Take the Bait

by S. W. Hubbard

  When none was forthcoming, Earl cleared his throat then plunged ahead. “Uh, you don’t really think Janelle ran away, do you?”

  Frank shrugged. “Something was going on with her, and then she disappeared. I’m not a big believer in coincidence. Now I find out she broke up with Craig, so there could be another guy in the picture. And then she knew these Bruderhof people—she could’ve gone off with them.”

  Earl dismissed this idea with a wave. “Nah, I’ve seen them around, too. They’re not weird. I mean, they are weird, but not scary weird. They’re like those people in that old Harrison Ford movie—whatsitcalled—Witness.” Earl used a substantial portion of his salary to pay for a satellite dish and had become an expert on old movies.

  “Well, we’ll have to check them out,” Frank said. “But even if they’re a dead end, I keep coming back to that gas can. At first I thought this boyfriend, or whatever, just happened to drive by when Janelle was walking home and she sticks the can behind that bush so no one will bother it, and goes off for a spin. I figured she’s expecting him to drop her back in the same spot to pick up the can and finish walking home. But he never does.”

  “Right.”

  “But what doesn’t make sense to me is, why not take the can with her, and let the boyfriend drop her off at the top of her road, where it connects with Stony Brook Road. Jack still wouldn’t be able to see her from there.”

  Earl shrugged. “Maybe she was afraid someone passing by on the road would notice them there.”

  “But all of Stony Brook Road is out in the open. The place where she left the can is just as noticeable as the top of the Harveys’ road. No, it’s starting to look to me like she left the can there because she knew she wasn’t going to need it. Because she wasn’t going back.”

  “But why put it behind the bush? Why not leave it right at the edge of the road?” Earl objected.

  Frank didn’t answer. That part puzzled him, too.

  “And remember, she didn’t have a penny in her pocket,” Earl continued. “No one would run away without any money.”

  “She told Al she didn’t have any money. We don’t know for sure.”

  “But if she lied to him, that would mean she planned it in advance.”

  Frank’s eyes met Earl’s and did not blink.

  “Wait a minute! Janelle didn’t know she was going to be walking to Al’s. Her father didn’t know he’d run out of gas. How could she make a plan to meet someone?”

  Frank rose and began to walk across the muddy baseball field, his hands shoved in his pants pockets. “Janelle was a very smart girl. She could’ve realized that if she disappeared when she told her family she was going to visit a friend or something, that we’d be more likely to suspect she’d run away. But disappearing while you’re on a spontaneous errand—that’s a good plan.” Even as he said the words, Frank wondered if Janelle were really that clever. It took more than intelligence to pull off a good con.

  “But how did whoever she went off with know when and where to pick her up?” Earl persisted. “Jack said she didn’t go into the house before she left, so she couldn’t have called anyone in advance.”

  “I can’t explain how she worked it yet,” Frank replied, his voice a little louder than necessary. He wasn’t confident himself in this theory, but he didn’t appreciate Earl shooting holes in it. “Maybe the accomplice was watching her, just waiting for the right opportunity.”

  Earl hunched his shoulders, as if to ward off an expected blow. “You’re skatin’ on thin ice, Frank. Awful thin.”

  7

  “COFFEE MADE YET?” Frank grumped by way of greeting Earl the next morning in the office. “I just can’t wake up. I got involved in looking over Janelle’s term paper notes last night—it looks like she did most of her research at the community college library. Then, I stayed up late reading that damn book.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Scarlet Letter. It’s not that long, but I dropped off to sleep before I made it to the end. Now I’m dying to know what happens to poor old Hester and that spineless preacher boyfriend of hers. I guess I’ll have to wait ’til tonight to find out.

  “So, what are those incident reports in front of you about? What do we have to do today?” Frank asked. Despite the frenzy caused by Janelle’s disappearance, the citizens of Trout Run still expected their usual level of service from the police department.

  “Oh, the principal at the elementary school called to say people are speeding in the school zone again.”

