by Ninie Hammon
"No wonder the tourists come here," he said.
"Andrew Carnegie turned it into a resort for the uber rich. There's a similar place off the coast of Georgia called Jekyll Island. It was the playground of the rich and famous, too, until World War II when it was too dangerous to have that many movers and shakers dangling out there off the coast in range of German U-boats."
As they approached the casino, Brice provided Nakamura and Hardesty the CliffsNotes on the facility, a running commentary that kept his tired mind occupied and helped him fight the compulsion to check his watch. And it had become a compulsion, like he could somehow look at it and freeze the digital display, stop the numbers from relentlessly counting down, shrinking with each click the odds of finding two missing children. Riley Campbell had vanished off a school playground almost three days ago. Christi Strickland had climbed over a rock wall at a crowded park and disappeared — poof! — going on twenty-four hours ago.
Brice was sure the unemotional Nakamura was doing the math in his own head. The verdicts those numbers pronounced were inescapable: Riley Campbell was dead — why else had the kidnapper snatched a second child? And Christi Strickland — if she wasn't dead yet, she soon would be.
The craft skirted the floating casino with its luxury hotel stacked up on the floors above and continued to the dock that extended from the shoreline beyond. Brice and the two FBI agents disembarked there. Though you probably couldn't rent a broom closet in the Nautilus Hotel for less than a thousand dollars a night, a more reasonably priced hotel was located across the road, Ohio Route 7, and it was there that the church choir director had holed up to take his sabbatical. After stationing a perimeter of West Virginia State Police troopers around the building, and Hardesty at the end of the hallway, Nakamura and Brice approached Room 435 warily, Nakamura on one side of the door, Brice on the other, weapons drawn. Then the FBI agent reached out and knocked.
"Dominic Ingerson, this is FBI Special Agent Haruto Nakamura. Open the door."
There was no response.
"Mr. Ingerson, we know you're in there. Open the door or we will break it down."
They heard movement from inside and the door opened the length of the guard chain. Nakamura held his badge in front of the crack but stayed beyond the door.
"Open the door, then step back away from it and clasp your hands behind your head."
"Alright, alright. Let me get it unhooked."
Ingerson fumbled with the chain, then opened the door and stood in front of it, a portly man in a burgundy bathrobe. He had white ultra-sunscreen on his forehead and nose. The room was dark, with only shadows beyond the light of the hallway.
"Put your hands up, lace your fingers together behind your head," Nakamura said, remaining flat against the hallway wall beside the door.
Instead of doing as he was directed, Ingerson turned away from the door and flounced down on the side of the bed, his voice like a petulant child.
"I'm not going to be treated like some criminal. You shouldn't be here. You're upsetting me!"
Nakamura nodded and Brice crouched low and swung into the room with his gun drawn. Ingerson saw it and leapt back as if he'd seen a snake.
“Don't … don't point that thing at me… What if it goes off? Stop it!" He sat cowering in the middle of the bed while Brice holstered his weapon and Nakamura came into the room and did the same.
"Are you Dominic Ingerson?" Nakamura said.
"Of course, I am, you know I am. Why would you point a gun at me? This kind of stress — it's too hard on me."
Then he reached down and began taking his own pulse as he spoke.
"Mama said you were coming here but I told her that was ridiculous, why would you need to talk to me? I don't know anything."
Brice shot Nakamura a look that said he would cheerfully charge this man's mother with hindering law enforcement.
Ingerson stopped taking his pulse and announced triumphantly, "See! See what you've done? God only knows what my blood pressure is. You need to leave right now."
Dominic was a round man with chubby cheeks, thinning hair and a paunch that protruded so profoundly he looked pregnant. The unfortunate man-breasts resting above it added to the illusion. The silk pajamas beneath the robe were unbuttoned several buttons to reveal a bony, white chest and several layers of bling.
"Mama said she told you I came here to rest, to get some distance between me and all the awful that is happening. I need quiet, dark, not the Gestapo barging in here in jack boots."
He sounded like he was about to cry, his hands fluttering around in the air as he spoke, as if they were twin birds over which he had no control.
"Mr. Ingerson, we want to talk to you about Riley Campbell," Nakamura said.
"Of course you do. That's what Mama said. And it is so awful, so horribly awful. A missing child, no, two missing children. That Christi Strickland, poor little thing."
"So you know both Riley Campbell and Christi Strickland?"
He looked up and gave them a baleful look.
"Don't be obtuse, of course I do. They both were in my children's choir. Christi, poor little thing, couldn't carry a tune in a guitar case, but Riley was … well, he had promise."
"So you took a special interest in Riley Campbell, is that what you're telling us?"
"Oh, gracious no. If you mean something like private coaching. I only have limited time. I can't get too tired, can't wear myself out, so I keep to a rigid regimen of how many after-work hours I will spend. Never more. And that time was, of course, spent with the soloists."
"So you're saying you never gave Riley special attention, didn't meet with him privately, spend time—?"
"Oh, no. Not Riley. Now Roger Cromwell, there’s a voice! A tenor, perfect pitch. After rehearsal almost every day I spent a half hour coaching him."
