Take the Bait

by S. W. Hubbard

  Frank returned to scrutinizing the letter.

  Jack tolerated this for a minute or so. “Then what?” he asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “The ransom! The ransom! How are we going to give him the money and make sure he gives us Janelle?”

  Frank sat back and studied Jack as he circumnavigated the small office. Jack had run his hands through his hair repeatedly, and this, combined with years of bad haircuts from the Verona barbershop, gave him a crazed appearance that warned Frank to weigh his response carefully.

  “We’ll have a few troopers dressed like hikers go in and look at the cabin,” Frank said, authoritatively. “When May 2 comes, we’ll set up a stakeout with Lieutenant Meyerson.”

  Jack searched Frank’s face for reassurance. “What if you blow it? What if you scare him off?”

  “I don’t think we’re dealing with an Einstein here, Jack. He’ll be no match for the state police. Now you go home, and don’t tell anyone about this. Not even your sister.”

  “But what about the money? I don’t have that kind of cash. The only person I could get it from would be Clyde Stevenson. I’m sure he’d let me use the reward money he’s put up.”

  Frank studied the desperate father closely, then nodded slowly. “Yeah, go ahead. Tell Clyde about the letter.”

  The ride to the state police headquarters in Ray Brook took nearly forty minutes, time that Earl spent in non-stop speculation about the ransom note and how the state police would handle what he called “the drop.”

  “Do you think they’ll find any prints on the letter? Would anyone be dumb enough not to wear gloves? Where do you think he’s hiding Janelle—in the woods on Mount Henry? That might not be too safe—there’s a lot of hikers out this time of year. Do you think the state police will let you and me go on the stakeout? Where will we hide … up in the trees? You know, I saw this thing on Crimebusters once, where the cops wore these special glasses that let them see in the dark. Do you think the troopers have those?”

  Most of Earl’s questions required nothing more than a grunt or a nod from Frank, and finally, twenty minutes into the trip, he wound himself down and fell silent. They rode like this for another five minutes, when Earl spoke hesitatingly. “Are you worried that Mr. Stevenson will want to fire you now that it turns out you were wrong about Janelle running away?”

  Frank jumped, roused from a waking dream. “Huh?”

  “I said, are you thinking that Mr. Stevenson will want to fire you now that it turns out you were wrong about Janelle running away?”

  Franks lips twitched. “Hell, no, I’m not worried. Besides, what makes you so sure I’m wrong?”

  “What!” Earl twisted to face Frank as best as his seat belt would allow. “How can there be a ransom note if she ran away?”

  “Nothing strikes you as strange about that note?” Frank asked. “Why do you think he would wait three days before sending it? And why offer Jack such a long time to raise the money?”

  Earl shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it’s his first kidnapping … or something.”

  “Yeah—it’s the ‘or something’ that I’m wondering about.”

  Earl undoubtedly would have pursued this further, but the appearance of state police headquarters, and all the marvels it contained, saved Frank from further explanation.

  12

  THURSDAY DAWNED CLEAR AND BRIGHT, with a few fluffy white clouds on the horizon to give the sky some interest. Arriving at a minute past six, Frank was first in line at Malone’s for the lumberjack’s breakfast: two eggs, two sausages, two pancakes, two slices of toast, and, of course, as much coffee as you could get up and pour for yourself. Thus fortified, he returned home to tackle a job that had been crying out to him all winter long—replacing the chronically stuck bathroom window.

  He knew that this was politically unwise; he should at least give the appearance of frantic investigative activity. But there was little to be done until the lab reports came back in the afternoon. He had intentionally not discussed the note in detail with Meyerson, curious to see what conclusion the trooper would reach on his own. So he left Earl in charge for the morning, with instructions to call him at home if any new information came in.

