All characters named in this story were created by Janet Evanovich, except the rookie cops and the teen gang members and Jacob Stanton (the House Monster), created by AutumnDreaming for this story.
All of Morelli's cop experiences in this story have been creatively adapted from the experiences of Ralph L. Dettweiler, former Sergeant of South Carolina Sheriff's Department, found at
Additional inspiration was gleaned from Charles Martin's novel Chasing Fireflies.
Steph's POV
I called Ranger from the lobby at St. Francis, but he didn't answer. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have dreamed of calling Tank, but this was an emergency. I had to get out of there before Morelli came down the stairs. I dialed Tank, but the "Yo," at the other end of the phone belonged to Bobby Brown.
"I need a ride," I said.
"What happened to the Porsche?" he asked.
"Nothing! It's fine. It's at my apartment. I'm at St. Francis. I need a ride back."
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm okay. Andy Zabotsky isn't."
"We heard." The RangeMan team heard everything. The minute intelligent life was discovered on Mars, RangeMan would be able to provide a full description. "Be there in ten." And he disconnected.
Ten minutes later, a big shiny black Range Rover pulled up in front of the juniper bush beside the parking garage enterance where i was hiding. I didn't even have to tell Bobby exactly where I was. They always knew. I ran around to the passeger side and climbed up into the front seat.
"So, why aren't you driving the Porsche?" he asked, smiling. He knew why. He just wanted to hear me say it.
"Because I didn't want to park the Porsche in front of the court house, and I didn't want to walk ten blocks."
"Still afraid it's stolen, aren't you?" he laughed, putting Range Rover in gear and taking off while I struggled to get my seat belt fastened.
"Do you know where Ranger gets all these vehicles?" I asked.
"If I told you…" he said laughing.
"You'd have to kill me?" I asked with a smile, knowing he was kidding.
"No, but Ranger'd kill me, so I'm not telling."
Bobby dropped me at my apartment building. I ran inside, scrounged up a peanut butter and olive sandwich and washed it down with my last beer. I tossed Rex a couple fruit loops and he poked his head out of his soup can and looked at me, whiskers whirring.
"You don't think I should give up on this bounty hunter thing, do you, Rex?"
Rex's little black eyes looked thoughtful for a second. Then he stuffed both cheeks full of fruit loops and turned tail back into his soup can.
"You're right," I told him. "We've just got to soldier on." Rex gave great pep talks.
I zipped up my black wool jacket, pushed a black wool ski cap down on my head, re-tied one of my black steel-toed boots, inspected a small hole in the knee of my new black jeans where I'd skinned my knee chasing a desperate felon, and pulled my big black leather bag onto my shoulder. I stood tall. I stood proud. I strutted around the room, gathering my courage. Then I ran to the mirror and added two more coats of mascara and a dash of Dolce Vita, which always seemed to be an effective means of courage-building. I tossed my hair, which didn't turn out to be a worthwhile gesture with the cap on. I stood in my Wonder Woman stance, fists on hips, head held high, and looked at myself in the full length mirror. Stephanie Plum, the original Bounty Hunter Barbie.
I locked up my apartment, took the stairs to the first floor, and ran from the door to the Porsche. The temperature was dropping and it was freezing cold. I revved the engine and headed for the bond's office. Along the way, the Porsche started acting funny. First, it made a wrong turn onto Hamilton. Then I realized it was going around the block. Without my consent, it parked in front of Tasty Pastry. I breathed a sigh of relief. I turned the ignition off and locked up before sprinting through the door.
Connie and Lula were sipping coffee at Connie's desk when I walked in. Their eyes lit up at the sight of the pastry box.
"Got any fritters?" Connie asked.
Lula opened the box. "Looks like she's got one of everything in here," she said, grabbing a doughnut with each hand. Good thing I ate two Boston Crème's in the car on the way over.
"Got anything for me?" I asked Connie.
"I got something for you!" Vinnie yelled from his inner sanctum. "Where's Sanders?"
"Why did you give me Sanders?" I yelled back. "You know he should belong to Ranger!"
"You wanted Lonnie Dodd, and he should have been Ranger's. You want to keep playing with the big boys, you need to bring me Sanders!" With that, he slammed and locked his door.
"Coward!" I yelled.
"Have you asked Ranger for help?" Connie asked. Actually, it was more of a suggestion.
"No. I can't keep depending on Ranger. I have my own team now."
