one twisted voice Read online

  “Please, ma’am…” Porter pushed his hands through his fair hair. “Just write the ticket and let me get out of here.”

  Ma’am? I smiled at that but hid it behind my notebook as I continued to scribble down his details. Around here, in this dead-end patch of dirt in Kentucky, I was used to being called by my given name: Molly. As a concession, those lowlifes who tried to sweeten me up, called me Officer Lane. It didn’t usually work on me. Not that I’m a hard-ass, but showing you can read a name off a badge doesn’t necessarily make you a law-abiding citizen.

  “You’re lucky that the cabin was deserted, Mister Porter, otherwise you could be going in for vehicular manslaughter. As it is, I’m still going to have to file a full report because of the damage to Mrs. Hinkle’s property.”

  “It’s abandoned. I probably saved Mrs. Hinkle the inconvenience of demolishing it herself.”

  He was probably right, but not in the eyes of the law. I gave him my stern look, one I’d practiced in my bathroom mirror the day I signed up as a state trooper. Dirty Harry squints don’t work well for a 130-pound woman, I discovered, so I went more for the stern schoolmistress look. Maybe that’s why he’d called me ma’am.

  “Please.” Porter shifted on the bench seat of the cruiser. “Is this necessary? You can check me out; confirm I’m who I say I am. You can mail me a court summons if necessary.”

  “What’s the big hurry, Mister Porter? We can have this done in a few minutes if only you’d cooperate.”

  “I haven’t got a few minutes.”

  I found myself looking at his hands, where he shoved them again through his hair. His palms were sweating, making the blond grow dark. He was in an awful hurry to get out of there, which was for sure. “You’re bleeding.”

  He glanced at his knuckles and saw the glistening blood. “It’s nothing.”

  “How’d you cut yourself?”

  His brown eyes jiggled as he searched for a convincing lie. “I’ve just crashed my car. How’d you think?”

  “Looks to me like you’ve been in an altercation, Mister Porter. Is that what you were speeding away from? Some bar fight I haven’t heard of yet?”

  “Bar fight? What?” He clasped his good hand over the damaged knuckles, as if hiding the evidence would change things. “I did this trying to get out of my car. Can’t you see how it’s jammed in the front of a house?”

  I made the mistake of following his gaze. Mrs. Hinkle would have to demolish her cabin after this, I thought. When I looked back, Porter had slid out of my cruiser, and was standing looking down at me. He was tall, six feet maybe, and he had the spare features of my favorite leading man: Viggo Mortensen. I’d been sweet on him since Hidalgo. I’d sworn to my girlfriends I’d only watched the movie a dozen times because I loved the horses. I did love horses, but...

  “Please, Mister Porter. Get back in the car.”

  “Not unless I’m under arrest.”

  “That very well may happen. But not if you cooperate and let me do my duty.”

  “That’s the problem, ma’am. You’re stopping me doing my duty.”

  He tried to step past me. I wasn’t intimidated. There was nothing that told me he was a bad man, in fact quite the opposite. What got my hackles up was the way he thought he could just brush me off. Would he try that with one of my male colleagues? I slapped my notebook against his chest, while caressing the butt of my service pistol in its holster. “Sir, if you don’t take a seat, I’m going to take you in. Do you want to be placed under arrest and handcuffed, because I sure as hell can arrange that?”

  An image of Viggo in handcuffs flashed through my mind. He was on a bed, his bare chest glistening with perspiration, the cuffs of the pink fluffy variety. I was sitting astride him and equally sweaty. Porter probably misread the flush in my cheeks. “Look, Porter. That’s the last thing I want, as I’m sure do you. So let’s just cooperate and get this done, shall we?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I really am.”

  Porter didn’t sit back down. He snapped forward his left hand and forced my thumb down on the gun’s trigger. He spun me and wrapped an arm around my neck. Fear flashed through me. How I’d misread him, I realised. I’d been entertaining the idea of hooking up with him for a drink and a meal and a notion of ‘let’s see where this could lead’. We’d have laughed about me ticketing him, before I ripped it up and threw myself into his arms. I hadn’t imagined that I’d be there as soon as this!

