A Christmas Fare

Chapter Two Trip in Progress

"And you're sure about this, Doctor Travis?"

"I'm hardly likely to come down here and make it all up am I?" Jesse felt anger mingle with his fear to produce a snapped answer.

"No, I guess not. Does Doctor Sloan know any of this?" Captain Newman looked across at the young man sitting in the chair the other side of his desk and he could see that he was barely holding it all together.

"Not yet. I thought it was better for you to start looking for Steve before I broke his heart. Captain, this is the first Christmas without Carol, Steve knows that his dad is suffering, and he didn't want this assignment, but he wasn't given any choice. And now it looks like Mark is going to suffer even more." Jesse's voice had risen with each word and Captain Newman had felt himself take a mental step back from the young man's wrath.

"What exactly did he say, Doctor?"

Jesse closed his eyes, just momentarily, before reliving the call. "He said my name, and …" he had to pause, the call had been personal, heartfelt, and Jesse wished he had spoken to Mark first. "He gave me a message for Mark and then … then he screamed."

Captain Newman got to his feet and moved to the door of his office. "Banks, get in here, and someone get me Brannigan on the phone."

"Doctor, I want you to leave, speak with Doctor Sloan, but keep him away from here. We will find Steve, but it will be easier and quicker without any additional help from outside sources."

Jesse said nothing, he just stood up, nodded at Cheryl and left the room, knowing that Mark wouldn't need anyone's permission to become additional help and that no one would stop him from searching for his only remaining child.

ooo

The boot, which made contact with his ribs, had so much power behind it that it lifted him clean off the floor and sent him flying into the wall behind him. Unable to protect himself from any of the instruments of torture being used against him Steve could only cry out as again his battered body was assaulted.

"Why … why are you doing this?" The swollen lips and loose teeth slurred his words; both had been received when a clenched fist had slammed into his face at the beginning of his beating.

"Because it makes me feel better." A large hand grabbed Steve around the throat and hauled him upwards, causing him to wretch and gag.

"Mister, I … drive a cab, what … have I ever done to you?" His vision was blurring, slivers of silver light invading from the corners of his eyes as he struggled for breath enough to speak.

The hand increased its pressure for a moment and then suddenly moved away and Steve fell in a helpless heap at the man's feet. He coughed and rasped as he tried to get air into his oxygen-starved body, wishing that his hands were free, so that he could get onto all fours and relieve the pressure on his damaged ribs and back. Instead he just lay there helplessly as he listened, finally, to why he was here.

"You killed my sister."

ooo

The room had been silent for so long that Jesse was concerned Mark had retreated in on himself. Unable to tell his friend alone what had happened, Jesse had told Amanda first and they had gathered Mark up and taken him to his crowded but friendly office to pass the news on in a place of relative privacy. That office was now totally quiet and Jesse was becoming desperate to say something, anything, to break the silence that surrounded him.

"I need to speak with Cheryl."

"Pardon?" Finally Mark had spoken and Jesse, caught up in the silence, had missed it.

"Cheryl, I need to speak with her. If Newman won't let me in the squad room then I'll bypass him. There must be something in the case notes which will tell us where Steve might be."

"Mark, why don't you let the police handle this one? All of us are far too emotionally involved to be rational about it." Amanda tried to keep her voice steady, tried to steer her oldest friend away from the course she knew he was intent on taking because she also knew that it would only lead to heartache.

"No! He … he is all I have left, he … he said he loved me." Mark gulped in air, trying to push the tears back down, "There has to be away to find him."

Amanda looked away for a moment, realising that she couldn't stop him from searching and the vision of the last cab driver she had autopsied came up into her mind. He had been tall, about Steve's height, a good-looking black man called Nathan Germain, at least the photo she had seen of him had shown him to be good-looking. The body however, was that of a man whose entire face had been systematically beaten and broken. His ribs had been smashed on the right hand side of the body, repeatedly hit, she had determined, with something akin to a baseball bat. The toes on his left foot were broken, and he had been shot, at point blank range, in the base of the skull, the bullet severing the spinal cord before exiting through the man's upper chest.

