Edgewise (6 page)

Lily looked back toward the old barn. “What will they do—the forensics people? Will they be able to tell if Jeff was there?”

“They'll look for footprints, fibers, cigarette butts—you name it. If anybody drove a vehicle across that field on the night that Tasha and Sammy were taken, they would have left very deep tire tracks, and since it started to freeze only a few days later, the chances are that those tire tracks are very well preserved. We'll also start a house-by-house inquiry, to see if any of the residents in this development saw anything unusual.”

Lily looked around. “If only snowmen could talk,” she said.

But the snowmen remained mute, and the people who lived in Sibley's End had seen nothing, and the FBI's forensic team found no tire tracks or distinctive footprints or any other material evidence. The single pajama button with the shred of blue-and-green cotton attached to it was the only indication that Jeff had taken Tasha and Sammy. Even then, Lily had bought Sammy's pajamas on sale at Dayton's, so there was no conclusive proof that the button was his.

Christmas came, and the Twin Cities sparkled with lights and decorations, and it snowed for three days solid. Lily took Petra, Jamie, and William to the Holidazzle Parade at the Nicollet Mall, and then for pizza and frozen custard at Marco's. She found it painful, taking them out, but to watch them clapping and laughing at the marching Santas was a more endurable pain than sitting at home, in her dark and empty house, waiting for phone calls that came less and less frequently.

She spent Christmas Day with Agnes and Ned and the children. Before lunch they bowed their heads around the table and said a special prayer for Tasha and Sammy and their safe return. Lily had bought Tasha the new Bratz disco doll, and a talking robot for Sammy. She wrapped their presents in gold and silver and left them under the tree, as a way of showing that they were not forgotten, and that she expected them to be home soon.

She was standing in the kitchen with Agnes, talking and drinking a glass of red wine, when Ned came in and said, “Lily? Couple of gentlemen visitors for you.”

For a split second she thought:
Not Special Agents Rylance and Kellogg, please. Not with bad news, not on Christmas Day.
But then Bennie Burgenheim appeared, with snow melting on the shoulders of his big red padded windbreaker.

“Lil! Happy Christmas!” He came tip-toeing into the kitchen and gave her a kiss. “I brought you a present,” he said. He turned around and held his hand out. In the doorway behind him stood a thin-faced man wearing a long black overcoat and carrying a gray wide-brimmed hat. The man gave Lily a small, tight smile and lifted up his hat by way of acknowledgment. He had dense black eyebrows and black glittery eyes and a narrow, bony nose. His chin was blue, as if he hadn't shaved since the day before yesterday.

“Lily, want you to meet John Shooks. John—this is Lily Blake, whom I was telling you about.”

“Bennie,” said Lily, trying not to sound too irritated. “Do you want to tell me what's going on here?”

“For sure. John is the private detective who helped out my brother Myron. I thought since Christmas had come and the FBI still hadn't found where Tasha and Sammy were taken to, maybe John could have a try.”

“Bennie, I know you mean well. But I really believe that the FBI is doing everything that anybody possibly
can
do.”

“I'm sure they are, Lil. But what do you have to lose? You know what it's like when we're having a tough time shifting an unattractive property. Sometimes it helps to bring in somebody new, so that they can look at the problem from a fresh point of view.”

“Agreed,” said Lily. “But selling a clunker is a whole lot different from hunting for somebody who's taken your children. Those FBI agents told me that they have very carefully planned procedures, so that they don't spook the people they're looking for.”

“Of course they do, Mrs. Blake,” said John Shooks, “and quite right, too.” He had a dry Minnesota accent like a creaky door, and a slight lisp, so that “course” came out “coursh.” He stepped forward and put down his hat on the kitchen counter. “One of the great difficulties when you're looking for parental kidnappers is that their victims are often willing accomplices to their own abduction.”

“What do you mean? My children wouldn't have gone with their father willingly.”

“Maybe not to begin with, granted. But you can guarantee that he's giving them the time of their life. And you can also guarantee that he's been working on them since day one, undermining their feelings for you. It doesn't take much.”

