The Bridge to Never Land (18 page)

CHAPTER 25

A
TRAFFIC CAMERA PHOTOGRAPHED
the license plate of the green Volvo southbound on the Orange Blossom Trail near Kissimmee, but it was two hours before the hit was identified and reported to the FBI. The FBI then asked area police departments to check the other cameras in their traffic-monitoring systems. This search produced another hit, also on the Trail, a mile south of the first hit. But that was it.

The FBI also requested police dispatchers for Kissimmee and surrounding areas to issue a BOLO—be on the lookout—alert for the green Volvo. The problem was, there was no way to know whether the car had continued south, or changed direction, or stopped at one of the many stores, malls, restaurants, hotels, and attractions in the heavily touristed area. And the local police were too busy dealing with the traffic and the usual tourism-related crimes to devote full attention to the search. Nevertheless, the FBI investigators were encouraged; they were close.

Also feeling encouraged was Lester Armstrong, who had arrived at the Orlando airport on a flight from Newark. The first thing he did when he got into his rental car was plug in and turn on his portable police-radio scanner. He heard the BOLO on his way out of the airport and smiled; the kids were in the area, and the police had not found them yet.

Armstrong headed for the Orange Blossom Trail, joining it near where the Volvo had first been photographed. He drove slowly south, passing strip malls, fast-food joints, and souvenir shops, his eyes flicking left and right. He came to a less-congested area, and on the left-hand side saw a sign that said gatorland standing in front of a building whose front doors were guarded by a gigantic set of green fiberglass jaws sporting enormous sharp fiberglass teeth. A tourist was standing in the jaws pretending to be terrified while another tourist took his picture.

Armstrong looked at the snout and shook his head.
They’re on the run,
he thought.
They’re not going to Gatorland.
He aimed his gaze ahead and continued south on the Trail, searching for the green Volvo, and the Cooper kids, and his paycheck.

CHAPTER 26

“C
HECK OUT THE FIRST ITEM
,” said J.D., pointing to the menu board in the Gatorland snack bar.

“I don’t believe it,” said Aidan. “They sell gator nuggets?”

“That’s disgusting,” said Sarah.

“You don’t even want to try the gator sampler?” said J.D.

“What I want,” said Sarah, “is a nice, normal, nonreptile hamburger.”

“You get those at Cowland,” said Aidan.

The three shared their first laugh in a while, feeling safe for the moment. It had been J.D.’s idea to go into Gatorland—to get the car off the highway, put them in a place where they could blend in with a crowd. They parked in a far corner of the lot, away from the street, paid their admission, and, with barely a glance at the various gator attractions, headed for the snack bar. When they got their food—nobody ordered gator—they settled at a table and ate hungrily.

It was Sarah, as usual, who got them down to business.

“Okay,” she said, sticking a french fry into her mouth. “‘Feed the bird when Ben says.’ We need to figure out who Ben is. So who are some famous Bens?”

“Ben Franklin,” said J.D.

“What time would he say?” said Aidan.

“Dunno,” said J.D. “I do know he said a penny saved is a penny earned.”

“What does that even mean, anyway?” said Aidan.

“Dunno that either.”

“Ben Affleck,” said Sarah.

“Does he say a time?” said Aidan.

“Not that I know of,” said Sarah. “But he’s cute.”

“Helpful,” said Aidan.

“Ben Stiller,” said Sarah.

“Can’t be a modern Ben,” said J.D. “Has to be a Ben from back when Pete gave Fay the locket. It could have been a friend of his, or an associate of the Starcatchers, in which case the odds against our figuring out who he is are pretty huge.”

They sat silent for a minute.

“Okay,” said Sarah, “let’s try it another way. What could ‘Feed the bird’ possibly mean?”

“The ravens?” said Aidan. “That seems pretty obvious.”

Sarah said, “But then why does it say bird, not birds? Plus, the ravens are only here because they followed us. Back when Pete gave Fay the locket, they were in England.”

“I wish they still were,” said Aidan.

“Wait a minute,” said Sarah, snapping her fingers.

The other two looked at her.

“England,” she said.

“Maybe you could explain that a little more,” said Aidan.

“There’s a famous Ben there,” said Sarah. “Maybe the most famous Ben of all. Aidan, we walked past it like fifteen times.”

Aidan frowned. “Big Ben?”

“Bingo. And what’s Big Ben?”

“A clock,” said Aidan.

“Exactly,” said Sarah. “And clocks do what?”

“Tell time.”

“Yes!” said Sarah. “They say what time it is! You feed the bird when Ben says.”