"Oh, yeah. Well, you'll need a team for this one," she said, sliding me a file. "Alphonse Ruzick. He's usually Ranger's, but Ranger's busy and isn't taking any new skips right now."
"Busy? Doing what?"
"Who knows with Ranger."
"He didn't answer his cell when I called him earlier. He didn't leave town did he?" Sometimes Ranger would disappear for a few weeks. Lula was convinced that his disappearances tended to coincide with governmental shakeups in various parts of the world.
"He didn't say, but I get the feeling it's something a little more personal."
"Why's that?"
"He was smiling." Connie was watching for my reaction, thinking I knew something about it, which I didn't.
"Ranger doesn't smile."
"Only when you're around," she said craftily.
"Well, it's got nothing to do with me," I assured her, taking the Ruzick file and stuffing it into my bag. "Lula, you want to ride along?" I asked, knowing what the answer would be. Lula was an even bigger chicken than I was.
"No way, Jose!" She picked up a stack of files and shuffled towards the filing cabinets, smearing grape jelly from her last doughnut onto the outside of the files. "I'm never going after another one of Ranger's skips with you."
"Why not? We got Lonnie Dodd, no problem."
"You set the man on fire," she said, hands on hips, eyebrows raised. "Next time, it might be me. Besides, you just lost me my Firebird."
"You weren't mad about that this morning."
"That was then. This is now." Lula said, tossing the files on top of the filing cabinet and opening a drawer.
I shrugged, grabbed one more Boston Crème, and headed for the door.
An hour later, Richie Biglo and I were staring open mouthed at a large black box sitting on Bernie Kuntz's work bench.
"What is it?" I asked, afraid I already knew.
"That's your tracking device. My first," he said proudly.
"Keep working on it," I said. "It has to be smaller." Way smaller.
"Why? You're going to put it on a car, right? No one's going to see it."
"Are you kidding me? The guy at Midas would see it. The guy changing Ruzick's oil would see it. The guy selling him tires would see it." I grabbed it and stuck it to a file cabinet and it slid down the cabinet slowly. "And it weighs too much. It'll fall off the car the first time he hits a bump."
"Well, you can tape it down, then," Bernie said hotly. "That's all I've got for you right now. I'm not a professional, you know. I'm just trying to help you out. It's not like you paid my expenses up front. Speaking of which, am I getting paid?"
I shrugged. I wasn't getting paid either, and our near-future prospects didn't look good. "I'm sorry, Bernie," I said. "It's just that I may need more help than this."
"I'll keep working on it," he said, handing me a small roll of black electrical tape. "Here. Tape it on with this. Here's the receiver." He handed me a portable television that should have been on a recycling bin somewhere, which on second thought was probably right where he'd found it.
"You've got to be kidding me!" I turned on the television. All it showed was black and white static. Beneath the noise of the static I could hear a nearly continuous buzzing sound.
"What?" Bernie shouted defensively. "You expected GPS?"
"Yes!" I said, shoving the tracer into my pocket and turning off the television receiver.
"Works better if the antenna is up," he said to my back as I stormed out, trailing Richie behind me.
We got into the Porsche, and Richie looked out the window, trying not to laugh. "Where do we start looking for Ruzick?"
"When I was asking around for Ranger last time, Sandy Polan told me he always comes home to his mother's for Sunday dinner, but I don't think I want to wait that long, and I don't want to tackle him on his mother's front lawn."
"Good thinking. Probably we should try to pick him up at Blue Fish," he said. That's when it hit me.
"Wait a minute. Alphonse Ruzick. Ruzick and Dish. Ruzick and Dish and Jamal Alou. You said they were doing business together."
"They were till you iced Alou."
"I can't go in there!"
"No kidding," he said. "But we could drive by. We're in Ranger's car and the windows are tinted. They'll think we're either Ranger or drug dealers. Either way, no one will mess with us down on Stark Street. We just won't get out of the car. Besides, you don't look like you with that cap on."
We cruised up and down Stark, but decided it was too early to run into Ruzick or Dish. They were night people. So we got something to eat at Pino's and waited for dark. It was a Thursday, Richie's night off.
We drove back down Stark and cruised for about an hour before Richie spotted Ruzick's car coming down the street at us.
"How can you tell that's him?" I asked.
"It's a 90's Mercury Sable. See how the front grill between the headlights is lit up too?"
