A Child Is Missing (10 page)

“No. Should I have?”

Will avoided that question. “You never saw Mr. Spicer?”

“Not until they took him in the ambulance. When I raised my head, I could see the officer take a six-pack, what was left of it, out of the car. I saw him dump part of a can of beer on the road. Your friend's car, it was all caved in. I knew he had to have been hurt real bad. I didn't know he … I'm sorry.”

Will nodded; his mind was racing. “Miss Glover, do you recall seeing anything else? Anything at all? I mean, did the police officer take anything else out of the car?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, another bottle maybe. Do you know what a bottle of peppermint schnapps would look like?”

“I'm not sure. But I don't remember anything else.”

“You're sure?”

“She just said so,” the mother said.

Suzanne Glover flashed the older woman a look that said, Shut up. Then she said firmly, “I am sure.”

“All right,” Will said. “Thank you. I'm sorry for all that's happened. I know Fran would be, too.” Just before he went out the door, Will said, “You might want to get your own lawyer. But I can promise you personally that you'll get what's coming to you.”

Twelve

The flashlight had gone out a long time ago, and Jamie was in the dark.

His feet were wet and cold. He had managed to squirm them into the blankets, but in doing that he had kicked the water bottle. The bottle had gone all the way down to where his feet were, and the top had come off. Jamie had felt the water on his feet. Now they ached from the cold.

They had left some food. Jamie had eaten a candy bar first. Then he found a sandwich. It didn't taste very good; it smelled bad and the bread was hard. He got angry and threw the sandwich way down past his feet.

Now he was getting hungry again. He wished his mother and father would hurry up and find him. It stunk where he was.

For a long time (it seemed like a long time), Jamie had been hearing a whistling noise. He knew that was from the wind blowing by the chimney. Now the whistling got louder, and there was another sound:
ting-ting-ting-ting.

Rain.

The
ting-ting-ting
got louder. So did the whistling. Then there was a real loud whistle and a
cling-cling
noise, and then the wind got real loud. Then he felt water on his chest. Water was running down the chimney.

A yellow light flickered over his chest, shone for a moment on his metal world, then was gone. Then he heard a loud crash.

Thunder.

There was a smaller crash, and the thunder rolled away like barrels in heaven.

“Mom-MY!”

They would come pretty soon. He wished as hard as he could that they would come soon.

Thirteen

“Today,” Agent Jerry Graham told the reporters and TV cameras, “we received another ransom note from the people holding Jamie Brokaw. The envelope bore a postmark from Deer Run. For those of you who don't know, Deer Run is right along the Pennsylvania border, some forty miles southeast of Deep Well, where the second ransom note was postmarked. This latest note gave instructions for the delivery of the ransom.

“That is all I can tell you, except to say that the ransom will be delivered as instructed, and that we renew our plea to the kidnappers to return the boy safely.”

“Sir,” a reporter shouted, “could we please see the ransom note? And the earlier ones?”

Jerry Graham shut off the microphone and stood up, ignoring the questions shouted at him. Will saw Graham look toward him and shift his head slightly—a signal.

“Sit down, Will. I don't think anyone saw you come in.” Almost comically, Graham looked up and down the corridor before flinging the door shut.

“You seem a little on edge, Jerry.”

“Do you blame me?” Graham sat down at his desk and unlocked the top drawer.

Graham was holding up a cardboard rectangle with the same kind of pasted lettering Will had seen on the previous ransom notes. “For your eyes only, Will. And off the record, please.”

Will read:

PUT 250G'S IN TIGHT WATERPROOF BUNDLE. NO BIGGER THAN 20'S, NO NEW BILLS IN SEQUENCE. TAKE BUNDLE IN MARKED POLICE CAR NORTH ON LOGGER HILL ROAD OFF RTE 126 IN DEER COUNTY. CAR MUST STOP EXACTLY QUARTER MILE NORTH OF 126. THROW BUNDLE OUT RIGHT SIDE INTO BRUSH AT LEAST 20 FEET FROM ROAD. DO THIS BETWEEN 4 AND 5 PM DAY YOU GET THIS. NO TRIX. WE CAN MOVE BOY AT WILL WITHOUT YOUR FINDING. HIS LIFE YOUR HANDS.

