Discovery Park sits on a low section of bottomland, north of the Sacramento downtown corridor. The flood-control system of weirs and levees releases river overflow into the park during the wet season and turns the park into a vast, swampy wasteland. John slipped a car from the police motor pool and tracked through the thick muck left behind by the receding floodwater. As long as he stayed on the paved sections, the sedan’s wheels wouldn’t suck down into the waterlogged soil.
Yellow metal barriers blocked the road, restricting vehicle access deeper into the park. Well after sunset, the waterside recreation area transformed into a black hole enclosed by trees, riverbanks, and levee walls. The vast darkness gobbled the light a few yards from John’s headlights. John peered ahead into shadows within shadows. Barren tree limbs quivered in the light breeze, like thousands of tiny skeleton hands reaching out from beyond.
John stopped at the barrier, turned off his lights, and scanned the nightscape for another car or anything that announced the exchange location. Tommy wouldn’t be able to walk very far in his condition. Winnow would ensure an escape route for himself.
He cut the ignition, stepped onto the mud-slicked roadway, and listened. The breeze muffled the traffic noise from Interstate 5. Branches rubbed against one another and cracked in the distance, but nothing gave away the position of a waiting car with an idling motor.
As John’s eyes adjusted to the pitch black around him, the faint outline of distant trees came into focus to his left. A large, grassy field spanned several acres between the muddy roadway and the trees on the far side of the open space.
John squatted and saw no other tire tracks in the mud, nor footprints other than his own. On the surface, at least, Winnow had yet to arrive. An uncertainty plucked at the flesh at the back of his neck. The gooseflesh came from the cold river wind. If Winnow were watching, John figured the chill would cut to the bone.
He took a position on a small rise near the roadway, where he could survey the entrance to the park and the grass field. He leaned against a tree, blending his moon-shadow with the one cast by an ancient, gnarled oak.
His mind drifted to the last time he and Tommy were in this park. The diagnosis of renal disease was fresh, and yet Tommy seemed so vibrant and alive. The boy ran in the grass field, trying to get his Spider-Man kite to take flight. John laughed so hard that day watching his son that his sides ached for hours afterward. There was a different ache now, and he hadn’t laughed in months. John wiped at his cheek and rubbed a moist spot. He hadn’t realized he was crying.
According to his watch, which he had checked five minutes ago and five minutes before that, he had waited two hours with nothing from Winnow. John’s skin and clothing were damp from the dew in the moisture-laden air.
A rustle in the tree line to his left got his attention. He craned his neck and peered into the blackness. He listened through his throbbing skull. Nothing, not another snapped branch or imaginary footfall echoed back at him. The park fell silent; the only sounds John heard were his heartbeat and ragged breath.
A low rumble vibrated in the valley. He chalked it up to a semitruck passing on the interstate. Then he realized the sound came from somewhere forward from his location, not from the overpass. He took a tentative step from the rise, down into the grass field. The rumble was beyond the tree line on the other side of the park. After two more steps, thick, heavy mud and blades of grass clung to his shoes.
The source of the sound lay ahead, and he picked up his pace, slogging through the wet park bottomland. His weighted shoes made each step more difficult than the last, and his legs pumped hard to keep on course.
The rumble deepened and ramped up in volume. A throaty exhaust sound ripped the silence in the park. John recognized the sound as a boat engine. His mind fired visions of Tommy in the water as he ran toward the riverbank.
The levee bank was steep and slippery with dew-covered grass. John stumbled and fell facedown in the muck as the boat-engine sound pulled away. He clambered up the levee bank to the gravel maintenance road on the crest. The sound of the engine reverberated in the river channel, but John couldn’t make out a boat, only a silver sheen in the water from the vessel’s receding wake. John stood on the levee road and scanned both directions, hoping for, and fearing, a glimpse of Tommy.
He sidestepped down the levee bank toward the waterline, slipping on the slick grass. With his left arm against the bank for support, John edged closer to the bottom, moving crablike down the embankment. John tracked the ripples from the vanishing boat’s wake to a spot fifteen feet upriver and discovered a deep gouge in the mud marked where a boat had touched ashore, similar to the track left when Cardozo’s body was dumped.
He had no reason to trust that Winnow would deliver Tommy. The message the Outcast Killer had left on the computer screen had meaning beyond the crazed ravings of a madman. Any other explanation took John to a dark place, void of hope. His mind drifted to memories of his son calling out for him.
“Daddy?”
It was the plaintive cry of a lonely, lost boy. John shook his head to rid the imaginary voice from his mind.
John popped up, facing the direction of the voice. Even in the dim light, he could see that his son wasn’t there. His pulse raced. He knew his son’s voice; there was no mistaking it. It was the sound Tommy made when he was scared. But Tommy wasn’t here. Was this what it was like to go insane?
