by Sandra Ryan
*****
While Mark was out in the hallway, a man walked into the police precinct dressed as a deliveryman. He pretended to have a parcel for Mark and so was directed to his table to drop off the package. When he got to Mark's desk, he plugged in a device unto the computer on the desk and began downloading some files. He kept looking furtively over his shoulder and was careful to stay out of sight of the cameras. After what seemed like ages, he unplugged the device and made his way to the exit.
He walked briskly into the afternoon sunshine. When he turned a corner, he brought out a cap and a pair of sunglasses to alter his look. Then he went into a coffee shop by the side of the street. As soon as he sat down, he made a call.
"I have it. Meet me at the usual spot."
Five minutes later, Holly Hackett stepped into the coffee shop and went straight to the location where the man was seated.
"You are sure nobody saw you?" She asked.
"Yes. I've been long enough in this business to know that being discreet is the watchword of the game." He smiled brightly at Holly, but she did not return the smile. If she had any choice, she would rather not deal with people of such characters.
"Okay. So can I have it?"
"Cash first," he replied.
She stared at him for a few seconds and then he sighed, reached into his jeans pocket and retrieved a flash drive. Holly plugged it into her laptop to make sure the contents were genuine. When she was satisfied, she threw an envelope containing some cash to the young man and walked out.
***************
Holly rubbed her eyes wearily. She had been staring at the computer screen for the past two hours since she walked in from the coffee shop. The man was one of the low level twerps she used for errands like this. She was sure there was no way the police were going to grant her access to their files on her clients, so she had sent the man in to hack into his system to get the document for her. She knew from previous conversations that Mark always stepped out to the hallway anytime he wanted to take personal calls and had thus known that it would be an opportune moment to send the guy in so he could grab what she needed and leave before getting caught. Of course, the arrangement had been that if he was arrested, he was on his own. He had known the risk, which was why she paid him handsomely for his efforts each time.
Once she came in, she had taken a look at the first document; it was the arrest documents of Samuel Clark. It was as he had told her. He had been busted on a burglary charge down-town. It had been his first and only offense, it appeared. The burglary had been such an amateur move that she was instantly sorry for him. Perhaps he had been trying to make ends meet? Who would blame him really, considering the kind of dysfunctional family he came from, she thought, but then had to chide herself for making excuses for a prep. She painstakingly went through the records, including the recordings from the trial. Even at the prison, he had been a model prisoner, and had even been let off on good behavior when his parole came up.
The next sets of documents were for the Benson baby’s case. She found out that they had compiled records of Samuel. He had been interrogated together with the other passengers, but his had been the longest. There were also photos of him taken, seemingly, when he was unaware, which seemed to confirm his suspicion that he was being tailed by the police. They had even made moves to arrest him the second time and would have succeeded, except that the D.A had declined their request for a warrant.
Holly was literally fuming at this point; how the hell had they come to the conclusion that he was a suspect, even to the point of declaring him the prime suspect? What sort of buffoon concludes that because a man had just one prior record, he had to be the one who committed every crime he was witness to?
She got up from her seat and went to stand at the window. The night sky was littered with the blinking lights of New York City shining like diamonds. She could see the statue of Liberty from where she stood, with her torch leading the trail in the search for truth and justice; that was how she chose to interpret the torch anyway. She had all of the information she needed; this was the time for her to make a decision, decide if she was going to take the case or not. Normally, this was the sort of case she ran away from. It was too personal. The stakes were too high. She was not keen on being in the spotlight and being the subject of the inquiries of media men and the likes.
And also, even though it was ridiculous, she knew it would be hard to convince the public that Samuel had nothing to do with the kidnapping. For many, the fact that he had a record was all of the evidence they needed, and the way he had been painted by the media left no doubt concerning his innocence. She had spent hours that afternoon flitting from one channel to the other, listening to what the reporters had to say about the case. Every major news network had carried the story, and Samuel was on the cover of almost all the major newspapers in the country. Some of the reports were downright ludicrous.
Somehow, she had the feeling in her guts that he was innocent, contrary to what everyone seemed to be saying. This inexplicable feeling in itself was surprising to her because she prided herself on the fact that she was not easily swayed by emotions. The whirl of these thoughts kept tumbling around in her head and she felt a desperate urge to grab a drink, lay back on the couch and not make any decision at all. Instead she found herself walking to her table. In a moment she was dialing Samuel’s number.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Holly.” She stopped herself from adding her last name. If they were going to work together she might as well start building the air of informality.
“Oh, hello,” he replied, sounding drowsy.
It was then that it struck her that she had not checked what the time was. She was so used to staying back late at the office that sometimes she forgot that everyone was not operating on the same time zone as she.
“I am sorry if I woke you.”
“That is alright.”
“We have decided to take your case.”
“Oh.” He replied.
