“I gotcher woman,” a rough voice declared.
I was about to say she wasn’t “my woman,” but finally my feeble brain engaged. “Prove it,” I said.
“Prove it? Awright, I will.” King had the handset jammed under his ear while he worked his cell phone frantically, probably trying to set up a trace.
I heard shuffling noises in the phone, the man’s voice barking some orders, and then Carrie was on the line. “Hello?” she said in a weak voice.
“Carrie? This is Cam Richter. Are you injured?”
“Head hurts,” she said. “Hair’s all sticky. Hurts.”
She wasn’t entirely there for the conversation, which confirmed a head wound. I wanted to ask her where she was, but she’d have no idea and was probably wearing a duct-tape blindfold anyway. There was more noise on the phone, a grunt of pain from Carrie, and then Mr. Personality was back.
“Satisfied, are ye?”
King was making keep-him-talking gestures. “Actually,” I said, “I’m not sure who that was. It might be her, but she’s out of her head.”
“Yeah, she is. Got her a real nasty hairdo, she does. By rights, she oughter be dead.”
“And you would be-Lucas?” I asked.
“Ho-o-o-o!” he exclaimed, making an owl noise. “How d’ye figger that?”
“Your deputy buddies told me you shot her and you’d gone to find her body.”
There was just a fractional pause before he responded to that. I saw King mouth an expletive and shake his head.
“I ain’t Lucas and I ain’t shot nobody and I don’t have no truck with no damn deputies,” he said. “You want yer woman back or not?”
“If it’s her, yes, I want her back.” And I want you dead, I thought. “What’s the deal?”
“Deal? I ain’t proposin’ no deal. I’m a’tellin’ ye what yer gonna do, you want this woman back alive.”
“Okay, then, shoot,” I said amicably. I didn’t need to challenge this guy. Remember the objective, I told myself. Get her back, then you can take other action. King had closed up his cell phone. No go on a trace, but he continued to listen in.
“You’n me’s gonna meet up,” he said. “You gonna bring a bag’a money. Cash money. Five thousand greenback dollars, cash money. I get the money, I’ll tell you where she’s hid at. No money, I leave her there to die. Plain as that.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s plain, all right. I can do that. Meet where?”
“Where you was this mornin’,” he said. “Where them cops was parked, a’waitin’ for ye.”
“So you are Lucas,” I said. “You missed me this morning. How do I know you won’t be sitting in the trees with that rifle, waiting to try again?”
“ ’Cause I want that damn money. I was s’posed to git paid for killin’ the both of ye. Y’all got lucky. Then I figgered, hell, more’n one way to skin this here cat. But you gotta come alone, now.”
He’d given up pretending he wasn’t Lucas. “I don’t know, Lucas,” I said. “I come up there alone, carrying a bag of money, you shoot me down from ambush, then kill the woman, you get my money and your paycheck. Now why should I take chances like that?”
King was giving me a strange look, but he was back on his cell phone, trying something else.
“You looky here, lawman,” Lucas said. “I don’t need to go puttin’ you down, or this woman, neither. Didn’t know she was a cop, awright? Nathan and them’re gonna git you for what you done to Rowena. Far’s they know, this here woman’s puffin’ up in the damn river, but they ain’t payin’ me nothin’ without no body, an’ the way I figger it, they’s all so stirred up right now, I take them a body and then it’s gonna be me in the damn river.”
“That doesn’t solve my problem, Lucas,” I said. “How about this-I come in one vehicle, my backup comes in a second one. We get there together, in the dark. The place where you said. Can she walk?”
A pause, as if he were thinking about it. “Maybe.”
“Then we’ll arrive together, two cars. One plain car, one cop car. You send her out of the woods, she gets in the plain car. My partner then gets out, puts the money out on the ground, opens it up in the headlights so you can see it’s really there, and then we both drive away. You come out when you want to and we’re done with it.”
“How do I know ye ain’t trickin’ on me?”
“Because we want her back, Lucas. And we can get the five thousand-we’re the cops. Five thousand doesn’t mean squat to us. And we don’t have to go to any bank to get it. Besides, our fight’s not with you-it’s with the Creighs. We’re gonna have us a war, Lucas. You want to be part of that, or do you want five thousand bucks, cash money, right now, and the chance to get out of Robbins County for good? Who else but the cops can do that for you?”
There was a long silence on the line this time. I decided to wait him out. It was a simple enough proposition, and we each stood to gain.
“Midnight tonight,” he said. “Mess with me, I’ll cut her damn throat. Best believe that.”
“I do believe it, Lucas. Like I said, our fight’s not with you. You were just paid to do a job of work. Didn’t pan out. So now we both get to make it right and get on with business. Midnight. We’ll be there.”
“Awright then,” he said and hung up.
“Damned hotel PBX system,” King growled. “Blocked the trace. Good work on your end, though.”
“We can get the money from Sheriff Hayes’s office,” I said. “He’ll have a buy-money stash. Then-”
“‘We’ is not the operative word,” King said. “‘We’ means us, not you. It’s our girl missing, and we will go meet this guy and get her back or bring him back in a rubber bag. You are still beat to shit from the morning, so you are going to stay put.”
I sat back in my chair and just looked at him. I knew that what he was saying made sense. He had the authority to execute the swap, and the means to put up the proper surveillance and backup nets.
“You know I’m right on this,” he said with a weary smile.
“Yeah, but.”
“I understand. But let us do our jobs. We know she’s alive, for the moment anyway, and if we can get her back for five grand, we will have dodged a large bullet. You stay put. We don’t need any stray operators in the mix right now. We get her back, we’ll call you and you can go see her in the hospital, okay?”
Much as I wanted to go along, Lucas wouldn’t know me from Adam. He wanted his money, and probably wanted to put some distance between him and his prisoner now that he knew she was a cop. I agreed. “Can she have her mamba stick back?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That belongs to the state; she no longer does.”
King left to round up his team and make arrangements. I went out front and took the shepherds. We watched them go. Gelber still looked angry, but I now suspected he was one of those guys who always looks angry. I spotted the county cruiser Hayes had promised sitting out in a corner of the parking lot and walked over to shoot the breeze with the deputy. To my surprise, it turned out to be one of the Big brothers.
“I see you’ve got a new job these days,” I said.
Bigger John grinned and stubbed out his cigarette.
“Does M. C. know you hired on over here?”
“Don’t reckon,” he rumbled. “But he will.”
“I never thanked you guys for saving my bacon the other night,” I told him.
“That done it for us,” he replied. “Them Creighs is outta hand. They find that Harper girl?”
I had to think for a moment before remembering Harper was Carrie’s maiden name. “SBI’s got an angle, going to work it tonight,” I said. “Did you know her before she left for Charlotte?”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t born yet. But Mingo-he knew her. Said her old man had been a problem once upon a time, but not no longer.”
He lit up another cigarette and blew a big cloud of aromatic smoke out into the night air. It momentarily made me want to go back to the noxious weed. A car came by us going into the parking lot, and two kids in the back were staring at us as they went past.
“We have a pretty good line on Agent Santangelo,” I said. “Some guy named Lucas wants to trade her for cash money.”