False Witness Read online

  “Thought he might know martial arts, so I didn’t take any chances.”

  “Yeah, he looks real dangerous,” Clark said.

  “You said alive. Check his pulse if you want.”

  Clark studied Hargrove for a beat, confirming Clark’s earlier assessment. Hargrove seemed scared—insecure, yet still resolute. Nervous. Trigger-happy. The worst kind. “Why don’t you put that gun down so we can talk?” Clark asked.

  Hargrove handed Clark a sheet of paper. “Money talks,” he said. “Here’re the wiring instructions.”

  Not so fast. “Where’d you find him?” Clark asked.

  Hargrove hesitated as if deciding whether answering the question might reveal too much. “I’m a niche player for several Vegas bond enforcers. I have connections with the folks who manufacture false IDs. Mr. Kumari here apparently decided to become Charan Jadhav. Once we found that out, the rest was easy.”

  Clark noticed a nervous twitch in Hargrove’s right eye. He had probably never been this close to a million bucks before. “What bail bondsman are you working with?” Clark asked.

  Hargrove flinched like a junior high student caught cheating. “I’m on my own.”

  In other words, for a million bucks, I’m cutting out my partner.

  “You licensed?” Clark asked.

  “Enough questions. Call the bank.” Hargrove inched the gun closer to Clark’s gut.

  “I can wire a quarter of a million right now,” Clark explained matter-of-factly. He made it sound like buying a loaf of bread. “But I’ll need to personally go in and handle the rest.”

  “What does that mean?” Hargrove’s face clouded over, his eyes narrow. “You don’t have the money?”

  “I’ve got it. I just need to liquidate a few stocks.”

  “You should have done that before you made the offer.” Hargrove put both hands on the gun and waved it toward the car door. “Get out.”

  Clark swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Hargrove was strung tight as a piano wire—the high notes—and Clark didn’t want to set him off. “I need to tell you a few things first.” He nodded toward Kumari. “Can we step outside and talk?”

  “He doesn’t speak English.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I pistol-whipped him. He begged me to stop in some other language. Must have been Hindi or something.”

  Without waiting for permission, Clark launched into an abbreviated explanation of everything that had happened since his visit to Dr. Silvoso’s plastic surgery office. Even as Clark recited the facts, they seemed surreal, and Clark found himself getting emotional as he talked about what he had done to get Jessica back. He left out irrelevant details, like his torture of Johnny Chin, and he embellished a few of the financial particulars to make it sound like he could come up with a million bucks in no time. But otherwise, it was an accurate and painful portrayal of how desperate Clark had become. At first, he intentionally dramatized it a little—selling his point. But by the end, the raw emotions had surfaced, and Clark couldn’t even finish.

  There was a long silence as Hargrove considered his options. “Give me the phone,” he said.

  Puzzled, Clark handed over his cell phone.

  “Not that one.”

  Clark put his hand over the other cell—the one given him by the kidnappers. It was his only link to Jessica and now Hargrove wanted it. There could only be one reason.

  “Nobody calls them but me.”

  Hargrove tensed. He raised the gun and aimed it at Clark’s temple. “You’ve got a sad story,” he said. “But I’ve got a sad story, too. I lied to you about working alone. I’ve got a bail bondsman expecting two-fifty of my cut. I’ve got a company that specializes in false IDs and breaking bones for past-due accounts expecting another two-fifty. A quarter of a million doesn’t even cover my expenses.” Hargrove was talking fast, his voice tense. “I’m sorry about your wife, man, but that’s not my problem.”

  Clark couldn’t let him have the phone. The last call had cost Clark twelve precious hours. “Nobody calls them but me,” he repeated.

  “Listen, pal, you’re not making the rules anymore. I’ll call them and tell them I’m holding you at gunpoint and I’ve got Kumari as well. If they’re willing to kidnap your wife in exchange for a chance at finding this guy, they’ll cough up a million. You get your wife back; I get paid.”

