Rock-A-Bye Baby, page 29
part #2 of Charlene Taylor Series
They’d checked hospitals, pharmacies and doctor offices. Fellows had been shot, was probably bleeding badly, and would no doubt need medical treatment. But if he was shacked up with a nurse….
She opened her eyes, her head still resting on her arms, on the desktop. Her gaze scanned the top of Smith’s desk, glimpsing the printout of Joshua Fellows’ entire bio that Smith had obtained from Mesilla Valley Hospital, a fifteen-page history of the criminal’s prior life.
Focused now, she flipped through the pages, having read most of it already. She reached the third to the last page and stopped. She sat up abruptly as a thought came to her. A long shot, but it was worth a try.
Charlene jumped out of the seat just as Matt reentered the room.
“What’s up?”
“I just thought of something. Where’s Smith?”
“On the phone.”
Charlene parked herself at one of the computers in the room and logged onto the Internet. She googled newspapers in Santa Fe and discovered a link for the Santa Fe Times. She clicked on it and was transferred to the newspaper’s home page.
“What’s the date that Fellows’ parents committed suicide?”
Matt put a pastry in his mouth and rifled through the papers, yelling out the date.
She followed the site archives and read the article on the suicide, and then turned to Matt. “I need the FBI to grand me a high-level security clearance.”
“What do you want?”
She told him, then got up and let Matt sit in her seat to punch in multiple, high-level passwords.
“I’m in.” Matt stood up.
Charlene settled back into the seat and started punching keys and scrolling around with the mouse.
“The printout showed that after Fellows’ parents’ died, the family house and real-estate sold within months of being put on the market.”
Matt said, “Remember that Smith already checked their old house. The new residents have no connection to Fellows or this case. No babies, no Fellows.”
“Got it.”
“What?”
Matt stood behind Charlene’s chair, reading the screen over her shoulder. She could feel his presence, smell his cologne.
“Fellows’ mother’s family is listed as title holders to real-estate in Denver. It wasn’t under the Fellows name, so it never came up in the database search. On this property, a log cabin was built in the thirties and never sold. The cabin is still registered in his mother’s maiden name.”
There was an aerial shot of the log cabin.
Matt said, “I don’t recognize that address.”
Charlene Google-mapped the city of Denver but couldn’t locate it either.
There was a wall-sized map of Colorado on the wall adjacent to the white board. They walked over to it and stood in front. Calculating the address, they studied the chart. In the end, using GPS coordinates, it took them fifteen minutes to pinpoint the location of the cabin on a dirt road that wasn’t listed on any map.
Charlene looked at Matt and, as if they had ESP, they nodded in unison. “Let’s check it out.”
* * *
Joshua slumped at the kitchen table, with pools of blood puddled around his chair. He’d removed his left shoe and sock, and rolled up his pant leg to reveal a swelling knot the size of a tennis ball on his ankle. It had already started to discolor.
“I parked the car in the back. It doesn’t look like anyone followed us.” Abigail walked toward him, pulling down her glove to check her watch. “How is it?”
He looked up, swallowing hard. His face was pale and covered with beads of sweat, after taking a bullet to the upper arm. It wasn’t fatal, but it was still bleeding profusely.
He pleaded with her. “I need a doctor.”
She cupped his face in her gloved hands. “You did good, baby.”
“Is it over, now?”
“It’s over.” Abigail turned around and walked toward the window.
“You didn’t tell me there would be a sniper,” he said, sounding upset.
His words stopped her. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know? You knew everything else.”
“I swear, Joshua, I didn’t know. Why would I send you if I did?”
He lowered his head, and stared at her, his gaze unflinching. “I don’t know, why would you?”
She paced the room in annoyance. “What is wrong with you?”
This wasn’t like him. He’d always been weak, a follower, but not now.
“The lady detective told me that my babies didn’t die from natural causes.”
“What?”
“She mentioned that someone killed them. The cop said it wasn’t my fault.”
“What are you talking about? Your wives had miscarriages.”
“You told me that I wasn’t supposed to have kids, and that it was God’s way of showing me.”
“It was.”
“She told me she had proof.”
He screamed, spitting from the mouth, and lunged at her from his seat, shoving her against the nearby wall, pinning her against the decorative wood paneling. Even from his seat, having lost a great deal of blood, rage motivated him as he put his good hand around her throat as if to strangle her.
“Joshua,” she whispered, her anxiety rising to a fever pitch. “What are you doing?”
“Why did you do it?” he yelled. “Why did you kill my babies?”
“I did nothing of the kind. Please.”
A tear slid down her cheek just as he released his hold on her neck. Trying not to overreact she took a deep breath and rubbed her neck, stunned that he could be so out of control.
She shook her head. “I would never do a thing like that to you.”
“She has proof.”
“Proof of what? It was a trick—a complete fabrication. She just said that to get you to turn on me. I love you.”
He no longer looked convinced. “You do?”
