Rusty Nail

CHAPTER 42

MY STOMACH HURT. I didn’t know if it was an effect of the tranquilizers, or the fact that I was burning up to do something but didn’t have anything I could do.

The Elk Grove police were called, but they really didn’t have much to do either. Our statements were taken. A few pictures were snapped. I explained to a nearly catatonic Holly what I suspected was going on with Bud and Lorna.

“So what now?” she asked. “We just wait around for them to contact us?”

“I’m going into the office, calling Indiana. Maybe they have some sort of idea where they’d go. Got someplace to go?”

“I’m going to stick around. Maybe something will turn up here.”

I looked at the twelve Elk Grove cops, standing around talking sports. Nothing was going to turn up here.

“Call me if you need me, Holly.”

She reached out to hug me, but it was stiff and mechanical; all of her life force had been drained from her. I explained to the uniforms I was leaving, and when nobody protested I hopped in my Nova and headed back to Chicago.

I spent most of the trip on the phone with the hospital, trying to ascertain Herb’s condition. First he was still in the OR, then he was in Recovery, then there were some kind of complications and they weren’t sure where he was. I asked for Bernice, but she couldn’t be located. By the time I got to the district house I was on my way to a total nervous breakdown, a feeling exacerbated by the two men waiting for me in my office.

“Hello, Lieutenant. We heard from the Elk Grove Police Department that you’d be here.”

“I’m really not in the mood right now, guys.”

Agent Dailey made a face that almost looked sympathetic. “We understand how you must be feeling.”

“I doubt it.”

“We lost two good men in Rosser Park when Lorna Hunt Ellison escaped custody,” Agent Coursey said. “They were friends of ours.”

“I’m sorry.”

Coursey looked at his shoes, which was the most emotion I’d ever seen from him.

“It should have been us. We were assigned to accompany Lorna. But when you cracked the Caleb Ellison case, we were ordered back to Chicago.”

“In a way, you saved our lives, Lieutenant.”

That was a karma debt I really didn’t need.

“Gentlemen, I feel bad for your loss, but I’d really like to be alone right now.”

“We’d like to help.”

“I prefer doing this myself.”

“Kidnapping is a Federal offense, Lieutenant. This is technically our jurisdiction.”

I shot venom out of my eyes. “Do you really want to play fucking jurisdiction games?”

“No,” Agent Dailey said. “We really want to help.”

I collapsed in my chair. I had no fight left in me.

“Fine.” I closed my eyes, tried to rein in some semblance of control. “What have you got?”

“We’ve created a new profile, with Vicky, of Lorna Hunt Ellison.”

“A new profile. Great. Does it happen to mention where she’s holding my friends?”

“Probably someplace close to Busse Woods, or perhaps in the woods themselves. We had a chance to interview Lorna before her escape. She’s a DO offender, impulsive, erratic, very low intelligence. Bud Kork has similar characteristics, plus he’s delusional and psychotic. They couldn’t have pla

That had been my assessment. Luring victims to your house in the boonies and burying them in your basement, though horrible, wasn’t the work of a criminal mastermind. But escaping from prison, rescuing Bud, then grabbing Harry and Phin took some real intelligence. A DO – disorganized personality type – couldn’t muster that. It didn’t make sense.

“How did Lorna escape? Give me details.”

They ran it down for me.

“We recovered the derringer, and a plastic bag we believed it had been wrapped in. Lorna could have planted it there years ago.”

I didn’t like it.

“Then why wait until now to use it? She’s been locked up for twelve years. Why didn’t she pull this stunt a long time ago?”

Both Coursey and Dailey shrugged at the same time. It was eerie.

“She might have been waiting for the right moment,” said Coursey.

“Or she’d forgotten about it until now,” said Dailey.

“Or” – I reached for the phone – “somebody planted it for her.”

I caught Ms. Pedersen, the assistant superintendent for Indiana Women’s Prison, on her way out the door.

“This is a terrible time for us, Lieutenant. I feel partially responsible. I knew Lorna was capable of violence, but didn’t think she could pull off something like this.”

“None of us did. This isn’t your fault.”

“I appreciate that.” And it sounded like she did. “Can I do anything to help?”

“When I visited you the other day, I asked about Lorna’s visitors. You said she had none. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“How about phone calls? Prisoners are allowed calls, right?”

“Of course.”

“Do you keep records?”

“No. But I can talk to the guards. They’d remember if Lorna had received any calls for the last few days. Can I call you back?”

I gave her my number.

“What if Lorna had help?” I told the Feebies.

“You think she was coached?”

“Maybe someone planted the gun, and gave her instructions on how to grab Bud and kidnap Harry and Phin. The same someone who supplied her with the roofies, or whatever drug they used.”

“Caleb Ellison?” Dailey asked. “He was obviously an organized personality. Sending the videotapes, leaving no evidence-”

“You saw his house, right?”

They each nodded three times. I almost looked up, trying to see the puppeteer.

“It was a mess,” I continued. “Garbage and porn all over. And look at the sloppy way he broke into my partner’s house. How would you profile that?”

“That’s typical disorganized behavior. Clearly Caleb manifested both O and DO traits.”

Maybe, but something bothered me. Some nagging little doubt that made me think I was missing the bigger picture. I gave the Crime Lab a call, surprised that Officer Hajek was still in this late.

“Hi, Lieut, I was hoping you’d call. Get my messages?”

Only now I noticed the voice-mail light on my phone, blinking on and off. Some detective I was.

“What’s up, Scott?”

“Got some results back. That burned bag you brought me? Analyzed the contents. Mostly clothing, and some glass and plastic fragments. I think they were toiletries: toothpaste, deodorant, hair spray, face cream, cosmetics.”

“Cosmetics? You mean makeup?”

“Yeah. Which goes along with the burned hair sample you gave me. There were traces of spirit gum on it. I think it was a fake beard.”

I pictured the Identikit photocopy; a man with a blond beard.

“So it was part of a disguise kit?”

“It could have been. And that bullet casing you found…”

My phone beeped. Call waiting. I told Scott to hold on.

“Lieutenant Daniels? It’s Ms. Pedersen. Lorna received three calls over the last week.”

“Do you know who they came from?”

“No. But the guard I talked to said it was a woman, Midwestern accent.”

“Thanks.” I switched back to Hajek. “Tell me about the bullet.”

“Nine millimeter.”

“Anything off it?”

“Nothing. But I did get something off that message machine I took from the University of Chicago. I digitized the tape and ran it through a filter, did a few comparisons.”

“And you found out it’s a woman’s voice.”

“How did you know that? That was my big surprise.”

A woman had called Lorna, so it made sense a woman left the messages on Mulrooney’s machine. The fake beard could have made a woman look like a man. With the sunglasses, and the hood, it would have been easy to fool the desk sergeant downstairs. And Al the car rental guy – when he greeted me, he didn’t have his glasses on. He couldn’t see a damn thing. Al had also mentioned the man who’d rented the Titanium Pearl Eclipse had a cold.