Blessed Child (49 page)

“How would you suggest that this document came into being?”

“Donna, let's be reasonable. You're too intelligent for this. We're about to change the world, my dear. This country needs a strong leader willing to cross ideological lines for the sake of progress. The American people want me to be that man. Surely you aren't suggesting that a rumor from some forgotten corner of the world should be allowed to stand in the way of that.”

“I'm not suggesting anything. But it strikes me as strange that you would agree to meet me in the middle of this vacant stadium over a rumor.”

“Does that surprise you? Well, it shouldn't. I know the power of suggestion. Misinformation can ruin a man. It was how we brought Milosevic to his knees. I'm sure my enemies would love to see me destroyed by a piece of paper. But we aren't going to allow that, are we, Donna?”

She cleared her throat.
I hope you're getting this, Bill
. They would never air unsubstantiated accusations. But they would air Caleb. This whole show depended on Caleb, and she had the boy in her pocket.

“What do you suggest?” she asked.

“I suggest you give the document to me and we call it a night. It's the only responsible thing to do. We have a country that's waiting.”

“We?”

He grinned and winked. “I'm sure all of our lives will improve under my administration.”

“You want the document now?”

“Yes.”

Donna's pulse spiked; she turned to the side and nodded. It occurred to her that she hadn't told Jason precisely what the sign was. Bill knew—her nodding—but would Jason follow? She nodded again.
Come on, Caleb
.

The door under the seats behind Donna suddenly opened and Caleb stepped out. He climbed two steps and stepped onto the field.

“I thought it would be appropriate for Caleb to give it to you,” Donna said, motioning with her hand.

Crandal's face went white. Roberts dropped both arms, took a step forward, and cursed.

Caleb walked toward them, holding the folded note with both hands. His hair was in tangles, and he smiled at Donna. Unless the studio had been caught flat-footed, Mitchell had already patched the feed through to live coverage. If they were on their toes, this picture was now live on all the majors.

“I thought Banks . . .” Roberts trailed off, red in the face.

The boy stopped by Donna's side. “Hello.” He unfolded the note, glanced at the script, and then looked up at Crandal. “This is my father's paper. I recognize it, because he taught me to write on paper just like this when I was even a smaller boy. It says here that you killed many good women and children in my country. And I think it's right because I had a dream where you ate a woman. So it must be that you are a very bad man.”

They stared at him, stunned.

We're making history,
Donna thought.
The world is watching and we're making history.

Crandal closed his eyes for a long second and then opened them. He looked at Roberts, and his security chief moved to the right. Roberts scanned the seats quickly. He slipped his hand under his jacket. Donna watched it all, not quite willing to accept the conclusion that blared through her skull.

He was going for a gun. He was actually going to pull his gun!

A pistol flashed in Roberts's hand. To Donna it felt like someone had opened her skull and poured in a bucket of ice water. She stiffened and took a step back.

“We have no option,” Roberts said. “The kid's alive.”

Jason was watching the scene through a gap around the door, and he bolted as soon as Roberts pulled out the gun. He shoved through the door and pulled up. “You'd better think twice about that, Roberts. You're on live camera.”

Roberts spun to him, gun extended.

Jason stepped forward, his heart thumping in his chest. “You fire and a million people will watch you do it,” he said.

Roberts blinked rapidly a few times. Leiah ran past him and pulled the boy behind her. Both Roberts and Crandal diverted their eyes and quickly scanned the empty stadium.

“You're lying!” Roberts snapped. “I swept—”

“He's not lying,” Donna said. She pointed down the field. “We have a camera in the announcer's box. We're live.”

“You're lying,” Crandal growled. “We agreed to no cameras!” He was panicking.

Roberts's gun wavered and he lowered it slowly. Somewhere in the distance a horn honked. Then another. Then a chorus of car horns, as if someone were getting married at a nearby church.

“Bill, you know how to turn on the PA?” Donna asked.