  “That’s insane.” Clark shuddered at the thought of Hargrove bargaining with Xu. Jessica’s captors would start the torture immediately. Clark’s mind flashed to Johnny Chin—the look of stark primal pain after Clark shot out his kneecap. The fear in Chin’s eyes when Clark threatened him again. He couldn’t let Jessica go through something like that.

  “Give me the phone!” Hargrove pressed the gun against Clark’s temple. Thoughts of Jessica flashed through Clark’s mind like a movie on fast-forward. Jessica on the trampoline. Jessica with heavy eyelids in the morning. Jessica with tears streaming down her face the day of the miscarriage. Jessica. Jessica. Jessica. He would die before he handed over the phone.

  “If I have to kill you, it only makes my bargaining position stronger,” Hargrove said. His voice sounded mechanical, disembodied. “Think about it. They’ll know I couldn’t care less about your wife. Their leverage will be gone. I could probably get two million.”

  “You’re going to kill me in this parking lot in broad daylight?”

  “No. You’re going to give me the phone.”

  A loud moan from the backseat momentarily distracted them both. Kumari cried out in Hindi, then flopped on the seat, his mouth open, gasping for air, a fish out of water. His eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets.

  “It’s a heart attack!” Clark ignored the gun at his temple and jumped out of the vehicle. He threw open the back door and leaned in, quickly twisting Kumari’s body around so he lay supine on the seat. This man—alive—was Clark’s only connection to Jessica! Kumari’s eyes rolled back in his head. He stopped gasping for air. His body went limp.

  I can’t lose him!

  “Call 911!” Clark shouted. He climbed into the backseat and covered Kumari’s mouth with his own lips, ignoring the taste of salty perspiration and the feel of the old man’s stubble. He pressed down tight to create a seal. He pinched Kumari’s nose and desperately pumped a few short breaths into the dying man. He placed both hands on Kumari’s chest and applied pressure. He felt the fragile chest compress and expand. He did it twice more.

  “Don’t you dare die on me!” Clark gasped. But Kumari just lay there, limp. Clark tilted Kumari’s head back, pinched Kumari’s nose, and blew in a few more breaths, praying for a miracle. He would gladly swallow the old man’s vomit if Kumari would just breathe again.

  “Call 911!” Clark shouted again, pumping in another breath. “If he dies, we both lose everything.”

  Clark pushed once more on the old man’s chest, but Kumari still didn’t respond. Clark pushed again . . . harder. He checked quickly for a pulse and thought he felt something. He placed his ear next to Kumari’s mouth.

  It seemed like he felt a breath. Wishful thinking? Hope surged through him. He blew two more breaths into Kumari and listened again.

  Clark’s own heart nearly stopped at what he heard.

  19

  Clark tried to control his shock, though the words had stunned him. He needed a second to react, so he blew another few breaths into Kumari’s mouth and continued pumping his chest, though not as forcefully as before.

  “I can’t call 911!” Hargrove cried. “Look at him!” Hargrove had twisted in his seat and gawked at the sight before him, the gun still in his right hand.

  Clark checked Kumari again for breathing. This time, the words were unmistakable.

  “Grab the gun,” the old man whispered. In English. Plain English, with perfect diction.

  “Okay, okay,” Clark huffed as if responding to Hargrove’s comments.

  Clark had climbed fully inside the Explorer, kneeling in the leg space of the backsea
t. He placed his hands on Kumari’s chest and stole a quick glance at Hargrove. Clark would have one chance to make this work.

  He blew a few more breaths into Kumari’s mouth. This time, the old man’s breath seemed more pungent. Or maybe Clark just noticed it more, knowing Kumari would be okay. He knelt again and pushed down twice on Kumari’s chest.

  He recalled the instructions of a bounty hunter colleague who hung out on the more-violent side of the profession. Make the first blow count. Drive the heel of your hand into the tip of the nose with all your might, forcing the bridge of the nose up into the skull. With the right amount of impact, the blow would disable. If the angle was right, it could kill.

  Clark didn’t want Hargrove dead, but the man had a gun. Jessica’s life hung in the balance. Clark had already tortured for Jessica, lied for Jessica, defrauded people for Jessica. If he had to kill for her, this was no time to hold back. He could sort it all out later.

