A Child Is Missing (33 page)

“I like to take bad medicine in one gulp, Jerry.”

“I've got some good medicine, too, Will.”

“How did you zero in on Raines?”

“I didn't, Will. At least not by myself.” Graham explained that another cop had noticed that Raines was putting more mileage than usual on his patrol car, and that his daily activity log didn't account for it. So Graham and Howe had begun to wonder why Raines would have been driving all over the county when he wasn't handing out that many traffic tickets.

Around that time, the ransom notes were being mailed from different corners of the county. “And that's where you were a big help, Will. When you noticed that funny newspaper typeface.…”

“Latin Condensed.”

“Whatever. When you noticed that funny lettering from the
New York Times,
and then you told me that the
Times
used in the ransom notes must have been bought right here in Long Creek. That really made us focus on Raines. Especially since the chief remembered seeing Raines reading the
Times
now and then.”

“So you didn't really dismiss what I pointed out about the lettering on the ransom notes?”

“Lord no. Quite the contrary. I was just putting on an act.”

Yes, Will thought. So much of it had been an act. Was I anything more than a prop? “Why did you have to put on an act, Jerry?”

“So you'd be in the dark, Will. I thought it might help in getting Raines to rise to the bait. Maybe you remember how I made a show of closing the door whenever I talked to you and I thought Raines was around.”

“Now I do. Twenty-twenty hindsight.”

“It's that way for all of us. So when Raines started pumping you, trying to learn what you knew about me—”

Lightning flashed in Will's mind. “You had his car bugged, you bastard!”

“—trying to learn what you knew about me,” Graham went on evenly, “we knew we were closing the ring.”

“And you couldn't just grab him?”

“No. Certainly not when the boy's fate was up in the air. And the involvement of Steven Sewell—a one-in-a-million accident—really had us scratching our heads. We didn't know how many kidnappers there were. So we had to let things take their course.”

Graham said the tape recording of the call to the Deer County Sheriff's Department by the “hunter” who reported spotting a man and boy in the woods had been analyzed. The analysis had indicated a strong probability, based on comparisons with recordings of Raines's voice from routine police calls, that the “hunter” and Raines were the same man. Raines had only partly succeeded in disguising his voice; Graham's remark to Will that the “hunter” sounded like an old man with bad dentures had been a lie for Raines's benefit.

“You already know about the poor pathetic hermit and his dog,” Graham went on. “He saved that boy, Will. It's my theory that Raines was going to kill that boy. Maybe take his picture first to get more ransom money. Then kill him, one way or the other.”

“Unbelievable.”

“For people like you and me, yes. Not for someone like Raines, who doesn't—didn't—function like a human being.

Graham was red-eyed and looked tired. He poured himself some water from the pitcher on the little table. “We didn't know what to make of your friend's auto accident, Will. How it tied into the kidnapping, I mean. Or even whether it did. But the Long Creek cop who investigated it, Ted Pickert, was suspicious early on. He got to the scene quickly, and he thought he saw another car making haste out of the area.”

“Raines.”

“We think so. We know so. But it wasn't until you found the schnapps bottle—”

“When did I tell you about finding the bottle?”

“Last night, when you were drifting in and out after being sedated. It wasn't until then, when we knew about the schnapps bottle being there, that we surmised that your friend had stumbled on the kidnappers and the boy in the garage. Under hypnosis, the boy gave us an almost dreamlike account of a strange man coming into the garage, scuffling with some other men, knocking over a green tank and a red tank as he ran out. But we, well…”

“You didn't know how much to believe him.”

“No, we didn't know how much to believe the child,” Graham said. “Especially considering what he'd been through.”

Will sat up and poured himself some water. He felt tugged from two directions: He wanted to hear what Graham had to say, yet he was eager to get out of the hospital. After a long moment, he said, “I've wondered what Fran went through.”

“That's another thing. Early on, the chief picked up on the fact that Raines was showing a lot of interest in the accident involving your friend.”