J.D. shook his head. “You have the same problem you had with the ravens. Big Ben’s in London, not here.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Sarah. “But it just seems…right.”

“Except for the part about Big Ben being in London,” said Aidan. “You’d have to fly over there, which doesn’t make sense if the bridge is over here.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sarah, snapping her fingers again.

“What?” said Aidan.

“Fly over,” said Sarah. “You said ‘fly over.’”

“Yeah. So?”

“So you don’t have to fly to England to fly over Big Ben. We’ve both done it dozens of times.”

“What are you talking about?” said Aidan. “It’s in London.”

“The original Big Ben is, yeah. I’m talking about a miniature Big Ben, in a whole miniature London. Which happens to be right here.”

“In Gatorland?” said Aidan.

“No, moron! Disney World!”

Aidan’s mouth fell open. “You mean…the Peter Pan ride? Are you serious?”

“I’m dead serious,” said Sarah. “That’s my favorite ride. You get in a little ship and fly over London at night, and there’s Big Ben, right below you.”

“Wait,” said J.D. “Are you saying you actually think the bridge could be in Disney World?”

“What I’m saying,” said Sarah, “is that Pete Carmoody brought the bridge here. Disney World is here. Pete left the locket here. The locket says ‘when Ben says.’ There’s a model of the world’s most famous Ben in Disney World.”

“But,” said Aidan, “how…I mean, to put this machine in a Disney ride…how in the world would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah. “But word is that he was a really, really smart guy.”

“That’s your argument?” said Aidan.

J.D. was drumming his fingers on the table. “Okay,” he said. “I think Sarah’s probably crazy.”

“Thank you,” said Aidan.

“But,” continued J.D., “we don’t have much else to work
with. Is there a pay phone here?”

“Over there, near the snack counter,” said Sarah, pointing. “Who’re you going to call?”

“You’re going to call them, actually,” said J.D., rising.

“Call who?”

“Disney. You’re a high-school student working on a research project. And you need to know what year they built the Peter Pan ride.”

“Ah,” said Sarah. “Because Mrs. Carmoody said Peter moved the machine out of the basement in…”

“…in 1971,” said J.D., heading toward the phone. “C’mon.”

It took Sarah several calls, followed by twenty minutes of being transferred, but finally she reached a helpful man at Imagineering by the name of Alex Wright.

“Right,” she was saying, as Aidan and J.D. stood by, listening. “The Peter Pan ride. No, the one at the Magic Kingdom. Yeah. Oh, really? Okay, I didn’t know that. Anyway, so the year it was built was…uh-huh…right…uh-huh…okay, thanks very much.”

She hung up.

“Well?” said Aidan. “What’d they say?”

“He said the correct name of the ride is ‘Peter Pan’s Flight,’” Sarah answered. “He was really strict about that.”

“But what did he say about the year it was built?” said J.D.

Sarah smiled. “1971,” she said.

“Whoa,” said Aidan.

J.D. picked up the phone handset. “One more call,” he said, punching in a number. “Who?” said Sarah.

J.D. held up his hand to indicate
hang on.

“Hello,” he said into the phone. “Mrs. Carmoody? This is J.D. Aster again…Fine, thanks…We did, too, thanks. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you again, but I had one more question. You mentioned that Pete worked as a consultant…right…right. So I was just wondering if you happen to remember any of the specific places he worked around 1971? When you finally got your basement back? Uh-huh…right…right…right. Oh really? He took you? Right…uh-huh. Well, that’s great, Mrs. Carmoody. Thanks for your time. Okay, I will. Thanks again. Bye.”

J.D. hung up and turned to Sarah and Aidan.

“What’d she say?” said Sarah.

“She said to be sure to say hello to both of you nice young people.”

“J.D.! What’d she
say
?”

“She said Pete consulted for Disney.”

“I knew it!” said Sarah.

“It gets better. He consulted for a couple of years, impressed them with his management skills, and ended up pretty much running one major project. Guess which one.”

“No!”

“Yes. He took Fay to the grand opening of Peter Pan’s Flight. Their last real date, she said.”

“Aw,” said Sarah.

“Okay,” said Aidan. “I guess we know who Ben is. Or what Ben is. What about the bird we’re supposed to feed? Where’s that?”

J.D. arched his eyebrows at Sarah. “Any ideas about the bird?” he said.

She shook her head. “Not at the moment.”

“So what do we do?” said Aidan.

“I don’t know about you,” said J.D. “But I’m going to Disney World.”

