15 Seconds Page 8

  Not exactly the profile of your usual fleeing cop killer. The guy even spent his vacations fixing cleft palates and helping to build schools in Nicaragua. Lots of group shots with happy villagers. Some of the photos were taken by his daughter. It was hard to connect that image with that of some crazed killer who had put two shots at point-blank range into a policeman.

  A light flashed on the message board and Carrie picked up. “Sheriff’s office. Officer Martinez tip line. This is Carrie Holmes . . .” she said into the headphones.

  “I have some information on the killer,” the caller said.

  “All right, go ahead . . .” Carrie grabbed her pen.

  “I didn’t do it. Any of it. I swear, it wasn’t me.”

  Carrie’s heart came to a stop, as if an electrical wire sent a jolt through it. Silently, she snapped her fingers, trying to catch the attention of one of the other detectives to get on her line.

  She put a hand over her speaker. “It’s him!”

  “What do you mean by any of it?” Carrie said back, hoping to engage the guy. She pushed the record button. She also routed a message to Akers’s secretary: Get him over here!

  “There’s more . . .” the caller said, his voice trailing off. “You’ll see.”

  The whispers of “It’s him! Steadman!” crackled around the floor and a crowd of detectives gathered around Carrie’s desk. The chief of detectives, Captain Moon. Carrie’s boss, Bill Akers. Even Chief Hall, who had just come back from the shooting scene. Carrie’s heart began to beat loudly and she could feel everyone in the room silently urging her with looks and signals to keep Steadman on the line. Three minutes, Carrie knew from training. Three minutes and they should be able to triangulate a fix on where he was.

  “Who am I speaking with?” she asked him. “I’ll need your name and some proof of who you say you are. You can imagine, there’s a lot of people calling in on this . . .”

  “I think you know exactly who you’re speaking with,” the caller said. “Martinez had a bullet wound in his left temple and another higher up on the skull. His driver’s window was down. He probably still had my driver’s license in his hand . . . You want my Social Security number? I think that’s sufficient.”

  Carrie’s adrenaline shot through the roof. She knew she had the killer on the line.

  She tried to get him to keep talking. “You said any of it, Dr. Steadman. And you said, ‘there’s been more.’ Has there been another incident?”

  Steadman didn’t answer. Instead, he waited a few seconds and changed the subject. “Are you a detective, Carrie?”

  The question took her by surprise. She glanced around, at the elapsed time on the screen. Going on a minute. Why not tell him the truth? Sometimes people in these situations just needed someone to talk it out with. “No. I work in community outreach,” she said. “I just agreed to man a phone. It’s actually my first day back from being away for a while.”

  By now several of the staff were listening in on the call.

  “Well, I bet the community outreach department has a lot more company at the moment than it’s normally used to, right, Carrie?” Steadman said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah,” Carrie said, holding in a smile herself. “This is true.”

  A minute fifteen.

  “You mind if I ask you something?” he asked. His next question threw her for a loop. “You have kids, Carrie?”

  More than threw her for a loop. Where was he going with this? It was almost like he somehow knew what was going on with her. Today of all days, bringing up kids. She hesitated for a second, not sure if she should give away anything personal like that, but Bill Akers nodded for her to keep engaging him. Ninety seconds.

  “Yes,” Carrie answered. “A son. He’s nine.”

  “I have a daughter myself,” Henry Steadman said. “Hallie. Super kid. She’s an equestrian. She almost qualified for the Junior Olympic team last year. She’s finishing her first year of college. At UVA. She’s the world to me. Just like yours, I bet?”

  “Of course,” Carrie said, feeling a flutter go through her.

  “Then you’ll understand what I’m about to say . . . though you probably won’t believe me. None of you,” he said, firmer, “since I assume there’s a bunch of you crowded around by now.”

  Carrie didn’t answer, but she smiled.