Graham said Howe had seen Raines sneaking a look at the accident report, perhaps to see if the investigating officer had indicated any doubt that Spicer had been drunk. The chief had then made sure the investigating officer was unavailable, to Raines or anyone else.

“I feel badly about misjudging Howe,” Will said. “He's not as dumb as I thought. Worse than that, he's a better man than I thought.”

The agent shrugged. “We make mistakes. Go see him before you leave town.”

Will pressed the buzzer on his bed, told the nurse he wanted to leave, so if any doctor needed to check him out, now was the time.

“Hmmm,” the nurse said. “Your blood work isn't back, and you had quite a stressful experience. A man your age, it might be best if you stayed another night.”

“No,” Will said.

As Will got dressed, he and Graham talked about the things that would never be known: how and at what stage Raines had found out about the kidnapping and muscled in on the Santos brothers; when and why he had decided to do away with them, and exactly how he had done it; why Raines had decided to eliminate Carmine Luna, and whether Luna might be alive if Will hadn't gone after him.

“Don't dwell, Will. I'm trying not to. I killed a man, after all.”

Will felt badly for him, but there was nothing he could say to help. Then he remembered something. “You told me you never left town, Jerry. Where the hell were you?”

“At the chief's house. His wife is a hell of a cook.”

“The money, Jerry. What about the ransom money?”

The agent shrugged. “We tossed Raines's apartment and his car. Nothing.” He went on to explain that Raines had been watched when the hermit's cabin had been discovered. Graham reminded Will that Raines had seemed eager to stay there. “It occurred to us that he might have had a small amount of the ransom money with him, maybe tucked in a boot—”

“And might have intended to plant it in the cabin to make it look like the hermit was part of the kidnapping.”

“Right. That's all conjecture. We'll probably never know.”

“I just remembered. Near the cabin, it looked like someone had started to build a snowman.…”

“And Raines stepped on it. Howe and I noticed that, Will. Of course, that made us wonder all the more if the hermit was just an innocent outsider. But we, we…”

Graham paused, shook his head. His eyes filled, and suddenly Will understood. He waited for his old friend to go on.

“We thought about trying to pass the word among the search party that this strange guy with the kid might be innocent. But we weren't a hundred percent sure. And how would we have passed the word without tipping off Raines? How, Will?” The agent held out his hands, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness.

“Jerry, you just told me not to dwell. You had to make a life-or-death decision. This guy Sewell, he was probably paranoid, and he might have had some leftover problems from his days as a heavy drug user. And he had a gun.”

“Which he used, unfortunately. Which made it easier for Raines to shoot him.”

“Raines?”

“The ballistics tests on Raines's weapon aren't final yet, but we're pretty sure it was him. We interviewed the others who had him in range, and none of them fired the fatal shot. Or so they said.”

“It would make sense, Raines shooting him.”

“It's perfect. Raines kills him, and it's all legal and kosher. The hermit never gets to tell his story.” Graham paused; Will had never seen him look sadder.

“Wait, Jerry. If Raines shot the guy legally—I mean, if he thought it was all legal—why didn't he come forward and say he'd shot him?”

“Oh, I set a little trap after the hermit was shot, Will. I spread the word it was a deputy who had nailed him—I told you that, remember—and waited to see if Raines would correct me. The kind of man he was, if he'd had nothing to hide, he would have wanted credit for shooting him.”

They talked for a while longer, agreeing that they'd get together sometime, somewhere just to visit. After Graham said good-bye, Will called the hotel and said he'd be over in a while to settle his bill.

After hanging up, he remembered that he had left his car behind the burned-out garage. When the panic subsided, he called the Long Creek police and was told that his car had been towed to the department's lot, where he could pick it up whenever he wanted.

“Did you find any equipment violations?” Will said.

“Huh?” The officer seemed nonplussed. “Tell you what, you want us to look for any, we'll be glad to write up a ticket.”