  He wasn’t long into framing out the new window when he realized he needed a gutter cap. He’d have to make a trip to Venable’s Hardware. On the quick trip down the hill and across Stony Brook, Frank noticed that the clouds were piling up, obscuring the peak of Mount Marcy. He thought of the gaping hole in the front of his house and hoped that he hadn’t picked the wrong day to tear out that window. But the Adirondack weather was always unpredictable. Sometimes the sky went from crystal blue to black and back again without a drop of rain ever falling. The weather report, even from the radio station in Lake Placid, was about as pertinent as the daily horoscope that immediately followed it.

  Frank intended to be in and out of Venable’s in five minutes, but he forgot to allow for the fifteen minutes of unsolicited advice from Rollie Fister that came with every purchase, no matter how small. By the time he got back into his truck, the first heavy drops of rain were dissolving the dust on his windshield. A dagger of lightning, so perfect it could have been drawn by a cartoonist’s hand, reached down from the black clouds on the horizon. A tremendous clap of thunder followed seconds later, then the skies opened up.

  The rain fell in solid sheets. Frank could see the road only in split-second intervals as his wipers worked futilely to clear the water away. He was uncertain of just where he was on the road until he felt it descending toward the new steel bridge that carried truck traffic over Stony Brook. In the vivid illumination of the next lightning flash, Frank saw a hunched figure loping along the side of the road. Immediately he beeped his horn and leaned across to throw open the passenger side door. “Get in,” he shouted.

  “It’s not safe to walk across that bridge in a storm,” Frank said as his passenger straightened out the sweatshirt he had pulled over his head in a vain effort to stay dry. It was Tommy Pettigrew.

  “Yeah,” Tommy agreed. Then, as an afterthought, “Thanks.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, Frank concentrating on his driving, and Tommy staring out at the storm. When they reached the other side of the bridge, it occurred to Frank that the weather was cooperating with him after all, delivering up Tommy Pettigrew for an impromptu chat.

  “Listen, Tom, it’s raining too hard for me to drive you all the way home now. But it can’t keep up like this for long, so we’ll just wait it out at my house, then I’ll run you back,” Frank said, turning the truck in the direction of his own house. Tommy, in no position to argue, grunted glumly.

  Pulling up in front of the cottage, Frank and Tommy got drenched in the time it took to run the ten feet from the driveway to the back door. Frank went immediately to the front of the house and surveyed his rainswept bathroom.

  “Geez, would you look at that! I’ll go down to the basement for a tarp and you can help me cover up that opening,” Frank said. Tommy neither agreed nor disagreed, and upon returning with the tarp, Frank found the boy just where he had left him, leaning against the bathroom door frame.

  As they struggled with the tarp, Frank tried to get his reluctant guest to loosen up. Twenty years of volunteering with the Police Athletic League had given him plenty of experience in communicating with sullen teenagers, but Tommy was proving to be an exceptional challenge. Frank peppered him with questions: sports, cars, music, his summer plans—every subject was greeted with an indifferent shrug or a few muttered monosyllables.

  When they finished and moved to the kitchen for lunch, Frank wracked his brain for another topic to try. Suddenly, the image of the posters in Tommy’s bedroom popped into Frank’s mind, and he said, “I caught that movie Enter the Dragon on the Late Show last week. Boy, that Bruce Lee really is terrific.”

  “Bruce Lee sucks!” Tommy set down his baloney sandwich and straightened from his perpetual slump, shaking the hair out of his suddenly animated
gray eyes. “Brandon Lee, his son, could have been the best of all time if those stupid assholes hadn’t killed him while he was making The Crow.”

  “Oh, yeah, I read about that. Someone accidentally put real bullets in the gun instead of blanks.”

  “It wasn’t no accident,” Tommy corrected Frank authoritatively. “Brandon had enemies—they were out to get him.”

  Uninterested in paranoid conspiracy theories, Frank took a different tack. “Funny how kids can get to be better than their parents at things. I hear your father was a pretty fair carpenter, but I bet you’re probably even better.”

  If talk of kung fu stars had ignited a spark in Tommy, talk of his father lit a crackling blaze. “No, I’m nowhere near as good as he was. He built our whole house by himself.”

