A Child Is Missing

by David Stout

  “And that’s a bad sign?”

  “I think it is. If these guys planned all this out well in advance, as I think they did, and then ask such a petty amount to start with—that tells me they had to work up their courage to do it in the first place. They really are small-time punks, as the first demand indicates.

  “Then it sinks in what they’ve done, and they realize they’ve risked a whole lot for very little. So they want more, a lot more money. Which they ask for a few days after the first demand. But they still haven’t told us how to get the kid back, or where to drop the ransom.”

  “And what’s that tell you, Jerry?”

  “I’m not sure. Either that they don’t really know what they’re doing, which wouldn’t surprise me, or that they’re completely cold-blooded and want to keep us off our guard. That last makes sense, because in a way anyone who kidnaps someone—for money, I mean—has to be pretty cold-blooded.”

  Graham paused to stare into his empty cup. Will waited.

  “See, once they tell us how to deliver the money, the kid is no good to them. Worse than that, he’s a liability. And if these guys are true amateurs—that’s what I fear more than anything—they might panic and kill him. If they haven’t already.”

  “The parents, Jerry. From where I sat, they looked like they didn’t know anything.”

  “I think that’s right. At least for her. You saw how she was. Him…? Well, I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure.”

  “And the chauffeur?”

  “Straight-arrow, we think. No record, no unsavory connections. Seems okay. Oh, this is off the record completely, but the kidnappers gave him a threat.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That they’d rape the boy if we didn’t cooperate.”

  “God Almighty.”

  “Yeah. So that’s where we are.”

  “Can you find anything from whatever tests you do on the ransom notes, Jerry?”

  “My official answer is yes. If somebody’s dumb enough to leave a fingerprint in the glue he uses to paste up the letters. Or if the fibers in the paper match those found on someone’s desktop blotter someday.” Graham snorted. “It’s all bullshit, Will. The paper the letters are pasted on is lined notebook, the kind you can buy in any store. Ordinary five-and-dime glue. The newspaper lettering … well, come on. I’ll show you.”

  “They gave me my own little office, Will. If I breathe deep, I can smell the soap and disinfectant, I think.”

  Graham gestured to a chair, and Will sat. The agent unlocked a desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of thick cardboard about two feet square, held it up for Will to see.

  The notes were displayed under a transparent sheet. The newspaper letters, all capitals, made up a jumble of typefaces. The first one read:

  WE HAVE JAMEY. WE WANT 50G OR HE DIES. GET RANSOM READY. WE WILL TELL YOU WHAT TO DO.

  “They spelled the boy’s name wrong,” Will said. “It is really J-A-M-I-E, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, they got it wrong.”

  “Unless they ran out of the letter i, which isn’t likely.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe they’re just stupid,” Will said, half-joking.

  The second note said:

  THE RULES HAVE CHANGED. PRICE RAISED TO 250G’S. COOPERATE OR BOY WILL BE KILLED. MORE INSTRUCTIONS TO FOLO.

  “What do you think, Will?”

  “What do I think?”

  “You’re a word person. Give me your gut feeling.”

  First, Will had to clear something up. “Jerry, I’m here as a newspaperman. How much of this is supposed to be on the record?”

  “Will, I’d like you not to mention the misspelling when you write your story. I’m also asking you not to write what I said a minute ago, about our not being hopeful that we’ll get anything from tests on the notes. Can you do that?”

  Will was uncomfortable, and he knew his face showed it.

  “Will, I’ll share stuff with you that I won’t with anyone else. You know that. Help me in return, is all I ask.”

  Will ran it through his mind. He thought of all the times he’d lectured reporters about not getting trapped in deals to keep things off the record. Then he thought about how the publisher had imposed on him by sending him to Long Creek in the first place. Then he thought about how a lot of situations just weren’t covered in the rules.

  But first he had a question. “Why me, Jerry? You guys have access to all the science and experts in the world.”