Agnes snapped, “Tasha and Sammy could never stop loving their mother,
ever
, no matter what Jeff might say to them.”

Shooks raised one eyebrow. “With all due respect, ma'am, young children can be very easily manipulated. They're young children, after all: they're
supposed
to be suggestible. That's how they learn things. And it doesn't take much in the way of amusement parks and rocky-road ice cream to convince a pre-teen kid that life with Daddy is a whole lot funner than staying at home with Mommy, tidying her bedroom and washing dishes and doing her geography homework.”

“I don't think my children are like that,” said Lily, defensively.

“What? They don't like roller-coaster rides? They don't like ice cream? They don't prefer swimming to schoolwork? Unusual kids, if you don't mind my saying so, Mrs. Blake.”

“I really don't need your help, Mr. Shooks. Bennie—thank you for bringing Mr. Shooks around. I appreciate what you're trying to do. But I think it's best if we leave this investigation to the proper authorities.”

Shooks smiled at her. Although he was so dark and thin and saturnine, there was something strangely kind about his smile, as if he really understood what she was suffering. “Okay,” he said, “the decision is entirely yours. Bennie's quite right, though. Sometimes, if you look at a problem from a different angle, it can unravel itself right in front of your eyes. As if by magic.”

“Would either of you gentlemen like a drink?” asked Ned. “I still have about two gallons of my famous Christmas punch left over. Bennie? How about you, Mr. Shooks? Care for a drink?”

“Thanks, but no,” said Shooks, still smiling at Lily.

“I'd better take a raincheck, too,” said Bennie. “It's solid ice out there, and I think I'm going to need my wits about me.”

“I'm sorry you've had a wasted journey,” said Lily.

Bennie put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Not at all. You know that I'd do anything for you, Lil. I just thought it might be worth giving John a crack at finding Tasha and Sammy for you. Like I said, he really helped out my brother Myron with his two daughters. Every time his ex-wife Velma tried to take them away, John found her in a couple of hours flat. In the end I guess she got tired of trying. He never heard from her again.”

Shooks picked up his hat and turned to go. As he reached the door, however, Agnes said, “Do you
really
think you could find Lily's children, Mr. Shooks?”

Shooks smiled at the floor. “Believe me, ma'am, I wouldn't have come here otherwise. Not on Christmas Day.”

Agnes looked at Lily. “Lily—maybe you should let him try. As Bennie says, what do you have to lose?”

Lily said, “I don't want to mess up anything the FBI might be doing, that's all. You see these stories on TV when ordinary cops arrest undercover cops by mistake, thinking they're criminals, and blow the cover on a drug bust or something.”

“I understand your concern, Mrs. Blake,” said Shooks, “but we're not dealing with a sting operation here, and I don't have any more power of arrest than anybody else in this kitchen. All I intend to do is find your children and bring them back to you, unharmed, and as quickly as possible.”

“But how can you do that, if the FBI can't do it?”

“Because I'm not the FBI, Mrs. Blake, and I can call on resources which the FBI are unable or unwilling to employ.”

“Like what, for instance?” asked Ned. “You mean, like”—and he silently mouthed the next two words—“
the Mafia
?”

“No, nothing like that. There are forces in this world that are a great deal more powerful than the Mafia. More trustworthy, too.”

Lily could feel her heart beating, quick and hard—adrenaline, released by the possibility that Shooks could actually do what he claimed he could do.

“How long do you think it would take you to find my children? I mean, supposing I
did
ask you to look for them?”

Shooks turned his head slightly and fixed her with his glittery eyes. “Hard to tell exactly. Depends how far away they've been taken. But no more than three or four days, I shouldn't imagine.”

“If you're such a genius at finding people, how come you're not more famous? How come the FBI doesn't use you?”

“Because what I do, Mrs. Blake—it comes at a very high price. Not always financially. Sometimes, in terms of money, it comes extremely cheap. But all the same, some people can't afford it; some people can afford it but don't want to pay it.”