  As a state trooper I’d been taught self-defense tactics, but in the real world a tiny woman couldn’t do much against a full-grown man. Not from the position I was in. I tried stomping his foot, elbowing him, but he was solid and my attempts only tired me. My notebook fluttered at my feet.

  “Ma’am, I really don’t wish to hurt you.”

  “Then let go of me,” I said, and to my shame my voice was around ten times higher than normal.

  “I’m sorry.” He let me go, but as I spun around, I saw that he was now holding my service pistol. “Get in the car.”

  Showing him both palms, I tried to reason with him. “Mister Porter, this is getting seriously out of hand.” I reached for my radio mike.

  “Don’t touch that!” Porter snatched the mike off my shirtfront, ripped the lanyard cord away, and then pulled my radio off my belt. “The pepper spray and baton. Ditch them. Then get in the car.”

  “Okay. Okay. Easy.”

  “Fingertips only,” Porter demanded, and I complied, flinging my kit away from me. I showed him my empty hands again. “Good. Now get in the car. No, I mean the back seat.”

  “You’re going to abduct me? A state trooper? Are you insane?”

  “No, ma’am, not insane. But I am desperate.”

  ***

  Porter drove while I fumed in the back seat.

  By now the dispatcher would have recognized my incommunicado as a sign of trouble and would have sent another radio car via Mrs. Hinkle’s place. They’d see Porter’s GMC, and the signs of our struggle, my discarded kit and guess what had happened. I didn’t mention that to Porter, and at any rate he seemed busy with his own thoughts.

  He’d locked me in the back of my own cruiser, damn it! There was a grill between us, and the doors couldn’t be opened from the inside: standard operating practice for carrying felons and a goddamn inconvenience to an officer of the law when the tables were turned.

  “Does this car come with a transponder?”

  His question surprised me. Since bundling me inside, slamming the door and then going to fetch a suitcase from his crashed car, Porter had been pretty tight-lipped.

  “No,” I lied. “That’s the kind of stuff the NYPD come equipped with, not Salish County radio cars.”

  “Where is it?” Porter watched me in the rear-view. His eyes were as soft as when I first saw them, but a pulse ticked along his jaw. He wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  I indicated the radio set on the console.

  “Too obvious. Is it in the trunk?”

  I blinked slowly. “Mister Porter, please...”

  “Will,” he said. “My name’s Will.”

  “Will. Okay. Please stop the car, Will. I’m sure we can sort this out, but if you continue with this ridiculous course of action then I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you.”

  “I’m going to stop the car. I’m going to rip out the transponder.”

  “No. That would be wrong. You have to stop now. Let me help you...”

  “You want to help?”

  “Of course I do. It’s why I became a cop. Protect and serve it says on my badge, and it means it.” I leaned forward and laced my fingers through the wire mesh. “I mean it. But there’s nothing I’ll be able to do if you continue with this...”

  “Ridiculous course of action?” He glanced at the rear-view again. “Tell me, ma’am. Is it ridiculous to love someone enough that you’d do anything to save their lives?”

  I thought of my parents, my younger sister. Sure, if anyone tried to hurt them I’d f
ight tooth and nail. “What’s going on, Will? Is someone you know in danger? If that’s the case, why didn’t you just tell me? I could have arranged-”

  Before I could finish my spiel, Porter was shaking his head. “They said that if they saw any sign of the cops they’d kill her.”

  “Who, Will? Who said that?”

  “The men who took Gabby.”

  Porter swiped the back of his bloodied hand across his chest. It was an act of frustration, one that said he wished the cuts on his knuckles were from pounding the men who were threatening his loved one. He reached across and banged his knuckles on the Samsonite case lying on the passenger seat. “Unless I deliver this within two hours, they swore I’d get her back in pieces.”

  “What’s inside the case, Will?”

  “Money.”

  “They’re forcing you to pay a ransom? We could call the FBI. They have specialists who deal with that sort of thing.”

  “I haven’t time.”