“Today?” Will said.

“Today. Now, Mr. Word Person, tell me again what you see.”

“Lord. He really thought this out, didn't he? Assuming there's one mastermind.”

“Yep. Very detailed. He wants delivery made just as it's getting dark.”

“Do you think he'll be watching?”

“My hunch? Yes. That area is deep woods. If he gets set up in a spot, and he has binoculars, he's pretty safe. Especially, say, if he's wearing camouflage clothing. Besides, they still have the boy, so he probably figures we won't get too cute. And he's right. But tell me what you see here, Will.”

“Damn, Jerry. What do
I
know?”

“As much as me, probably. We're nowhere on this, Will. I'd roll the dice to make something happen, except I don't know where the dice are. What do you see here?”

“It's more like the second note than the first. He's no fool. By comparison, the writer of the first note sounds unintelligent. You're probably way ahead of me, but he must know this whole region pretty well. A hunter, maybe? An out-doorsman?”

“Or at least someone who knows the land around here. What else, Will?”

“He's, well, he's fairly literate. There, the possessive
your
in front of the gerund
finding.
The misspelling of
tricks
is a deliberate shortcut, nothing more. See, he gets tired of clipping and pasting. ‘His life your hands.' He leaves out
is in
because he's getting impatient with the cut-and-paste task.”

“Tell me more.”

“Hmmm.… The same crazy-quilt of typefaces. Ordinary, commonly used newspaper fonts. Oh. Where he says ‘quarter mile,' he managed to find the entire word
quarter
somewhere in a headline, so he pasted it intact. Saved himself some snipping.”

“The impatience you spoke about, Will.”

“Instead of cutting letters, he cut corners.”

“Nicely put, Will. We'll do tests on the paper and paste, but I'll bet my mortgage it's like the other paper. Ordinary five-and-dime stock.” Graham bit his lip, as though deciding something important. “Will, you're one of the few newsmen I trust totally. That's why I'm inviting you right now to come with me, if you'd like. On the stakeout, I mean. When the ransom is delivered.”

Will filed his story early, called the
Gazette
to verify that it had been transmitted intact, fielded a few routine questions. The thrust of it, of course, was that there had been a third ransom note, with instructions, and that the authorities intended to comply.

Will almost lied when Tom Ryan asked him whether he knew any details of the ransom delivery. Will said he had written everything that officials were willing to say with certainty. That was true enough, technically, and Will felt honor-bound not to go further.

He left the motel before anyone at the paper could phone him back with sharper questions. He found a decent diner and ordered the pasta special. It turned out to be simple spaghetti and meat sauce, but it wasn't bad, and it would give him the body warmth he'd need later on. Then he found an army surplus store, where he bought a thick sweatshirt with a hood, a pair of flannel-lined hunting pants, rubber and leather hunting boots and socks to go with them, and a water-repellent canvas hunting jacket.

Will put it all on his credit card, but he would damn well put it on his expense account.

He went back to the motel to change into his new outdoor gear, and by three o'clock he was in a car with Jerry Graham, who was dressed the same way.

“I'm getting too old for this stuff, Will. That's what I think sometimes.”

“Me, too, Jerry.” In fact—and there was no hiding it from himself—Will felt invigorated. He might pray to God (and he had) that the kidnapped boy come home alive, but it was still exciting to be at the center of events as they unfolded. It was what had first drawn him to the newspaper life, years ago.

“I'm sorry about your friend, Will.”

“Thanks. I got the funeral arrangements made. Fran's body is on its way back to Bessemer. Maybe he's home already, in fact.”

“He'd gone off the wagon in a big way just before the wreck, I guess?”

“It looks that way. I mean, his clothes smelled of beer and everything, and he tested high on blood alcohol.…”

“Any reason to have doubts? Other than wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt because he was a friend?”

“All right. I won't deny my emotions might be getting in the way. If I'd been in the office, I never would have sent him over here. The kidnapping is a big, big story, and I would have worried about the pressure being too much for him.”