  “I’m just a hack, myself,” Frank said deprecatingly. “Your dad probably would’ve had that window all nailed in by now.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tommy agreed as he reached for more potato chips. “He worked real fast, and he never made mistakes. ‘Measure twice, cut once,’ that’s what he always said. I helped him all the time. He taught me how to miter corners when I was only nine years old. I have all his tools.” Suddenly Tommy’s voice hardened. “My Uncle Jack wanted to sell them, but I wouldn’t let him.”

  “Good tools are hard to come by,” Frank sympathized.

  “Not if you’re willing to spend a little money,” Tommy lectured. “Uncle Jack was always buying cheap shit from Sears ’cause his old lady wouldn’t let him buy expensive tools. He was pussy-whipped by Aunt Rosemary. Not like my dad—he was a real man!”

  Frank knew that Tom Pettigrew Sr. had displayed his manliness by beating his wife and son, yet Tommy’s pride in the man didn’t surprise him. He had seen this kind of pathetic loyalty time and again. As social workers carried them out of the house, kids would stretch out their arms and cry for the parents who had whipped and kicked and burned them. Frank guessed there weren’t many people who were willing to listen to Tommy sentimentalize the cruel drunk who had been his father.

  And by letting the kid run on, he’d seen a pattern in Tommy’s conversation. If you asked Tommy a question he clammed right up, but if you made a definitive statement, his natural contrariness compelled him to set you straight.

  “Too bad your cousin didn’t know a little about martial arts,” Frank said as he set a plate of Oreos on the table. “She’s such a sweet kid—I’m worried that she’s being taken advantage of.”

  Tommy took the bait without hesitation. “Janelle’s not the little princess Uncle Jack makes her out to be. She can take care of herself.”

  “Maybe,” Frank said, dunking his cookie in a glass of milk. “But an innocent young girl with no money—I just wonder how she can survive on her own.”

  Tommy snorted. “She’ll survive the way all bitches survive—by opening her legs.”

  Somehow, Frank doubted the boy had much direct experience in the behavior of women. Was this bravado just talk he had learned from Ray, or did he really know something incriminating about Janelle?

  He began clearing dishes from the table. “Yeah, I guess girls always have that to fall back on, huh? Still, I’d hate to think of Janelle being forced to earn her way like that.”

  “She’d enjoy it. They all do.”

  “You seem to have sort of a low opinion of your cousin. Was there bad blood between you?”

  “She just pissed me off sometimes. She thought anything she did was all right, but anything anyone else did was …” Tommy used his thumbnail to pulverize a cookie fragment. “A big fuckin’ deal.”

  Frank took a calculated risk. “Yeah, I could see where that would get under your skin, especially when you knew she used to slip out of the house at night without her dad knowing.”

  Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”

  “Oh, I just heard it around town.”

  “The rain stopped,” Tommy said abruptly. “You don’t have to drive me home. I’ll walk.”

  “No, no. I’ll drive you; it’s no trouble,” Frank insisted, desperate to keep Tommy talking.

  “I said, I’ll walk. I got things to do.”

  Frank laid a restraining hand on Tommy’s arm, all pretense of casual conversation abandoned. “Look, if you know who Janelle was meeting at night, you need to tell me. It could be our only hope of finding her.”

  “I don’t know who Janelle was sneaking around with, or where she went. But I’m glad she’s gone.” And with that, Tommy bolted out of the house.

  Frank stood in the doorway and watched the boy’s angular frame, shoulders hunched as if he were still battered by rain, slouching down the road until he disappeared from view.

  By two the new window had been nailed in, and Frank was back at his desk. He called his daughter, Caroline, to see if she could find out anything about Bob Rush’s tenure at the Presbyterian church in Rappahonack, a town not far from her home in Chappaqua. She promised to check and get back to him. After he had hung up, Meyerson called with the lab results.

  Frank cradled the phone against his shoulder, stretching back as far as his ancient swivel chair would allow. He took notes on a pad propped against his knees as he listened intently to Myerson’s report.