“No thanks. Say, if the chief is in, I'd like to come by and see him a little later.”

“I'll pass the message.”

So he did have one last chance, after all. What would he make of it?

He spotted Heather Casey coming out of the intensive-care unit. “Don't you ever take a day off?”

“Oh! Hello. I'm here on overtime, as a matter of fact. How are you feeling?”

“A little tired and sore, but okay.”

“So, then, you've been given permission to leave.”

“I told them I was leaving, yes.”

She smiled at the nuance. “Men. You're all alike.” She said it as a joke, but the words reminded both of them of what they had talked about, and what he knew about her. He saw it in her face, and he was sure she saw it in his.

Will remembered how it had been a long, long time ago when he broke up with a girl: Nothing either of them said sounded quite right. “Anyhow,” Will said, “I'm glad I got a chance to say good-bye in person.”

“I'm just going on a break. Would you like some coffee?”

Say yes, he told himself. “No thanks. I have a couple of stops to make before heading home. I just wanted to tell you…”

She waited.

“…to tell you…”

Still she waited.

And he took one of her hands in his, kissed it, and held on. “To tell you what a lovely person you are. What a lovely woman.”

There was no mistaking the sadness behind her smile, or that it was a farewell. “Have a good life, Will.”

He gave her hand one last squeeze before letting go. Then he walked to the elevator without looking back.

The chief's office had a big window overlooking the parking lot.

“Hey! Good to see you up and about,” Howe said, standing to shake hands. His smile was friendly.

“Thanks. I would have gotten here sooner, but I got the slowest cab in town.”

“Probably the last one,” Howe said, offering a cushioned chair next to the desk.

“Thanks for retrieving my car.”

“We won't even charge for the tow.”

“That's nice of you. Especially since I've been wrong about so many things.”

Howe smiled and waved his hand as if to dismiss Will's concerns. “You a baseball fan, Shafer?”

“I follow it a little.”

“Then you know that a great hitter is one who succeeds one out of three times. One in three! If I'm right more than half the time, I think I'm doing good.”

“I try to remember that myself. Sometimes I think that if I could only put out yesterday's paper again, I could make it perfect.”

Howe chuckled. Then Will felt almost faint. He had forgotten all about his newspaper. My God, were the editors in Bessemer expecting him to file a story today for tomorrow's paper? And what had they done for this day's paper, with him out of commission?

“Chief, can I use your phone?”

Tom Ryan answered. “Will! Great to hear your voice. How are you?”

“Good, Ry. I know I've been out of touch, and I was wondering how you folks made out for today's paper? And do you want me to do anything for tomorrow?”

“That's what I call dedication, Will.” Ryan affected a good-natured tone, but it didn't fly. Then he told him the
Gazette
had run a wire-service story on the shooting of Raines for the first edition, followed by a staff-written article for later editions.

Will waited; he knew from Ryan's voice that there was more to come.

“Will, we sort of, you know, downplayed your being there and all. We thought, or the publisher did, that we should be careful about becoming part of the news ourselves, if you get my drift.”

“I get your drift.”

“Same thing for tomorrow's paper, Will. We figured we'd … we'd do a staff piece from here, using the wires and whatever we can get by phone.”

“Sounds good, Ry. You don't need anything from me, then?”

“I guess we're all set, Will. Maybe you can start thinking about writing a piece for this Sunday. Sort of a wrap-up, putting it all in perspective.”

“Sure, Ry.” He hung up before Ryan could change his mind.

“Everything under control?” Howe said.

“If it isn't, I don't care.”

“That's the spirit. Say, I have a present for you.”

Howe opened a desk drawer and took out a metal shaving mounted on a block; it was just like the one Will had seen on the station desk.

“You don't have to use it as a paperweight,” Howe said. “It can be an effective weapon.”

“I know just what to do with it.” What he would do would be to leave it in his office. He didn't think Karen would like it.