Rough Draft (39 page)

“You know Abraham Ackerman, the senator?”

A white gull landed at the fifty-yard line and stood watching the mowers crisscross the field.

“Democrat from New York. That one?”

He nodded. Then he told her the rest. His meeting in New York last weekend, the hired killer who murdered the senator's daughter Joanie, the same killer who would be dispatched to murder J. J. Fielding. Hannah as bait.

When he finished they sat for a moment in silence. Hannah's face was hot and tingling. She could feel the prickle on her neck, hairs standing stiff.

“Did you do this, Frank? Set this up?”

He shook his head.

“I was invited along for the ride at the last second, an afterthought I'd worked the Fielding case, I knew you, I know Miami, they thought I was a good fit.”

“I see.”

One of the mowers was headed for the gull, but the white bird just stared at the big red machine and didn't move.

Frank said, “Helen Shane put it together. About the same time Ackerman started making a fuss, stomping around in Director Kelly's office, those videotapes from Maude Fielding arrived in the mail. They wound up on Helen's desk, and I guess she was intrigued. So she took a closer look at the file we had on J. J. Fielding and apparently she found some letters you wrote back then to the Bureau, complaining about me, that I hadn't followed through on all your suspicions about Fielding. Those letters were in the file and Helen saw how passionate you were, how certain you were it was Fielding who killed your parents. So, bingo, she came up with the idea of hooking you into the operation. Dangle Fielding in front of you, and you in front of Hal Bonner. The operation runs exactly seventy-two hours, the length of the tapes. Bonner sees Fielding is dying. He gets desperate, afraid he's going to miss his last chance at the guy and the money. Then when he makes his move, we step in and nab him.”

“Only he didn't make a move.”

“Oh, I think he was here and we didn't recognize him. He got scared off, now he's gone.”

The mower came to a halt a yard in front of the white gull. The man revved his engine but the gull refused to yield his spot on the green field. The man waved his arms but still the gull did not budge. The man on the other mower stopped nearby and was laughing at the spectacle.

“And you went along with all this, Frank? You thought that was a fair trade? Risk the life of a civilian and her son so a U.S. senator could have his revenge? You thought it was
okay to bring this monster, Hal Bonner, into my life and my son's life?”

“I went along with it, yes.”

“And the person who took a shot at me? What was that about?”

He shook his head.

“I don't know, Hannah. The car was a rental. It was stolen from some tourist, a European.”

“Which country?”

“I don't know. Norway, I think.”

“A tourist from Norway?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Do you have a name for this tourist?”

“I didn't ask for a name,” Frank said. “Why? Why's that important?”

“It probably isn't. Probably just a coincidence. My ex-husband is from Norway.”

“Randall's father.”

“That's right. His name is Pieter Thomasson. We're in the middle of a messy legal fight over visitation rights.”

“How messy?”

“Not messy enough for him to take a shot at me. He's a coward anyway. A bully with no guts. His specialty is preying on underage girls.”

Hannah stared at the field for a moment.

“What about the guy last night, Frank? The one who tried to drown you, was that the killer Ackerman's looking for?”

He shook his head again.

“He fit Bonner's description. But no. Hal murdered someone this morning in Nashville, Tennessee. Apparently he never took the bait. Operation Joanie is closed down.”

“As of when?”

“This morning.”

“I was just watching Fielding on the Internet a couple of hours ago.”

“I suppose they haven't gotten around to shutting down the broadcast site. Everyone rushed off to Nashville.”

The man on the mower inched forward until he made the gull hop aside, then he mowed the patch of grass where it had been standing. As soon as he passed on, the gull hopped back and took possession of his plot of earth again. Territorial stubbornness. Must have been an alpha gull.

“And how was I, Frank? Was I good bait? Did I do my part as expected?”

“You vastly exceeded expectations,” he said.

“I'm so glad I could help.”

She stood up.

“And last night, that little intimate moment in your room, was that part of the operation? Was that your role, Frank, seducing the bait?”

