Take the Bait

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Paul could not accept this,” Michael continued. “He kept debating issues that had already been settled. He could not relinquish his own ideas. Worse still, he sometimes criticized other brothers and sisters while not in their presence. This we do not tolerate, and he was admonished several times.”

  Michael sighed, gazing out into the lush green woods that surrounded the buildings. “Adapting to life in community is not easy—we all struggle sometimes. The only thing that makes such continual self-surrender possible is acceptance of Jesus Christ as your savior. Paul tried to repress his ego through sheer willpower, and of course, he could not succeed. Finally, we agreed that he should leave.”

  “There were hard feelings?” Frank inquired.

  “No, not at all. Paul admitted that his belief in the Christian life was intellectual, not spiritual. He went off to pursue his beliefs in his own way.”

  “Where did he go?” Frank could hardly bear to ask the question, anticipating the answer he would get.

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. We gave him a small amount of money to tide him over until he got reestablished in the outside world. A few weeks later he sent the money back. That was the last we heard of him.”

  “Where was the letter mailed from?” Frank pleaded with the urgency of one who knows his cause is hopeless. “Was it from somewhere in New York?”

  Michael rose from his seat and turned back toward his desk. “Really, I cannot remember.”

  Recognizing that he’d been dismissed, Frank rose and thanked Michael. As he reached the door he turned back. “One other thing—the last time I was here, you and Henry were upset because the children had been feeding the goats. Why was that? Are those animals important in your religion?”

  Michael furrowed his brow. “We are Christians, sir. What role could goats possibly play in our faith?” He went on without waiting for an answer. “We have had some success selling our goat cheese to restaurants and markets. But the flavor is affected by what the goats eat. They must not eat the children’s food.”

  Frank knew he risked offending Michael, but he couldn’t let go of the idea that Pablo was somehow behind the deaths of the pets in Trout Run. “We’ve had a few animals die in, um, unusual circumstances lately. This Paul never let on that maybe he believed in, uh, you know…”

  “Animal sacrifice! Mr. Bennett, you try my patience. You do not seem to hear what I tell you of our life here. I think it would be best if you leave now.”

  Frank went back out into the afternoon’s bright sunshine. Too overwhelmed to begin the long drive home, he sat down at a nearby picnic table to think over what he had learned. He felt like a man who against stratospheric odds has actually managed to find the needle in the haystack, only to drop it back among the stalks again.

  He had no idea how long he had been sitting there; perhaps only minutes, perhaps nearly an hour, when five men emerged from the workshop and settled themselves around the table. They nodded and smiled in Frank’s direction but seemed quite uncurious about his presence among them. Seconds later, a woman appeared carrying a box of cookies, a large thermal jug, and some cups. She greeted them briefly, then left. They passed the box and jug, solemnly from man to man, including their guest in the circuit. Frank, teeth poised around a cookie, hurriedly set it down when he realized one of the men was preparing to say a prayer over their modest snack.

  After effusive thanks were given for what proved to be exceedingly watery lemonade and gingersnaps that had grown spongy in the spring humidity, the men began to talk.

  “Looks like we’ll have five rocking horses ready for the big show next week,” one young man with thick black glasses commented.

  “That’s good. They always sell. The horses and the table and chair sets are very popular,” an old man agreed, his dentures clicking rhythmically as he chewed his gummy cookie.

  The younger man turned to Frank and offered an explanation. “We’re taking some of our wooden toys and children’s furniture to the big crafts festival outside Lake George next week.”

  Frank made an effort to hold up his end of the conversation, despite his black mood. “Do you go every year?”

  “The community exhibits every year. Only four of us can go—we take turns. I went last year, and Ralph will go this year,” he explained. The men continued to eat in silence.

  Frank would have liked to start the trip home, but pinned in by the Bruderhof men on either side, he urged himself to sit still. It wouldn’t kill him to wait until their afternoon break was through.

  Leaning over with his elbows on the table to conceal the two cookies he had no intention of eating, the pictures of Janelle and Pablo he had stuffed into his breast pocket flopped forward. Their presence ate at Frank, goading him to act. With a furtive glance over his shoulder to be certain Michael was not nearby, Frank pulled the pictures out and laid them in front of the friendly young man with the glasses. “This fellow Pablo—Paul—used to be a novice here,” he said, not caring that his remark came entirely out of left field. “Were you friends with him; maybe you’ve gotten a letter from him recently?”

  Taken aback, the young man stared at Frank curiously. “We do not get personal mail here. All letters are to the community as a whole.”

  Three of the others nodded in confirmation.

  “I have seen Paul since he left us.” It was Ralph who spoke, the taciturn man due to travel to the crafts fair. “The last time I worked at the fair was the year Paul left. I saw him there. He said he was forming his own community, a secular community.”

  Frank dug his nails into the soft wood of the picnic table as he fought to control his excitement. “Where? Did he say where it was?”

  Ralph stroked his wiry beard. Again, this ponderous rumination—it was enough to make an active man scream. “Saranac Lake,” he said finally. “He said it was somewhere north of Saranac Lake.”

