The detective stared through the windshield at the alley.
From a coat pocket, he withdrew a roll of hard-caramel candies. He peeled the end of the roll, extracted a candy. He held the sweet circlet between his teeth while he folded shut the roll. As he returned the roll to his pocket, his tongue took the caramel from between his teeth. This procedure had the quality of a ritual.
'So?' Mitch said. 'You believe me?'
'I've got a bullshit detector even bigger than my prostate,' said Taggart. 'And it isn't ringing.'
Mitch didn't know whether to be relieved or not.
If he went alone to ransom Holly, and if they were both killed, at least he would not have to live with the knowledge that he had failed her.
If the authorities took it out of his hands, however, and if then Holly was killed but he lived, the responsibility would be a burden of intolerable weight.
He had to acknowledge that no possible scenario would put him in control, that inevitably fate was his partner in this. He must do what seemed right for Holly, and hope that what seemed right turned out to be right.
'Now what?' he asked.
'Mitch, kidnapping is a federal offense. We have to notify the FBI.'
'I'm afraid of the complication.'
'They're good. Nobody's more experienced with this kind of crime. Anyway, because we have only two hours, they won't be able to get a specialty team in place. They'll probably want us to take the lead.'
'How should I feel about that?'
'We're good. Our SWAT's first-rate. We have an experienced hostage negotiator.'
'So many people,' Mitch worried.
'I'll be running this. You think I'm trigger-happy?'
'No.'
'You don't think I'm a dog for details?' Taggart asked.
'I think maybe you're best of show.'
The detective grinned. 'Okay. So we'll get your wife back.'
Then he reached across the console and plucked the car key from the ignition.
Startled, Mitch said, 'Why'd you do that?'
'I don't want you having second thoughts, bolting off on your own, after all. That isn't what's best for her, Mitch.'
'I've made the decision. I need your help. You can trust me with the keys.'
'In a little while. I'm only looking out for you here, for you and Holly. I've got a wife I love, too, and two daughters — I told you about the daughters — so I know where you are right now, in your head. I know where you are. Trust me.'
The keys disappeared into a jacket pocket. From another pocket, the detective withdrew a cell phone.
As he switched on the phone, Taggart crunched what remained of the circlet of candy. A caramel aroma sweetened the air.
Mitch watched the detective speed-dial a number. A part of him felt that with the contact of that finger to that button, not only a call had been placed but also Holly's fate had been sealed.
As Taggart spoke police code to a dispatcher and gave Anson's address, Mitch looked for another sun- silvered jet high above. The sky was empty.
Terminating the call, pocketing the phone, Taggart said, 'So your brother's back there in the house?'
Mitch could no longer pretend Anson was in Vegas. 'Yeah.'
'Where?'
'In the laundry room.'
'Let's go talk to him.'
'Why?'
'He pulled some sort of job with this Jimmy Null, right?'
'Yeah.'
'So he must know him well. If we're going to get Holly out of Null's hands smooth and easy, nice and safe, we need to know every damn thing about him we can learn.'
When Taggart opened the passenger's door to get out, a clear wind blasted into the Honda, bringing neither dust nor litter, but the promise of chaos.
For better or worse, the situation was spinning out of Mitch's control. He didn't think it would be for the better.
Taggart slammed the passenger's door, but Mitch sat behind the wheel for a moment, his thoughts spinning, tumbling, his mind busy, and not just his mind, and then he got out into the whipping wind.
Chapter 55
The polished sky and the sharp light and the flaying wind, and from the overhead power lines, a keening like an animal in mourning.
Mitch led the detective to the painted wooden service gate. The wind tore it from his hand as he slipped the latch, and banged it against the garage wall.
Undoubtedly, Julian Campbell was sending men here, but they were no threat now, because they would not arrive before the police. The police were only minutes away.
Following the narrow brick walkway, which was sheltered from the worst of the wind, Mitch came upon a collection of dead beetles. Two were as big as quarters, one the diameter of a dime. On the underside they were yellow with stiff black legs. They were on their backs, balanced on curved shells, and a gentle eddy of wind spun them in slow circles.
Cuffed to a chair, sitting in urine, Anson would make a pathetic figure, and he would play the victim convincingly, with the skill of a cunning sociopath.
Even though Taggart had implied that he heard truth in Mitch's story, he might wonder at the hard treatment Anson had received. With no experience of Anson, having heard only the condensed version of events, the detective might think the treatment had been worse than hard, had been cruel.
Crossing the courtyard, where the wind badgered again, Mitch was aware of the detective close behind him. Although they were in the open, he felt crowded, pinched by claustrophobia.
He could hear Anson's voice in his mind: He told me that he killed our mom and dad. He stabbed them with garden tools. He said he'd come back to kill me, too.
At the back door, Mitch's hands were shaking so much that he had trouble fitting the key in the lock.
He killed Holly, Detective Taggart. He made up a story about her being kidnapped, and he came to me for money, but then he admitted killing her.
Taggart knew that Jason Osteen hadn't earned an honest living. He knew from Leelee Morheim that Jason had done a job with Anson and had been cheated. So he knew Anson was bent.
Nevertheless, when Anson told a story conflicting with Mitch's, Taggart would consider it. Cops were always presented with competing stories. Surely the truth most often lay somewhere between them.
Finding the truth will take time, and time is a rat gnawing at Mitch's nerves. Time is a trapdoor under Holly, and time is a noose tightening around her neck.
The key found the keyway. The deadbolt clacked open.
Standing on the threshold, Mitch switched on the lights. At once he saw on the floor a long blood smear that hadn't concerned him before, but which alarmed him now.
When Anson had been clubbed alongside the head, his ear had torn. As he'd been dragged to the laundry room, he'd left a trail.
The wound had been minor. The smears on the floor suggested something worse than a bleeding ear.
By such misleading evidence were doubts raised and suspicions sharpened.
Trapdoor, noose, and gnawing rat, time sprung a coiled spring in Mitch, and as he entered the kitchen, he