  I chewed a lip in frustration. I hadn’t joined up to write joy-riders tickets, I genuinely had wanted to make a difference. To help those in need. But I was also torn by duty and procedure. “Please, Will. We can work this out. Stop the car now. Unless you do that, you’ll be stopped by my colleagues and where will that leave you then?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I won’t be stopped. I’m prepared to die first.”

  “Where will Gabby be then? If you die, who will help her?”

  “Then it’ll be down to you, ma’am. Won’t it?” We met gazes, and this time he was neither soft of eye nor threatening, but pleading.

  “I want to help. I really do, Will. But not like this!”

  “I’m sorry it has to be this way. But there’s nothing else for it. I’ve now got less than two hours because of the time we wasted back there. If you’d just ticketed me...”

  “You’d still be trying to change your tyre. That’s if your car would still run after the collision. You would be no further on than when I’d first met you, so don’t start casting blame. You should’ve told me, Will. Immediately. I could’ve done something then.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, breaking the connection.

  “What’s done is done. I can’t worry about it now, I have to save Gabby.”

  “Let me help you, Will. But not like this. Not as a prisoner.”

  “I can’t trust you, ma’am. I’m sorry, but the first chance you get you’ll try to stop me.”

  “When there’s a life at stake? What do you take me for?”

  “Someone constrained by the law. I’m under no such constraints. Ma’am, I apologize in advance, but what I’m going to do will go against all lawful process.”

  “You’re talking about fighting them? You’re going to try to take Gabby from them?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then you definitely need help...From a goddamn shrink!”

  Porter grunted, but it was a mirthless laugh. “They wanted a million dollars. I couldn’t raise that much cash in time, and they’re not going to be happy. But I’m not leaving there without Gabby.”

  “You could be putting her in even more danger.”

  “If I don’t get her free they’ll kill her anyway. I’d rather take the chance, than not, thanks.”

  “Doesn’t Gabby have a choice in this? If she knew what you were planning wouldn’t she argue against you risking your life? Would she want her husband to act so stupidly he kills you both?”

  Porter frowned, then slowly turned to look over his shoulder.

  “Ma’am, Gabby isn’t my wife. My wife died. Gabrielle’s our daughter. She’s only ten months old.”

  ***

  Porter dismantled the transponder under my guidance, and when we got back into the cruiser, I was driving. I could handle the vehicle better than he could, and my mind wasn’t so full of dark thoughts that we’d have another smash. That first time, Porter was lucky that Mrs. Hinkle’s house had cushioned the blow, because if the car had continued into the trees, then any hope of saving his baby would have ended then.

  Porter sat beside me, the suitcase in his lap. My service pistol was still in his hand, resting on top of the case, a reminder of the trouble we were both now in. We’d gone beyond threats the moment I’d understood his plight. The poor man! First he’d lost his wife, who’d died, I discovered, having hemorrhaged during child birth, and now despicable men threatened to take his baby, the sum worth of their lives together. Walking in his shoes, I’d do anything to stop them. Despite being a police officer, I could understand. More than anything in the entire world I wanted a baby of my own, but that would never happen. Cysts on my ovaries – and the subsequent surgery - had ruined those plans. It had also separated me from my husband, Johnny, who went off in search of someone who could ensure his name lived for at least another generation. For my baby that would be never born, I thought it was worth risking my life to save one that had.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this, ma’am.”

  “Okay. So do two things for me.”

  Porter looked across at me, and he wore the hangdog expression of a beagle.

  “Stop apologizing and stop calling me ma’am. It makes me sound old. I’m only twenty-three.”

  “You look, uh...”

  “Don’t dare say older,” I said, “or we part company right now.”

  “I was going to say, you look too young to be a state trooper.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  Porter’s mouth twitched. So did mine. We shared a glance before returning our eyes to the road.

  “Molly,” I said.

  “Sorry?”

  “You were about to ask what to call me. If we’re going to work together you should at least know my name.”

  “Molly Lane.” It was as if he tasted my name on his lips.

  “Something wrong with that?”