A brief silence. Roberts began to lift the gun, his knuckles white. “You're bluffing.”

The air squealed with feedback. The public address system crackled with a man's voice. “Am I on?”

“Say hi to Bill,” Donna said, wearing a smirk.

Horns blared, closer now. The cameraman's voice echoed through the empty stadium. “We're rolling, Donna. Mitchell has the feed out for the taking. We're live on most stations across the country. And Jason's wrong if he thinks that only a million people are watching this. You better believe that.”

A healthy dose of feedback shrilled again.

The goose bumps that spread over Donna's skin were from the thrill of it now. “Did they announce the party?” she asked.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Thank you, Bill.”

Donna turned to Crandal. “You see? I'm not bluffing. In fact, my guess is those horns we're hearing are from rush-hour motorists who've heard our open invitation to come down to the Rose Bowl to see the boy. I'd say we have three minutes before they start flooding the stadium.”

Crandal took a step backward. “This is nonsense! Absolute nonsense, you hear me?! You'll never get away with this!”

Roberts's gun had disappeared. He stepped up, white as a sheet. “Let's go, sir.”

“I think I am getting away with this,” Donna said.

The horns were blaring much closer now. It occurred to Jason that they were getting all of this dialogue over their radios. Every word spoken here was being broadcast to millions of cars as well!

Crandal looked directly at the announcer's box and scowled.

“We should leave, sir! Now!” Roberts said.

A man suddenly sprinted through the side entrance at the fifty-yard line. He ran out about twenty feet and pulled up, wide-eyed. Two more ran in behind him. They were here already.

“Sir . . . !”

Crandal spun and strode for the back entrance through which he'd come. Roberts turned back once, still white, and then they left the stadium.

Donna immediately went into action. “Okay, Bill, let's set up the other camera down here. Keep the feed rolling.” People were entering the stadium in a sudden stream now. The horns in the parking lot rose over the high walls like a symphony tuning up. Jason watched the unfolding in unbelief. Whatever strings Donna had pulled to bring this together were paying off in grand fashion.

She was facing the booth and talking directly to the television audience now. “What you're witnessing, ladies and gentlemen, is something you're unlikely to ever see again in your lifetime. History is being made before our eyes. We'll leave the speculation about Charles Crandal's comments to the appropriate authorities. But I think we've all learned tonight that not everything is as it seems.” She eased over to Caleb and put her hand on his shoulder. “As you can clearly see, Caleb is alive and well. And I'm sure that we can persuade him to tell us what has happened in a few minutes.”

She continued, but Jason tuned her out and faced the field. Several people were out in the middle screaming at the top of their lungs, directing traffic, telling the floods of people now entering the stadium to find seats as quickly as possible. Another NBC team had arrived and were running to the front with suitcases of equipment. Four men dressed in T-shirts were wheeling a ten-by-twenty platform on wheels toward them. It looked as if it had come from under the seats.

Jason stepped up behind Leiah and swallowed.

When Donna said show, she meant show.

It was Peter who saw the Rose Bowl coverage first.

He was sitting in his blue wheelchair flipping through the channels, but following his new custom, he peeked in on NBC every five minutes or so. They were the ones who seemed to be on the inside of Caleb's story. The Learning Channel episode on mummies came to a commercial break, and he switched back to NBC.

At first the picture looked like something from a home video—like a football field without any football players or people in the stands. The picture shimmered and then zoomed in to Donna and two other men.

Peter watched with mild interest as they talked. It was the kind of thing his mom and dad probably would go nuts over, but to him it was just a political story, and as far as he saw it, politics was one of those things that would matter one day, but for now . . .

Wait a minute! Who was that? The camera focused on a small boy walking from a side door. It was Caleb! Was it? Yes! Yes, it was Caleb!

“Mom!”

His mother poked her head in from the kitchen. Peter glanced at her and then returned to the picture. Suddenly the one man had a gun out, and it was pointed at Caleb!

