The Scorekeeper Read online

  “Again.”

  “Fifty-four twenty-eight.”

  “Good,” Reed said. “That’s my phone number. Basic Columbus codes, so it’s 614-555-5428. I want you to wait twenty minutes. Turn the phone off if you can to conserve the battery, then call me at that number. You got it?”

  “Fifty-four twenty-eight.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Arthur Woodson Community Park was just over three miles from the 8th Precinct. Running with the flashers on, Reed opted against the sirens, not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention. Even at such a late hour, people in a place like The Bottoms were trained to keep an eye out for the police.

  If not to hide their own transgressions, at the very least to rubberneck at whatever may be occurring.

  Leaning hard on the gas, he made it in less than three minutes, tearing across the parking lot and leaving the sedan at a diagonal in the front visitor stalls. Climbing out, he left the door open just an extra half-beat, ample time for Billie to rocket through, the two of them jogging together for the front door.

  Whether Della Snow was a real person or not, he couldn’t be certain. Same for the situation she was describing, such that Reed was still fighting to wrap his mind around it.

  But that didn’t mean it wasn’t to be taken seriously.

  Or that they had even a split second to waste if it was.

  Bursting through the front doors of the precinct, Reed headed straight for the staircase rising before them. Ignoring the grid of desks for beat cops and admin workers sprawled in either direction, he took the stairs two at a time.

  With Billie on his hip, they emerged on the second floor, finding the space a near copy of the one below. To his right, he could see bright lights, knowing that Jackie would be at her post on the dispatch desk at the far end.

  Not having the time or the energy to answer any of her questions, he instead made a hard left. Slowing his pace just slightly, he wove his way through the tangle of desks set aside for detectives, the number far exceeding those needed for the tiny group currently working out of the precinct.

  Already knowing where they were headed, Billie led the way, both arriving at Reed’s desk in the corner a minute after pulling up outside.

  And giving them sixteen more before Della Snow called back.

  With just a shake of the mouse on the desk, Reed brought the screen to life. Going straight for the CPD database, he entered the name Della Snow and set it to search.

  On a hunch, he also went into ViCAP – Violent Crime Apprehension Center – and NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, and set those to run as well. Both operated by the FBI, he put each to searching for her name both as a perpetrator and as a victim, hoping that if this did come back as legit, maybe he would get something that might point him toward who might have done such a thing.

  Or at the very least, where she might now be.

  Once all three were up and running, he circled back to the low hanging fruit, moving into the Division of Motor Vehicles database. Entering the name, a response came back just a moment later, a driver’s license for Della Ann Snow popping up.

  Enlarging the image to full screen, the picture in the corner showed a light-skinned black girl, her tone suggesting mixed-race parentage. Straight hair was combed back from her forehead and hung past her shoulders before disappearing from view.

  Skinny, her smile seemed especially broad on her face, her collarbones jutting out beneath the straps of her tank top.

  Her date of birth put her at twenty-four years of age. The address listed was for a spot in Hilliard, not matching the one she had given him on the phone, but not far from it.

  Fairly common, given her age and stating she was a student, two demographics that were known to relocate quite frequently.

  Sending the image to the printer, Reed set it to make ten copies. Unsure of who he might need to enlist in the hours ahead, he wanted to be sure to have plenty of information on hand, able to disseminate photos at a moment’s notice.

  Just as he was finishing, the search through the Columbus Police database completed its search, a pop-up telling him that the name had come back without incident. Which meant that she had never had a run-in with anybody, no need to file a restraining order or lodge a complaint against someone.

  Not so much as a parking ticket, even.

  “Dammit,” Reed said, closing the program and flipping over into the two FBI databases, finding them both to be drawing a blank as well.

  The sum total of which told him nothing, and at the same time quite a bit. While it didn’t shed any light on who the girl was or who might have abducted her, it also proved that she didn’t seem the sort to be calling and making such a thing up.

  Assuming, of course, that the person he was talking to was actually Della Snow.

  Closing out of all the files on his desktop, Reed jumped up from his seat. Slapping twice at the leg of his jeans, Billie fell in beside him, both swinging by the printer just long enough to grab up the printouts before heading back to the stairwell.

  As we walked, he slid his cell phone from his hip and pressed it to his face. Knowing that alone wouldn’t be enough to get him past Jackie unscathed, he dialed the third entry in his call log, the line ringing just twice before being snatched up.

  The voice on the other end sounded no less awake than when they’d spoken earlier in the day.

  Even if it did sound infinitely less happy about it.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was still half a pizza sitting in the open box on the end of the coffee table in front of The Scorekeeper, though the time for eating was now well behind him. Despite knowing it would likely be the last chance he got to eat what he wanted for a while, there was simply no way his stomach would be able to handle another bite.

  Not with the lingering McNuggets from earlier still in his system.

  Certainly not with the anticipation and exhilaration he felt roiling through him. Harkening back to a feeling he hadn’t experienced in years, The Scorekeeper could feel his every nerve ending pulled taut.