“He didn't have what it takes?”

“Once, he did. Quite a long time ago. Quite a few drinks ago.”

Will knew the geography well enough to tell when they had crossed into Deer County. The day was raw, damp, windy. Now and then, Graham worked the windshield wipers. Some of the gusts were strong enough to push the car to one side or another.

“We've all known sad cases, Will. I know some talented agents who rubbed someone's ass the wrong way, ran afoul of some federal chickenshit. So they crashed and burned. When that happens, people get out or they get bitter.”

Will waited, sensing that Graham would say more.

“This guy Fran, Will. You knew him way back when?”

“For a while, he was a mentor. When I was new, he taught me a lot. So the years went by—more than I want to think about, actually—and things went a certain way for him, another way for me.”

“And suddenly you're the guy in charge, watching over him. Role reversal.”

“Yes. And I suppose”—Will was about to share more than he'd intended to—“I suppose I'm operating on some not-quite-resolved baggage from years ago. My father committed suicide, and there was a sense of shame attached to it, back then. Which I can't do anything about. Now, Fran will always be the drunk who crashed into a car and injured a young woman as his final act.”

“The gutter reaching up to drag him home?”

“Something like that. So I've been sort of snooping around to see if there could have been any mistakes. Or anything else. Off the record, Jerry, this is an angry little town in some ways, and I'm not sure how much I'd put past the cops.”

“Meaning what, Will?”

“Meaning I don't know what. I did wonder if the young woman had a friend in the police department who was going to help her collect a big insurance settlement off a stranger.”

“Pretty farfetched.”

“I know. And the young woman doesn't seem like that kind of person.”

“You went to see her about this?”

“About the wreck, I did. Just to try to satisfy myself. And there were a couple of other things.”

Will told Graham about Fran Spicer's old drinking habits (whenever possible, schnapps first, then beer) and his lingering suspicions about the blood test.

Graham listened—skeptically, Will thought. Finally he said, “Be careful, Will. You're right about one thing. Long Creek is an angry little town. Isolated, suspicious of strangers. Don't get on the wrong side of the cops, if you can help it.”

After a while, they turned off Route 126 and started uphill on a narrow two-lane road that was asphalt in some stretches, dirt in others.

“We're going roughly parallel to Logger Hill Road, Will. It's over that way.” Graham gestured to his right with a thumb. “About three-quarters of a mile, actually. You in shape?”

“For my age, not bad. I jog a little.”

“Good.”

Jerry Graham found a hard spot by the road and pulled over. Will stood next to the car, flexing his legs to get the warmth started. The turf under his boots had lost some sponginess; the ground would soon freeze, and might not thaw again until April.

Graham opened the trunk, took out two pairs of binoculars. “One for day vision and one for night, Will. Do me a favor and carry one pair.”

Then Graham took a rifle out of the trunk and slung it over his shoulder. “An old three-oh-eight Winchester semiautomatic, Will. Stop anything on the continent. The telescopic sight that's on it right now”—Graham took a foot-long tube out of the truck and put it into a deep pocket—“can be replaced with this night-vision sight in a few seconds.”

“If you see someone picking up the money…?”

“I'll just try to see where he goes, that's all. Get a general description, if I can. But it's a good bet the kidnappers, or one of them anyhow, is in the area, and we want to be ready.”

Graham took out a small compass and held it as far as possible from the rifle barrel so that the needle wouldn't be affected by the metal. Then he pulled up the back of his coat and took a black radio off his belt. “This is Eagle Visitor,” he said into the radio. “I'm moving in now.”

The agent took a path up a hill, through thick underbrush, then into a stand of old evergreens. Will had been able to see the top of the hill from the road, and it hadn't seemed like such a steep climb. But it was plenty steep enough, Will decided after a few minutes.

Then Will figured it out: Instead of taking the most direct route to the top, Graham was deliberately varying his path. “You're trying to stay out of sight, Jerry.”

“More like not wanting to go in a straight line, in case someone's drawing a bead on us. Whoever he is.”

Wherever he is, Will thought.