Racing Against Time Read online

  The CSI team had gotten every shred of evidence they could from the hit-and-run victim’s body. All that remained was to have the release papers signed. “Probably a little later today, why?”

  “She has no family. I thought I’d arrange for a funeral service for her.”

  Callie stopped short of her desk to look at him. “If she has no family, and no friends from what we could see, who’s the service for?”

  The answer was simple. “Delia.”

  Callie nodded, understanding. She was more than a little impressed. With his own world in utter, devastating turmoil, Brent could still manage to think of a woman who so many would have easily and completely put out of their minds.

  “I’ll talk to the M.E. and see if I can speed things up,” she promised.

  He smiled to himself as the live broadcast ended and an announcement was made that the station was returning to its originally scheduled programming. The press conference had interrupted all the shows in their usual time slots. Even the local cable stations carried the broadcast.

  Switching from channel to channel, he could see the anguish in the judge’s eyes from all different angles.

  Good. He was suffering. Just as the self-righteous bastard had made him suffer.

  “Won’t do you any good, Montgomery,” he said to the image that was no longer there. “Nobody saw anything. Nobody’s going to help you.”

  Turning, he saw the little girl standing in the doorway. In an effort to begin forming a bond with her, he’d told her she could watch Sesame Street. All kids liked Sesame Street. Alice had.

  But she’d rejected the suggestion the way she’d rejected everything else so far. He was getting frustrated. The food he’d gotten especially for her still sat on the table, untouched.

  Her spirit began to annoy him.

  “Sesame Street is not on right now, Rachel.” He hit the video button on the state-of-the-art set. Nothing but the best for Jackson, he thought sarcastically. A bright-blue screen appeared. He reached into the knapsack he’d brought in from the SUV he’d parked next to the cabin. “I’ve got a video you might like.”

  But Rachel continued staring at the blue screen. She’d seen him, seen her father. And heard him say her name. He was looking for her.

  “That was my daddy,” she announced triumphantly. “He’s on TV.”

  “No, that wasn’t your daddy,” he said firmly. “Just someone who looked like him.” Rachel refused to look at him, staring defiantly at the screen. “I told you, your daddy’s gone. He wanted me to take care of you.” Taking her arm he yanked once to get her to look at him. “He’d be very sad if he knew you weren’t eating. Very sad. You don’t want him to be sad, do you?”

  Rachel looked over at the table. Her daddy had always said it was important to eat well. He always told her that at breakfast because she didn’t like to eat breakfast. Her tummy was always upset when she had to go to school.

  Maybe the man was right. Maybe he did know her daddy. Maybe her daddy had told him to take care of her. She didn’t know what to think anymore. Her head hurt.

  With a sigh Rachel slowly walked toward the table.

  The sky that hung over the deep-green rolling fields of the cemetery had turned to a dark shade of gray, as if remaining the bright blue shade it had been early in the morning would somehow be disrespectful to the woman who was being buried today.

  The smell of rain was in the air and the only sound that was heard was the voice of the priest who had come from Delia Culhane’s parish to officiate over the ceremony.

  His head bowed, Brent stood alone by the grave-side as the diminutive, older man said a prayer over the gleaming oak coffin. As he listened, Brent couldn’t help thinking that it was such a shame that a kindly soul like Delia had no one to mourn for her.

  Her end had come too soon. She should have lived a long, full life and when the time finally came for her to leave her earthly home behind, she should have had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren standing in attendance by her grave.

  This wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.

  A sound caught his attention. Brent turned in time to see Callie approaching. He raised an eyebrow in silent query.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she apologized in hushed tones. She’d wanted to check out the perimeter herself before joining him. It had taken longer than she’d anticipated. She saw the question in his eyes. He probably thought she was here because they’d discovered something. So far, all the clues they’d been pursuing had led to dead ends. “I thought you might want some company,” she explained.

  She looked down at the casket, which was the best that the funeral home had to offer. It was a testimony to the judge’s character that he’d selected it for his housekeeper. He could just as easily have had her buried in a pine box or cremated, for that matter. No one would have been the wiser.

  Callie’s regard and respect for Brent Montgomery continued to grow.

  Although she’d wanted to be there for him, her appearance at the funeral was not altogether altruistic. A part of her had thought that perhaps the kidnapper might be standing somewhere on the sidelines, drawn out by a morbid curiosity to watch the drama he’d created continue to play itself out.

  She had several police officers positioned at various sections of the cemetery. So far there was nothing out of the ordinary to report.

  Brent was surprised at how comforting her appearance here was to him. “Thanks.”

  Making the sign of the cross, the priest ended the service. A kindly smile of condolence on his thin lips, he looked from Callie to Brent. “Anything you would like to say or add?”

  Brent wasn’t good at personal moments like this. Had trouble speaking what was in his heart. But there was no one to speak for Delia and she had died in his employ, no doubt trying to save his child. He owed her more than he could ever repay.

  Brent stepped forward, placing a single white rose on the coffin’s lid. “I’m sorry this happened, Delia. Rachel is going to miss you a great deal. You were very good to her, and neither one of us is ever going to forget you.”

