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He called Peter. “June is missing in action. I need you to track her location.”
Peter hit a few keys on the computer. “Blake, I’m getting a signal almost two bus stops back from you. The signal is stationary, not moving.”
Blake ran across the street and flagged down a cab. He leapt in and leaned over the front passenger seat with his phone on speaker. “I’m in a taxi, Peter, and the driver can hear you. Give him directions to her signal.”
Peter’s voice came over loud and clear. “Go straight for three blocks and then turn left and stop. Did the driver get that?”
Blake had moved closer to the driver and showed him his I.D. The driver said, “I heard you.”
Blake said to the driver, “When we stop, I’ll need you to wait by the curb for me.”
The driver glanced at Blake. “It’s your money, and I get paid for driving or sitting.” He moved out into traffic and raced down the street, just clearing two lights before they turned red. Then he turned left and whipped the cab to the curb. “Is this the spot?”
Blake was half out of the back seat, shouting into the phone, “Is this it, Peter? There’s nothing but a wall here, around some construction.”
Peter came back: “Look for a way to get behind the wall. She’s about 15 feet in front of you.”
Blake walked along the wall until he found the loose boards. He pushed them aside and stepped through. The narrow space inside was in deep shadows and it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust. He heard a muffled sound and headed towards it. By the time he reached June, he could see pretty well. He gently pulled the tape from her mouth and stepped around to cut the tape holding her to the pole. “June, what happened?”
With her body freed, she began to rub the sticky tape glue off her face. “I had him, Blake. He was right next to me on the bus and all of a sudden he jumped up and was outside in a flash. I got the bus stopped and chased him in here, but he got the jump on me.”
Blake held the boards back for her and then followed. He opened the taxi door and they got in. June laid her head back and inhaled deeply. She heard Blake tell the driver to take them back to the hotel.
Blake said, “I’m happy as hell I found you alive, but why didn’t he kill you? Anyone would have thought he would kill you.”
June reached out and took Blake’s arm. “I don’t know why he didn’t kill me, but he knew who I was! Maybe that had something to do with it.” And then she remembered they were going to the hotel. “Aren’t we going after him?”
Blake patted her leg. “We have no idea where to start. He knows we’re looking for him, so nothing we thought we knew about him is of any use now. He’ll be running from us more than trying to find his next tour victim. We need to catch the next flight back to Memphis and get you together with a sketch artist. You’re the only one of us who knows what this guy looks like.”
June slept most of the way on the flight back to Memphis. The only plane that wasn’t booked up had been a 10:08 p.m. American Airlines DC-8. It didn’t reach Memphis until midnight.
The sketch artist was scheduled to come to the A.P.S. building at 9:00 a.m. on Monday. Blake had already let everyone know they would be going on to Cary as soon as they had a sketch. Their only chance to catch the killer now was to catch him on his home ground.
He and June took a taxi to the Hideaway and said goodnight. June drove off in one direction and Blake in another. At home, after two straight shots of Jim Beam, he fell across the bed and into a deep sleep.
His phone woke him at 8 o’clock the next morning. “Hello!”
It was Taylor, who had to holler over background noise. “Shelley and I are at O’Hare. We had to come through Chicago to get a flight back to Memphis today. We’ll be boarding our plane shortly. Do you want us to go on to Cary as soon as we get back home?”
Blake pulled himself off the bed. “That would be good – go down and start looking around. The rest of us will join you as soon as we have the sketch.”
“They’re calling for us to board. We’ll see you in Cary – maybe on Monday afternoon?”
Blake agreed and tossed his phone on the bed. He lay back down and didn’t get up until noon, when he went fishing. All Sunday afternoon he replayed the events of Dallas over and over in his head. He was thinking how let-down everyone was probably feeling. He suspected that if they didn’t catch the killer in Carolina, it would mean the end of the team – or of his part of it, anyway. A failure like that, and any and all trust would be lost.
Monday morning he started his Jeep and headed to the office. He had just turned onto the freeway when his phone rang. “Morning, June. You okay?”
Her voice sounded weak and unsure – it wasn’t the June Warner Blake had come to know. “I know I messed up, and because of me, this killer is still on the loose. I’m so sorry, Blake.”
Blake sought to reassure her. “June, this is my operation. When things go wrong, it’s because of a misstep I made. I should have been on that back bus; you were only doing what I asked you to do. The fault is on my shoulders, so don’t you be sorry about anything. Just get me a good picture of this bastard.”
June’s voice was a little more sure when she said, “I’m pulling into the complex now and I think I see the artist awaiting an escort. I’ll take him in and get back with you when we finish.”
Blake got off the freeway at Shelby Drive and drove up to Airways, where he took a left. He could see the front of the Hideaway from the stop light. The light turned green and he drove through the intersection and pulled into the parking lot in front of the old bar and turned off the key. He didn’t think Tony or Wayne would be there yet, and Shelley and Taylor had already gone to Cary. A very sad feeling came over him. He couldn’t explain why he felt that way, but he hadn’t felt so alone since his wife died.
| Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Ed Rogers |
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