  “Experts? Sure, Will. And if I want a good, perceptive reading of these ransom notes, which happen to be pasted-up newspaper letters, what should I do? Call a semantics expert from the state university a hundred miles away? And where do I get an expert on newspaper lettering? I’m looking at one. I’m looking at a professional word person. What do you say?”

  “Sure, Jerry. I’m a man first and a newspaperman second. And I’ve got kids of my own.”

  Graham put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “You’re straight as ever, Will. You’d have made a good FBI agent.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Graham laughed. Then he held the cardboard up again. “Tell me what you see, Will.”

  Will studied the letters. Was there something? Yes.

  “What do you see, Will?”

  “You asked for my gut feelings, so here goes. Look at the first note. The boy’s name is spelled wrong. The ‘50G’ without an s after the G. And ‘Get ransom ready.’ The level of expression is rather crude.” Although not much worse than that of some of my reporters, Will thought ruefully.

  “And the second note, Will?”

  “It’s more literate. The words cooperate and instructions, for instance. You don’t have to be a genius to use them, but they do indicate a higher level of sophistication than shown in the first note, I think. And where he has the ransom demand: He uses the apostrophe and the s with the G, which is more correct usage. Oh, and using f-o-l-o for follow. That’s a deliberate abbreviation, almost certainly.”

  “I agree. What else?”

  “Well … it’s ordinary, I mean pretty common newspaper type, I think. Bookman Roman, Bookman Italic, some other fonts I recognize. But … yes, it’s the kind of lettering you see all the time in newspapers. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Good, Will. Anything else?”

  Will studied the notes line by line. “No, I don’t think so. These notes were done by different people, weren’t they?”

  “I think so.”

  “And what’s that mean, Jerry?”

  The agent shrugged. “For sure, that the second was written by someone a little smarter. That one was written by a man, another by a woman? Or maybe it’s just a division of labor. I imagine it takes a while to paste up a message. Maybe the one who did the first note said, ‘Hey, you do the next one. It’s a pain in the ass.’”

  “But Jerry, you already knew there were a couple of kidnappers. So the fact that the notes were done by different people is no surprise, is it?”

  Graham frowned. “No. It’s just that whatever scraps of knowledge we get might help us to … well, to get a conviction someday. Even…”

  “Even if you can’t save the boy.”

  “Right. So maybe one kidnapper is a lot smarter than the other. Maybe that’s why they’re squabbling, if they are. Maybe that helps explain the higher ransom demand. I don’t know.”

  “So, Jerry, when you catch the guys, all that will help you turn one against the other to build your case. Right?”

  “Maybe. But if these guys are divided, if they’re at each other’s throats and their nerves are frayed, it doesn’t help the kid’s chances. If he still has any.”

  “If they are amateurs at heart, it reduces the boy’s chances, doesn’t it?”

  Graham nodded yes. “Setting up the ransom delivery is the biggest source of worry for them right now. That, and the boy himself. Who, after all, can identify them. That’s assuming they
haven’t already, um, decided how to solve that problem.”

  “Damn.”

  “You’re right about amateurs being more dangerous, Will, because they’re not sure of what they’re doing. Trouble is, except for political terrorists, all kidnappers are amateurs.”

  “Are you here for the duration, Jerry?”

  “I think so. I can’t be certain. Part of what I do is hand-holding for the parents. And that’s tougher in this case, because they live apart.”

  “Is there any chance at all that they, you know…?”

  Graham measured him coldly for a moment before his eyes softened. “I think their emotions are genuine, Will. That’s all I can say. I’ll tell you what I can tell you, and when I can. You know I’m good on that.”

  “You always were, Jerry. I haven’t forgotten.”

  Will shook hands with the agent and left. On his way back to the hotel, he remembered something Graham had done a lot of years before. It was in Bessemer in the 1970s, and some student radicals (or so the Gazette had called them) at the Bessemer state university branch had staged several protests over the various investigations into the 1971 Attica prison riot that killed more than forty inmates and guards.