  “But I swear—on my little girl—’cause I still think of her that way—and right now she needs me more than anything in the world—that whatever it looks like, whatever anyone may think, I had nothing to do with what happened to that policeman today . . . I was back in my car, waiting for him to finish up my ticket, when a blue sedan pulled next to him and someone shot him through the window. It sped away and I went after it—to try and ID it—that’s all—which was the reason I left the scene. You understand what I’m saying, Carrie? This is exactly the way it happened. On my little girl!”

  “That’s bullshit,” Captain Moon said dubiously. “Five different people saw him coming out of Martinez’s car.”

  “And not to mention that I was the one who called 911 . . . It was a blue sedan. I don’t know the make or the model, but I do know something about it. It had South Carolina plates. You’ve got to find that car.”

  “What make was it, Dr. Steadman?” Carrie asked, glancing again at the clock. They had been on two minutes now. “The car. Were you able to make out the plates?”

  “No, not the numbers. But they were definitely South Carolina. I’m sure . . .” He stopped himself. “And I have no idea what make,” he said with a sigh of frustration. “I would only put you in the wrong direction . . .”

  “Just keep him going, Carrie,” one of the detectives whispered, pointing to his watch.

  “I hear you, Dr. Steadman. But all I can say is—and I think I’m giving you pretty sound advice here—whatever you’ve done or haven’t done, you have to turn yourself in. Everything can be sorted out then. I promise you, you’ll be treated—”

  “I think you know exactly how I’ll be treated.” He cut her off. “You all know what happened today, as I was trying to head back peacefully to the scene. And at the Hyatt. You want to help me, Carrie, look for that blue sedan. The plate number began with AMD or ADJ . . . There must be security cameras around somewhere that would’ve spotted them. There has to be some way.”

  Two and a half minutes.

  “And remember what I told you. On my daughter, Carrie. I know you’ll know what I mean. I wish I could turn myself in. I wish . . .” There was a long pause and Carrie almost thought he was about to share something. He finally said, “Just look for that car. I think it’s already clear, whether I turn myself in or they eventually catch me, no one there will look.”

  “Dr. Steadman . . .” Carrie pressed. “What did you mean by—”

  The line went dead.

  Carrie sat back and blew out a breath for the first time. Almost two and a half minutes. A phone number had come up on the screen, but it wasn’t for Steadman’s; it was for a completely different phone. A White Fence Capital. Steadman had likely stolen the phone from somewhere.

  “Excellent work, Carrie,” Chief Hall said. “Certainly a lot of excitement, no, for what I understand is your first day back?”

  “Yes, sir,” Carrie acknowledged. Though she found herself wanting to ask if they should follow up on the blue car.

  “Well”—he squeezed her on the shoulder—“you did just fine . . .”

  Then suddenly someone shouted from the detective’s pool. “There’s been another shooting!”

  Tony Velez, one of the homicide crew, ran up. “In Avondale! This must be what Steadman was just talking about. Victim’s name is Michael Dinofrio. His wife came home from exercise and found him dead at his desk. Two in the chest. His car’s gone. A silver Jaguar. And the kicker is . . . guess who Dinofrio was supposed to be playing golf with right about now . . . ? At Atlantic Pines. Steadman,” Velez finished, looking around the table.

  “I took a call from a ca
bbie,” Carrie said, suddenly remembering the location, “who claimed he drove someone resembling Steadman from the Clarion Inn near Lakeview to an address in Avondale . . .”

  “That’s about a half mile from where Martinez was killed,” Bill Akers said.

  Frantically, Carrie checked back on the call screen, locating the time of the call and drop-off point. 11:02 A.M. “33432 Turnbury Terrace.” She looked up. “That’s only a block away.”

  Suddenly she knew what Steadman had meant when he said, “You’ll see, there’s more . . .”

  Then Sally Crawford, who’d been tracing Steadman’s call, said loudly, “The phone Steadman just called in on . . . White Fence Capital. It’s a real estate partnership here in town.” She turned to face the chief. “Michael Dinofrio is the CEO.”

  Carrie felt a flush of embarrassment come over her. If there was any doubt before about Steadman’s connection to these murders, there wasn’t one now.

