“Please, God, please,” Deronda said with her eyes closed.
Isaiah came to a hard stop at Pacific, a big street, traffic swishing by in front of him. He got out and hopped up on the hood of the car. A one-eighty scan took in a KFC, a parking lot, Five Star Auto Parts, a Chevron station, Del Taco, Top Notch Appliances, and Reliable Public Storage. It wasn’t likely the man had stopped to pick up some spark plugs, have a bite to eat, or buy a refrigerator, and his pickup wasn’t at the gas station. But he might have gone into Reliable. Isaiah knew the place. Row after row of identical storage lockers with roll-down doors. The girl could be in one now, just waking up, dizzy from the chloroform, the man a looming silhouette as the door came down and blacked out the sky.
Deronda stuck her head out of the window. “What are you doing, Isaiah?” she said.
Isaiah’s shirt was stuck to his back, his scalp tingling. The man was getting away, the girl having no idea what she was in for. What did you see, Isaiah, what did you see? When Isaiah came out of Beaumont’s he saw the skinny girl walking by, the pickup creeping after her, the man staring hard, his face shiny with sunburn. His cap had a logo embroidered on it. A fish with a lure stuck in its lip, and there was something reflective on the back bumper. A trailer hitch.
The man had a boat.
Isaiah got back in the car and floored it, running the red light, cars honking. If the man was heading to the marina he would have been driving south. Instead, he was headed west toward the LA River. Maybe his intention was to assault the girl in a warehouse or an empty building but a boat was better. Be alone with her out on the ocean, do what he wanted, and throw her body overboard.
“Call 911,” Isaiah said. Deronda dialed her cell, put it on speaker, and held it up to Isaiah’s ear.
“911,” the dispatcher said. “What is your emergency?”
Isaiah had to shout over the roaring V8. “A kidnapping,” he said, “a little girl.”
“When did this happen, sir?”
“A few minutes ago. I’m chasing the guy, he’s getting away. Going west on Dover, just passed Pacific.”
“Did you see the kidnapping?”
“No, I didn’t see it. He chloroformed her, put her in his truck.”
“Sir, you said you didn’t see it.”
“I smelled the chloroform, they’re probably in his boat by now.”
“Chloroform doesn’t have a smell—what boat?”
“Isaiah!” Deronda said, dropping the phone.
The river was coming at them fast, filling up the windshield. Isaiah downshifted, jerked the wheel right and then cranked it hard left, the car sliding sideways onto the bike path, Isaiah stomping on the gas, dust and gravel shooting out from behind the car as it raced off downriver.
“Why didn’t I get out of the car?” Deronda said. “Why?”
The Mercury outboard chugged along, the Hannah M moving at wake speed down the wide green LA River. Upstream the water was too shallow but here near the harbor there was just enough draft. Boyd stood tall on the bridge of his twenty-one-foot cuddy cruiser. The air was a warm wet blanket on his face but it felt good anyway.
Boyd was living in his grandmother’s second bedroom when she died of old age. The house went back to the bank but she’d left him some money in a safe-deposit box. Not a lot but enough to buy a secondhand boat with Bondo patches on the hull, a cracked windshield, and rust flaking off the gunwales. He loved the boat, by far the best thing he’d ever owned. Nick let him park the boat trailer inside the chain link enclosure with the forklift providing he could use the boat whenever he wanted. Backing the trailer into the water took no time at all.
The skinny girl was stashed in the cabin below. Boyd had laid her down on the mildewed mattress and put duct tape around her wrists and ankles and over her mouth. She’d moaned a couple of times, her shirt pulled up over her incredibly small waist. Boyd kneeled next to her, listening to her breathe and feeling the tapeworm in his gut growing and twisting, filling him with rage. He’d almost attacked her right then and there but decided to stick with the plan.