  “Okay, I tell you what we’re going to do, Earl. How about you go over and park the patrol car behind that stand of trees near the school and catch yourself a few speeders, and I’ll stop by the Harveys’ and see Jack, then go over to Mount Marcy College to see what I can find out about the Bruderhof. I’ll meet you back here after lunch, okay?”

  Earl was clearly thrilled—running the speed trap was his favorite assignment. He set off immediately with Frank’s warning echoing after him. “Don’t get carried away, Earl. Four or five tickets ought to get the message out.”

  Frank was about to follow Earl out the door when the buzz of his intercom brought him back to his desk.

  “Frank? Craig Gadschaltz is here with his mother. Do you want to talk to him now?”

  “Yes. I’ll be right out.”

  “Hi there, Craig, “Frank greeted the boy. “Thanks for dropping him off,” he said to Mrs. Gadschaltz. “I’ll see that he gets over to school after we talk—why don’t you just have a seat in my office there, Craig.”

  Craig’s mother, a bosomy, square-bottomed woman in jeans and a sweatshirt, interposed herself between her son and the office door. “You can’t talk to him without me being there. I know my rights!”

  Frank mustered his best look of astonishment. “He’s not being interrogated. I hope I didn’t give you that impression. It’s just a few more things have come up since we first talked to him the day Janelle disappeared, and I need some clarification. But you’re welcome to stay if you think he needs your help.”

  As Frank expected, Craig immediately said, “Go ahead, Mom. You better get to work. I’ll be fine.”

  Mrs. Gadschaltz took one faltering step backward.

  “He won’t miss more than half an hour of school,” Frank reassured the reluctant mother.

  “He better not.” She glared up at him, years of hard work and worry about money and family shining fiercely in her eyes. “He’s up for a baseball scholarship. He needs to keep his grades up and play good when the scouts come around. I won’t let the trouble with this girl ruin it for him.”

  Frank patted her on the shoulder. “No, of course not,” he said as he propelled her out the door.

  “All right, Craig,” Frank boomed, closing his office door behind him, “this won’t be any worse than sitting through Cry Uncle’s history class.”

  But his show of good cheer did nothing to put Craig at ease. The young man dropped his gaze to the clenched hands in his lap. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Craig was absolutely unremarkable looking. Light brown hair, pale blue eyes, clear skin marked only by a rosy flush beneath the cheekbones. Frank supposed that teenage girls must consider Craig handsome, mainly because he had none of the common flaws of adolescence. No big nose, jug ears, or zits—just a simple face that had not yet been marked by life. Not, at least, until now.

  Frank leaned across the desk in an effort to get low enough to meet Craig’s downcast eyes. “I know you want to talk to me about Janelle,” he said softly. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, too. I thought maybe together we could get some ideas about what happened to her.”

  “You don’t think she was kidnapped, do you?” Craig asked.

  “Let’s just say I don’t think a stranger snatched her off the street.”

  Craig sighed, as if he found this to be discouraging news. “Neither do I.”

  “Why not?” Frank tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice. This was the first time anyone he’d talk
ed to had agreed with him.

  “Janelle had been acting weird.”

  Frank waited, but to no avail.

  “Weird in what way?” he finally prompted.

  Craig shrugged.

  “When did you first notice she was acting different?’

  “The middle of January,” Craig answered unhesitatingly.

  “Right after the basketball game with Lake George?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, how did you know?” Craig straightened up and looked at Frank with new interest.

  “Miss Powell said Janelle seemed to lose her enthusiasm for cheerleading right around then.”

  Craig nodded, as if this made sense, but volunteered nothing further. Either the kid was intentionally obstructionist, or he simply belonged to the class of male who would remain forever baffled by emotions. Women would be a mystery to him throughout his life, and even his own feelings would be so foreign to him that he wouldn’t recognize them unless someone else gave them a name.

  “Do you know why? I understand the two of you broke up around that time,” Frank probed.

  “I didn’t break up with her. She broke up with me. I still loved her!” Craig set the record straight with surprising force. Having apparently startled himself, he slumped down in his chair again and began scuffing the heel of his sneaker against the worn brown linoleum.

  “Do you know why she wanted to call things off?”