  “I’m sorry to tell you, there’s not much to go on,” Meyerson began. “No prints on the letter except Jack Harvey’s. Cheap envelope available in every discount store in America. Letter paper is twenty-pound bond of the type used in every copier in America. Letter written on a PC and printed with an ink-jet printer, again of the type found in virtually every office and half the homes in America. No one at the Saranac Lake post office remembers anything, and there’s been no unusual activity at the ranger cabin on Mount Henry.”

  Frank grunted. “I figured that’s what you’d say.”

  “Then I faxed a copy down to Dr. Steinmetz—he’s the shrink at headquarters in Albany. He’s worked a lot of kidnappings, serial killers, hostage situations—the guy can look at the smallest details and tell you what kind of nut you’re dealing with. So I sent this down without giving him any background on the case, just to see what he’d say. And you know what?”

  “What?” Frank responded cautiously.

  “He asks me, are we sure this is a real kidnapping.”

  Frank straightened up in his chair and put the pad on the desk. “I knew it! What reasons did he give?”

  “Steinmetz says most ransom notes warn against calling in the police. Also, the writer didn’t offer any proof that he actually had the kid, so it could just be some lame effort to cash in on Harvey’s misfortune, which is what I thought when I read it. But the doctor said something else was weird: all the punctuation in the note—commas and everything—was correct, which leads him to believe the grammatical errors and misspellings were intentional.”

  A slow smile spread across Frank’s face.

  “Hey, are you still there?” Meyerson wanted to know.

  “Yeah, I heard you. So, what do you make of that?”

  “It’s some jerk trying to cash in on Janelle’s disappearance, who thinks ransom notes should look like they come from illiterate nuts.”

  “Maybe,” Frank answered.

  “Maybe? What else could it be?”

  “What if someone wrote the note to get us to start looking at this case as a kidnapping?”

  “You figure Jack thought this would light a fire under us?” Meyerson hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s that good an actor.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “So, who else would want us to think she’s been kidnapped?” Meyerson asked.

  “Think of it from a slightly different angle, Lou,” Frank instructed. “Who wants us to stop looking for a runaway?”

  After a slight pause, Lew’s low, throaty chuckle escalated to full-fledged laughter. “Oh, man, Frank. You got your hands full with this one. Just how do you plan on telling Jack Harvey that his daughter’s behind her own ransom?”

  Frank recline
d in his BarcaLounger. His back and shoulders throbbed from the day of lifting and nailing. Normally a job well done brought him enough pleasure to counteract his aches and pains, but his mishandling of Tommy Pettigrew had ruined any satisfaction the new window could offer.

  If only he’d hung back and let Tommy bring the information to him. But no, he had to charge right in like the hounds of hell were on his tail. Now he was even further away from knowing who Janelle was meeting, and why Tommy held her in such low regard.

  And the gratification of being right about the ransom note had evaporated when he contemplated all the unanswerable questions the note raised. Why had she sent it now? Maybe Janelle knew he was on to her? But for that to be true, she must be in touch with someone in town who was keeping her posted on the direction of the investigation. It was bizarrely comforting that she thought he was closing in—at least she had confidence in his ability.

  He shut his eyes and tried to call up a mental picture of Janelle. Her sweet, eager face reproached him from telephone poles, bulletin boards, and store windows everywhere. The more he learned, the more elusive she became. Intellectual, whore, daddy’s girl, schemer—who was the real Janelle?

  Nothing in his long career had prepared Frank for this: a case where everyone pressured him for results, but no one wanted him to pursue any of the leads. In fact, someone wanted him to spend the next nine days going down a blind alley. Then the phony ransom drop would explode in his face and the Town Council would demand his resignation. Unless he did some major ass kissing.

  To hell with them—he’d resign before he let Clyde and Jack dictate how he ran this investigation. And then he’d find that kid just to spite them all—Janelle included.

  13

  THE SHOUTING MATCH taking place in the Town Office was loud enough that people crossing through the green could hear the raised voices, although, try as they might, not the precise words of the combatants.