“Well,” she chuckled. “I was not expecting you to start making cartwheels at the news but I expected something more than just ‘oh’”
“I am sorry about that. I waited for your call all day so I was almost positive you decided you were not going to take my case after all. This is splendid news. Thank you.”
“Once again I apologize for calling so late. I had to conclude a few things before deciding if we were going to take you on as a client or not.” A though occurred to her and she asked, “That is, except you decided not to go with us or found yourself a new agency?”
“Oh, not in the slightest. I am elated to be working with you. Jewel had such lovely things to say about you.”
“How do we proceed from here?” he asked.
“I have a few leads I want to check out and then I would get back to you. I would keep you in the loop as we go along.”
“Thank you very much,” he replied.
“It is my pleasure. How are you holding up?”
“I am fine. I am learning to live with seeing my face splattered on TV screens, I guess.” He gave a short laugh.
“That is good. We have a long trek in front of us and I need you to be strong for the case ahead. I will let you know if anything comes up. Do have a good night, Mr. Clark.”
“You too. And you should call me Samuel.”
“Alright, Samuel,” she said and hung up.
She sat back on her seat when she got off the phone. She knew she had done the right thing. Yet she knew it may not have been the smartest thing in the circumstances. She hoped she wouldn’t regret her decision in the end. She got up and made her way to the outer office. It appeared that she was going to take that drink after all. Another glass of scotch would not be the death of her.
*********
It was the tweet that first caught her attention. Under the comment section of a post on a news website had made about the missing baby someone had written;
Is this baby even real? What
sort of child disappears on an airplane without a trace? This is not some fucking backwoods country; this is fucking America, shit like that don’t happen here!
I know, right? Another user had tweeted. From the first time the story broke I knew there was definitely something fishy about the whole get up.
Elizabeth watched with horror as the tweets started pouring in. They were under the hash tag, phantom baby.
People would go through any lengths to achieve cheap popularity, even to the extent of staging a baby’s disappearance. I’m not convinced by this conspiracy theory. Not one bit!
Isn’t her husband a business mogul or some politician? I think this might be a way he wants to hurt the airline. I mean, the stocks of the airline have dropped five percent since that incident. IMO anyway.
I heard the bitch left her baby all by himself to go romp with some guy in the bathroom. This is just a ruse; I do not believe her story one bit.
Elizabeth felt a wave of nausea wash through her as the tweets kept coming in. By mid-morning the tweeters had generated an enormous amount of traffic and the original tweet had been re-tweeted over ten thousand times. The individuals even moved over to Facebook and Instagram and began trolling her. Gossip bloggers got wind of the story and began circulating it. Elizabeth could not get out of bed, she stayed in front of her laptop, ready to catch every new tweet that came in. She ran her name multiple times on Google and each search turned up some new information about her.
The tweets were like a knife in her gut, and each one that came in felt like someone turning the blades all over again, causing an enormous amount of bleeding in her heart. She got a sick kind of satisfaction from the whole thing. She had not been able to forgive herself for leaving her baby in the care of a total stranger for those few seconds she had gotten up to pee. With each hateful comment that came, she told herself that she deserved it. That it was the price she had to pay for being so careless and negligent.
But then towards the evening she felt anger welling up in her. Who were they to call her out in such a manner? Who were they to question her love for her child, and how she had been totally devoted to him? Some nights she still woke up clutching her breasts where they ached for her baby’s lips. She even had to consciously stop herself from moving to his room at intervals, because she always forgot that there would be no baby in the crib if she went there. Who were they to tell her otherwise? What right had they?
She was still in this state of anger when her husband came home. He stood by the door and watched her. She was still in the pajamas she wore that morning, and he knew she had not gotten up from the bed to do anything else. The cleaner had informed him, with an amplified sense of concern, that she though Mrs. Benson may be coming down with something. He had thanked her and dismissed her for the day. He did not want her tattling to the press that his wife was suffering any form of mental impairment as a result of the loss of their child. That would add to the stress she was already under. He was the source of one of the problems; he did not wish to be the source of another for her.
“Hello, babe. How are you?” he stepped in and dropped his briefcase by the side of the bed and climbed in beside his wife.
She lifted her red rimmed eyes at him and tried to manage a smile,
“I am good. Still here.”
He felt a pang as he noticed how gaunt she had become in the short time the baby was missing.. He climbed into the bed and gathered her into his arms.
“Clara tells me you did not get up today even to eat. You need to take care of yourself, babe. I can’t lose you both at the same time.”
“I didn’t feel like eating anything. And I don’t need you to take care of me, I said I am fine.” She wriggled out of his embrace and turned back to the open laptop before her. He looked over her shoulders to see what she was doing.
“You have to stop torturing yourself in this manner. This would not help anything.” He took the laptop from her and gently closed it.