  The radicals had seen conspiracies and whitewashes everywhere, and they had sided with the prisoners time and again. They had infuriated most of the people in Bessemer, and the police had broken up several demonstrations by enthusiastically using dogs, clubs, and tear gas.

  Jerry Graham—at that time, a young FBI agent, and as buttoned-down and conservative as he looked—had been at one of the protests. Will had been sent to cover the disturbance, and he watched from twenty feet away as a wild-eyed young man with dirty hair and even filthier clothes rushed up to Graham. “Fascist motherfucker!” the young man screamed in Graham’s face.

  Looking sad rather than angry, the agent had calmly wiped the young man’s spittle from his face, then had prevailed upon a Bessemer police officer not to arrest the screamer. “Everyone’s entitled to be an asshole once,” the agent had told the cop.

  Will had been close enough to hear, yet he was sure that Graham hadn’t seen him and wasn’t feigning compassion for the benefit of the press. Indeed, Will had never told Graham that he had seen what happened. And Will had never forgotten what Graham had said in his office sometime later: “I think those students are a bunch of naïve jerks, but this is still a free country. That’s off the record.”

  Only later did Will appreciate how principled Graham had been, and how much professional damage he had risked. Graham had given him a lot of “no comments” back then, but he had never lied to him. Never.

  So here they both were again, Will thought: the aging FBI man and the aging journalist. Jerry, you always were a cut above most lawmen, FBI or otherwise. Maybe this is where I pay you back.

  Nine

  The hermit did not always know when the sadness would fall on him. When it did, it was like a weight on his shoulders. Sometimes it was so heavy, it drove him to his knees. Then he would cry like a child, filled with self-disgust, until he couldn’t cry anymore. Wolf knew enough to leave him alone then. The dog would retreat to the corners of the cabin, or hide in a thicket until his master’s sadness was over.

  If only the crying made him feel better. It didn’t; it was something he could not help, but it would never make things right.

  Sometimes he could shake off the weight before it settled over him; he could do this by swinging an ax, or trotting through the woods, or—whatever. But more often than not, when the weight settled on him, he just gave himself up to the sadness. And the whiskey.

  It was getting dark, and he had just made the long cut off the highway, over farmers’ fields, through thick patches of woods, and down a wooded hill, until he came out on the winding dirt road. The road was a little wider than a logging trail, but it got little more traffic than that.

  He hated shopping trips, so he always figured his needs so that he had to make a trip only once every several weeks. Now, his backpack was heavy with cans of meat and fruit, a bag of flour, coffee, potatoes, batteries. And whiskey; he always bought whiskey.

  When he was at a place in the road where the hills were high on one side and a gulley sloped sharply away on the other, the weight of sadness fell on him. Maybe it was because he was tired, or perhaps it was the gloom. Whatever. The sadness came on him, and his eyes filled with tears.

  He stopped, adjusted the straps on his pack, felt the deepening cold in his nostrils. Tonight he would drink whiskey, as much as it took to go to sleep. He would put away his supplies in the morning.

  If the cabin he and Jo had built had not burned, Jo would still be alive. Wouldn’t she? They hadn’t done that much in heavy drugs. Yes, Jo would still be alive.

  “No. No, no, no, no.” He was startled by his own voice; yes, it was on him, the sadness. He hoped the rest of it wouldn’t come—the screams, the voices calling to him for help, the voices he heard in his dreams.

  Faster, faster. He left the road, went down a leaf-choked gulley where it was even darker. He sobbed again, loathed himself for it, was glad a rushing stream masked his sounds.

  Jo was gone, forever, with their unborn child. He cried for them, cried for himself. Only the hills and trees would know.

  He pushed forward. It was getting too dark to see, but he knew the way by heart.

  He heard a sound. God, no, don’t let it be the voices again. Jo was dead, their child dead, their life together dead.

  The boy Jo was carrying would be a young man now. (Somehow, the hermit knew that the child had been a boy.) Would his son have liked living in the woods? Would Jo have changed?

