Madman on a Drum

by David Housewright

  “Liquidate some investments, transfer proceeds—you changed, man.”

  “Have I?”

  “I remember when… Ahh, never mind.”

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  “Maybe never. I ain’t your friend no more, McKenzie. You or Bobby.”

  “I was thinking that myself,” I said aloud, even as my inner voice asked, Is he daring us to guess who he is?

  “I want the money in cash,” the kidnapper said. “Old bills. Nonsequential serial numbers. Twenty-five thousand twenties, ten thousand fifties. Got it?”

  “It’s going to take—”

  “I don’t care how long it takes. Only you gotta know, the longer it takes, the longer we keep the girl. Got it?”

  “We” again.

  “Got it.”

  He hung up.

  I looked at the tech agent. He was holding both hands over the headphones covering his ears.

  “We couldn’t get a fix this time,” he said. He squinted, opened his eyes, and removed the headphones. “He could have been using a Trac-Fone or some other prepaid cell phone that’s not traceable.”

  “No, no, no.” Bobby had the Central High School yearbook open and was furiously turning pages until he found the one he wanted in the seniors’ gallery. “Yes.”

  He stabbed a photo hard with his finger.

  I looked over his shoulder. First photo from the right, third from the top.

  “You got him?” asked Honsa. “You know who he is?”

  “Scottie Thomforde,” Bobby said. “First we get Victoria back…”

  “Later, we’ll kill him,” I said. “Later, we’ll kill them all.”

  3

  Agent Honsa pretended he didn’t hear the threat. Instead, he propped his forearms on the back of a chair and leaned toward us, studying first me and then Bobby with cool professionalism. I guessed that he had heard threats like mine before and was deciding how seriously to take it.

  “Who is Thomforde?” he said. “What is your relationship?”

  “Scottie Thomforde is from the neighborhood,” Bobby said. “He grew up six, seven blocks from here. Near Aldine. His mother still lives there.”

  “Aldine is a city park,” I said. “Sometimes we had ball games up there. Scottie played with us.”

  “That’s how I connected the dots,” Bobby said. “When he said, ‘Let’s have some fun, guys.’ We used to say that just before we went out onto the field. ‘Let’s have some fun out there.’ ”

  “I used to say it,” I said.

  “What happened to him?” Honsa asked.

  “He quit,” I said.

  “We were pretty tight for a while,” said Bobby. “Except he quit playing sports in high school to take up music.”

  “He was a madman on the drums,” I said. “Used to carry sticks with him and beat out a riff on anything, sidewalk, hood of a car, the tables at Burger Chef—drove the manager crazy. We used to call him ‘Sticks’ for a while. Scottie got a kick out of that, but the nickname never took.”

  “After a while, he just drifted away,” Bobby said. “Without the game, we had nothing to keep us together, nothing to share, nothing to keep the friendship alive. We’d see him around; we were still friendly, only Scottie began spending most of his time with his musician friends. Some of them formed a band and played small gigs. High school dances. Played across the street once at Merriam Park. They were pretty good. Covered the Stones, Bob Seger, Journey, Elvis Costello.”

  “Drugs?” Honsa asked. I nearly laughed. Despite everything, he was still the Man. ’Course, I had been the Man once, too.

  “Some grass, some hash, plenty of beer,” I said. “No more than the rest of us.”

  “Hey, hey,” said Bobby. “Watch it with that ‘rest of us’ stuff. I have a reputation to protect.”

  “If you can call it that,” I said, and we both smiled.

  For a moment he had forgotten about Victoria. For a moment he was the old Bobby. Only for a moment. His heart wrenched him back into the present, and he turned away from us, a pained expression on his face. The family photograph I had nudged off the wall earlier was still resting against the baseboard. He bent to retrieve it. “Tell him the rest,” he said and returned the photograph to its hook, making sure it was perfectly straight.