  The smile that had first appeared while working out in the woods earlier in the day was now back, his focus on the pair of telephones sitting just inches from the open pizza box. The fun they represented had first started almost a half hour ago. Beginning with nothing more than a single muted phone call, he had connected to the device hidden in the footwell at the base of the box Della Snow now found herself in.

  Knowing that a single call would barely be enough to get her attention, he had instead placed three in succession. Then he had waited just five minutes before starting the process again.

  And finally, a third time just for good measure.

  The sedative he had injected her with had been finely calibrated to bring her from her slumber exactly seven hours after being administered. Even with a small bit of wiggle room, he had known she was awake when placing the calls, most likely had been for quite some time.

  Long enough to have realized the full gravity of her situation, for sure. Probably even to have started trying to work her way out of the box, realizing how futile it was, that no hope lay in attempting to fight her way through.

  Not that he wouldn’t have loved to see her try.

  Of everything, the fact that he wasn’t able to watch what was going on was the only part that he was really sad about. The mere thought of being able to sit and watch her scream, her features painted in terror, bordered on intoxicating.

  Coupling it with her tears, and her vain attempts at escape, it would almost make the previous six years worthwhile.

  Almost.

  Not wanting to make his backtrail too obvious, though, The Scorekeeper had opted against it. Finding a camera that could see in the dark and get a feed out to him was possible, but it would be too obvious, especially so early in the night.

  And it wasn’t like he needed to view all of the various places that would come into play over the course of the evening.

  Instead, he was l
eft to merely fantasize, imagining Snow kicking her way through the false bottom and using her toes to slide the phone up to her hands. Constricted by the tight confines of the coffin he’d made for her, she would have had to rub her pristine skin against the rough wood, fighting to earn every inch.

  Just as he had for so long.

  The struggle to get the phone had taken slightly longer than anticipated, The Scorekeeper’s hope in his captive waning just slightly as he waited for her to make the call. For just an instant, he began to think that he had overestimated his prey, that all this would be for naught.

  Leaning forward on the edge of the couch, he had stared at the phones before him, practically willing them to life. In the back of his mind, he tried to concoct alternatives to his plan, seeing no viable solutions for the elegant sequence he had put together.

  It was this, or it was nothing.

  To his extreme relief, it would prove to be the latter, the phone on the right erupting. Grabbing it up, he had been forced to pause a moment, to calm the pounding of his heart, before pressing it to his ear and playing the part of a confused and overworked 911 operator.

  For more than five minutes they had continued the back and forth, just the sound of her panicked voice sending a spur of adrenaline through him that made the one earlier in the day pale by comparison.

  His plan, his beautifully crafted, meticulously plotted, plan was actually coming to life.

  Through a series of forced stops and starts, The Scorekeeper was able to draw out of the girl that she knew absolutely nothing. She had seen nobody, had no idea who might be doing such a thing to her.

  Which was exactly the point.

  Content that it was safe to proceed, The Scorekeeper had shifted the call over to the 8th Precinct. Through eight excruciating minutes he had tried to relay the conversation to the dispatcher there, the woman somehow managing to sound both much older and infinitely denser.

  A conversation he hoped to never replicate, if at all possible.

  Once he was finally able to impart to her exactly what was happening and the urgency of the situation, the role of the first phone was completed. Signing off the line, he removed the battery from the phone and crushed it beneath his heel, rendering it useless ever again.

  It was at that point he was able to take up the second phone, the device a copy of the burner he had planted in the bottom of Snow’s coffin.

  And with intense pleasure, he had been able to listen to every word shared between her and Detective Reed Mattox.

  The opening volley hadn’t been quite as beneficial as anticipated, but it had rendered one vital piece of luck that he hadn’t banked on – the detective’s personal cell phone number. When or if it might come to be necessary, The Scorekeeper didn’t yet know, though that was hardly the point.

  For now, the show was just beginning. A production he had spent years putting together, he wasn’t about to get greedy, was certainly not in any rush to skip ahead to the conclusion.

  Instead, he checked the clock again, seeing there were just a few minutes remaining before Snow was set to call Mattox back.

  It was all The Scorekeeper could do to sit still and wait.

  Chapter Twelve

  The phone was back on speaker, the front headlamps on Reed’s sedan flashing from side to side. Painting an alternating fluorescent glow on the pavement before him, he alternated glances between the GPS mounted to the dash and the road ahead.

  With no traffic to worry about, he pushed fast through the streets on the edge of Franklinton, running hard north toward Hilliard.

  “Where are you now?” Grimes asked, his graveled voice loud over the sound of the engine rising and falling.

  “Heading toward Hilliard,” Reed said. “I’m going to the address she gave me to check things out, look for signs of a struggle and try to corroborate her story.”

  “You still think there’s a chance this is a hoax?” Grimes asked.

  Raising a hand to his face, Reed passed it over his features. Surprised to feel it come back damp with sweat, he wiped his palm against the leg of his jeans, giving his head a quick shake.