  He would twist and, with his left hand, grab the wrist of Hargrove’s gun hand, pushing the gun away. Simultaneously, Clark would use his right hand to land the debilitating blow, driving Hargrove’s nose out the back of his skull if he had to.

  He took a quick breath, the calm before the hurricane. This one’s for you, Jess.

  He twisted and grabbed for Hargrove’s gun hand but didn’t get a good grip. The bullet whistled by Clark, shattering the back window. In the same instant, Clark drove the heel of his right hand into the tip of Hargrove’s nose, pulling back a little at the last possible moment, almost involuntarily, his instincts somehow keeping him from landing the blow with all his pent-up fury. Still, he heard the crunch of collapsing bone and saw Hargrove’s eyes roll up in shock. Clark grabbed the gun.

  Hargrove buried his face in both hands and slumped in the front seat. Blood flowed in a stream from his hands, down his forearms to his elbows, dripping on the seat. Another rivulet dripped from his chin. He made small gurgling noises, his eyes vacant.

  What kind of animal have I become?

  Clumsily, with his wrists still taped together behind his back, Kumari scrambled to an upright position in the backseat. “Maybe you should call 911,” he suggested.

  Clark grabbed his cell phone from the front seat. Hargrove pulled his hands away from his face for an instant, and Clark gaped in horror at the damage he had done. Hargrove’s nose was nearly collapsed; it protruded only slightly from his face, skewed to the left side. Blood poured from the nostrils.

  “Don’t let him die,” Clark said to nobody in particular. Hargrove stared back in shock. He was losing consciousness fast.

  The adrenaline rush that fueled Clark’s attack gave way to pity. He called 911 and gave the operator directions to the site. Next, he stuffed the cell phones in his pocket and flung Kumari over his shoulder. The old man wasn’t that heavy, maybe a hundred forty pounds max, but still, he could have made things a lot more difficult by resisting.

  Clark half jogged, half walked to the Caddy and threw Kumari in the passenger seat. Construction on the adjacent site had stopped as the men turned and stared at the strange scene. A few of them were on cell phones. Clark hopped in the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and beat it toward the parking lot entrance. Kumari had his eyes closed, his lips forming silent words.

  “What are you doing?” Clark asked. He careened around a row of cars, throwing Kumari onto his side in the middle of the front seat.

  “I was praying,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “Dennis Hargrove, the man you nearly killed.”

  Clark focused on the road ahead of him as he exited the parking lot and sped past the casino. At Green Valley Parkway he took a right, away from the interstate and the sound of distant sirens. “If you wouldn’t mind, say one for Jessica, too.”

  20

  After two blocks of glancing in his rearview mirror, Clark took a right into a quiet residential area. He zigzagged down a few streets, keeping a constant watch on the road behind him. The police would soon have a description of his vehicle. He had nearly killed two men today and defrauded a third. He had alerted the U.S. attorney’s office to a kidnapping scheme involving the mob and had then fled Las Vegas. Everyone would be looking for him—the feds, the locals, the mob.

  He felt like a cornered fox with the hounds baying at his heels, the red-coated aristocratic hunters on their galloping steeds in pursuit. Or maybe, more accurately, like a rat in a maze. He turned left, then right, then left again at the next stop sign. He had no idea where he was going. He needed time and space to figure out his next move. But his frazzled mind was misfiring, the neurons short-circuited by pure exhaustion and fear about what was happening to Jessica.

  “Why did you help me back there?” he asked Kumari.

  “You, my friend, were the lesser of two evils,” Kumari responded softly. “Within minutes of Mr. Hargrove’s telephone call to these kidnappers, they would have murdered your wife and overtaken us.”

  A fist of anxiety squeezed Clark’s heart, wringing out any confidence gained from this most recent getaway. Something about the way Kumari said it, as if it were a foregone conclusion, made it more real.

  “Two lives would most assuredly have been lost. Mr. Hargrove did not have—what would you say?—the street smarts to deal with the triads. I decided to take my chances with you.”