Fay Carmoody hung up the phone and headed for the living-room sofa. She found herself drawn to that particular place—the place where J.D. had opened the locket, and where for a moment that wonderful golden light had filled the room. It had made Fay feel wonderful—as if she were young again, as if in that instant all the pain and weariness of all the years were gone. Whatever had been in the locket, it was still there, in her house, in the air, just a little. She could feel it. And in some strange way it made her feel as though Pete were near.

She sat on the sofa, eyes closed, smiling, lost in memories.

She opened her eyes. She’d heard a sound outside, from the front of the house, a sound like rushing wind.

She rose and turned toward the door. There was a window to the right; on the sill sat a large black bird.

Odd,
she thought. In all the years she’d lived here, she’d never seen a bird like that. She walked toward the door, and stopped again; through the window she could see more of the birds. Many more.

What on earth?
she thought. She decided to go outside and have a look.

CHAPTER 27

R
AY HOLLISTER WORKED SECURITY
in the Downtown Disney parking lot, but what he wanted to be—what he
dreamed
of being—was a real law-enforcement professional.

When he saw the old green Volvo, he nearly wet his pants. He’d memorized the license plate that morning when he saw the police flyer posted on the break-room bulletin board. Besides a description of the car, the flyer had photos of two teenagers and their suspected kidnapper, who was wanted by the FBI.

And the car was right there, right in front of Ray. In Downtown Disney!

His heart was beating so hard he nearly dropped his radio when he unclipped it from his belt to call in his discovery. Minutes later, a dozen police cars converged on the Volvo, sirens whooping. The police hustled Ray to the break room, where they asked him a bunch of questions, most of them about whether he’d seen the kids or the kidnapper. Ray was sorry he hadn’t; he felt he was disappointing them. But his spirits rose when a man and woman in business clothes came into the break room and identified themselves as agents Hector Gomez and Wanda Blight of the FBI.

The FBI!

They questioned Ray briefly, but quickly lost interest when he said he hadn’t seen the occupants of the car. The agents then went to the surveillance room, where Ray’s boss, Earl Specter, was pulling up video shot by the various security cameras around Downtown Disney. Ray, eager to watch the pros at work, followed the agents.

Specter quickly found video showing the Volvo entering the lot and parking.

“Here we go,” he said.

On the screen, a male driver got out of the car, then a teenage girl and boy.

“That’s them,” said Gomez. He pointed to the time stamp in the corner of the screen. “So this was…what? Twenty minutes ago?”

“Right,” said Specter. “This was shot twenty-two minutes ago.”

Specter switched to another camera. The trio on the screen crossed the parking lot and joined other visitors on the sidewalk.

“Doesn’t exactly look like they’re being held against their
will,” Agent Gomez said.

“Can’t trust that,” said Agent Blight. “You never know what kind of psychological damage results from captivity. Those kids could be zombies.”

“They don’t look like zombies, is all I’m saying.”

“They do look awfully cooperative, if you ask me,” said Ray, from behind them.

“I didn’t ask you,” snapped Gomez and Blight in unison.

Specter worked the controls, picking up video from a series of cameras that showed the fugitive trio moving across the Downtown Disney Marketplace then out to the bus-stop area. They walked down a row of buses, then boarded one, which pulled out thirty seconds later.

“Where does that bus go?” said Blight.

“To the parks,” said Specter.

“They’re going to Disneyland?” said Gomez.

“It’s actually Disney World,” said Ray. “Disneyland is the one in—”

“Shut up,” snapped Gomez and Blight.

“Technically,” said Specter, “the bus goes to the Transportation and Ticket Center. From there you get transportation to the parks.”

“Show me the cameras from the Transportation and Ticket Center,” said Gomez.

“Can’t do that from here,” said Specter.

“I need to find that bus,” said Gomez. “Now.”

Ray, who’d been listening to his radio, said, “Excuse me?”

“Shut up,” snapped Gomez and Blight.

“But this is about the bus,” said Ray.

Gomez whirled to face him. “What about the bus?” he said.

Ray pointed to his radio and said, “There’s an accident, a traffic jam, on the on-ramp between Bonnet Creek Parkway and Epcot Center Drive. It’s backed everything up. A bunch of buses have been delayed. If you take Bonnet Creek north to Vista and go west on Vista, you can avoid it.”

“Come on,” said Gomez, heading for the door. Blight was right behind.

“You want me to ride along?” said Ray. “I know all the—”

“No,” snapped Gomez and Blight, exiting.

Ray shook his head. He was beginning to have doubts about a career in law enforcement. It seemed to make people awfully irritable.

Armstrong was still patrolling the Orange Blossom Trail when the police scanner crackled and the dispatcher broadcast that federal officers needed backup at Disney’s Transportation and Ticket Center.