I glared at him. "Yeah, I see it," I snarled at him. I was never going to understand this headlight recognition thing. Were all men born knowing the headlights for every car ever manufactured? I guessed that explained why there was so little room in their brains for anything else.
The silver Sable passed us. I saw the man who was driving it, and he didn't look friendly.
"Yep, that's him," Richie said. "That's Ruzick."
I turned around in a parking lot and followed him for about ten minutes before he pulled into a gas station. What luck! He started pumping gas, and then he was sitting in the car, waiting for the pump to click off.
"Okay, here's the plan," I said. "When he gets out, I'll just walk up to him and stun him, and then you and I can cuff him and stuff him into his own car and deliver him straight to the Docket Lieutenant." I fished my stun gun out of my bag, made sure it was charged, and stuck it in my jacket pocket. I tucked my cuffs in the other pocket and handed a pair of leg shackles to Richie.
"Okay," he said, stashing the shackles, zipping up his coat, and putting his hood up.
We got out and started walking towards Ruzick just as he got out and slapped the pump back into place. He'd already paid, and was back in his car and was turning over the engine. I was about to lose him. I ran up to his car window and knocked, hoping to figure out some way of getting him out of the vehicle. My knuckles, wrapped around my stun gun, were resting on a one-dollar bill in my jacket pocket, change from the doughnuts. Ruzick jumped and looked at me through his dirty driver's window.
"Hey, mister! You dropped some money!" I yelled at him, showing him the wadded up bill in my hand. I figured any guy who still eats at his mom's every Sunday and drives a '95 Sable can't afford to be throwing money away.
He opened his door and reached his hand out to take the money from me. Richie had been pretending to be walking past me up to the door of the convenience store, but suddenly he turned and grabbed Ruzick's arm and yanked. I dropped the dollar bill and reached into my jacket for the stun gun. Richie let go of Ruzick just as I was about to hit the button. Ruzick's arm caught me by surprise and he shoved me hard enough to knock me off my feet and onto my back. Richie stood rooted to the spot, his eyes round as two dinner plates.
"Get him!" I yelled as Ruzick scrambled back into his seat, hit the gas, and pulled away, his car door still half open. I leaped up and ran along side the car, trying to wrench the door open. Ruzick slammed the door shut on my jacket sleeve. He was entering traffic, dragging me down the street in the dark, the rubber soles of my boots smoking on the pavement. I lost my footing and suddenly sparks were shooting out behind me as my steel-toes dragged the ground. I kicked out, trying to get my feet under me again. Richie was running after me, reaching for me, trying to pull me free.
A shot rang out and the glass of the driver's window shattered.
"Get off!" Ruzick bellowed.
I unzipped my jacket with my left hand and wiggled out of it. Just when I thought I was free let out a I scream as I was yanked forward again, this time by my hair. Richie flipped open a pocket knife and started slicing away at my hair as a second shot zinged past us. With an agonizing rip, I was free. Richie pulled me to the curb. We were standing in under a street lamp a block away from the gas station, gasping for air.
I reached up to feel my hair, and started crying. I was cold, my shoes were ruined, I was probably half bald, and I didn't get my man. I'd even lost my dollar, but I still had my stun gun. My hand was cramping from gripping it so tightly. Richie gasped, took my other hand, turned me away from the gas station, and started running again.
"Hey!" I yelled. "Let go!"
Then I heard an unmistakable WHUMP as the gas pump Ruzick had been using went up in flames. I turned just in time to see about thirty people running in all directions. I held my breath, praying that someone would have had enough sense to hit the emergency shut off on the pumps before running away. No such luck.
The blast sent the joined pair of gas pumps airborne, straight up like a rocket. We watched the projectile burn out and then grow larger and larger as if fell back down to earth. It landed with a sickening crunch, right on top of the Porsche. Then a second explosion rocked the lot as the Porsche's gas tank exploded. There were a dozen other cars on fire now, exploding at intervals like pop-corn. A minute later, the second set of gas pumps took off, slamming down right in the center of the convenience store, shattering the windows. Black smoke filled the air and the sounds of police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks were growing louder and louder. The street was lined with people. News crews would be here in a matter of minutes. Richie and I stood in shocked silence, dressed in black but still not able to blend into the night like Ranger and his men would have.
I was no stranger to blowing up buildings. But the funny thing was, every time seemed like the first time. I reached for my phone, but realized my bag was in the Porsche which was nothing more than a smoldering cinder.