  Frank, Lieutenant Meyerson, and one of his staff, Trooper Pauline Phelps, sat staring at a large wall map of the Adirondack Park. Frank had driven straight from Silas to state police headquarters, knowing that he would need their resources to locate Pablo’s compound.

  “‘Somewhere north of Saranac Lake’ doesn’t narrow it down much, Frank,” Meyerson complained. “The Saint Regis wilderness area is some of the wildest terrain in the park.”

  “I know, I know. But isn’t most of that land state owned?” Frank asked. “They couldn’t get away with squatting for long.”

  “A lot of it is, but there are little pockets of privately owned land sprinkled all through there. That’s what makes it so hard.” Meyerson turned to his colleague. “Pauline here’s been patrolling that area for three years now. She knows it as well as anyone.”

  “Wherever your man is, he hasn’t been the subject of any citizen complaints, or I’d know about it,” Pauline said. “My strategy would be to show the artist’s sketch around at every little market and gas station in this area. They have to buy stuff somewhere.”

  “We’ve got to be able to do more than that.”

  Pauline stood and tapped the map twice with a pointer. “There’s also two wilderness canoe outfitters who might be able to help. Those guys know the back-country like my mom knows the layout of her favorite supermarket.”

  This seemed like a more productive possibility. “All right, so Pauline will work that angle?”

  Meyerson nodded. “I’ll brief the Saranac Lake police, see what they can come up with. You may as well get back to Trout Run. I’ll see you tomorrow, for the stakeout at the lean-to.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “I can hardly wait. I have to warn you—Clyde and Ned plan to come along. They seem to think that providing the ransom money gives them the right to supervise the operation.”

  “We can’t have civilians involved! It’s against regulations,” Meyerson protested.

  Frank waved off the trooper’s objections. “If this were a legitimate ransom drop, I’d agree, but there’s no harm in letting them tag along on this c
harade. It’s a lot easier for me to just humor them.”

  Meyerson said nothing more. Frank took this as assent and left while he was ahead. The sun was making its final descent in the west, casting a warm glow over the apple orchards and dairy farms, fishing ponds and five-building hamlets that he drove past, but Frank was oblivious to the scenery.

  It seemed typical that Pablo would think he could improve upon a system that the Bruderhof had been living by for over seventy years. Would his community merely be a secular mirror image of the Bruderhof community? Or would he somehow corrupt the Bruderhof vision to create something more sinister?

  He was plagued by the notion that what had happened to Martha and the other dead and missing animals in Trout Run was linked in some way to Janelle’s disappearance. What if Pablo saw the slaughter as a sort of warning not to lavish so much attention on domestic animals? Was his influence over Janelle so great that she would actually help him in this awful work? Did she get Tommy involved, too? Was that why he was acting so coldly about her disappearance?

  He still wanted to think of Janelle as a victim, but this case had shaken his confidence to the point where he believed anything was possible.

  20

  “THIS IS A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME,” Frank complained, although no one was near enough to hear him. Earl was positioned beyond a clump of black raspberry bushes, Meyerson crouched behind a large fallen log, and the Stevensons were well out of the way, shielded by a huge rock formation. A cold drizzle fell, dampening even Earl’s enthusiasm for the stakeout at the lean-to. They had been in their places since four-thirty in the morning, waiting for the alleged kidnapper to pick up the knapsack with the ransom at dawn. In all that time, the only activity had been the steady work of a chipmunk gathering seeds.

  Now it was close to eight o’clock, and Frank was stiff, wet, and irritable. He calculated how soon he could decently call an end to this and declare the whole thing a hoax. The sharp sound of a stick snapping pulled his attention away from his wristwatch. A man in a hooded anorak moved briskly along the trai l and entered the clearing.

  Frank watched in astonishment as the man slowly circled the lean-to, then dropped down on his knees to peer under the little structure. A moment later he had pulled the red knapsack out and sat staring at it, as if uncertain what to do next. Shocked by this turn of events, Frank stood rooted to the spot while Meyerson leapt out from his hiding spot and confronted the man.

  “State police!” he barked. “Drop the bag, stand up, and keep your hands over your head.”

  The man jumped in surprise, then grinned. “Wow, cool. Are you making a movie or something?” The smiled faded from his face as he saw Meyerson’s gun leveled at his heart. Slowly he rose and followed the trooper’s instructions, his eyes never leaving the gleaming weapon.

  Meyerson reached out and pulled back the man’s hood, exposing a limp brown ponytail. “All right, Pablo, the game’s up. Where do you have Janelle?”

  “Why are you calling me Pablo? Who’s Janelle?”

  “That dumb act won’t take you too far, buddy,” Meyerson said. “Are you going to tell me you don’t know what this is?” He pulled open the red knapsack, revealing the wads of cash it contained.

  The man jumped back, as if the bag had contained a live creature. “It’s not mine.”

  Meyerson seemed to construe this as an attempt to flee and immediately moved to handcuff the suspect.

  With the kidnapper safely restrained, Ned, Clyde, and Earl emerged from their hiding places. Clyde marched right up to the man and, undeterred by the fact that the suspect was a good foot taller than him, took his usual authoritative approach. “I demand to know where you are keeping that poor young girl.”

