Snapshots. Pamela Browning
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this point, the action sped into fast-forward. Martine let out a small involuntary squeak at Rick’s sudden movement. Lightning quick, the knife slit a shallow cut across the creamy skin at the base of her throat. Beads of blood appeared, dark red and out of place as they slid toward the scoop neckline of Martine’s pale green dress.
“Stay away,” warned her captor in an agitated voice, his accent guttural and Hispanic. “Unless you want your wife to become fish food at the bottom of a canal.” The man seemed electric, wired, jittery, like an out-of-control marionette.
Rick recoiled, held himself back when all he wanted to do was to rush the man and blow his head off. Martine, who must have known his inclination, sent him a look of such dire pleading that it rocked him back on his heels.
All thought of their previous argument and of last night’s discovery faded in the force of Rick’s sudden, gut-wrenching comprehension. He recognized the man as Jorgé Padrón, an illegal immigrant who had been convicted on Rick’s testimony some years ago. Padrón had created a fracas in the courtroom before they led him away, kicking over a chair and yelling in broken English that he’d get even with Rick McCulloch, no matter how long it took. Since Padrón was sentenced to ten years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, Rick had known he would eventually be back on the street, but he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. The newly convicted often issued impassioned threats before being led away to serve their time.
“Drop your gun,” Padrón commanded.
Rick hesitated, bile rising in his throat. It tasted metallic, coppery.
“Rick—” Martine gasped, her eyes begging him.
“Shut up,” Padrón said, tightening his grip so that she winced. “Drop it,” he said to Rick. “Unless you want me to add a few more red beads to this pretty necklace I gave your wife.”
Bloodstains now covered the bodice of Martine’s dress. Feeling a sense of futility, Rick dropped the .38. It landed with a thud on the grass.
“Hands up where I can see them.”
Slowly, Rick raised his hands above his shoulders.
Padrón maneuvered Martine between him and Rick as he propelled her toward the white car at the curb. “No talk from you,” he warned Rick. “I’ll kill her without thinking twice.”
“Take me, instead,” Rick said urgently. “Let her go.”
“You? You’re no use to me. Comprende?”
Rick comprended, all right. The man was a convicted sex offender who had robbed a convenience store and raped the owner’s wife. He’d carved the woman’s face into ribbons for good measure.
“Open the door,” Padrón ordered Martine as they approached the driver’s side of the white car. “Do it!”
Martine’s hand, the one with his wedding ring on the third finger, inched out. Rick watched, alert for any lapse on Padrón’s part, any chance he might be able to jump the man before he reached the car. The steel skin of the .38 gleamed in the moonlight a few feet from his right foot.
“Hurry up!” Padrón said.
Martine pulled at the door; it opened. Padrón slid inside under the steering wheel and yanked Martine in after him.
“Padrón, let’s talk about this,” Rick said, refusing to panic. “We can solve your problems some other way. Let her go. Take me. I can help you.”
“Like when you sent me off to Raiford Prison? Yeah, right.” To Martine he said, “Turn the key. Start the car. You and me, we go for a ride.” He tightened his choke hold around her neck.
Martine did as he said. The car’s engine clunked to life, and a cloud of black exhaust spewed from the tailpipe. Rick hoped some of the neighbors would notice, but all the nearby houses were dark.
“Now put it in drive. No surprises, Mrs. McCulloch, and you will be okay.”
Rage flickered up past the fear in Rick’s throat, wrapped itself around his brain and squeezed. Martine…Martine. The white car began to roll slowly toward the intersection.
“Don’t call police,” was Padrón’s parting command. “Anyone follows me, she dies.”
This warning notwithstanding, Rick grabbed his gun and was behind the wheel of his Taurus sedan before the Impala rounded the corner. He grappled with his cell phone and managed to alert the police department, relieved to learn that his friend Wally was working the desk.
Rick did his best to explain, and Wally was no dummy. He knew who Padrón was. Wally had worked the case with Rick shortly after Rick had joined the force.
“Don’t worry, Rick,” Wally said, but by that time Rick was straining to keep track of the Impala, which was darting in and out of cars ahead. He almost lost it in the traffic on busy Kendall Boulevard.
Rick sped through traffic lights and ignored stop signs as the Impala bobbed and weaved, nearly running up on the sidewalk at one point, speeding up the ramp to the Palmetto Expressway. From what he could tell about the car’s occupants, Padrón stayed pressed close to Martine, and he could only imagine her state of mind at present. His wife wasn’t the most stable of women even in the best of times; in the past few months she’d been seeing a counselor for depression. Hang in there, Martine, he muttered. Despite their difficulties, she would expect him to do everything in his power to save her. Rick wouldn’t disappoint her—the consequences were unthinkable.
The expressway was its usual tangle of passenger cars and semis, with macho guys jockeying for every inch as they dodged from lane to lane, women laughing into cell phones pressed to their ears. Packs of commuters were scurrying home to outlying subdivisions. Overhead a 747 banked low, preparing to land at Miami International. Graffiti rushed by, spray painted on the metal guardrail in the median: SNOWBIRDS GO HOME. DOLPHINS ROCK. JULIO + ANA (TRULY).
The white Impala picked up speed, almost sideswiping a Mack truck. Rick jammed his foot down on the accelerator, raced past a school bus, barked out his location to Wally on the phone.
What happened next went down fast. The Impala, traveling an estimated hundred miles an hour in the passing lane, swerved to the right for a few seconds, almost clipping a red Mustang. When the Impala arced back into the passing lane, it skidded left into the grassy median.
Steer into the skid, Rick thought. He had a moment of jubilation when Martine appeared to be doing just that, but before he could draw another breath, the Impala’s tires bounced off the pavement so that the car slewed sideways into the median again. Miraculously, it straightened. Then it struck the metal barrier, sending up a plume of sparks.
For one heart-stopping, surreal moment, the Impala seemed frozen in midair, no longer a car but a graceful white wingless flying machine. Rick’s brain struggled to make sense of the scene as the car with his wife inside proceeded to land on its roof with a deafening crash, immediately bursting into flames.
Rick ran toward the twisted wreckage, heart thudding against his ribs. Other motorists stopped, and cars slowed on the highway as drivers craned their heads in curiosity. The blaze made it impossible to see anything but the outline of the car, and the heat drove him backward. Then he spotted a patch of pale green in his peripheral vision, Martine’s dress, and he changed direction, dreading what he would find when he reached her.
He knelt beside her, appalled by all the blood. Soon, sirens were keening all around as pulsing multicolored lights illuminated a nightmare scene of fire engines and police cars. Martine was unconscious, but she was alive. He let the paramedics push him aside, their brief, urgent words mere babble in his ears as they strapped Martine onto a stretcher and slid it into the ambulance.
He’d supervised a hundred emergency scenes in the course of his work, but all of them had been marked by his own detachment and his ability to function well under stress. As one of the paramedics slammed the ambulance door, he tried to bring that same sense of focus into this situation but failed. The horror of the images