  “No. Not a thing. It’s just, well...it doesn’t sound like the name of a cop.”

  “What kind of names do cops have?”

  “Where I come from, they tend to be Irish or Italian.” He squinted at the gun. “I suppose that sounds very clichéd?”

  “Only if you come from New York.”

  “New Jersey. But near enough.”

  “So what are you doing in Kentucky?”

  “Trying to save my daughter,” he said.

  “Besides that?”

  “It’s where my wife, Marie, was born. We have a summerhouse near Big Fork. We used to enjoy the white water rafting up there.” He closed his eyes, drew his bottom lip between his teeth. He looked frail, and vulnerable, and I wanted to reach across and take his hand. I didn’t think he looked like Viggo Mortensen any more; he just looked like Will Porter. A father consumed with worry for his baby daughter, and that was more attractive than anyone I’d ever seen in my life. To hell with it, I thought, and I did reach across.

  Porter moved the gun, but only so he could turn his hand over and I slipped my fingers into his palm. “Everything’ll work out,” I promised.

  “Thanks, Molly. I hope you’re right.”

  ***

  We couldn’t approach in the marked cruiser, so I hid it under a lean-to in a nearby farm shed. Porter lifted the Samsonite case and wedged it under his left armpit. In his right he still held my service pistol.

  “Can you shoot that thing?”

  “Point and squeeze, right?” he said. “What’s so difficult about it?”

  It was a single-action S&W. Because there was no need to thumb back the trigger in order to prime it, the pull was exceptionally long and could throw off an unwary shooter’s aim. “Maybe I should use it,” I offered.

  “I need a weapon.”

  I crouched low, sneaking up the hem of my uniform trousers. Clipped in an ankle holster was a snub-nosed revolver. It wasn’t police issue. I stood again. “Let’s swap. Double action. Pull back the hammer, and then squeeze the trigger. I think you’ll handle it better than my Smith.”

  Porter wore confusion on his face
. “You had that all along, yet you chose not to use it?”

  “I knew you were one of the good guys, Will. Besides, if we’d drawn on each other in the car, where would that have left us? I don’t think that we’d have become friends.”

  Porter shook his head. “You’re a very surprising young woman, Molly.”

  “Not as surprising as you turned out. To think this morning I thought I was in for another boring day.”

  He chuckled, and it was a nice sound.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get your daughter back.”

  He held out the S&W. “You’ve got a deal.”

  ***

  We had only one chance at this. We were crouching at the tree line, looking across a field at a whitewashed barn. In the gathering gloom of the evening, the planks looked grey, like bones left to bleach under a desert sun. The moon was just a fingernail clipping low over the forest, but it was cloudless and there was still enough light to see by. The problem was anyone hiding inside the barn would also see us coming. There was a helicopter crouching in the field behind the barn, a quick getaway, should Porter have reneged on the deal and called in police back up. I couldn’t let them know I was here or they’d be up and away and God help Gabby then.

  Porter had pieced together who the men holding his child were: base criminals who saw an opportunity. He was a developer who specialized in land reclamation and regeneration. He had been in the papers and on TV news bulletins, shaking hands on a deal worth billions of dollars. Porter of course was just the front man for his company, his take from the deal would be a mere fraction, but to those enterprising criminals they must have seen him as a gold mine worth tapping. A team of four had broken into his summerhouse, men armed with guns. They had lifted Gabby from her cot and brought her to Porter where he was asleep in his bed. There they’d woken him, and Porter fought them – hence the bloody knuckles. But a gun pushed under his ear halted him and they made their demands, before knocking him unconscious with the butt of the pistol. When he’d wakened, he didn’t doubt they were serious about harming Gabby, and had gone immediately and drawn out all the cash he could get his hands on. He hadn’t been able to raise more than half the million dollars the kidnappers demanded, but it had to be enough. Ironically, most of his money didn’t come from his business dealings, but from a life insurance policy paid out after Marie died. I guessed that, had Marie been alive still, she’d pay a thousand times that, a million, if it meant saving her baby. So too would Porter if he had it.