Frank stared off at the field.

“If you couldn't tell that was real, nothing I could say would make any difference.”

She squeezed past him and headed down the stairs.

In the movies, he would have called out to her and she would have stopped and turned around and they would have had a parting exchange, something poignant or enigmatic, some last dramatic milking of the moment. But as she descended the stadium stairs, all she heard was the mowers, those big blades shaving the grass to perfect flatness, so that next Saturday boys in sharpened cleats could gallop up and down that field and have their fleeting chance at glory.

It was two-twenty when she pulled up to Pinecrest Middle School and parked the Porsche behind a big blue SUV. A couple of mothers waved at her and Hannah waved back.

She got out of the car and marched up the sidewalk, scanning the line of vehicles for Gisela's white Bronco. But she didn't see it anywhere. Gisela was supposed to pick up Randall after school and take him back to Hannah's and wait there till Hannah arrived. Gisela Ortega was always fifteen minutes early for every appointment, always had been. But not this afternoon. Hannah walked to the east end of the school and didn't see her Bronco anywhere.

She was heading back to her car when the dismissal bell
rang and the children began pouring out of the side doors, racing across the playground. Hannah walked back to the main gate, boys and girls swarming around her, the crossing guard halting traffic so the first wave of children could cross the street.

Inside her purse, her cell phone rang.

Hannah stood at the front gate watching the children whoop and skip and run toward their afternoon freedom. She dug the phone out, flipped it open.

Her hello was met with silence.

She was about to snap it shut when the voice spoke in her ear. She recognized it, but couldn't place it for a second.

“Hannah Keller?”

“That's right.”

She thought she saw Randall coming across the playground. A blond boy about his size hidden among a crowd of slightly taller kids. She moved in his direction.

“We have your kid,” the girl's voice said.

Hannah was craning to her left, but the blond boy wasn't Randall. He was shorter, thinner, happier.

“You hear what I said? We have your fucking kid and you're not going to see him alive again unless you tell us where J. J. Fielding is. Did you hear me?”

Hannah pressed the phone hard to her ear. She stood still among the streaming children.

“Did you hear me, Hannah Keller? You hear what I said? We have your goddamn precious little boy. You go to the police, he's dead. You don't tell us where Fielding is, he's dead. If Fielding dies before we get to him, your kid dies. You got that?”

She couldn't seem to fill her lungs. Her knees were spongy. All around her was the chatter of children, reunions between mothers and children.

“Let me speak to him,” Hannah said. “Let me speak to my son.”

She continued to scan the sea of children. The rush was dwindling now. Maybe this was another part of the hoax, Operation Joanie's final phase. Maybe Randall was there
among the last children straggling out the doors. But it was a short-lived thought. The voice in her ear said, “He's not talking. He's gone mute on us.”

“Put him on,” Hannah said. “Give Randall the phone.”

Hannah heard the girl muffle the receiver and speak, and she could hear a male voice answer. She couldn't make out the words but the man's accent sounded stiff and foreign.

“All right,” the girl said. “I'm giving him the phone, but like I said, the kid's not talking. He hasn't said a word in six hours.”

Hannah listened as the phone was passed from hand to hand.

Then she heard the quiet rasp of breath against the receiver.

“Randall? Randall, is that you?”

There was only silence on the line. But it was
his
silence. It was impossible to say how she knew this to be true, but she was utterly certain.

“Randall, now listen to me. You're going to be all right. I'm going to get you away from these people. Please believe me, Randall. You're going to be fine. You just need to be brave, to hang on, don't panic. Can you do that for me, Randall? Can you be brave?”

More silence.

“We're partners, right, Randall?'

She waited, listening for the chafe of his breath.

“I love you, son. Be strong. I'll see you very very soon.”

She heard the man's awkward accent again and then the girl was speaking in her ear.

“So, okay, you satisfied? That was him.”

