MISSING

Chapter 4

The pilot flew them over the vehicle, then landed in the nearest suitable clearing.

"Do you want me overhead, or shall I wait here?" he shouted, over the noise of the engine.

"Wait here."

An eerie silence fell as the engine slowly powered down. The pilot pointed. "About a half-mile in that direction. If you get lost, shout."

There was no track. They pushed through undergrowth and scrub. It had stopped raining, but everything was dripping, and soon they were soaked. Eric was conscious of ignoring all the precautions they normally took against snakes and suchlike. At least larger animals would have been scared away by the helicopter. They saw the Hummer ahead. Eric withdrew his gun. Benitez did the same. They approached as silently as they could.

Eric rapped sharply on one of the windows, then immediately ducked down. "Anyone in there – show yourself!"

Silence.

Carefully, he reached up to the door latch and opened the unlocked vehicle. He had to fight his own momentary hesitation, his heart pounding, before he stood and looked inside.

Empty.

Eric murmured, "Thank God…" and leant against the car for a moment in relief. He felt obliged to explain to the officer watching him. "I thought I might be looking at a body." His body.

At a glance, the interior looked pretty normal. No real signs of a struggle. At least, not inside. The ground was wet, and the Hummer well bogged down. He knew, for a certainty, that Horatio would never have driven it here.

"Delko?" Benitez called from the other side of the car. "You want to see this. Looks like someone had a fight."

There was a mass of footprints, all directions, overlapping. Clearly a fracas of some sort… Eric reached over them to open the driver's door. He immediately noticed a small patch of blood on the doorframe, with a few hairs stuck to it, and winced. The hairs were red.

He returned to the footprints. Eventually the melee faded to a line of prints, the wet ground clearly showing four people. He followed them, getting a picture of what had happened. Three adults, one child. One set of prints seemed odd, tottery, occasional drag marks. He followed them a little further, but the ground was getting dryer, the marks less distinct. He caught sight of fabric, a jacket, tossed into the bushes. He retrieved it and recognised it only too well. Black, a designer label inside… the sleeve torn half out of the armhole. So he'd struggled again. The footprints faded out.

"Horatio!" Eric took a chance and shouted. "Horatio!"

Nothing. He had an instinctive feeling that if their captive was too much trouble they'd abandon him. Or kill him. But not too near the Hummer – too easy to find…

He walked on a little. No tracks now.

He called again, but only a bird's alarm call answered him. Reluctantly, he turned back towards the Hummer.

"The tracks fade out," he told Benitez. "They took him, but he was struggling." He forced a smile. "At least he was alive… then. Dear God, it could have been twelve hours ago…"

"What do you want to do?"

"Search. Find him. But we need more people. He could be anywhere…" Eric sat on the running board of the Hummer and called Frank. He told him what they'd found. "God knows how we get the Hummer out. It's up to its axles."

"Don't bother about that," Frank said briskly. "We'll work something out. You think they took Horatio with them?"

"I know they did. But he was fighting – it's obvious. My thinking – they'll dump him. He's a big guy to drag through here restrained, or unconscious." Or dead. He couldn't bring himself to voice it. "My thinking, they'd get far enough away from the vehicle, then leave him. But we haven't heard from him, which means he's… incapacitated." He knew Frank was thinking the same as him. But, even if he was dead, they needed to find him. "We need a search party, Frank."

There was a brief silence. "All right. As many as I can spare. It'll take about an hour to get there. You staying put?"

"Of course."

"A search needs doing logically, Eric."

"I know. We'll go over the Hummer. I'll send the chopper back, shall I?"

"Yep. Get the pilot to give me the location – meet my guys in the clearing in an hour."

"Thank you, Frank. I know you're sticking your neck out…" He could only imagine how much – a helicopter and a search team, based on what? His hunch?

"One, it's Horatio, and two, I've got a tough neck."

"Oh, and tell Calleigh they've got the boy with them." He was ashamed that he'd forgotten that case completely.

"Will do."