  Craig focused his eyes on a crack in the office wall above Frank’s head. Again, his mouth opened soundlessly.

  Frank’s usual method with recalcitrant suspects was to let the silence hang heavy in the air until the person being interrogated couldn’t stand it and started talking. But Craig clearly had a high tolerance for silence. The kid needed an occasional explosive charge to move the discussion along.

  “Were you and Janelle sleeping together?”

  “Who told you that?” Craig demanded.

  “No one. It’s my job to put two and two together.”

  Craig seemed relieved by this. “We never really did it. We were going to, but we didn’t,” he muttered into his shirt collar.

  “What do you mean you never really did it?” Frank dropped his paternal air. The sex quiz that Janelle had filled in had been in the December issue of the magazine. Had she been thinking of Craig when she answered those questions, or some other man? He might as well play it as if it had been Craig and see where that led. “I have reason to believe Janelle felt pressured by your sexual demands.”

  Color consumed Craig’s entire face. “Demands! I didn’t make any demands. She wanted to as much as I did, but then …” Craig stopped.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened,” Frank suggested softly.

  “We were at Janelle’s house. No one was home. But then she thought she heard something. She was afraid it might be Tommy. It was nothing. But then we were, you know, too nervous.”

  “Tommy? I would think she’d be more worried about being caught by her father.”

  Craig shrugged. “I guess she knew her dad was definitely out. Besides, Tom’s a little crazy. He doesn’t like me much. Not since Janelle and I have been going together.”

  “But before then, you were friends?” Frank asked.

  “Kind of. We were in Boy Scouts together for a lotta years.”

  Frank brought the conversation back to Janelle.

  “So you think this incident upset her enough to break up with you? When did it happen?”

  “Before Christmas. I told her it didn’t matter,” Craig continued pleadingly. “I told her we never had to do it again.”

  Fishing for a reaction, Frank let out a snort of disbelief. “That’s not the impression I got.”

  “Got from who?” Craig’s teenage baritone shot into soprano range. “It was Melanie wasn’t it? She just assumes that everyone screws around as much as she does.” Craig met Frank’s eye squarely. “It’s not like I forced her. I didn’t.”

  “But still, she insisted on breaking up?” Frank asked.

  Craig nodded. “She claimed it wasn’t that, but she wouldn’t say if there was anything else. Then she’d start crying and I thought she’d change her mind, but she didn’t. Finally she just stopped talking to me. Wouldn’t take my calls, walked right past me in the halls at school. I couldn’t believe it. It just wasn’t her.” Craig’s voice trailed off and he looked like he might start to cry right there.

  Frank stood up and walked over to the window to give Craig a minute to compose himself. With his back still turned he asked, “Were you two using any, uh, protection, the night you were together?”

  “I told you, we didn’t actually do it,” Craig answered.

  Now it was Frank’s turn to squirm in embarrassment. “You know, Craig, you don’t actually have to penetrate—get all the way inside a girl—to get her pregnant. Even if you’re interrupted, there could be enough semen present to get her pregnant.”

  Craig was shocked. “No way! You think she ran away ’cause I got her pregnant! No way, man. No way!” He jumped up from his chair and headed for the door. Before he left he paused and shouted over his shoulder. “You’re wrong!”

  The office door vibrated with the slam Craig gave it on his way out. Frank regarded it without satisfaction. He imagined Craig driving along Stony Brook Road; seeing Janelle and pulling over; begging her to get in the car with him so that they could talk things over. The picture was clear up to this point. Then what? Craig drives the car to some quiet spot; Janelle tells him she’s pregnant and her father insists they get married; Craig sees his future going down the drain. And he strangles her with his bare hands? Hides the body so well it hasn’t turned up in four days of searching? Frank shook his head. Did young men kill for that reason in this day and age? It seemed to him they just walked away from their responsibilities without a backward glance. And even if Craig were passionate enough to kill, was he clever enough to conceal it for long?

  The need to talk to Jack Harvey was more pressing now. He called, but the phone rolled over to an answering machine on the fourth ring. Hanging up, Frank decided to drive over to the Harvey house anyway. Perhaps Jack would have returned by the time he got there.