  I told Honsa and the other agents that we used to hang out at the Burger Chef on Marshall and Cleveland when we were kids. After we all started driving, it became less of a hangout than a gathering place. One day, during the summer before we started college, Bobby walked to Burger Chef to meet me—it was only a few blocks from here. Along the way he met Scottie and an older guy that Scottie played music with named Dale Fulbright. They were sitting on the curb on Marshall Avenue directly across the street from a mom-and-pop convenience store—it’s not even there anymore. Bobby said, “Hi, guys. What’s going on?” Scottie said, “Nothing.” Fulbright said, “Leave us alone.” So Bobby continued on to Burger Chef, bought a cherry cola, and sat in a corner booth waiting for me. I drove up a few minutes later in my father’s car. “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” That was pretty much how we began all of our conversations back then. I saw Scottie and Fulbright on the curb, and I asked what that was all about. Bobby said, “Who knows?” We drove off. I don’t remember where we went. It must not have been much fun, though, because we returned about an hour later to find cops all over the place, especially in front of the store. We wandered over, asked what was going on. We were told that a couple of guys armed with a .45 just robbed the place. A plainclothes cop asked, “Did you see anyone hanging around the store?” Bobby answered, “I saw Scottie Thomforde and Dale Fulbright sitting on the curb about an hour ago.” The cops drove to Scottie’s house and knocked on the door. Mrs. Thomforde answered. The cops said, “We would like to speak with your son.” That was all it took. Scottie broke down, started crying, said he was sorry, said he had never done anything like that before, said it was all Fulbright’s fault and asked to be forgiven. Fulbright, on the other hand—no one ever confused him with a scholar—answered his door with the .45 in his hand. He shot a cop. The cops shot him. They killed him. The cop he shot had only a flesh wound, but now everyone was angry and they couldn’t take it out on Fulbright. So even though Scottie was two months shy of his eighteenth birthday, had no previous record, and had nothing to do with the shooting, the county attorney went for the max, aggravated robbery in the first, forty-eight months. Scottie served thirty-two. Ruined his life. Scottie blamed—

  “Lieutenant Dunston,” Honsa said.

  “It never occurred to me that I was ratting out a friend,” Bobby said. “Never entered my mind.”

  “It’s what got us thinking about becoming cops,” I said.

  “You said Thomforde served thirty-two months,” Honsa reminded me. “Yes. Except that was just the beginning. He’s been in and out of prison ever since.”

  “Why now? Why wait all these years to get revenge on Lieutenant Dunston?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is he angry at you?”

  “Up until now, I didn’t know he was.”

  “McKenzie did him a favor once,” Bobby said. “Before that first jolt in Stillwater, Scottie got into trouble and McKenzie helped him out.”

  “Something changed,” Honsa said.

  “Something,” I said.

  “I have his record,” the tech agent said. All this time he had been working his laptop and I hadn’t noticed.

  Honsa peered at the computer screen. “Last crime—he did a short stretch in Stillwater for check forgery, been out for about six months, released to a halfway house…” Honsa’s head came up from the laptop and fixed me with his eyes. His reassuring smile had been replaced with something hard. “It’s in the Badlands.”

  “Let’s go get him,” Bobby said. He had his Glock out of its holster, and he was checking the load.

  “Go where?” Harry said. “I doubt he’s calling from the
halfway house—”

  “Let’s go,” Bobby insisted.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Honsa said.

  “I’m going to get my daughter back.”

  “You’re not leaving this house.”

  “Don’t try to stop me.”

  Honsa put himself between Bobby and the front door. “Think, Lieutenant Dunston, about what you’re going to do,” he said.

  “I’m thinking about my daughter.”

  “So am I.”

  “Boys, boys, boys,” chanted Harry.

  “Shut the hell up, Wilson,” Bobby said. He waved the Glock at him. Bobby doesn’t wave guns, I told myself. Only this was a different Bobby than the one I knew. I wondered what I was going to do about it when Bobby reached for the doorknob and Honsa moved to intercept him.

  Shelby called from the staircase. “Bobby.” She was sitting on the steps and peering through the posts that supported the banister, holding one in each hand like the bars of a prison.