John slogged through the river muck toward the sound. Tommy sounded close, but there was no one there. He pivoted, not trusting his senses, looking for his son.
“Tommy?” he called out to the invisible voice.
Silence.
John peered into the brush along the riverbank and into the rushing current, looking for the boy.
“Daddy?”
John knew he was close.
A light-blue flicker shone two paces ahead.
John tumbled over a slick rock and landed chest first into the mud.
He scrambled on his hands and knees, closer to the sound, and reached for the blue object. When he touched it, John knew what it was: the sleeve of Tommy’s favorite jacket poked through the mud.
The cries for help from the unseen boy continued, buried in the mud underneath him. He clawed into the mud, pulling on the exposed section of the sleeve, and uncovered the rest of the jacket, less than an inch under the surface.
Tommy’s voice came through much clearer now.
John followed the voice that came from the jacket. He felt a lump in the sleeve, and bile collected in his throat, knowing the rancid gifts Winnow left behind. A glow illuminated through the fabric, and John found the source of his son’s voice. It wasn’t imaginary; it came from a cell phone.
“Tommy? Tommy, where are you?” John said, holding the cell phone to his ear.
After there was no answer from his son, John looked at the screen. The phone showed an incoming call from a blocked number. Tommy’s voice was set as the ringtone.
John stabbed at the green accept-call button, held the phone close to his ear, and said, “Tommy?”
It wasn’t Tommy’s voice that greeted him. “I was nearly ready to give up on you, Detective,” Brice Winnow said.
“Where is he, you son of a bitch?”
“Oh, he’s around somewhere, or maybe around several somewheres. You know how I tend to leave bits and pieces.”
“What do you want from me? You left that message so I’d come out here. Well, here I am.”
“Just want to get right to it, eh? No exchange of pleasantries or idle chitchat, as they say? Fine. Are you listening closely, Detective? I provided you a cell phone. Think of it as your son’s lifeline.”
“What do you want, Winnow?”
“Interrupt me again and we’re done here. You understand?”
“Tell me,” John said, kneeling in the mud.
“If I disconnect our call, your boy dies. If you hang up, the boy dies. This connection must remain open or the boy dies. You contact anyone, he dies. Understand? Do you understand?”
“I understand,” John said. “How do I know you have him and that he’s okay?”
Winnow laughed. “Not a trusting soul, are you? I get it. Pull up the camera on your phone.”
The phone shook in his hand, and John hesitated to push any button for fear of disconnecting the call. He found a small icon with a picture of a camera on the screen. He pressed it, and the screen flashed, then went dark.
“Hello?” More than a small edge of panic seeped into John’s voice.
Over the cell phone’s small speaker, Winnow said, “A surveillance camera feed is linked to your phone. Look at it all you want. That comes with a risk, as your phone battery will burn away each second you linger.”
John picked up a slight movement in the picture on the screen. The camera provided a grainy, jumpy video feed, but it was enough to show Tommy, curled up on a filthy mattress.
“Tommy! Tommy, it’s Dad!” John cried.
“Oh, Tommy! Tommy!” Winnow mimicked. “He can’t hear you. Turn the camera off, or you won’t have enough battery life and neither will Tommy.”
John hesitated and took one more look before he made the video feed vanish.
“So we begin. If you do exactly as you’re told, I will release your son.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Trust, Detective? This isn’t about trust, it’s about keeping the boy alive.”
John’s thumb hovered over the camera button, longing for another glimpse of Tommy.
“Warehouse, northeast corner of Tenth and R Street. Go there. Fifteen minutes.”
“I can’t get there in fifteen minutes,” John said, already scrabbling up the levee embankment.
“You don’t have a choice, Detective.”
“Winnow!” John said, with no response. He looked at the phone to ensure the call remained connected and the screen counted up the call time.
John reached the top of the levee and ran across the open field toward his parked sedan. Mud clung to his feet and caused him to trip on an exposed tree root. He fell forward, still cradling the cell phone. He couldn’t risk breaking his fall with his arms and took the full force of the fall on his chest, knocking the wind from his burning lungs. The concussion dizziness returned, fogging his mind for a moment.
He pushed up to his knees and struggled to pull air into his chest. With a half breath, he stood and slogged to the car. The cobwebs in his brain loosened. He held the phone up and reassured the fall hadn’t broken his line to the killer, or rather his lifeline to Tommy.
John reached his car and didn’t waste time knocking the river mud from his shoes or the slime from his shirt before he jumped behind the wheel. The detective started the engine, threw the transmission in reverse, and jammed the wheel to the left, spinning the car around on the slick surface.
He punched the accelerator and shot out of the park entrance, entrusting his son’s future to vague promises from a sadistic serial killer.