Richie gave me his coat and sheltered me from the cold till Morelli pulled up, screeching to a stop beside us, his Kojak light flashing on top of his SUV. He jumped out and raced around the car, his hands shaking as he inspected my hair and face.
"Are you okay?" he asked, breathless and panicked.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
"Anyone else hurt?" he asked.
"I don't think so." Richie said. "Not unless someone was still inside the convenience store. I think everyone ran."
"Dead bodies?" he asked, covering all his bases.
"No!" I cried, defensively.
"Just checking." Buckey and Kenny had answered the call. We watched as they worked to spray foam on the fire. "How did this happen?" Morelli asked, gesturing towards the burning remains of the gas station, still in a state of disbelief.
"I'm not sure," I said, my voice still shaking.
"Stun gun," Richie told him.
"What?" Morelli said, incredulous. "You used a stun gun at a gas station?"
"Well, I didn't think it would blow up!" I yelled. "If Ruzick had stood still, this wouldn't have happened!"
"I know, I know," Morelli said, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. "It wasn't your fault. If only those darned bad guys would turn themselves in and go quietly." He was mocking me again.
"Hey!" I yelled. "It was an accident!"
"No, it was reckless endangerment! And I ought to haul your ass in for this one!"
"You wouldn't dare." I tried to give him the eye like his Grandma Bella, but he'd grown up with the eye and it didn't faze him in the slightest.
"At least I'd know you were safe!" Morelli really sounded like a broken record sometimes.
"I'm fine!" I yelled.
"Get in the car," he ordered us both. Richie grabbed me, pushing me roughly into the back seat of Morelli's SUV. I'd forgotten he was freezing. We watched Morelli walk down the street to talk to Kenny and John Petrucci, the fire marshal.
I stuck my hands deep into the pockets of Richie's coat and felt the little black and white television that served as the tracking receiver. I pulled it out, switched it on, and it went BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. I handed it to Richie and jumped into the front seat. Morelli had left his keys, which was not his usual MO. I was due some luck. I turned the engine over and took off. If I was going down for starting the fire, I was taking Alphonse Ruzick with me.
"Which way?" I asked.
"Are you nuts!?" Richie was screaming! "You can't steal a cop car!"
"I'm not stealing a cop car. I'm borrowing Joe's SUV." I was the queen or rationalization.
"Let me out!"
"Are you going to be a weenie or are you going to tell me which way Ruzick is headed?"
Richie calmed down after a few blocks and started giving me left, right, straight directions, but we kept running into dead ends. It was like running a rat maze. We could smell the cheese, but we kept hitting walls. I was cursing myself for ever trusting Bernie Kuntz.
As I turned back onto Hamilton for the third time, I saw Ranger in my rearview mirror. He was driving his big black truck with the bug lights and serious antennae that let him communicate with NASA. Morelli was with him. Richie's cell phone rang.
"Don't answer it!" I yelled. "It's Morelli."
We seemed to be driving around in circles, and Morelli's SUV was almost out of gas. I was running out of time. The beeping had been strong and steady, but it was getting stronger as we approached the Burg. I took a shot and drove towards Ruzick's mother's house.
Mrs. Ruzick lived in a yellow duplex with a yellow-brick stoop on a block of duplexes with a bakery on the corner. The back yards were long and narrow, and an alley one lane wide ran behind. Between the duplexes were double drives with single-car garages. Mrs. Ruzick's car was parked on the street and the beeping became a flat-line as we approached. I glimpsed Ranger turning down the street behind me, and I hit the gas. I was going to prove to those arrogant jerks that I could do this job, once and for all. Alphonse Ruzick was mine.
I raced past the Ruzick house. The only way Ranger had followed us was that either I or the SUV were bugged. Since I didn't have anything left but the clothes on my back, I figured it was the SUV. Our only hope was to jam the transmissions.
"Turn on anything electronic you can find, all the way up!" I yelled. I turned on the radio, the radar detector, the vehicle lights, windshield wipers…I even pushed in the cigarette lighter. Then, over the din, I heard a familiar sound. Rex! I looked in the rear view mirror at Richie.
"What's back there?"
"Receiver," he said.
"Can you make it send instead of receive?" I asked.
"No! It's a receiver, not a transmitter." He dug around in the back some more and came up with Morelli's back up hand-held police radio. "Here's one!"