Nathan had visited Amanda in her dreams for over a week after she had finished working on him, she knew that were Steve to suffer the same fate none of them would ever recover from it, and she was certain that it would kill Mark, gradually, bit by bit, until he would be so far removed from the man he was now that the killer would have claimed another victim.

She turned back as she heard Mark's voice speaking on the phone his grief coming out as anger and frustration.

"I'm not asking for you to divulge confidential information, Cheryl, but this is my son, I just want to know where he was when he was … taken … and where the others were when it happened to them." Amanda and Jesse could hear Cheryl on the other end of the line, not words, just the sound of her voice, and they could tell from Mark's body language that he didn't like what he was hearing.

"So, e-mail it to me. It won't take long, and maybe I can help you … of course I won't … yes, that's right … bye." The phone was slammed back into its rest and Mark strode across the room to his computer, switching it on and sitting down almost in one movement, and then, with his e-mail page up on the screen in front of him, he waited.

ooo

The instant technology which they all relied on so much seemed to take forever to deliver the information that Mark was waiting for, but finally, after a little over five minutes, a notice came up showing that he had mail and both Jesse and Amanda moved a little closer so that they could see what Cheryl had sent.

ooo

"I did what?" Steve was still finding talking difficult, but he knew that he had to strike up a dialogue with this guy, had to try and postpone the inevitable so that the captain could find him, rescue him, before his dad had to suffer the death of both children in one year. The thought of that very nearly made him collapse, but he pushed the emotions to one side and tried to focus on the slightly shaky face in front of him.

"My sister, you killed her."

"I drive a cab, I don't kill people. You've got it all wrong."

"She was in a cab when she was killed. If the driver had been more careful she would still be here, and I wouldn't have to be doing this."

"You … you don't have to do it anyway." Steve closed his eyes for a moment, it was getting harder and harder to breath, and talking as well was almost impossible.

"What do you know? How can you possibly understand what I'm going through?" The man swung the baseball bat round as he spoke, and although he tried to move out of its way Steve was still struck on the upper arm and sent sprawling.

"Arghhh!" The pain radiated down through his body, his left hand went numb and the world exploded around him. For a moment Steve was sure that he was going to lose consciousness, but he fought against it. "My … my sister died, I can't kill those responsible, it … it wouldn't be right."

There was silence for a while as the man considered what he had heard and Steve used the time to try and collect himself a little and he fought the pain to marshal his thoughts once more. He knew that if his captor followed the pattern of his previous killings he had at least one night here, maybe two before his body would be put into his cab and left in a parking lot downtown. At this time of year, with all the Christmas shoppers it may not be so easy to dispose of him, and that thought gave Steve a perverse pleasure as he tried to work out a way to prevent himself from becoming victim number six.

ooo

The map of Los Angeles was spread out across the dining table and the details of each killing was laying with a piece of kitchen string pinning it to the location of the body. Now Jesse was carefully putting some of the red string, which Mark used to hang Christmas cards, from the details to the abduction points. There didn't seem to be any connection between the first set of pins, and Jesse knew that Mark was counting on their being one for the second set.

"What did Steve tell you, Jesse?" Mark was trying not to feel hurt and betrayed by his son's actions, but to see them as the behaviour of the loyal and caring man he knew he was.

Jesse had realized that Mark would want to know all that he knew, but if he was honest it was precious little. With a deep breath to help him prepare, Jesse began to speak.

"He said that he had been assigned to the Fare Man case, that he was going undercover to try and get a handle on the guy who was killing the cabbies." Jesse paused for a moment, not really sure how to carry on.

"And … what else did he say?" Mark was peering over his glasses at his young friend, trying to sound less than desperate for news of any kind about his son.