  “What girl?” The man’s head swiveled back and forth in dismay. “You can’t just handcuff me like this for no reason.”

  “You’re under arrest for the kidnapping of Janelle Harvey. You have the right to remain silent…”

  “Kidnapping!”

  The suspect’s startled exclamation didn’t stop Meyerson’s droned recitation of the Miranda warning. He concluded with a brusque command to sit on the floor of the lean-to until the backup troopers arrived.

  Ned, ever affable, waited until the suspect had settled himself, then smiled encouragingly. “Pablo, it’ll go a lot easier for you if you just tell us where she is.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” the man protested. “My name is Jason Klein.”

  Clyde planted his hands on his hips. “The nerve! To keep lying in the face of such overwhelming evidence! We all know who you are.”

  Frank did not share Clyde’s certainty. Ponytail notwithstanding, the man didn’t really look like the sketch of Pablo. His face was rounder, and he appeared to be in his midtwenties, not thirties. Though police sketches were notoriously inaccurate, this one had been good enough for the men at the bruderhof to have recognized Pablo.

  But there was no point in speculating. “If Nick and Penny can pick him out of a lineup, we’ll know we have our man,” Frank reassured Clyde.

  “Wait a minute! I won’t have Penny involved in this. It could put her in danger.” Ned’s good humor evaporated, as Frank had noticed it was often prone to do.

  “Your wife will have to view the lineup,” Meyerson replied. “Nick Reilly can say whether this is the man he knows as Pablo, but only Penny can verify if he’s the man she saw Janelle talking to.”

  “What about Kim and Melanie?” Ned challenged.

  Frank snorted. “They were precious little help with the sketch artist. All they could agree on was the ponytail and earring. And I hope,” he continued, “that you’re not suggesting two minors should do something you consider too dangerous for your wife.”

  “Hey, look at this!” Earl saved Frank from what promised to be another nasty confrontation with the Stevensons by waving a small rectangle of white paper over his head. He had apparently picked it up from the path where Jason, aka Pablo, had entered the clearing.

  Walking toward his assistant, Frank experienced one of those moments of dissonance when the mind, quite aware of what the eyes are seeing, nevertheless refuses to accept it as real. At a distance of three feet, he could distinguish the unmistakable pattern of Janelle’s meticulous calligraphy. Two steps farther and he could read the words as Earl held the paper before him:

  On the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones in the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places.

  “This matches the paper you found in her room?” Meyerson had appeared at his side and read over his shoulder.

  “No doubt about it,” Frank confirmed.

  “Can you explain how this got here?” Meyerson asked their suspect.

  The man looked up at the five inquiring faces that surrounded him. Understanding dawned in his eyes and he straightened up from his slumped position. “I want a lawyer.”

  The suspect made one phone call, to a lawyer named Peter Stratton in Albany. It would be at least two hours until Mr. Stratton arrived, so the young man was locked up in Trout Run’s only cell to wait.

  Frank’s effusive thanks to the Stevensons for their assistance at the stakeout, offered with the intention of dismissing the meddlesome pair, hadn’t had the desired effect.

  “You’d better find Nick Reilly; we’ll need him for the line up,” Clyde ordered as he planted his wide bottom firmly in one of Frank’s visitors’ chairs.

  Frank wondered how noticeable his annoyance was. “A very good idea, Clyde. Earl, why don’t you give Nick a call.”

  Earl reported no answer at Nick’s home; then called the Trail’s End and learned that Nick would be in at five.

  “Five! We can’t wait until five! You’d better go out and search for him.”

  “There’s really no rush, Clyde. We won’t be able to put a lineup together before that, anyway. We need four
or five other men.”

  “Why, Lew and Earl can be in it. And just round up a few of those fellows who sit around at the Store all day. Let them do something useful for a change.”

  “The other participants can’t be people that Nick already knows,” Frank explained. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Why that’s outrageous,” Clyde protested. “Just another example of how our criminal justice system coddles criminals.”

  “Frank’s right, Dad. He can’t rig the lineup. And if this lawyer’s smart, he’ll probably insist on having five men with ponytails and earrings. That could take a while to come up with around here, huh?” Ned smiled at Meyerson for confirmation.

  “Hopefully, the lawyer will talk some sense into this guy and he’ll realize he’ll be better off to cooperate. Then we won’t have to proceed to a lineup at all,” Meyerson replied.

  “I think it’s a good sign that he’s not willing to talk without a lawyer. He must have something to hide,” Ned said. He clapped his hand on Clyde’s shoulder. “Well, Dad, what do you say we head home? It doesn’t seem there’s much more for us to do right now.” He turned to Frank. “I’m sure you’ll keep us posted on developments after Mr. Stratton arrives.”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  Clyde stood up reluctantly. “And just where did you put that knapsack filled with my ten thousand dollars? It’s not just lying around here, is it?”

  “It’s locked up in the safe, Clyde. We still need it for evidence.”

  Clyde scowled but permitted his son to steer him out the door. “We’ll be at home if you need us,” Ned called back over his shoulder.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Frank sagged back in his chair, rubbing his temples.