“Of course, I do.”
She wrapped her arms around him, caressing his head, playing with his hair, hearing his heavy breath in her ear.
“It’s just the two of us. That’s the way it’s always been. You’re my baby brother. Who took care of you growing up? Who rocked you, sang you to sleep when you were scared? Who protected you? Who’s always loved you when no one else did?”
“You?”
“That’s right. Me. It’s us against the world.”
“So, what do we do now?”
She smiled, relieved to have him back. “We need to get ready to move the babies. But first, we need to remove that bullet.”
“So, can I keep one, like you promised?”
“That was before you screwed things up. We have a contract. The buyers want a certain number and we promised to deliver them. What do you think they’ll do to us if we don’t hold up our end of the bargain? You know who we’re dealing with.”
His face flushed red and his eyes flashed anger. She knew all his trigger points, things that set him off, and she knew she had little time to extinguish what would be an inevitable explosion.
“But that’s my baby. I deserve it.” He ground his teeth, the sign his tension was at its peak.
“We’ve already received half the money up front. Don’t you know what will happen if we don’t deliver?”
He opened his mouth to respond when he suddenly slapped his flat hand against his right temple. His migraines had returned with a vengeance, as they always did after a tirade.
It came to her then; she wasn’t going to win, not this time. He was hell-bent on keeping that child, had generated his own plan. His eyes told the story. It was over.
She spoke in a soothing tone. “Oh, sweetie, I can see that you’re in pain. Let me help you get rid of that headache.”
Just as she always did, she reached over and began to massage his temples with soft, circular strokes.
“Is that better?”
“Yes.” She could tell he was de-escalating.
As she massaged, she wondered, where they had gone wrong. She’d been careful for six endless years. Who had solved the puzzle? The local police certainly weren’t bright enough to figure it out, and Smith and the FBI had been chasing down leads for years, with no success.
From the start she knew the LA detective would be trouble. They should never have kidnapped the woman’s niece. That had been dangerous, but necessary. The harsh truth was that they should have eliminated Taylor when they’d had the chance.
She knew what had to be done.
“Okay, Josh, you can keep a baby.”
Smiling now, he took her hands and squeezed them. “Really? You mean it?”
She nodded and smiled. “Of course. Now let’s remove that bullet.” After a brief pause, she added, “I’ll get you a drink to make it easier.”
“Really?” His face opened wide in surprise. “You’re going to let me have a drink? You never do that.”
She struggled with ambivalent feelings. It couldn’t end well, but there was no other option. “You won’t want to feel anything when I plunge the tweezers into that hole in your arm. Plus, it’s a celebration.”
“What are we celebrating?”
“The end.”
She turned and unlocked the cabinet door and took out his favorite bottle, Jack Daniels, and poured a healthy portion into a glass of ice cubes. Then, behind his back, she added a few drops from another smaller bottle and then stirred it with her gloved fingertip.
When she turned back to the table, he smiled, excited about the prospect of a rare drink.
“You’re not having one?” he asked.
She shook her head. “There will be questions if I show up with booze on my breath.”
“Good thinking. That’s why you’re the brains.” He held up the glass as if to make an imaginary toast. “I love you, sis.”
He took a sip, then two, then downed the whole glass of whisky in one swallow. Joshua closed his eyes, looking dreamy and contented.
Abigail bent over and whispered in his ear, “I love you too.”
Without warning, he frowned, as if noting a bitter after-taste. He looked inside his glass, and then traced his finger around the rim. His eyes were already glazing over.
“How could you—”
He tried to strike out at her, but instead he grabbed his throat and his body convulsed before his eyes rolled back in his head. His upper body slumped over the table top, and his breathing ceased. It was over.
She sat at the table, staring at her brother. Finally, she put her hand to his wrist. He was gone.
She had just started cleaning up when a buzzer sounded; the motion sensor alarm in the path had been activated. Only the weight of a vehicle could set it off.
The sensor was planted one mile from the cabin so, depending on the speed of the vehicle, she had only minutes to escape.
* * *
“Let’s stop here and walk.” Charlene put her hand on Matt’s arm as he slowly drove the car down a winding dirt path, enclosed on both sides by woods.
“Why?”
“The cabin can’t be far. If he’s there, we’ll attract his attention when we arrive. Let’s move in on foot, just in case.”
Matt pulled the car over slightly, as much as he could since the tree line was so close to the road on either side, and shut off the engine. The car blocked over half of the access road.
The cabin sat back in the woods, hidden in a secluded area that no one had ever purchased, at least on paper. The perfect location for a hideout. No neighbors and lots of privacy.
“No wonder we couldn’t find this place on a map. There are no roads.”
It was colder when they exited their vehicle, zipping their coats up against frigid air that reflected the higher elevation.
They stayed just inside the tree line, not far from the path, but followed it around a curve hidden by bushes to where the cabin was visible in front of them.