"So you never gave Riley any gifts?"
"Why would I give him gifts?"
"And you're saying Christi Strickland didn't witness you spending time with Riley, maybe saw something she wasn't supposed to see?"
"Whatever in the world are you talking about?"
"You didn't give Riley action figure dolls, or silver dollars, maybe, because he was … special?"
"Why would I do that? He wasn't special. I mean, he had a good voice, but—"
"Don't lie to us, Mr. Ingerson. We have forensics going over those objects right now and we can lift your fingerprints off them. It will go easier on you if you tell us the truth now."
"I don't have any idea what you're talking about. I never gave Riley a silver dollar. For what?"
"How about this?" Nakamura held out his cellphone with the picture he'd taken of the pin with the music note and a cross on top of it. "If you didn't give it to him, where did he get it?"
Brice spoke for the first time, firing the question like a bullet. "The minister said you gave out pins like this every year to different students — are you saying the minister was lying?"
"No. I mean, yes. Oh, this is so upsetting!" His voice broke. "I'm not calling anyone a liar!" He sobbed, sucked in a few sniveling breaths, then got control. "I do give out pins every year after the fall and spring performances. But we're still rehearsing for the fall performance and I haven't even selected for certain who will get this year's awards."
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
"There are two awards, one for the older choir and one for the younger choir. Actually, I do know that the one for the younger choir will go to Roger Cromwell. That boy is only eight, but with his perfect pitch—"
"You didn't give this pin" — Nakamura wagged his phone in front of the man's face — "to Riley Campbell?"
"Are you not listening to a word I say?" He put his hand on his breast in a dramatic gesture. "You're distressing me, can't you tell that? My heart, it's like a jackhammer in my chest. It is hard enough to engage in this discussion at all. Talking to the police about such a horrible subject, but if you don't even listen and I have to repeat myself."
"Of course I didn't. I haven't given out the pins yet. I don't give them out until after the performance — are you listening to me? We're still just rehearsing. And even if I had given them out, I wouldn't have given one to Riley. I already told you, his voice is average at best. Pedestrian. He can hold a tune, but he has—"
"If you didn't give him this pin, where did he get it?"
"How would I know?" Ingerson's face had been getting redder and redder, glowing beneath the white sunblock. "Do I look like a psychic to you?" He snatched the phone out of Nakamura's hand and placed it dramatically against his forehead. "Like I can concentrate and divine somehow where the boy got it?" He moved it off his forehead and held it in front of his face. "Like I could just look at it and …" He moved it farther from his eyes, like someone farsighted, then handed it back to Nakamura with a dismissing sound.
"That's not even a Junior Choir pin! It's a Senior Choir pin, and not even the same design as this year's. I design them myself. I'm very artistic — with a pen and paper, oils and pastels, of course, not with one of those computer design programs." He grunted in disdain. "I redesign the pins every year. You can see the design of this year's pins if you like. It's in my file cabinet at the church, but the pins I ordered haven't come in yet."
"You say this is an old design, an old pin?"
"Oh, indeed yes. At least a year, maybe more than that."
"I'll need a list of every child you've given one of these pins."
"Oh heavens, there are quite a few of them. Last year the pin went to Arnold Westerman. The year before, 2013's pins went to Michael Hardesty and Zach Kirkland — they were both equally talented. I gave a pin in 2012 because, well, it was a tradition and I couldn't break the tradition, but …" He leaned closer and spoke conspiratorially. "Between you and me, there was not a single child worthy of the award in the whole choir that year. Not a single child. Then in 2011 … so sad." He paused, shook his head. "You should have heard that boy sing before his voice changed. At twelve, he had the voice of an angel. But when he turned thirteen … puberty hit him hard. He didn't even belong in the choir, couldn't carry a tune, just sort of bleated like a goat."
"What boy? Who?"
"Why Lucas Ferrigliano, of course."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As they re-crossed the lake in the water patrol boat to the dock on the Shadow Rock side, Nakamura sat on a bench in the stern, staring out at the wake churned up by the big engines. He'd called Trimboli, one of the agents at the Campbells' house, and dispatched her to the Ferriglianos next door to detain the boy for questioning.
Brice stood near the bow, chatting with the water patrol officer to keep his mind off his growing list of misgivings about their only current lead. Lucas Ferrigliano didn't tick all the boxes. Since sexual predators tended to stick with one sex or the other, what connection did the sixteen-year-old boy have to Christi Strickland? The maybe-Christi-saw-something connection they'd theorized about the choir director didn't fit the teenager, who lived next door to the first kidnap victim. And why would Christi have smiled when she saw the Ferrigliano kid at the park? Why would she have willingly gotten into a car with him when she barely knew him if she knew him at all? If the boy was the kidnapper, there had to be information they didn't have to tie all the loose ends together.
While they were talking, Nakamura's cellphone rang. His face showed no emotion whatsoever, but some other unidentified body language was shouting that something was very, very wrong.
Brice made his way to the back of the boat as Nakamura clicked off the call.
"There's another child missing," the FBI agent said, his voice as controlled and emotionless as if he were reading the fine print on a credit card application. Brice, on the other hand, took the news like a kick to the belly. He couldn't even speak for a moment, and when he did, he didn't seem to have quite enough air to support his words.