  Clark made a mental note about Kumari’s assumption that the triads were involved. When Clark had recited his story to Hargrove in the Explorer, he intentionally chose not to mention the possibility that the Chinese mafia was behind this.

  Clark surveyed each street, looking for just the right vehicle. “How can you be so sure they would have overtaken us?” he asked. “And who do you think ‘they’ are, anyway?”

  At this Kumari seemed to nod a little, as if a slow student forced to stay after school was finally asking the right questions. “I have two questions, Mr. . . .” Kumari paused, and Clark had the feeling he would have extended a hand if both hands weren’t taped behind his back. “I don’t believe I have your name.”

  “Doe. John Doe.”

  This generated a polite smile from the professor, swollen lip and all. “Yes, of course, Mr. Doe. I believe my first abductor may have called you Shealy during the phone call, but he was probably mistaken.

  “In any event, the answer to your first question is contained in the cell phone the triad gave to you. Unless I am mistaken, that phone will have an LBS system built into it. Such a system, if I am correct, works in the same way as the Global Positioning System that keeps car navigational systems on course. That phone, Mr. Doe, is your electronic leash. As soon as you call the triad and tell them you have located me, they jerk your leash and reel you in.”

  Goose bumps formed on the back of Clark’s neck. In the chaos of locating and gaining custody of Kumari, he had forgotten that the mob would be tracking his every movement.

  “Second, I have a history with this group of men who abducted your wife. They will do whatever it takes to get what they want. Human life means nothing to them.”

  They were now in the heart of a quiet, residential neighborhood with its small, one-story adobe homes on neat little postage-stamp lots. Each house had a few trimmed shrubs in the otherwise-barren patch of desert that comprised the front yard. It was too hot for anyone to be outside, except for a single older man about a hundred yards away, sweeping the sidewalk leading up to his house.

  Clark pulled over to the curb a few feet behind a gray Durango, one of the few SUVs he had seen in the last several blocks. He programmed the Escalade’s GPS system and wrote down directions to the interstate. He checked the rearview mirror and did a quick three-sixty of the neighborhood.

  Clark quickly pulled on his Kevlar vest, T-shirt, socks, and shoes. He fastened the shoulder holster in place and holstered the Glock. He struggled as he twisted into his sports coat in the driver’s seat, pain shooting through his sore neck.

  “Would you like my advice?” Kumari asked.

&
nbsp; “Not particularly.”

  Clark jumped out of the Escalade and hustled to Kumari’s side. After another quick look around, confirming that the old man sweeping his sidewalk was not watching, Clark pulled Kumari out of the front seat and stuffed him into the backseat. Using plastic handcuffs, he linked one of Kumari’s taped wrists to the inside door handle. “Just in case you had any ideas of reaching the horn,” Clark explained.

  As Clark pulled some tools out of the cargo space, a car drove quickly past. The driver and passenger were two young women, both wearing sunglasses, probably in their twenties. Hardly the mob profile.

  Clark grabbed his slim-jim, a knife, and a pair of pliers. It took him less than five minutes to hot-wire the Durango. The man down the road finished sweeping his sidewalk and went inside his house. Clark transferred his tools, his prisoner, and his directions. As Kumari settled back in the passenger seat, he gave Clark a worried, quizzical look.

  “Are you a professional thief?” the professor asked.

  “I don’t know where you got that idea,” Clark said, pulling away from the curb.

  Clark tried to ignore the stares of the professor as he followed the directions back toward the main road. “What?” he finally asked, exasperated.

  “You kept the cell phone,” Kumari noted.

  “I’m going to call them with it.”

  “Write down their number and use your other phone. Discard the leash.”

  “I can’t risk that. They might take it out on Jessica.”

  “If you keep the phone, they will know where to find you. When they locate you, what is your plan?”

  Who knows? Clark hadn’t gotten that far yet. He was following a make-it-up-as-you-go plan. “I guess I’ll put a gun to your head and demand that they free Jessica before I give you up.”

  Kumari didn’t flinch, as if this were all just one huge math problem. “What if they do not bring Jessica?”

  “I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”