The exterior of the building looked old and dilapidated, with much of the outside wood rotting. It had clearly been upscale when it was new, with two stories and a wide wraparound porch.
“Look.” Charlene pointed to the far edge of the trees, just across from the house. A subtle cloud of dust kicked up. “Looks like someone just is either coming or going, but they can’t get past our unit unless they find another way out.”
“I don’t see a vehicle.”
“They probably parked it out of sight.”
They continued to move, careful not to make noise that would arouse suspicion.
As they approached the cabin, they stayed in the bushes, but saw no signs of movement from either inside or outside the structure.
Then they heard a gas-powered generator humming from a little shed in the back.
Matt pointed his flashlight to a place behind the building. “There’s a car.”
The blue Neon was parked under a stand of trees, well hidden from view, but close enough that Fellows could easily escape if the need arose. As he moved his light around, he saw a white van—the other of the two vehicles they’d been hunting.
Neither vehicle would have been visible by aerial surveillance.
Her heart was beating hard in her chest when she said, “Let’s go.”
She stepped out of the bushes and felt Matt’s strong hand on her shoulder, pulling her back, almost knocking her over.
Charlene looked at him. “What are you doing?”
“No, the question is, what are you doing?”
“I’m going in there.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Oh, yes I am. Martina could be in there.”
He shook his head. “The blue Neon confirms our guy is here. That means the babies are probably here, too. If we go in and he sees us coming, there’s no telling what he’ll do to those babies. He’ll be like a cornered animal.”
She knew it was a great argument, but she didn’t want to hear it.
Was Martina in there? She couldn’t let her mind go there, or she wouldn’t be able to wait.
“Hang on, baby girl,” she whispered.
“Let’s call Smith and circle around front, where we can keep an eye on the house and wait for backup.”
* * *
It took less than a half-hour for Smith to arrive with a team and a plan, though it seemed like forever to Charlene.
Smith hadn’t notified DPD SWAT this time around. In fact, he’d told Charlene that he hadn’t even consulted with Janice Salinger. That lapse would create some serious backlash.
They couldn’t risk SWAT’s “search and destroy” mentality, especially with babies inside the cabin. Instead, Smith had summoned the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to be in charge of this tactical situation.
The night had turned frigid, and her breath was visible even against the darkening night sky. The cold had worked its way through her thin jacket.
She and Matt huddled together, behind one of the FBI’s dark-colored SUVs.
Through lighted, high-powered binoculars, Charlene inspected the cabin. It didn’t look the same as it had on the computer screen.
Clearly there would be no negotiation, a one-shot deal. The EHR Team would storm the house. She didn’t like the plan because it put the babies at risk, but it wasn’t her call so she kept her mouth shut.
When Smith walked by, she followed him.
A dozen or so men waited for the order to advance. Most of them looked fresh out of Quantico.
Smith approached a man who scoped the cabin through a FLIR Scout PS24 Heat Sensing Thermal Imaging Camera, attached to a tripod.
There hadn’t been time to get a search warrant, and in 2001, the United States Supreme Court ruled that performing surveillance of private property using thermal imaging cameras without a search warrant by law enforcement violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. But they had no other choice.
An HRT member said, “We have a warm one.”
Smith asked, “What do you see?”
“One person, sitting on a chair. Haven’t seen any sign of anyone else.”
“What about the babies?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Keep looking.”
Charlene nudged Smith. “We can’t wait forever.”
Smith stared at Charlene, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Then he turned and strode away.
When Charlene turned around Matt smiled at her. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
They joined Smith in one of the cars, the heater turned up high.
“We ready?” asked Charlene.
“Yes,” said Smith. “Just waiting for one more confirmation.”
She asked, “Is the medic here?”
Smith nodded. “Yes, she’s here. It’s a good idea, since we might need to use force to take Fellows.”
“I don’t give a shit about the perp. I’m more interested in the health of the babies.”
As if on cue, a sharp rap hit the window, and Smith rolled it down.
“One adult in the kitchen. He hasn’t moved since I spotted him. I see seven, smaller forms in another room, all lying down. No other life forms detected.”
“There should be two adults,” Charlene said.
“Only one adult in there now, ma’am. Looks like a man.”
Matt said, “It’s gotta be our guy.”
Smith put his hand to his mouth, talking on his earpiece. “Move in.”
Charlene stepped out of the car and quietly closed the door. Matt got out and walked around to stand beside her, while Smith stayed inside the warm vehicle.
The tactical team had already been in position, setting up an inner perimeter around the cabin, awaiting the command.
She held her breath, closed her eyes, and mouthed a silent prayer.
The car’s interior light came on, startling Charlene, as Smith stepped out of the vehicle. He held an iPad, following the video feed from the helmet-cam of one of the tactical unit members, and handed it to Charlene, which surprised her.
On the helmet-cam, the front door lock was picked and the team entered. The man’s breath clouded in front of him as he moved.