‘Oh yeah? What do you suppose I do in the meantime? Go to work, eat and pretend like everything is fine, the way you are doing?”
“I do not know what you expect me to do Elizabeth. This is me coping the way I know how,” he said, stepping away from the bed and removing his clothes.
“This is not coping Nathan. You are behaving like the price of your stock dropped or you lost an investment. Nathan, we lost our baby! I lost our baby!”
“I am sorry about that Elizabeth, but there is nothing I can do about it. I am giving the police room to conduct all of their investigations.’
He came to stand beside her and put his arms around her shoulders.
“They will find our little boy. We just need to give them time.”
“You don’t know that now, do you? You do not know when they would find the baby. Heck, you don’t even know if the baby would even be found eventually.”
He sighed and turned away to move into the bathroom. From the door he told her,
“I will speak to some of my people. They would know what to do about the tweets. Please get some rest.”
But she did not. She went back to looking at the tweets and fell asleep in front of the computer screen. She was so tired that she had slept till noon and thus missed the story when it broke. When she got up, she went back on twitter and realized that the hate messages had been replaced with sympathizers, with a lot of people calling out the individuals who tweeted the other day for being unsympathetic and inconsiderate. She knew then that something had happened while she slept.
She turned on the TV and realized what caused the sudden change of heart; the news of the day before had been replaced with photos of her at the airport with the baby, dispelling the rumors that there had been no child. She stood in front of the TV and tears coursed down her cheeks. It was the first time she was seeing the photo from that night. There was a particular scene where her baby had been grinning up at her so wildly. She remembered that particular moment, the warm feeling she had felt staring into his eyes, his fingers wrapped around her thumb. She broke down in front of the TV and wailed uninhibited.
********
“Hello, Holly, how are you doing?”
‘I am fine. You need to turn on your TV right now!” she said to him.
“Okay. I’ll get right to it.” With the phone still placed to his ear, Samuel padded down from his bed in his stockinged feet and turned on the television. He caught the tail end of a broadcast.
We have a confirmed report from a source within the police department and it says that there have been no ransom demands yet from the kidnappers of Baby Benson. This is particularly puzzling considering that Mr. Nathan Benson is a multimillionaire. Why else would the baby have been taken if no ransom is going to be demanded? This has led to a lot of speculations with the opinion in some quarters being that there is more to this baby saga than meets the eyes. The parents of the boy have continued to refuse to comment. Mrs. Benson had canceled a lot of appearances within the week, stating that she was choosing to wait for word privately. . In any event, if you have any information that would help in the recovery of the child, please do not hesitate making use of the number on the screen. We would keep you updated on any new developments...
“Are you still there?” Holly asked.
“Yes, I am. I am right here,” he replied. “So, what now? What does this mean for us?”
“I am not sure, but I am positive it would work in our favor. We can work with the news we have right now.”
“Still, it does not mean that I have been completely absolved, right? I would still be the subject of attention for a long time, right?”
“I am afraid so,” she responded.
In the time since she took him on as a client, she had practically come up with nothing. There weren’t a lot of information to go by. It was as though they were just scratching on the surface without any breakthrough in sight. They had managed to get a restraining order against the reporters and they had all vacated his premises, although som
e persistent ones still hounded him as he walked around the city, but that was the extent of what they had achieved so far.
“This could be an indication that the kidnap was personal and not professional,” Holly said over the phone.
“What do you mean?” Samuel asked.
“I mean that the absence of a ransom could be an indication that the people who grabbed the baby were doing so for personal reasons. Perhaps they may have done it to cause pain to the parents of the child and not necessarily for the financial gains they could get from a ransom.”
“That is a possibility?”
“It is.”
“Who do you think may have any reason to want to hurt the Bensons?”
“I have no idea, Samuel. I am an investigator, not a clairvoyant.” She gave a small laugh. “But I can imagine that a man of Nathan Benson’s standing would have a lot of enemies both in the personal and in the professional field. You do not attain the heights he has attained without having to step on some toes.”
“I guess you are right.”
She gave another laugh. “I hope I am right, Samuel. This is as close to a credible lead that we have had.”
“How about the mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Benson?”
“She isn’t big on the social scene. Even prior to this time, she lived a very private and secluded life. But I do think it might be worth the shot to take a look into her as well. In fact, I think we would do just that. We would find a way to interview her first then get to her husband later.”
“I guess you would be going over to their house tomorrow then?”
“Dear Samuel, we are going to visit Mrs. Elizabeth Benson together. So I suggest that you get ready. Tomorrow I would be coming to your place at 10 am. and we would drive to the Bensons. I am hoping that her husband must have left for work by that time. I would love to catch her alone, without her husband breathing down her neck and trying to hide things the way people in his position are wont to do.”
“Do you think that is a good idea, my going with you, considering the circumstances and all that has been happening in the media?” Samuel asked.