Armstrong hung an illegal U-turn and stomped the gas pedal down. He couldn’t imagine why the runaways would go to Disney World. It seemed stupid; once inside a theme park, they could easily be trapped.

And Armstrong planned to be the trapper.

The Disney bus apparently had a nuclear-powered air conditioner; the interior was the temperature of a meat locker, and it seemed to grow steadily colder as it inched forward in the traffic jam. The passengers, including Aidan, Sarah, and J.D., were shivering. Those who had brought sweatshirts put them on.

The good news was that, by looking over the tops of the cars ahead, they could see that the accident was finally clearing and traffic was beginning to move. A few minutes later they approached the Transportation and Ticket Center, passing an ocean of parked cars. Finally, they reached the bus stop, where the driver apologized for the delay and told them to have a Magical Day.

The passengers quickly exited the frigid bus, happy, for the moment, to feel the humid Florida heat. Aidan, Sarah, and J.D. stood on the sidewalk as a river of tourists flowed past them.

“Is it just me,” said Aidan, “or do these people look really large to you?”

“They’re the size of buffalo,” said Sarah. “And those are the children.”

“That’s good,” said J.D., “because we need something to
hide behind.”

“Hide from who?” said Aidan.

J.D. pointed. Walking toward the buses, their eyes scanning the crowd, was a group of security guards. With them were several uniformed police officers and a man and woman in business suits—clearly not tourists.

“What do we do?” said Sarah.

“We can’t stay here,” said Aidan.

“We need to get into the Magic Kingdom,” said J.D.
“There’s way more people there. Much easier for us to disappear.”

“The monorail?” said Aidan.

J.D. squinted into the distance. “Bad idea. There’s a long line. We’d be sitting ducks waiting there.”

Sarah pointed to a sign by the parking area. “How about the ferryboat?”

“Bingo,” said J.D. “There’s basically no line.”

“But how do we get past them?” said Aidan, pointing to the oncoming security guards.

“We split up,” said J.D. “They’re looking for three of us, so we go one at a time. Put on your sunglasses, get with a group of people, and keep your head down. We meet on the ferryboat. I’ll go first. If they catch me, try another way.”

Agent Blight spotted Sarah first. The girl was alone, moving through the thick crowds away from the ticket center and away from the monorail. Even stranger, she was making no apparent attempt to make herself known to anyone around her, no attempt to be rescued.

“I’ve got a twenty on the girl,” she told Gomez, who spun around sharply. Blight pointed across the bus area. “You can’t see her now, but it’s her. Moving away from us.”

“Go!” said Gomez, waving the security people forward. Blight was already running through the mob, jumping up every so often to try to catch sight of Sarah.

What are you doing, Sarah Cooper?
she wondered.
Where are you going? And where are the other two?

Head down, J.D. worked through the crowd. He knew better than to look back toward the security people; the back of a head was far more difficult to identify than a face. He made no attempt to track Sarah or Aidan. For now they were all on their own.

The thought struck him suddenly:
Maybe I should turn myself in.
His life had become a disaster since the kids had shown up at his office. As intriguing as the Einstein bridge was, it wasn’t worth going to jail for. What had he gotten himself into? What if he just let the kids board the ferry, and he surrendered? Wouldn’t that help prove he was innocent?

He could even tell the police that the kids were heading to Peter Pan’s Flight. This was his chance—probably his last chance—to make this right.

He stopped. The crowd moved past him, like water around a stone. All he had to do was turn around and walk back with his hands in the air. It would be bad—cops, lawyers, courtrooms, press—but not as bad as if they hunted him down.

He turned around. All he had to do was take that first step. Off to his right he saw Sarah heading toward the ferry. His eyes swung left, and he froze. About twenty-five yards behind Sarah, trotting in the same direction, was the woman in the dark suit who’d been talking to the security people. A detective? An FBI agent? Whoever she was, she was heading in Sarah’s direction, her eyes searching the crowd.

She was on Sarah’s trail.

J.D. found Aidan to be something of a pain. But he liked Sarah—liked the way she thought, liked the way she overcame her fears, liked the way she never gave up. She was so close now to her goal, or at least she believed she was.

And she had put her trust in J.D. He took a step toward the woman in the dark suit. For just an instant, he considered putting his hands in the air. Instead, he cupped them around his mouth and yelled, “Hey! Lady cop!” She looked his way; he could tell she recognized him.

He turned and started running into the dense crowd headed toward the monorail. He glanced back. The lady cop was now running after him, with some security people right behind her.

J.D. ducked his head and plunged deeper into the crowd.