“Where's Gisela? What have you done with her?”

The girl did not reply.

“Where is she?” Hannah said. “I want to speak to her.”

“The question is,” the girl said, “where the hell is J. J. Fielding hiding out? That's the only thing that matters.”

Hannah watched the last of the kids wander out of the school. Some heading for their bikes, others for the last vans and cars still parked along the shoulder of the street. Her
thoughts were whirling. Trying to piece together a plan, a strategy. The very thing she'd been doing for the last five years, creating clever maneuvers, Erin Barkley's quick-witted schemes. But those fictional moments took hours to compose, sometimes days or weeks to polish to a flawless sheen. This required seconds. Less than seconds.

“I don't know where Fielding is,” Hannah said. “Not yet.”

“What the hell does that mean, not yet?”

“I mean he's about to tell me. That's all I can say right now. In the next few hours, he's promised to reveal his location.”

“The next few hours?”

“Now listen to me,” Hannah said. “That man you're with. Is his name Hal?”

The girl was silent. Two seconds later the phone clicked off.

“You did good,” Hal said. “You're a natural-born kidnapper.”

“She knows your name, Hal.”

“She does?”

They were in his rental car driving down Bayshore Drive, heading into the Grove. Hal at the wheel, Misty and Randall in the backseat. She had one of the derringers in her hand, out in the open where Randall could see it, so he wouldn't try anything stupid like jumping out into the street, screaming for help.

“She asked me if I was with a guy named Hal. She fucking knows your name.”

“Doesn't matter,” he said. “What'd she say about Fielding?”

“She said he was about to reveal his location to her. He was going to do it in the next few hours.”

“Is that right?”

“That's what she said.”

“You believe her?”

“She sounded too scared to lie or make something up.”

“Good,” he said. ‘Then take this.”

Hal craned around in his seat, holding out the small portable computer.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Turn it on,” Hal said. “I'll tell you how to work it. We gotta keep watching your old man. If he lets something slip, we might not need Hannah Keller at all.”

Misty took it and popped open the lid. She looked out the window at the Grove. Busy today. Shoppers and lots of high school kids. The sidewalk restaurants nearly full, people sipping wine in the middle of the afternoon. There was a time Misty might've been out there among them, killing time, looking for hot guys. But all that seemed like kid stuff now. Like a little girl's aimless existence.

“Where we going now, Hal?”

“I thought we'd swing by your apartment.”

“My apartment?”

“Sure,” he said. “So you can run in, pack some things.”

Misty looked over at Randall. He was peering at the screen of the little computer, watching it come alive, go through its start-up routine.

“Yeah, I guess there's a few things I'd like to take with me.”

“One bag, that's all,” Hal said. “In this business you have to travel light.”

Misty leaned forward and laid a hand on Hal's broad, muscular shoulder. He turned his head and looked at her fingers. Then he reached up and laid his hand on top of hers. The sunlight glinted off his sharpened thumbnail, a golden barb, as beautiful as the talon of an eagle.

As she raced through traffic on the Palmetto Expressway, Hannah called Lieutenant Dan Romano from her cell phone. She had to bully her way through three layers of secretaries before she finally got him on the line.

“Hey, stranger,” he said. “Long time, no hear.”

“Randall's been kidnapped, Dan. I'm on my way to her apartment right now.”

“Whoa, whoa, Hannah. You're on your way to what apartment?”

“The woman who kidnapped my son. I recognized her voice. I know where she lives.”

“Hey, back up a second, tell me what the hell's going on.”

She gave him a quick rundown of the situation, a little garbled maybe, but the best she could manage. When she was finished Dan Romano was silent.

“Did you hear me, Dan? Are you there?”

“Hey, look, I'm sorry, Hannah. But I'm afraid there's nothing I can do.”

“Nothing you can do? Dan, you need to send a SWAT team over here right now. Seventeenth and Flagler. They've got Randall. This girl and a man named Hal Bonner, a professional killer.”