"Start going through all the channels except the police channels," I told him. "I'll see if I can lose them." I ran Ranger through my old tried and true route for losing a tail, but he knew it well and kept up. I was expecting a RangeMan road block any minute. "Keep switching channels!" I yelled, as I headed sharply down an alley and then through a car wash and down another alley. I had no idea if any of this was really working, but I didn't see Ranger in my mirrors anymore. I took a series of side streets, switched back and headed towards Mrs. Ruzick's. I raced down the back alley and the signal was still strong. We drove two blocks over, parked, and locked the SUV. Then we ran through yards till we came to a stop in front of Mrs. Ruzick's yellow garage.
We wrenched open the garage door. There was the Sable. My jacket was lying on the floor of the garage. I handed Richie his coat and put mine back on. There was a fair bit of my hair lying on the floor of the garage too. I wanted this guy bad. We closed the garage door behind us.
Maybe Morelli and Ranger were right, I thought. Maybe I should have more patience…have a plan. I opened the driver's door and climbed in, searching for the gun. It was in the glove box. I took it out and shoved it into a McDonald's bag lying on the floor. I crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash can nearby.
Then I opened the back door and tried to pull down the back seats. I peered into the empty trunk. Perfect. If Ruzick's relationship with his mother was in any way normal, he'd be leaving for his own place within an hour. Richie grabbed a pair of pliers and broke the plastic clips on the seat backs so they wouldn't lock into place. Then we both climbed into the trunk, which was a very tight fit for Richie, and pulled the seats back up into place. Then we waited, ignoring the cramping and discomfort. I saw the glow of Richie's watch in the dark as he checked it every few minutes.
After forty-five minutes, we heard the garage door open and Ruzick slid behind the wheel and pulled out of the drive. We waited until he was motoring down the road, the radio on, humming to himself before we slowly lowered the seat backs. I had my stun gun in my hand, and I jabbed it into his neck and hit the button. Zap! He was out like a light. I was trying to steer while Richie was trying to pull him out of the driver's seat. That had been the plan, and it had seemed like a good plan while we were waiting in the trunk. But now, Richie was having trouble with his part of the plan.
"Richie! Get him out of the seat! His foot is on the gas!" I yelled as we barreled through an intersection at 50 miles per hour. Fortunately, the light had been green, but I wasn't so sure about the next one.
"I can't!" he yelled. "I was lying on my right arm, and it's asleep! I can't feel a thing!"
I was so mad I was temped to stun Richie but I was too busy trying to steer the car. We were hitting dips in the road and bouncing along, scraping up the under-carriage. Cars were honking and people's grandmother's were flipping me the bird.
"Take the wheel!" I yelled, trading him places. I slipped into the front passenger seat and tried to pull Ruzick's foot off the gas. I tried to shift the car into neutral, but there was a bang and a bump, and suddenly, we were airborne. There was a crash and the sound of plate glass breaking. Ruzick's foot mashed down on the gas as I felt the shifter slide into neutral. The engine roared till it redlined and blew, sputtering to a deathly silence. The car was rocking slightly. Richie opened the back door on the driver's side and jumped down. He looked around and started laughing. He came around and opened the passenger door and helped me climb down.
The car was perched seemingly in mid-air. The trunk was sitting on a sales counter and the front end was supported by a large commercial copier. I looked around to see why he was laughing. We were standing inside the sales office for the local cable company.
"Serves them right for making me wait seven months for service when that squirrel chewed up my cable line," he said, rubbing his arm vigorously and before pulling Ruzick from the front seat. I pulled out my cuffs and pulled his hands behind him while Richie slapped on the the ankle shackles. We dragged him out of the building, just in case it decided to blow up too.
I expected Ranger and Morelli to pull up any second, the way they usually did. We waited, but nothing happened. Ranger didn't have any tracers on me, and Morelli's SUV was out of gas new Mrs. Ruzick's house. Besides, I had Morelli's keys. We sat in silence. None of the neighbors or passers-by had even called the cops. Guess they didn't feel like helping out the cable company either.
With the Porsche blown to bits, I was once again without transportation. I had to get this grease-ball to the lock up somehow. Well, Ranger once made fun of me for going after an FTA in a cab. I'd show him I could bring in my man in a cab if I wanted to. So, I borrowed Richie's cell phone and dialed my dad.
To be continued...