“Stew! Stew get in here right now!” His mother sounded frantic, and his dad heard that too, because he bounded in from the garage.

“What? What is it?”

“It's Caleb,” Peter said. “That guy has—”

“Is this for real?” Stew demanded.

“Yes! Yes, it's for real,” his mom shot back.

His dad bounded for his radio on the kitchen table and flipped it on. The speaker crackled with a man's voice describing what they were seeing right now. The police knew.

The Longs watched for another three minutes in stunned silence. They watched Jason run out, followed by Leiah. They watched Crandal and Roberts leave and then they watched as a tag line appeared across the bottom, inviting anyone who so desired and could to come to the Rose Bowl. Caleb was back.

The black ticker tape scrolled across the bottom for a full thirty seconds, and Peter felt his heart pounding in his chest like it was going to tear loose. Then his mom spoke.

“The Rose Bowl's only fifteen minutes from here.”

No one answered her. People were already arriving at the stadium. A helicopter shot showed long bunches of lights suddenly breaking from the three surrounding freeways, heading toward the Rose Bowl. It looked like a blotchy ring of fire moving into its center.

“The roads will be jammed pretty soon,” Mom said.

Peter looked up at his dad. “Please, Dad.”

His dad hesitated one moment longer and then he was suddenly grabbing for his police jacket. “Okay, in the cruiser. If we're gonna go, we might as well get there in style. Barbara, grab Peter's coat. I'll get him in the car.”

They were on the road with their overhead lights flashing five minutes later. The radio was crackling, and the roads were filling up, and Peter couldn't help but think that something was about to happen.

Something very big.

Banks had picked the news up when some rookie cop with a high voice started yelling over the scanner that the kid had been found. In fact, the cop insisted, he was on television right now with that reporter from NBC, his kidnappers, and Charles Crandal, of all people! Where? At the Rose Bowl. And the tag at the bottom of the screen was inviting one and all to the Rose Bowl.

The scanner immediately clogged with cops crackling back and forth.

Crandal was with the kid? Banks had nearly panicked. For a fleeting minute he considered leaving it all. But then the beauty of the situation hit him square in the head, and he fired the Monte Carlo and screamed toward the Rose Bowl.

The kid was there, the kidnappers were there, and most importantly, confusion would be there. You put them all together with a trained killer and you got one point two million out of it.

He arrived with the first few cars, parked on the north side, and waited for more cars to arrive. If he was going to depend upon confusion, he had to let confusion set up.

The cars came in long strings of headlights, sounding their horns like adolescents who thought they had something to celebrate. They rolled in undirected and parked in surprisingly neat rows, considering the spontaneity of it all. There were no attendants with orange vests and flashlights facilitating a smooth process. There were just hordes of people who'd evidently heard the announcements on their radios and pulled off the freeway to see what all the fuss was about. They parked their cars and hustled toward the gaping entrance, which was flooded with light.

According to the police band, the 210 freeway had come to a standstill, and they were scrambling to redirect traffic. To complicate matters, all the freeways leading anywhere near Pasadena were hopelessly clogged. Evidently the whole basin had heard the news and decided en masse to beat a path to the Rose Bowl before their neighbors turned on their televisions and decided to make the drive. The only solution offered was to divert as many exits as possible toward the stadium. According to a police chopper reporting over the band, the region looked like a massive spider web of lights leading to the lighted bowl.

Banks felt a twitch over his left eye. The idiots had no idea what kind of show they were in for. Not even a clue. He might have to give up Jason and the woman—he knew that. It depended on what kind of position he could get in. But then again, maybe he would just pop away.

And what if the game had changed now? What if this exposure of Roberts and Crandal dampened their willingness to pay?

He cursed out loud and shoved the thought from his mind. He couldn't think of that now. Not when he was closing in for the kill. Not when he was about to finish what he'd started.

His wait lasted seven minutes. A sea of cars surrounded his own. He stepped from the vehicle and walked to the back. His getaway lane was clear to the left. Good enough. He popped the trunk.