  “Honestly, Captain, I don’t know what to think. This whole damn thing sounds so far out there, either somebody is pulling an elaborate prank or the crime of a lifetime.”

  “And either way, they’re doing it with courtside seats.”

  Reed hadn’t yet considered such a notion, though he couldn’t argue it was wrong. Bobbing his head slightly, he said, “How do you see it?”

  Taking just a single instant, Grimes let out a loud breath. “Same way you are. It sounds ludicrous. A girl wakes up in a box with a cell phone?”

  “But what if it’s true?” Reed finished, already knowing how the hypothetical ended.

  It was the same line of thinking he’d kept circling back to in the previous twenty minutes.

  “Have to act like it is until we have reason to believe otherwise,” Grimes said. “Anything in the system matching the MO?”

  On the digital GPS screen beside Reed, a pulsating red circle indicated he was to make a left. Slowing just slightly, he took the corner at thirty-five miles an hour, blowing through a red light.

  As he did so, he could feel the weight of the car push hard on the passenger side. In the back seat, Billie scrambled across the plastic seat cover, fighting for purchase before they evened out and began careening straight ahead again.

  “Didn’t have time to search that,” Reed said. “I looked for Della Snow and didn’t get a hit with us or the feds. If it’s ever happened before, I’ve damned sure never heard about it.”

  “Me neither, but I’ll take a look,” Grimes said.

  “Appreciate it.”

  On the other end of the line, Reed could hear movement. Right now he could imagine Grimes scrambling around, having been pulled from the throes of sleep and thrust into this nightmarish sequence, the same as he.

  Both of which paled compared to what might have befallen Della Snow.

  Flicking his gaze back to the screen, Reed said, “I have just a couple minutes before she’s supposed to call me back. GPS says I’m almost to the house, so let me check this out and I’ll hit you right back.”

  More movement could be heard on the other end. “This goes without saying, but assume you have probable cause for everything you find there. I’ll back you and Billie both on it.”

  Not needing to express his gratitude a second time, Reed said, “If I find anything up here, I’m going to need full resources. We have no idea where this girl or is how much time she has. That box can’t have unlimited air, and once the battery on that phone dies, we’ll have no way of contacting her.”

  On the screen beside him, the path ended abruptly just a short distance ahead. Like the tip of a flashlight, the blue circle throbbed at the top of the screen, denoting the end of their journey.

  “Full run, whatever you need,” Grimes said. “I’m getting dressed now. By the time you call me back, I’ll be out the door and on my way to the station. I’ll run air traffic control on whatever you need.”

  Slowing just slightly, Reed checked off the numbers on the mailboxes filing by to either side. Starting with 219, he counted backward before sliding to a stop in front of a two-story stucco painted white, the shutters and roof a matching brick red.

  “In the meantime, can you call Greene and Gilchrist and get them up on standby?” Reed asked. “We might need to play some divide-and-conquer here.”

  “You got it. You want me to roust McMichaels and Jacobs, too?”

  Glancing out through the front windshield, Reed could see no signs of life from the house. The windows were dark. There were no cars in the driveway.

  “Definitely.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The phone was gripped tight in Della Snow’s hands. With her elbows propped on the bare wood beneath her, the device was just an inch above her sternum, the plastic warm and damp in her sweaty palms. Each breath she had to force in and out, the
shallow gasps leaving her on the verge of hyperventilation.

  “Fifty-four twenty-eight,” she said aloud. “Fifty-four twenty-eight.”

  There was no need for her to keep repeating the digits. As an accounting major, she was more than proficient with numbers.

  Considering that these might represent her sole direct lifeline to the world at the moment, they had been seared into her frontal lobe, a sequence she would carry until her dying day.

  Whenever that might be.

  The reasoning behind doing it was simply to push the reality of her situation from her mind. To give her something else to focus on besides the fact that she was cold and naked, alone and scared.

  That she was in a box, put there by God-only-knew who, for a reason she didn’t pretend to have any idea about.

  Saying the numbers as slowly as she could, Della waited until what she guessed was twenty minutes had passed. And then she made herself wait another five.

  Only at that point did she trust to power the device back to life, holding her breath as the light of the screen flashed before her, almost blinding in the total darkness. Scrunching her eyes tight, she jerked her head to the side, waiting as the phone vibrated once, alerting her it was active and ready to transmit.

  Where she was that still allowed a signal to get out, she hadn’t a clue, thankful only that it did, even if the phone had clearly been planted as a means to mess with her. Otherwise, there would have been no need to keep it buried beneath the plank at the end of the bed, the heel of her foot sore from slamming it against the wood to get to it.

  Forming her eyes into narrow slits, Della looked down at the screen, just a few black block numbers visible on a yellow-green background.

  “Twenty-two minutes,” she whispered.

  Feeling a tiny ripple of palpitations pass up through her core, she thumbed in the sequence of numbers, whispering them aloud as she did so, before flipping the phone to speaker.