  Callie saw the tears in his eyes then, just a glimmer before he forced them back.

  Moved, she slipped her hand into his without thinking, and squeezed. “We’re going to find her.”

  “How?” he demanded once they turned away from the grave and were walking toward his car. The ceremony had gotten to him and for a moment, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of futility. “How are we going to find her? It’s been two days, and all we know is that the kidnapper may or may not have been driving a Mercedes.”

  “He was,” she told him quietly, undercutting his tone. “Specifically, because of the impression and a partial tire skid, we know it was a Mercedes 500 SL.”

  He supposed that was something, although he still felt the information was a long way off from helping them find the kidnapper. “Has anyone reported having their Mercedes stolen?”

  “Five people. We’re checking their stories out right now. Meanwhile, I have someone getting in contact with the DMV for the names of all Mercedes 500 SL owners in Aurora and the surrounding vicinity. In addition, calls have been pouring in from all over ever since your press conference yesterday, people claiming to have seen Rachel after the kidnapping.” The sightings had been from as close as a mile from the site of the abduction to as far away as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each call was logged and a flag was inserted in a map to mark each site. “We’re checking out as many as we can as quickly as we can.”

  He thought of yesterday morning and the files Callie had taken home with her. “What about the people I put away?”

  “We’re working on that, too.” Her cell phone rang, instantly silencing them both as the sound sliced through the late-morning air. “Cavanaugh.” She listened a second, then nodded as she muttered, “Thanks.” Shutting the phone, she pushed it back into her jacket pocket. “That was just the police officer I left in charge on the grounds here. No one out of the ordinary has been
seen anywhere in the area.”

  “You thought the kidnapper would come to the funeral?”

  “I think the kidnapper wants to see you squirm, wants to see you vulnerable. Funerals have a way of dragging out emotions from the people involved.” She’d certainly seen emotion in his eyes as he’d said his final words over the Culhane woman’s coffin. Looking at him, Callie debated for a moment, then asked, “Do you want to go somewhere for a cup of coffee?”

  The personal invitation was unexpected and caught him off guard. “Don’t you have clues to run down?”

  She wondered if he thought she was shirking her responsibility. Nothing could be further from the truth. She considered his well-being a part of her job.

  “I have a great team for that. I thought maybe you needed someone to talk to for a few minutes. Someone who qualifies as a sympathetic stranger.” She knew how hard it was at times to talk to someone close to you, no matter how well meaning they were. She thought that was why people struck up conversations with total strangers, the need to unburden themselves anonymously.

  For a moment that night at the fund-raiser flashed through his mind. “You’re not a stranger, Callie.”

  “Almost,” she pointed out. “You don’t know anything about me.” She noticed that he was looking at her waist. Glancing down, she realized that the hilt of her service revolver was peeking out from beneath her jacket. “Other than the obvious, of course.”

  He was about to refuse her offer when he thought of returning home. His sister and brother-in-law were still there, waiting to offer comfort at every turn. Fairly or not, he still wasn’t in the mood to deal with his sister hovering over him, trying to cheer him up.

  And if he was with Callie, he’d be on the front lines if anything broke. It was what he’d wanted all along. “Coffee sounds good.”

  “Okay, I know a good place. Why don’t we take my car?” she suggested.

  He was about to get in on the passenger side when his cell phone rang. It was probably his sister, checking on him, he thought. Childless, she thought of Rachel as her own. The kidnapping had hit her pretty hard, he thought, a flash of guilt traveling through him.

  He held up his hand. “Just a second,” he said to Callie. Drawing the phone out, he placed it against his ear. “Hello?”

  “How does it feel, Judge? How does it feel to lose your daughter?”

  Every nerve ending stood at attention. There was no point in trying to recognize the voice on the other end. The caller used one of those synthesizers that distorted voices. Brent could have been talking to a man or a woman for all he knew.

  “Where is she, you scum?”

  Callie had rounded the hood and was at his side immediately.

  “Where is she?” Brent demanded again. “Tell me what you’ve done with my daughter.” The silence mocked him. “If you hurt her, if you so much as harm one of the hairs on Rachel’s head, there’s no place on earth that you’ll be safe. I’ll find you and kill you. I swear I will kill you.”

  “She’s mine now.”

  The scratchy sound of laughter echoed against his ear. And then the line went dead.

  Chapter 8

  Callie saw anger take hold of every fiber of Brent’s body, and she pitied anyone who ever attempted to face down the judge.

  “Was that the kidnapper?”

  Hardly hearing her, Brent searched his memory, trying to think who could hate him enough to steal his daughter. Somewhere, in the back of his brain, a chord was struck, but he couldn’t make it clear, couldn’t bring it into the foreground.

  He was vaguely aware of nodding his head in response to her question. And then he felt Callie’s hand on his shoulder. He looked at her.

  Her eyes seemed to scan his face. “Could you recognize his voice?”

  “No.” He tried not to allow defeat to seize him as he made the admission and shook his head. “Whoever it was used one of those electronic distorters. It sounded like a robot.”

  Frustrated, Callie began with the basics. “What did the voice say?” she wanted to know, then cautioned, “Exactly.”