  The son of a bitch just called in on the second victim’s phone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took close to two hours, but the trailer’s front door finally opened. Vance saw a woman step out into the night, wearing a tight red halter and a denim jacket hanging from her shoulder, her blond hair all mussed up.

  He watched from his perch in the woods. Good ol’ Wayne, the guy Amanda was supposedly in love with, came out, shirtless and in jeans, with a beer in hand. The girl spun around and pressed up against him and gave him a lingering kiss, Wayne’s hand snaking down her back and onto her shorts until it came to rest on her behind.

  Vance couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out.

  She turned and continued down the steps, a little wobbly, to her car. “You know one thing . . .” she said, turning back, and pointing at Wayne. “Whatever it is you got, it sure does make my register ring.”

  “Ring-a-ding-ding,” Wayne sang, and took a swig of his beer, the two giggling like fools.

  The girl stumbled to her car and waved as she drove away, passing right by Vance. After a short while, when Vance was sure she wasn’t coming back, he picked up the black satchel from the seat next to him. He got out of his car, lifted the trunk, and took out a heavy lead pipe, the words the responsibility starts now drumming through his mind. Wheat from chaff.

  Just no knowing where it ends.

  He stepped up to the front door, hearing the TV on inside. He knocked.

  It took a few seconds for the door to open. Wayne appeared, with that same shit-eating grin on his face, still holding his beer, surely expecting someone else. “Forget something . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” Vance said, staring into Wayne’s shocked eyes. “I did.”

  Vance swung the pipe and struck Wayne in the kneecap, probably shattering it right there, and when Wayne buckled on one foot with a yelp, Vance jabbed the butt end into the boy’s jaw, sending him across the floor in a groaning heap.

  Vance shut the front door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Where the hell am I?” the boy moaned, groggily, finally opening his eyes.

  The room was dark. Vance had turned off all the lights. Wayne was hog-tied, his arms behind him, dangling from a crossbeam on the ceiling. He couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe. He just hung there, his feet bare, blood pooled in his mouth and all over his shirt.

  “Who’s there?” Wayne called out into the darkness. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this to me?”

  Poor kid had no idea who had even strung him up there.

  Vance rose up and shined a flashlight into Wayne’s eyes. The boy squinted, blinded, turning his face away. “Who is that? Mr. Hofer? Why the hell are you doing this to me, Mr. Hofer?” The kid was shaking. “What’s going on?”

  “What am I doing here, son . . . ?” Vance said, pulling out a chair and sitting down on it in front of Wayne. “I’m simply here to ask you a few things. And how you answer them will go a long ways toward determining whether you ever walk away from here . . . So you think about what I’m about to say, and then we’ll see. Okay, son?”

  Wayne nodded, scared out of his mind.

  “Good.” Vance continued to shine the light on him. “First is, what did you do to my girl?”

  “I’m s-sorry, Mr. Hofer,” Wayne said, tears and mucus streaming down his face and falling onto the floor. He’d always been scared of Amanda’s old man. The guy was crazy. Even Amanda said so. The stories she would tell of him, when she and Wayne were high. How he had this violent streak. How he would just hurt things—stray cats, squirrels, Amanda’s mom. And what he used to do on the force. How he once busted a man’s wrists with his nightstick while the guy was writhing on the ground. Used it in other ways too, he’d heard. Got him thrown off the force.

  “You mean her? Brandee? She ain’t nothing to me. She’s just a friend. Amanda’s still my girl.”

  Vance shook his head. “I don’t mean about the girl, son. The girl could fuck you to kingdom come for all I care. You really think this is about her? You want to go on living out that putrid, dog-shit life of yours?”

  “ ’Course I do!” The kid was openly crying now, almost shitting in his pants. “Please, let me down, sir. You know I do. You—”

  “So then I’ll say it again, how you answer’s gonna go a long way toward determining how we get that done, Wayne. So you tell me . . .” Vance stood up and faced him now. “You tell me where you got the drugs from, son. I’m talking the Oxy. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Oxy? We only just smoked a little weed,” Wayne said. “That’s all. We weren’t hurting no one . . . We jus—”

  “I don’t mean tonight, you stupid fool,” Vance said, feeling his temper rear. “The Oxy that my little girl was taking. Who just got her life stolen away by whatever it was you pushed on her. That’s where she got them from, right?” Revulsion pooled in his eyes. “The stuff she was on. From you, right, son?”