  Bobby turned toward her.

  “Listen to what he has to say,” she said.

  Honsa took his cue. “Scottie Thomforde isn’t holding all the cards anymore,” he said, “but he still holds the most important one. He has Victoria. That’s what we have to think about now.”

  “I am thinking about her,” Bobby said.

  “No, you’re not, Lieutenant Dunston. You’re thinking about what you want to do to Thomforde.”

  Bobby stared hard at Honsa for a few beats, then dropped his eyes to the Glock in his hand. He slowly holstered it.

  “Victoria comes first,” Honsa said. “Thomforde, now that we know who he is, we can pick him up anytime. He’s not going anywhere. Until we get Victoria back safe and sound, we want to give him the illusion of space. We want him to think that he’s in control, that he has options. The last thing we want—the very last thing—is for him to panic, and if he sees us coming, he might do just that. Lieutenant Dunston, if Thomforde feels trapped, if he feels that his plans are shit and that everything is going against him, he’s not going to blame us. Or himself. He’s going to blame the girl.”

  “I understand,” Bobby said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. But…”

  “But what?”

  “So many things can go wrong. You know that. My fault, your fault, his fault, nobody’s fault—so many things can go wrong that we can’t allow this opportunity to go by. If we can find him…”

  “What about his partner?” Honsa asked. “We know Thomforde has at least one. He keeps saying ‘we’ and ‘we’re,’ and then there’s Katie’s story. She said a man grabbed your daughter and carried her back to the van. Who was driving the van?”

  “So Scottie has a partner—”

  “What is he going to do if we arrest Thomforde?”

  “We don’t have to arrest him. We can surveil Scottie until he leads us to Victoria.”

  “How do we find him without tipping our hand?”

  We all took a few moments to think about it. Harry supplied the answer. “Thomforde’s parole officer.”

  4

  Karen Studder had the face of a woman whose prettiness was five years behind her. She was built large on top, with a narrow waist and hips and tennis-player legs. Her skin was burnished bronze beneath her dark blue shirt and khaki skirt; apparently she was one of those women who are convinced they look better with a tan despite evidence that it’s the sun that turns grapes into raisins. She would still be pretty if not for the sun.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know where Scott Thomforde is. I know where he’s supposed to be.”

  “You don’t keep track of your people?” Bobby said.

  We were all standing in the space between Bobby’s living room and dining room. Karen was on one side; we were all on the other. She must have felt outnumbered.

  “I supervise about a hundred offenders,” Karen said. “I don’t follow each and every one of them around. I don’t know the exact moment that they’re in violation. When an offender is paroled to me, I’ll look in on him twice a week, maybe three times if I want to see more. Later it’s once every two weeks, sometimes once a month. I usually arrange for employers to contact me if an offender doesn’t show up for work, but they’re under no obligation. Thomforde is in a halfway house. If he doesn’t come back from work, the supervisor will let me know. It’s still early, though.” Karen looked at her watch. “Not even six thirty.”

  “They don’t have to be back in their hole by a specific time?” Bobby asked.

  “They don’t live in holes,” Karen said. “They live in a limbo between prison and real life, and we cut them slack when there’s slack to cut them. Scottie has been in compliance all the time I’ve had him. Never a problem. That earns him some leeway. We don’t freak out if he’s not back immediately after work. Maybe he stopped for coffee with his co-workers, maybe he’s visiting his mother, maybe he’s with a girl…”

  Bobby took a photograph off the wall and thrust it into Karen’s hands. “Maybe he’s with a twelve-year-old girl,” he said.

  Karen studied Victoria’s photograph and stole a quick look at Shelby, who was watching intently from her spot on the staircase. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No. There’s nothing in his jacket that indicates sexual crimes.”

  “We don’t think it’s a sex crime,” Honsa said. “It’s a kidnapping for ransom.”

  Karen said she didn’t believe it. Bobby told her she had better.

  “What do you want from me?” she said.

  “You’re an officer of the court,” Honsa reminded her.

