thumbs into his eyes and implode them like hardboiled eggs. True Buddhists, even in their darkest moments, harbor no such fantasies. I didn’t care. He’d kidnapped my woman, terrorized her gentle soul.

He would pay for that with his life.

I
DROVE
through the cold and snow, back to the bed-and-breakfast, hoping to find Deputy Streeter to see if he’d gone to question Preston Kavitch, but his Jeep wasn’t there. With nothing better to do than foment vengeful thoughts, I parked on the street with the engine running, my phone in hand, and attempted to send Streeter my first-ever text message.

My fingertips were too big for the tiny keypad. I kept misspelling words—when the phone’s infuriating autocorrect function wasn’t misinterpreting them for me. “At Tranquility B&B, need to speak with you ASAP” became “At tranquility choice Neemm too spew Witt you’ll,” followed by, “Bees to speak with youth,” followed by, “Am tranquilizer B&F I homered to spa why you!” Whoever dubbed them “smart” phones must’ve been pretty stupid. It took me five attempts before I finally was able to hit “send.” Streeter responded almost immediately.

“En route your loc 7 min ETA.”

Welcome to the Technology Age, Logan, where the telegraph has become the preferred method of human communications.

Streeter arrived exactly seven minutes later, pulling in behind me. I turned off the engine, stepped out of the Yukon, and got into his Wrangler.

“Got your voice mail,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. Crazy day. We got the preliminary autopsy results back this morning on Chad Lovejoy. Looks like Mr. Lovejoy got tapped with a .40-cal, three rounds. We got some good plaster casts, shoeprints leading away from the plane, before the snow covered them up. Fairly unusual tread design.”

According to Streeter, law enforcement records showed that Chad Lovejoy had done two tours in the less-than-loving embrace of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He’d logged sixteen months at Chino on an intent-to-distribute cocaine beef, and another year at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison for residential burglary. He was on parole at the time of his murder.

“How does a two-time loser land work at a high-end airport like Tahoe?”

“His uncle’s Gordon Priest,” Streeter said. “Priest is the manager at Summit Aviation Services.”

“I already know that. Did you talk to him yet?”

Streeter shook his head. “We’re still putting a list together. Lovejoy ran with a pretty sketchy crowd, given his arrest record. He had no shortage of ‘friends’ who would’ve slit his throat for a nickel. We’re talking to them first.”

“What about Preston Kavitch. You talk to him yet?”

“Soon as you and I are done here.” The deputy wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “What was so important, you had to talk to me A-SAP?”

Part of me, a big part, wanted to fill him in on the call I’d received from the man calling himself Crocodile Dundee, but I knew doing that would likely doom Savannah. Well-intentioned though they may be, few rural law enforcement agencies have the expertise to bloodlessly resolve real kidnappings. The track record of federal law enforcement isn’t much better, which was why I wasn’t about to fill in the FBI, either, not with the prospect of special agents flooding Lake Tahoe in their raid jackets and black Chevy Suburbans. The German army marching into Paris was only slightly more conspicuous.

“You wanted information on the locked-down FAA file,” I said.

“You got something?”

I filled him in on the downed airplane’s apparent ties to the CIA.

Streeter’s eyes lit up. “The CIA? In El Dorado County? Oh, man, that’s
awesome.”

“If it were my investigation,” I said, “the first thing I’d do is try and establish whatever it was that was in that crate. You nail that down, you find out where a thief might fence it. You establish the market, you establish the market’s primary players. Then you start squeezing. Hopefully, they lead you to your killer.”

“Not to pry or anything,” Streeter said, “but you seem pretty familiar with the process.”

I opened the passenger door and got out.

“If I hear anything else, I’ll let you know. Lemme know if Preston says anything worthwhile.”

“I’ll tell you what I can,” Streeter said.

I started back for the Yukon.

“Mr. Logan?”

I turned.

“We’re gonna do our best to find her and bring her back to you safe.”

I tried to thank him or at least smile. It would’ve been the civil thing to do, but I wasn’t feeling all that civil.

A
MOTEL
room is a motel room. All I really cared about was whether the shower produced hot water and the bed was reasonably free of parasites. The thirty-six dollar a night Econo Lodge on Lake Tahoe Boulevard would more than do until I heard back from Crocodile Dundee.

Savannah would’ve rolled her eyes at the prospect of spending five minutes in such a room, let alone all night. The art that decorated the room—reproductions of badly composed landscapes—would’ve commanded her attention. The paintings were bolted to the walls. Why, she would have wondered aloud, would anyone in their right mind even
think
about stealing such tacky art? She might’ve made some snide remark about the floral print bedspread, and how humans occasionally have been known to spontaneously combust rubbing up against that much polyester. She would’ve accused me of being tight with a buck for having booked us into such a room, while I, in turn, would’ve accused her of being spoiled by her daddy’s oil money. Then we would’ve thrown the bedspread on the floor and made intense love. Entwined and wholly spent after that, we would’ve pondered our future together and that of our child. All would’ve been perfect in our world. For a while, anyway.

A burning, acidic pain traveled up the back of my throat from somewhere deep beneath my sternum. Standing in the hallway, card key in hand, surveying my new temporary digs, I felt something wet on my cheeks and reached up to wipe it away, surprised by my own tears. The last time I’d cried about anything was, well, I couldn’t remember the last I cried.

I took a shower, toweled off, trimmed my beard, put on clean clothes, rearranged the hangers in the closet, lay down to nap and couldn’t, paced, did push-ups, gazed out at the snow, forced myself to watch television. Anything to stop staring mindlessly at my phone on the bathroom counter where I’d plugged it in to recharge, waiting for it to ring.

A little dog with a high-pitched yap was barking and whining in the room above mine. I turned up the TV. Five minutes of channel surfing produced nothing that held my interest beyond a few seconds of the Ellen DeGeneres Show—and only because it occurred to me how much Ellen resembled Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

The barking upstairs grew louder, more incessant. I cranked up the volume. Then somebody next door started pounding in protest on the wall. I fantasized about putting my fist through the Sheetrock and teaching whoever was on the other side a lesson in potential life-saving etiquette: never pound on the wall of any motel to complain about the noise because you never know whether it’s harmless, hard-of-hearing gramps on the other side of that wall with
Wheel of Fortune
turned up too loud, or members of the Manson family. I turned off the TV, grabbed my phone, threw on my jacket, and left.

Walking through the motel’s parking lot toward my car, I looked up and saw the faintest hint of blue sky before the windblown clouds reclaimed their domain. Crocodile Dundee had been right about the forecast; the snow seemed to be letting up somewhat. If all went according to his plan, I’d be airborne in the morning. One step closer to getting Savannah back.

I needed to know as much about him as I could—his motives, his capabilities, everything and anything that might afford me an advantage if and when we crossed swords. Nowhere, it dawned on me as I pondered what limited resources were available to me in snowy South Lake Tahoe, offered more knowledge than a public library. There was a small one just off Lake Tahoe Boulevard, about a mile and a half west of the motel. I’d noticed it while searching for Savannah earlier in the day. I fired up the Yukon and drove over.