Point Blank

Unfortunately, they didn’t have anything to give us in return.”
    “Did you trace the call, Dillon? Do you know where they are?” Ruth asked. Savich said, “It’s good news, bad news. Claudia called from a prepaid cell phone Moses purchased for cash at a Radio Shack this morning. He activated it from a pay phone in the parking lot. It’s anonymous that way since there’s no registered owner, but the signal was loud and clear. And since they were calling from a set location, we located them dead-on.”
    “Where?” Dix asked.
    Sherlock said, “At a Denny’s on Eighth Avenue and Pfeiffer Street in Milltown, Maryland. Even though the local cops got there in under five minutes, Moses and Claudia were gone. Evidently Moses had left Claudia alone with the cell phone. When he came back she was still talking to me. I heard his voice, could tell he was angry at her for using it. So that means he knew we could find him. He hit the road fast.
    ” Sherlock sighed. “If only he’d spent a bit more time in the men’s room, we could have joined them for dinner.”
    “Please tell me where the good news is in all of this?” Ruth asked them. Sherlock said, “Good news is we’ve got great descriptions, down to Moses’s old black lace-up army boots, and Claudia wasn’t exactly undercover. She had on low-cut plumber jeans, a skimpy hot-pink top, and a fake fur jacket. They made quite an impression on their waitress, who said Claudia was pretty but she wore too much makeup, and that the old guy looked like he’d spent a hundred years staked out in the sun.
    “But the best information is from a waiter who was outside smoking a cigarette when Moses and Claudia left the restaurant. He was yelling at her, shaking the cell phone in her face before he shoved her into a van.
    “The waiter had Claudia in his sights until the van disappeared from view. She waved at him from the passenger-side window. He doesn’t remember much about the van—thinks it was a Ford, real dirty. He was focused on Claudia. We might get something more from him. I’d bet my next paycheck on it.”
    Savich said, “Our Denny’s waiter is all set up to have Dr. Hicks hypnotize him tomorrow morning at Quantico, and we need to be there. I’m not certain if we’ll be back tomorrow evening, depends on what shakes loose.
    “Moses isn’t stupid. He might have figured we could locate them even with a prepaid cell phone, as long as Claudia stayed on the line.”
    Sherlock picked it up. “And that would mean we’d speak to people at the restaurant who saw them. So they might lie low for a while. Still, every squad car in the area will have Claudia’s picture by morning.”
    Ruth clapped. “Dillon didn’t tell us what you’d managed to do when he called earlier. This is great, Sherlock. Keep it up and you’ll break the whole thing wide open.”
    Sherlock said to Ruth, “Claudia wanted to talk to Dillon, Ruth. She wants to have sex with him, actually. Dillon was upset because he thinks I’m too delicate to hear the dirt Claudia dishes out.”
    Two pairs of female eyes went to Savich.
    “There’s more to it than that, Ruth, and Sherlock knows it.”
    “Ah,” Dix said, sat back on the sofa, and crossed his arms over his chest.
    “Ah, what?” Savich asked him, never looking away from his wife.
    “So maybe all of this boils down to the fact that you want to protect her.”
    Sherlock turned on him. “From a crazy child on a cell phone? Dillon has no right—”
    Dix spoke over her. “I’d probably feel the same way if Ruth were my wife. It’s simply the nature of the beast—both of you must know that by now. It’s just instinct.”
    Sherlock went on point, and Dix felt lucky Savich was sitting between them. “Women have the same instinct, macho man.”
    Dix cleared his throat. “Well, I’m glad we cleared that up without bloodshed. Would everyone look at the time. Is it late, or what?”
    There was a sprinkling of laughter, most of it from Ruth, Dix thought, then a pound of silence. Ruth jumped in to tell them she and Dix had spent the rest of their afternoon with Gordon Holcombe. “
    We searched every space in his office, house, and studio, every record. He was cooperative, I’ll say that for him. We even spoke to three of his former lovers on the phone. They were fine, all of them elsewhere at the time of the murders.”
    Dix said, “I’m going to talk to Gordon again tomorrow.” He frowned down at his clasped hands. “I