  “No, no . . . It wasn’t from me, Mr. Hofer. I swear.” Wayne was hanging like a side of beef, the blood rushing into his head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, sir . . . I—”

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about?” Vance humphed cynically, almost smiling. “What Amanda was high on when she killed that poor, young gal and her baby . . . While her husband was serving his country over there. Now, I know it was you, son, so there’s no sense playing this out. The Oxy, where’d you get ’em, boy? That’s all that I want to know. Then I’ll hoist you down.”

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know,” Wayne groaned. “She didn’t get ’em from me . . .” He shook his head back and forth like it was on a pulley. “I promise. I swear that, Mr. Hofer . . .”

  “You swear . . .” Vance tightened his grip around the lead pipe, the muscles in his wide forearms twitching. “Son, we both know that’s a damn lie. And lying won’t be the thing to help you now. But here’s a bit of the truth. I lied as well. You’re gonna have to pay for what you’ve done. Everyone is. Everyone up and down the line. Till I find where it came from. No way around that. That’s just where it stands, son.”

  Wayne was trembling now, barely able to garble words back. “What I’ve done? What have I done?”

  “All those lives you stole, son. The girl and her baby.” Vance stared at him. “My Amanda too.”

  “No . . .” Now the boy was squirming and sobbing, tiring himself out twisting all over the beam. Every time he jerked his legs, the rope tightened around his neck. “I didn’t do anything to them. I didn’t give her any drugs! I swear . . .”

  Vance went over to the black bag he had placed on the chair. “Son, we can do this two ways, and I’m afraid you’re not gonna like either of ’em, but one surely more than the other. But I think we both know by the time I walk out that door”—Vance opened the bag—“it’s gonna be with those names.”

  “There are no names! You hear me, Mr. Hofer, there are no names!”

  It was still dark and Wayne could barely see. He just heard
things from wherever Vance was moving around. Things that made him scared. Like a sharp hiss—followed by the sweet smell of gas, propane, and then a whoosh, which sent an electrical current of fear jerking through his upended body.

  He shat down his pants.

  Then Wayne looked up and saw the blue flame from a welding torch in Vance’s hand, coming closer to him.

  “Listen, please, Mr. Hofer, please . . . Listen!” he screamed. Suddenly his answers changed, and he began stammering. “These aren’t like regular folk. They’re not from around here. They’re truly bad people. I can’t give you their names. I can’t! They’ll kill me.”

  To which Vance replied, chuckling, “What do you think I’m doing, son, just playing around?” He adjusted the flame to high and brought it close to Wayne.

  “Now, you can stay up there, whimpering like a child, long as you like. Trust me, I’ve got all night. But whimpering ain’t gonna help you in this situation. I want to hear you talking names, son. Otherwise . . .”

  Wayne’s eyes bulged as the flame came close, darting back and forth. “I didn’t do anything to them! I swear. I didn’t.” The heat was close to his face. He began to sob. “I didn’t!”

  “Well, that’s just where you’re wrong, son. Where you and I disagree.”

  Vance grabbed one of Wayne’s bare feet and put the blue flame against his sole, the boy’s skin sizzling and his leg kicking around like a half-killed bass and a shriek coming out of him that might have been heard in Lowndes County.

  “Please, Mr. Hofer, please . . .”

  “Where you got the Oxy from that you fed my daughter? You hear me? I can make this last forever, son, or I can make it quick. Either way, by the time I leave, I’m going to have what I want.”

  He placed the blue flame on Wayne’s foot again, the kid jerking and crying and howling bloody hell. And a stink going up. “Names, son . . . It’s only going to get worse. I think you must be hearing me now. No one’s leaving here without those names.”