Eric looked up at Benitez. "They're sending a search party. Run back and tell the chopper he can go home. And get him to call Frank Tripp now, with the co-ordinates of that clearing."

"Where will you be?" The man sounded a little nervous.

Eric smiled briefly. "Right here, don't worry."

Alone, he dropped his head to his hands, and pushed his fingers through his wet hair. Suppose he was way off the mark? Suppose they'd got Horatio hidden somewhere? He was relying purely on instincts, and he knew they could be disastrously misleading… Still, if they didn't search, they wouldn't know. He tried to put himself in the place of the bad guys. Eric knew this part of the 'glades fairly well and he couldn't think of any shelter nearby, no cabins or campsites… He thought, if it was him, he'd try for the nearest road… Which, from memory, was about four miles away. He couldn't imagine dragging an unwilling Horatio four miles over rough ground.

He sighed, got up, and climbed into the Hummer. He had no kit with him, but he wasn't looking to process it anyway. He knew who had been in it. He looked carefully round it. Nothing out of place, bar a roll of duct tape on the floor, which didn't belong there. He picked it up and put it on the dash, then got out of the driver's seat, and into the back. There were traces of mud, and blood, on the back seat. He assumed the hostages had been lying there. Something caught his eye, pushed between the back and the seat. Something metallic… Poking his fingers into the narrow crevice, he pulled out Horatio's badge. He brushed dust off the gilded surface. "Oh, Horatio…" he murmured, smiling despite his worry. A clear message – 'I'm here.' And at least it hadn't fallen into the wrong hands. He couldn't hope for the same with his gun.

He heard the helicopter start up, and, moments later, saw it lift into the air. Now he just had to wait. When Benitez returned, he found he was glad of the company. They checked the rear section of the Hummer, but the expensive equipment it housed appeared untouched.

"Thought they'd have had a go at this," he murmured. "It's worth a fortune."

"I suppose they had their hands full," Benitez replied.

"I'm sure they did. They wouldn't recognize this stuff anyway. And you could hardly sell it on eBay. Mind you, I don't understand anything these guys have done…"

"In what way?"

At least talking passed the time. "Well, they took the boy, but why kill the mother? Why not snatch him from school? Why not dump the bloody clothes and the weapon? Why run into the 'glades? All right, they wrecked their car, so the Hummer represented a way out, but why on earth take Horatio with them? And why drive the damned Hummer into the middle of a bog? They're beyond stupid! Perhaps that's why they seem so difficult to find – stupid means unpredictable."

"Not the brightest…"

"Definitely not. They've done so many stupid things we should have them in a cell by now. Instead of that, we're missing one police lieutenant, and one eight year old boy."

"And two crooks."

They fell silent for a while. "I wish we'd brought some coffee," Eric muttered.

The rain started again. They got into the Hummer for shelter.

The hour passed torturously slowly, but at last they heard the rumble of vehicles. They went back to the clearing as a cruiser and a minibus pulled in. Eric was pleased to see that Frank had come himself. Five police officers got out of the bus, all wearing waterproofs, and stood waiting for instructions.

Frank came up to Eric. "How you doing?" His voice was unusually sympathetic, and Eric thought he probably looked as bad as he felt.

"Honestly, Frank? I feel sick. Sick that he might have been lying out here for over twelve hours. And sick that I might be on completely the wrong track, and we're looking in the wrong place."

"Don't worry about that. Let's get this search started."

As he went back to his men, a Hummer pulled into the clearing, and Calleigh exited. She came up to Eric, and kissed him on the cheek.

"If he's here, we'll find him," she said softly. She registered his surprise at seeing her. "You said the boy's with them, so we might find him too. So my case is your case."

He smiled, not entirely believing her, but overwhelmingly glad of her support. Frank speedily issued instructions, maps, and the latest headsets.

"Remember, everyone can hear everyone else, so speak if you've got something to say," the detective said bluntly. "Otherwise, button it. Don't tread on any snakes. And be thorough."

The search began.

TBC