  “You want me to take Scottie into custody? I don’t do that. If you want a warrant, I can call a judge. If we can’t find a judge, I’ll issue an apprehension and detention order myself. But I don’t arrest people. I work for the Minnesota Department of Corrections. We have rules.”

  “Bend them,” said Bobby.

  “Bend them?”

  “What do you do when an offender is in violation?” I asked.

  “I call the police and have them execute the warrant.”

  “Ms. Studder,” Honsa said. When he had her full attention, he said, “Calm yourself.”

  “I am calm.”

  “Ms. Studder, we do not wish to arrest Thomforde at this time. We merely wish, if possible, to learn his current location.”

  “You want me to find him?”

  “Yes, Ms. Studder. After that, we’ll take over.”

  “Just find him?”

  “You do do that, don’t you?” Bobby said. “You do look in on your parolees?”

  “Yes,” said Karen. “We call them home visits. Kind of like a pop inspection. We look in on them at home, at work, find out who they’re hanging with. I’ve done it twice with Scottie already.”

  “Then he won’t be suspicious if you do it again,” Bobby said. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” said Honsa. His voice was combative, his reassuring smile gone. “We’ve discussed this before. Just the sight of you might cause Thomforde to panic. We’ll send one of my agents.”

  “You don’t think seeing the FBI won’t make Scottie freak?” Bobby said.

  “I’m not going alone,” said Karen.

  This went on for about thirty seconds until Bobby conceded in a loud voice. “All right, send McKenzie.”

  Honsa shook his head.

  “McKenzie knows the neighborhood,” Bobby said. “He knows more people than Larry King. He’ll know where to go when she”—he gestured with his thumb toward Karen—“runs out of ideas.”

  Honsa shook his head some more. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. His voice was suddenly neutral. “The man who took your daughter knows McKenzie as well as he knows you. I am deeply concerned about what might happen if Thomforde saw him.”

  “Thomforde will be suspicious if anyone goes looking for him,” Harry said. “But McKenzie”—Harry waved a finger—“isn’t the cops. He isn’t us. If Thomforde discove
rs that McKenzie is looking for him, he’ll think it’s just McKenzie and not law enforcement. He’ll still believe that he has the upper hand. He’ll still think he’s in charge. He won’t panic.”

  Honsa stared at Harry as if he were looking at a traitor. “No,” he said.

  “We need to send somebody,” Harry said.

  “I’m not going alone,” Karen repeated.

  “No,” Honsa said.

  “Yes,” Shelby said. “Victoria is my daughter. I say yes.”

  We all turned toward her. She was still sitting on the staircase, still peering through the posts. I had forgotten that she was there.

  “Mrs. Dunston, it’s against my better judgment,” Honsa said. “If Thomforde sees McKenzie coming…”

  I felt the weight of Shelby’s eyes fall on me.

  “Hey, Scottie,” I said.

  Honsa pivoted toward me. I walked up to him, slipped my arm around his shoulder, hugged him close. “Scottie. Man, you gotta help me. For old time’s sake. I know you don’t like Bobby Dunston cuz of what happened. I don’t blame you. But someone just took his kid. Someone kidnapped his little girl, man, and we can’t tell the cops. You gotta help me. You’ve been around. You know people. You can ask questions, okay? You gotta help me find her. Will you help?”

  Honsa stared at me for a moment as if I were drunk, dangling car keys in his face.

  “I don’t like this,” he said.

  You think I do? my inner voice replied.

  “Be careful,” Honsa said.

  5

  It was nearly 7:00 P.M. when we walked out of Shelby’s Place, but daylight savings promised us at least another half hour of sun.

  “I’ll drive,” I said and led Karen Studder to my Audi 225 TT coupe parked on the far side of Wilder. She circled the light silver sports car, examining it carefully before speaking to me across the roof while shielding her eyes against the setting sun.

  “You’re not a cop, are you?” she said.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. This car—if you’re a cop and you drive up to 367 Grove Street in this, Internal Affairs would be all over your ass.”