Darden was talking now, his voice sounding low and cautious, giving a kind of play-by-play for the benefit of the FBI and SWAT teams.
“Okay, I just pulled up at the corner of Sims and Weide,” Darden said. “There’s not a living soul here that I can see. Just a few houses, not many lights on. One quadrant of the intersection leads off toward a playground, although it’s covered with snow. I think maybe a ball field.” He hesitated. There was the sound of his car door snicking open. “I’m getting out now.” There were slight crunching sounds. “Nothing. I think this might be . . . Wait a minute.” Now they could hear his breath sounds, hoarse and a little panicked. “I hear something.” More crunching. “There’s a phone ringing. A pay phone over there.” Now there was wild excitement in his voice.
“Holy crap,” Max said. “That must be the last pay phone left in existence.”
“Kidnapper really plotted out the route,” Afton muttered.
“Hello?” Darden had answered the ringing phone, his voice high and reedy. “Yes,” he said. “I know where that is.”
There was more crunching and then the sound of his car door opening and closing. When he was safely inside, Darden said, “Same voice. This time he told me to head over to that old nightclub by the Wabasha Street Caves. I’m supposed to look around the parking lot for a pop can. Inside is supposed to be another set of directions.” He swallowed hard, and then said, “I hope you guys are listening in because this feels very dangerous. Like I’m walking into a trap.”
“We’re listening,” Afton said, even though she knew Darden couldn’t hear her.
Max shook his head. “This is like a bad scavenger hunt that . . . Oh, holy shit.”
“What?”
“I’ll bet the kidnapper is leading him toward those old beer and mushroom caves.”
“It’d be hard for SWAT to follow him in there,” Afton said.
Max pounded a fist against the steering wheel. “No, it’s going to be damn near impossible. That’s a terrible place. Those caves are dug right into the hillside. You’ve got a bluff that rises nearly eight hundred feet high above them and is nearly impossible to scale. And the Mississippi River dips within fifty yards of those caves. It’s mostly dense woods along there. There are no streets . . . no lights . . .”
“And if those new directions send him farther back . . .”
“The farther back you go,” Max said, “the more deserted it gets. Just a tangle of trees and underbrush. And if the kidnapper tries to lure Darden inside one of those caves, all bets are off ’cause it’s dangerous as hell. There are drop-offs inside, noxious gasses.”
“What are we gonna do?” Afton asked. She remembered that some high school kids had died in those caves a few years ago. They’d crawled in to drink beer and smoke pot, but ended up breathing deadly carbon monoxide.
Max worried his upper teeth against his lower lip. “I can’t imagine what the SWAT team will do.”
“Can we get over there somehow? I mean us, you and I?”
“We can’t risk it. There’s only that one narrow road in, past Harriet Island Park. If the kidnapper is watching, and I’m sure he is, we’ll be spotted in a second.”
Afton was almost frantic. “There has to be someplace we can go.”
Max considered this for a few seconds. “There might be a spot up top. Way up on the river bluff.”
38
AS Afton and Max careened across the Lafayette Bridge, the lights of Holman Field, where they’d jumped onto a helicopter just five days ago, shimmered dimly off to their left. At this late hour, traffic was almost nonexistent in this industrial part of the city where large, low warehouses stretched for blocks and sodium vapor lights lent an unnatural yellow glow.
All the while they listened to Darden’s mutterings and the squeal on Max’s police radio.
They could hear Don Jasper screaming at the SWAT guys to pull on their white coveralls and get into position fast.
But would they be fast enough, Afton wondered, even as sharpshooters were being dispatched?
Cruising down Plato Boulevard, Max made a couple of turns, and then headed up Ohio Street, barely slowing as he blew through a stop sign. It was a narrow, twisty street that climbed upward at a steep angle. It took them directly up the east bluff that loomed over downtown Saint Paul and the Mississippi River.
“Isn’t there a park up here somewhere?” Afton asked as they popped out on top. “A place where we can see what’s going on?”
“I think . . . this way,” Max said, turning right.