  The words were still burning in his brain. “He said, ‘How does it feel, Judge? How does it feel to lose your daughter?’ And then he said, ‘She’s mine now.’”

  It wasn’t much. But maybe it was something. There were so many wrong directions to go off in, she thought. But she couldn’t allow that to paralyze her. One of these directions had to be the right one, and there was no way to discover that without pushing forward.

  “That almost makes it sound as if there was a tug-of-war over your daughter.” She raised her eyes to his face, returning to a familiar path. Most missing children were taken by estranged spouses. “Like a custody battle.”

  “I already told you, there was no custody battle.” Bitterness leaked into his voice. “Unless there’s a photo op involved, Jennifer wants no part of being a mother if it entails playing the role for more than an hour.”

  She still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. “What did your ex-wife have to say when you told her that Rachel was missing?”

  He frowned as frustration built on frustration. “I haven’t been able to reach her. Jennifer’s on vacation somewhere in Nevada. Reno, I think, although I’m really not sure.”

  On vacation. Convenient. Callie made a mental note to get in touch with the Reno police and have the woman tracked down. From everything Brent had told her, it sounded as if Jennifer Montgomery had willingly washed her hands of all parental privileges, but you never knew what went on in a person’s head. At the very least, the woman might want the child as leverage for reasons of her own.

  But for now Callie decided to turn her attention in a different direction. Maybe she’d missed something in reviewing the judge’s cases. If there wasn’t a tug-of-war over this particular child, maybe the kidnapping signified a tit-for-tat frame of mind. Someone had had their daughter taken away by the judge, so now he was taking away the judge’s daughter.

  “Was there anyone you convicted of incest, Brent? A father separated from the daughter he was abusing?”

  The question seemed to come out of nowhere. He shook his head. “No, I haven’t had any cases like that.” Damn it, why weren’t they making any progress? “You know that,” he heard himself snapping. “You’ve been through the cases with me.”

  Callie sighed. “Right.” But there was something nagging at her, something they’d overlooked or skimmed over. Something that had registered on the perimeter of her mind, maybe late that night as she’d been reviewing the cases. Something that she couldn’t readily summon now. “At least now we know that it was a kidnapping with a definite motive.”

  “Then why kill Delia?”

  That was simple. “Because she got in the way. Because she could identify the kidnapper.” Callie stopped as another thought struck her. She saw Brent looking at her expectantly. Hopefully. The slowness of the process was as frustrating to her as it was to him. “In calling you, it seems as if revenge isn’t enough. He wants you to know that this wasn’t a random act, that Rachel was not just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that he specifically chose her. I’m hoping now that his ego will make him want you to know that it’s him. That he’s the one who caused you all this grief.”

  Brent wasn’t into subtlety. Black-and-white suited him far better. “If that’s the case, then why didn’t he tell me who he was?”

  “Because this is a game to him, most likely a game he’s waited a long time to play. He wants to draw it out, to enjoy making you suffer.”

  Brent gave voice to the one thing that terrified him the most. “Do you think he’s harmed her?”

  The look in his eyes begged her for the truth, but also entreated her to make it the right truth. The truth he wanted to hear. That his little girl was all right. To her surprise, Callie realized that she would have lied to him to erase the pain she saw there.

  But fortunately she felt she didn’t have to. She believed in her theory.
/>   “Other than scared her, no, I don’t think he’s harmed her. It’s in his best interest to keep your daughter alive so he can taunt you with her.” She was about to say more when her cell phone rang. Smothering impatience, she flashed an apologetic smile at him. “I don’t think we’re ever getting out of this parking lot for that cup of coffee,” she commented, taking out her phone. “Cavanaugh.”

  She heard Adams on the other end of the line. “One of the suspects you wanted me to run down is AWOL. John Walker hasn’t checked in with his parole officer in a couple of weeks.”

  Maybe this was finally it. Adrenaline began to pump through her veins. “We have an address for this shy parolee?”

  “Last known residence was a motel in one of the city’s less-than-stellar areas. Skylight Inn.”

  A motel. That meant that Walker had at least gotten past a halfway house. But predators had patience, she thought.

  “We’re not here to judge, Adams, we’re here just to track them down.” Juggling the cell against her ear and shoulder, she pulled out her pad. “Want to give me the address?” As Adams recited it, she quickly scribbled it down in what her father had once said looked like hieroglyphics. “Got it.” She flipped the pad closed. “Good work. I’ll take it from here. Keep going down the list.”

  Adams said something unintelligible as he hung up. Callie figured she was better off not knowing what he’d said. The man was a good detective, just a lousy human being.

  Brent was on her the second she closed the cell phone. “What do you have?”

  “A possible lead.” She tried to recall what she’d gleaned from Walker’s file the other day. She couldn’t remember if the man had a daughter or not. “John Walker was paroled six months ago. He was a no-show at his last meeting with his parole officer.” While wanting to keep his spirits from flagging, she didn’t want to raise his hopes up too high, either. “Could be nothing,” she warned, telling him what she figured he already knew. “A lot of ex-cons pull disappearing acts.” There was a more important question to ask. “Do you remember him displaying any particular sense of hostility toward you when they took him away?”