"He said that he knew it was a bad case and the assignment was dangerous but that five homes were gonna be without dads this Christmas and he had to do it. He also said that it was because his own family was so important to him that he owed it to the wives and children of those cab drivers to find the killer before he struck again." Jesse couldn't continue; he put down the string he was holding and made his way towards the deck. Family was important to him too, but not the immediate relatives that Steve had meant. Mark, Amanda and Steve were the backbone of his life, and Steve was more than a best friend, more than a brother. The trust that had been placed in him made Jesse even more determined to find his friend. Jesse realized that one of the reasons he knew about the case was that Steve was protecting his father, but he had come to him, had told him things and that trust would never be forgotten. Jesse took a deep breath in, he was hurting so badly himself but he knew Mark was suffering even more than he, and for the first time Jesse wasn't sure how to reach him.

ooo

"There's blood here, on the back of the driver's seat, I'm guessing it's Steve's, but I'll get it checked right away." Cheryl indicated for a Crime Scene Officer to come and take a scraping and then she moved back and opened the rear door.

"The screen was open, Steve would never have allowed that, he must have been distracted," she thought for a moment, "maybe he was calling in his fare, or watching for a break in traffic, whatever it was his attention was diverted someplace else, and our kil … perp got the upper hand." She crouched down outside the taxicab and played a flashlight over the carpeted floor. "A gum wrapper, we've had them before, carefully folded up into a square, a neat, almost perfectly accurate square. No prints, nothing else left behind, the only thing we have in our favour this time is that there is no body in the trunk."

"Yeah, well that doesn't make me feel a whole lot better." Robert Brannigan shivered slightly into his lightweight jacket, and wasn't sure whether it was the cool breeze or the fact that it could well be his cab being gone over for clues as to his whereabouts that made him feel cold.

"The dispatch operator said Steve called in a fare to Riverside Drive, which is about three or four miles from here. I don't think we would have found the cab without the LoJack in it."

"Beats me why they don't have 'em in all cabs, not just the two we were driving. And we only had 'em because Newman insisted."

Cheryl didn't answer, she knew there wasn't really anything to say, and that Brannigan was talking as much to himself as anyone else. She could see four uniformed officers checking vehicles and two others speaking to the men working the gate of the parking lot where Steve's cab had been found. She could tell that no one was getting anywhere and a deep sense of foreboding and helplessness descended on her as she stuffed her hands in her pockets and tried to work out what she was going to tell Mark Sloan.

ooo

The room had been totally quiet for a long time and Steve was having trouble keeping his panic at bay. His captor had left after kicking out at the fallen cop and as the daylight had gradually faded he had failed to return.

The final kick had broken at least one rib, and ever since then Steve had been coughing up blood. He knew that he was destined to die in the cold, inhospitable room that he was now in, but he wished that his dad wouldn't have to see how traumatised and bloody he had become before the shot was fired that would end his life.

Gradually, as the time had passed he had been making his way, inch, by painful inch, towards the door, having to do something to at least put up a show of resistance, but it hadn't been easy.

The blow from the baseball bat had definitely fractured his arm, and with it tied behind him the pain had quickly turned to agony. He also suspected that the broken ribs had punctured a lung and an all-encompassing feeling of despondency, which was becoming almost impossible to get rid of, hung over him.

The door was getting closer, but the distance he was able to cover each time before having to stop to catch his breath and battle the pain was getting smaller and smaller. The room around him was fading in and out of a grey haze, and Steve knew that his chance of staying conscious and putting up a reasonable fight was almost over. He pushed himself forward once more, but his bare feet slipped on the flooring sending him crashing down on his injured side.

"Arghhh, Dad … I'm sorry … I'm …" His voice faded away on his cry as he coughed once more before becoming totally still.

ooo

Mark and Amanda had given Jesse a little time to himself while they finished marking up the map, but then the necessity for speed, an extra pair of eyes, and a quick mind, had forced them to call him back to them. Now they were looking at the different locations and trying to see the connection.

"I think that the bodies were just left anywhere it was quiet and he wasn't likely to be seen. But the pick up points, there is definitely something there, look."

Mark was pointing to the shape that the pins were making on the map. Wherever you were standing around the table they made a square, a neat, almost perfectly accurate square.

ooo