“I don't understand.”

“You would, if you were to retain me.”

“Give us a ballpark figure,” said Ned.

Shooks said, “I'm sorry. I'd have to consult my resources first, find out what they were looking for.”

“A thousand? Two thousand? Ten thousand? What?”

“You can name your price,” put in Bennie. “Concord Realty will pay. We just want to see Lily get her kids back.”

“How much did your brother pay?” asked Shooks.

Bennie thought about it, and then frowned. “I don't know, to tell you the truth. He never told me.”

“Exactly,” said Shooks. He turned again to leave, but Lily knew that she couldn't let him go. If he could really find Tasha and Sammy for her in three or four days, she didn't mind what it cost. She didn't even mind if she had to sell the house and live in some low-rent apartment in Cedar-Riverside.

“Mr. Shooks . . .” she said, and he stopped where he was, patiently waiting for what she was going to say next.

He met her the next morning at eleven
A.M
. at Sibley's Barn. It had stopped snowing and an orange sun was suspended in a pale-gray sky. She wore a shaggy fox-fur coat and a shaggy fox-fur hat and thick shaggy boots. When she crossed the Brer Rabbit field Shooks was already waiting for her, in his long black coat and his wide-brimmed hat, and a very long black scarf, his breath smoking.

“How did you sleep?” he asked her as she approached. She was taken aback. It seemed an incongruous question from a man who barely knew her. Yet somehow it made sense. He wanted to know how excited she was.

“Not very much, as a matter of fact,” she told him. “But then you must have known that.”

“I've looked inside the barn already,” he said. “No physical, evidence, just as the FBI told you. No footprints, no fingerprints, no fibers.”

“So now what?”

“We find out what happened here first.”

“How can we do that, if there's no evidence?”

Shooks smiled. “I said no
physical
evidence. But people leave more than physical evidence. They leave a resonance, an echo. A smell of themselves.”

“The FBI tried manhunting dogs. They couldn't pick up any scent at all.”

“I'm not talking about that kind of a smell. Here—come into the barn and I'll show you what I mean.”

Lily hesitated for a moment, but then she stepped through the access door into the barn and Shooks followed her. She stood among the straw while he circled around and around her, trailing his fingers against the walls.

“What are you looking for?” she asked him.

He stopped circling. “They were here all right. I can hear them.”

“You can
hear
them? What do you mean?”

He approached her with his hands held up to the sides of his face. He stopped only two or three feet away from her, and it was then that she saw that his eyes had rolled up into his head, so that only the whites were exposed. She took a step away from him, and then another. He looked grotesque, like a death mask.

“
Where are we going?
” he suddenly said. But he didn't speak in his own voice at all. He sounded high and childish. In fact, he sounded exactly like Sammy.

Lily felt her scalp crawl with fright. This wasn't ventriloquism, or mimicry. Somehow, this was Sammy talking through Shooks's lips.

“How are you doing that?” she demanded. “That's Sammy! How are you doing that?”

“
Mommy's going to be worried,
” said Shooks, and this time he spoke in Tasha's voice. “
I think you should take us back home
.”

“
Don't you want to come on vacation?
” he replied, and now he was talking like Jeff. In fact he sounded so much like Jeff that Lily couldn't stop herself from turning around, to see if Jeff was standing behind her.
“Mommy won't mind if we take a few days' vacation. We can swim on the beach, we can go horseback riding. We can do anything you want.”

“But does Mommy know?”
asked Tasha.

“I'll call her. I promise. The trouble was, she didn't want me to see you so the only way was to have those friends of mine sneak you out of the house.”

“
I'm cold,
” said Sammy. “
I don't want to go on vacation. I want to go back to bed.
”

“Don't you worry. My friends are bringing a car for us. There are blankets in the back, and it'll be warm. You can sleep on the way.”

Lily slowly approached Shooks and said, “Jeff? Jeff, listen to me, Jeff. Where are you taking them?”