"Who? Where?"
Then his own cellphone rang. Caller ID showed it was Fletch. He didn't answer.
"A little girl, Marley Nicole Ewing," Nakamura said. "She was taken from a department store at Oak Ridge Mall. She's three years old." He took a breath before he said the rest. "And she's deaf."
"Three children in four days."
"Something set him off." There was a heartbeat pause before Nakamura continued. "A serial killer on a spree won't stop until we catch him."
"You think it's a killer, then, not just a kidnapper who—?"
"How's a kidnapper going to corral three children?" Nakamura's words were clipped, probably as close as he came to snapping. "And why would he try?"
The mic on Brice's shoulder radio spoke into his ear. "Unit One, this is dispatch." His phone rang a second time.
"I'm calling for reinforcements," Nakamura told Brice as the boat ignored the no-wake zone and only throttled down as it neared the dock. "I'll have four more agents on the ground here before nightfall."
As he and Nakamura raced to his cruiser, Brice told the dispatcher they were on the way to the mall, to have Fletch meet them there.
It wasn't a big mall, fewer than two dozen stores, a Planet Fitness gym and a small Cinema City movie complex with eight screens. Shaped like a wagon wheel with a food court and fountain in the center, four hallways branched out from it with stores on both sides of the hallways. There were large public entrance/exits at the ends of all four halls, and a separate entrance directly into the food court between the East and South Halls. There were also rear delivery entrances to most of the stores. The child had been snatched from a department store called Your Style Your Way, which was the center store of three on the right side of the North Hall. Next to it was a Stride Rite shoe store and on the end on the other side was a pizza parlor called Andolino's Pies. Facing those stores across the hall were only two businesses, a jewelry store called Love Stones and a large chain bookstore, Billions a'Books.
Combined law enforcement — Brice's deputies, city and state police — had locked down the whole mall. No one in or out either of the four hallways, the food court entrance or the back doors of the stores. All the exits from the parking lot had been blocked by police vehicles. As he passed through one of the roadblocks, he saw West Virginia State Police Trooper Corbin Hollister gesture for the driver of a minivan attempting to exit the parking lot to roll down his window. The last time he'd seen Trooper Hollister was on the Fourth of July, just minutes before Fletch had been shot by a crazed meth-head who planned to blow up a dam.
"I am respectfully asking you to step out of your vehicle and give me your permission to search it," the trooper said. "You have the right to refuse. If you choose to exercise that right, you'll have to return to the parking lot while we secure a search warrant."
With hours of waiting as the alternative, the driver couldn't get out of his vehicle fast enough.
Brice understood with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that the effort was almost assuredly too late, that whoever had taken the child had spirited her away before the police arrived.
Fletcher met them as they entered Your Style Your Way. Like a Sears store or JCPenney, it featured clothing for men, women and children. Shoes, too, on the back wall. The men's and boy's departments were mostly on the left side of the store, the women's on the right. But children's clothing was intermingled with both and there were men's and women's accessories — scarves, gloves and hats — on racks in the front of the store, as well as a jewelry counter that featured both women's jewelry and men's watches.
"Mrs. Ewing, first name Candice, lives in Fairmont, was over there," Fletch said, pointing to a section of merchandise cordoned off with yellow-and-black police tape. "Behind that rack."
Fletcher lifted the tape for Nakamura and Brice to cross under it as he continued. "She had the little girl, Marley, three years old, in a basket." T
he clothes in that section of the store were dresses, most of them evening gowns hanging on racks that were probably nine or ten feet tall. The sports clothes, pants and shirts and shorts were farther down.”
"You could start a bonfire and roast marshmallows back there and nobody'd see you," Brice said, nodding at the clothes racks.
"The mother said she just went around a single rack of long dresses, pulling them out and looking and letting them drop back. The little girl was in the cart where the mother started. She said she wasn't even gone a minute, but …"
"But?" Nakamura asked.
"I'm betting it was longer than that. Women get interested in clothes, they hold them up to themselves, imagine how they'll look with this pair of shoes or that handbag. They lose track of time."
Brice looked at Fletcher with a new respect.
"When she got back around and saw that the little girl wasn't in the cart, she thought the child had climbed out, and even thinking that she was frantic. The little girl is deaf, couldn't hear her mother call her. Mrs. Ewing immediately called out, 'I've lost my little girl. She can't hear. Please help me find her!' And all the women in that section, store employees, everybody who heard her, started searching. They probably looked for five, maybe ten minutes before they dialed 911."
And after that it was another four or five minutes before the first units arrived, three or four more minutes before they locked down the parking lot. The kidnapper had ten, maybe fifteen minutes to get away.
Nakamura pointed up to the dark circles on the ceiling.
"Security camera footage?"
Fletcher shook his head. "Those are just for show, to curb shoplifting. There aren't any cameras in them. But there are cameras at all the entrances to the four halls of the mall and to the food court. There are also security cameras mounted on the back sides of all the buildings, on the end, that cover the loading docks and back entrances. I have the mall manager cuing that up for you in his office."