  County road 518, in the stretch between Birch Lane and the unnamed drive that led to the Harveys’, contained one of the most impressive vistas in all the Adirondack Park. Right after Birch Lane, the road took a sudden veer to the right and climbed sharply. Upon cresting the hill, the entire expanse of the broad, shallow valley was suddenly visible, and at the far side of the valley, five of the High Peaks stood shoulder to shoulder.

  Frank couldn’t help but pause every time he came to that spot in the road—he view was different every time. On a sunny day like this one, the mountains were so big and close it seemed you could reach out the car window and touch them. But on misty days you could barely discern the outline of each peak, and they seemed as remote and mysterious as mountains in Tibet. The mountains changed the weather patterns, so often you’d see an expanse of azure sky behind them, while black clouds between you and them dropped rain on the road you were about to drive over. Today the mountains looked benign, as if they harbored no secrets and wouldn’t harm a soul, but Frank knew it wasn’t so.

  He let the truck pick up speed as it coasted down the hill, and raised a considerable racket as he rattled down the Harveys’ drive. Bounding from the truck, he proceeded to pound loudly on the door.

  Harvey didn’t answer Frank’s knock, but as Frank turned to leave the front porch, he saw Jack’s sister approaching along the drive that continued back behind the house. He gave her a big wave and shouted, “Hi, Dorothy, I just stopped by to talk to Jack for a minute.”

  She nodded, and the furrow of concern etched permanently in her forehead grew deeper. “Jack’s not home. Is there some news on Janelle?” When Frank shook his head, Dorothy’s lip trembled and he thought she might start to cry. “I just feel so helpless.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I wander around all day not knowing what
to do with myself.”

  Frank put his hand on Dorothy’s shoulder but said nothing. His supply of reassuring platitudes had just about run dry.

  Dorothy slipped away from his touch. “Jack went to help the volunteers up at the flower shop. You could catch him there.”

  He was just as glad that Jack was not home—it gave him a chance to size up this woman whom everyone considered fortunate to be a widow. “Say, could I ask a favor? Could I just use your bathroom before I take off?” Frank asked.

  “Oh, sure,” Dorothy hesitated. “If you have to.”

  They walked toward the small house that sat behind Jack’s. A one-story rectangle, punctuated at regular intervals by square, double-hung windows, the house had been built by an able, albeit unimaginative, carpenter. The front door opened directly into the living room, and as Frank stepped into the house, the reason for Dorothy’s reluctant hospitality became apparent. Tommy was sprawled across a brown vinyl recliner, engrossed by the antics of some game show contestants on the blaring TV.

  “Tommy’s, uh, home sick from school today. This bug has been going around …” Dorothy’s explanation trailed off. Clearly Tommy was perfectly healthy, unless chronic sullenness could be considered a medical malady.

  “Hi, Tom,” Frank bellowed over the TV, but Tommy merely lifted his gaze momentarily and gave an imperceptible nod.

  “The bathroom’s this way,” Dorothy said, hurriedly steering Frank to a hallway at the far end of the room.

  Dorothy disappeared into the kitchen and Frank headed toward the bathroom at the end of the hall. On the way, he unashamedly stared into the two bedrooms that opened off the hallway. One contained a neatly made double bed with a faded flowered bedspread. Above the plain pine dresser was a large mirror with a discolored streak. Clearly this was Dorothy’s room, although it bore none of the more obvious signs of feminine habitation.

  Across the hall was a door with an orange DANGER—KEEP OUT road sign hung on it. The door was partially open and in the dim light that penetrated the partially drawn curtains he could make out the usual astonishing clutter of a teenage boy’s bedroom. From the posters on the wall, it seemed that Tommy’s interests were divided between cars and martial arts. Two room fresheners gave off a pine scent that could not mask a strong chemical odor. He opened some drawers, looking for airplane glue or spray cans, and soon found both. So, Tommy huffed—a great way to kill off whatever limited quantity of brain cells he’d been born with.