“Yeah?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice sounded angry, and this time it sounded like a real person.
“I had to take a leak. Is that a problem?”
Silence. Will felt sweat trickle down his side. Had he pushed his luck too far? He’d been sure Artie wanted him, but what if he just wanted to make him suffer? If he killed Jen in the brutal way he’d killed the others, then disappeared again, Will would suffer. Artie would know that, and that might be enough for him.
“Leave the phone and go to the car. I won’t tell you again.” The line went dead.
Will laid the phone back on the basin with a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking. Then he turned and went out to the car.
CHAPTER 59
Al’s phone rang just as he got back into his car in the Walmart parking lot, the screen showing it was Lonnie.
“Boss?” Al said.
“Hawkins called. He tracked Will to the Holiday Inn. Found out he checked in to Room 103 after a called-in reservation requesting that particular room. He found Will’s clothes inside.”
“What about the shoes and the necklace?”
“They weren’t in the room.” Al heard Lonnie take a deep breath. “But he found them outside the side entrance door—the one closest to 103. On the ground right where a car would have been parked.”
Al cursed. “So that means we’ve got no way to track him.”
“Yeah.” Lonnie was silent for several seconds. “We may not be dead-in-the-water yet. The motel has a security camera pointed at the lot. Don said the clerk is contacting his boss now—refused to let Don see it till he got permission. Where are you now?”
“Just came out of Walmart,” Al said. “The guy who had Will’s phone said he found it on a shelf by the TVs, and sure enough, the clerk remembered Will. Guess he stood out because he bought three burner phones, and he got a call on the Walmart phone while he was there.”
“He took a call on the store phone?”
“He didn’t talk to the guy who called. The clerk said Will had just checked out when the phone rang. The caller asked the clerk to tell Will he wouldn’t be able to pick him up and to give him a number to call. Lucky for us, the clerk has a tendency to remember numbers. At least I hope he remembered right.”
“You got a number?”
“I got four. The number the caller wanted the clerk to give to Will, plus the numbers of the phones Will bought. I was just getting ready to call the station to get them started on tracking them. The one the guy called from is likely a burner, but since we got the number—”
“We might be able to trace it,” Lonnie finished. “It’s a long shot, but right now those numbers and the Holiday’s security camera are the only ones we got.”
They disconnected, and Al called the detective section’s secretary.
“Helen, it’s Al,” he said.
Before he could say more, the woman said, “Did you find her?”
“Not yet.” He heard a groan on the other end. “But I need your help.”
“Anything.”
“I’ve got some phone numbers I need to trace. Anderson bought three at a Walmart, and the fourth is a number he was given to call.” He read off the numbers.
“On it.” Helen said and disconnected.
Al knew if anyone could get the information, Helen could. She had contacts at every telecommunications company in the area. Phone numbers were doled out in blocks by some organization that served the U.S. and Canada. Helen had explained it all to him once, but that was as much as he remembered. Well, that and the fact that Helen could quickly find out which company ended up with the number the detectives were trying to track. Once they knew that, they could work on getting the company to track the phone’s location.
The phones Will bought were easier, since he already knew the identity of the carrier. Al sat in the Walmart lot, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, wanting to move, wanting to do something, but not knowing what. Helen called back in less than five minutes, but it had seemed like an hour.
“Still working on the one number,” she said, “but I’ve got the ones Agent Anderson bought. The last location of one was at the mall, but that one’s gone dead.”
Probably told to chuck it out the window, Al thought, and somebody’s run over it.
“The other two are at Benson Park—on the picnic area side.”
Bingo, Al thought, excitement washing through him. The picnic area would be empty at this time of night. It would be a perfect place for the killer to trap Will. If they could get there in time…
“Get marked units heading that way,” he told Helen. “No red lights and sirens, though. Tell them to park on the ball field side and head in on foot.”
“Will do.”
Before Helen could disconnect, Al added, “Better get a couple units on the other side of the woods, too.”
He disconnected and called Lonnie, quickly filling him in on what Helen had found out and what he’d told her to do.
“I should have checked with you—”
“Don’t worry about it. You did right. I’m headed that way. I’ll let Hawkins know what’s happening.”
“See you there.”
Twenty minutes later Al, Lonnie, Don, and several uniformed officers had swarmed the restrooms. They didn’t need to check to know that the phone on the basin was one of the ones Will had bought, just like they didn’t need to check that the gray Chevy parked in the lot was the one Will had been driving. A sharp-eyed rookie had spotted that the plate matched the number and letters scratched into the wall of one of the stalls. Will had tried to