  There was a low, cold wind. It shifted slightly, bringing the sound of the rushing brook closer to him. It was then that he heard the sound.

  “Mommy … Daddy…”

  The hermit put his hands over his ears, shut his eyes as hard as he could to dam up the tears. He didn’t remember ever hearing the ghost voices this clearly before. When he felt the wind shift, he took his hands away from his ears and opened his eyes. The wind, that was it. The wind had made the noises. He was not crazy.

  His dog barked. The hermit could tell from the sound that Wolf was a couple hundred yards back, at a different bend in the stream.

  “Wolf!”

  The dog was silent; the hermit listened for the sound of the dog running after him. Nothing.

  Wolf must have flushed a rabbit, the hermit thought.

  “Wolf!” the hermit shouted louder, to be heard over the stream. “Damn you, Wolf.” The dog could hear him, he knew. There was almost nothing the dog didn’t hear.

  The wind shifted slightly again, making the sound of the stream a little louder. He heard another noise, or thought he did. It was almost a low moan. Then the wind changed yet again, and the sound was gone. He was relieved; he had heard enough ghost voices.

  “Wolf.” He heard the dog tromping through the snowy brush. “Good, Wolf. Okay.”

  The dog was next to him now, and panting. Trying to tell him something?

  “All right, Wolf. Come on.”

  The hermit took the flashlight from his deep pocket, shined it into the darkness to be sure he was headed where he thought.

  The dog yelped, whined.

  “No. No time to play, Wolf.”

  The hermit smelled fresh dirt. Shining the light down at the dog, he saw that the animal’s front paws were dark and wet.

  “Damn you, Wolf. You would have to dig.” The hermit was tired and didn’t want to have to clean mud out of the cabin from Wolf’s paws. All he wanted to do in the cabin was shut out the cold and the ghosts and drink some whiskey. He pointed the light where he wanted to go and slapped his side with his gloved hand, the signal to the dog that he was out of patience.

  Reluctantly, Wolf obeyed.

  Ten

  Will had some time before he had to file his story, and the rest of the day lay beyond him like a gray landscape. He was homesick. He was still w
orried about Fran.

  The hospital was only a block away. Maybe there was some improvement.…

  The hospital had been built during the Great Depression. The cornerstone said 1935, but just as telling was the WPA-style architecture. Not to mention the several decades of grime stuck on the masonry like burned skin, a reminder of the time when the mills and smelters had brought prosperity with their soot.

  Just as Will entered the building, he heard a woman’s voice: “Mr. Shafer?”

  Will turned and saw the nurse he’d met earlier in the intensive-care unit. “It is Mr. Shafer, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Hello again.”

  “I’m Heather Casey, Mr. Shafer. Your friend is sleeping very soundly. There’s no change.”

  “Ah. Well, then, I guess there’s no point in my going to see him.”

  “Not really.” Nurse Casey frowned, hinted to Will with a shift of her shoulder that he should follow her outside.

  They stood on the front walk. “Have you been friends for a very long time, Mr. Shafer?”

  “You could say that. Yes. Fran has had his ups and downs. Especially downs lately, but he used to be a fine newsman, and he taught me a lot. More years ago than I care to recall all of a sudden.”

  “I know what that feels like. About the years racing away, I mean. But I must tell you—I’m not optimistic.”

  “But you said there was no change.”

  “No, as far as his vital signs are concerned. But considering his overall condition, the longer he goes without rallying…”

  “I see.”

  Will was startled when the nurse put a hand on his shoulder. Startled because the gesture was a warmer one than he had expected from his first meeting with the nurse. Startled because her hand felt good on his shoulder, and he saw that she was a far younger-looking, more handsome woman than he had perceived at their first meeting.

  “This is tough, I know,” she said.

  “Well, it’s no sadder than a lot of the things you see, I guess.”

  “I’m sure you see some sad things in your line of work, too, Mr. Shafer.”

  “Hmmm. And if Fran does make it, he’s going to be charged with drunken driving, isn’t he?”