In the Shadow of the Arch

by Robert J. Randisi

"I'll check the hospitals for the woman," Keough said. "If he wrapped her wound in a towel, maybe he decided to take her for treatment."

  "Or maybe he took her and the car and pushed them off a bridge."

  Keough shrugged and said, "That's a theory, too."

  "Where's the boy?"

  "I left him with Joyce, um, Wilson, a woman who works next door. I'll have to go and check and see if social services has come for him, yet."

  O'Connell sat back in his chair, folded his hands in front of him, and regarded Keough.

  "I hate to say this," the older man finally said, "but I'm impressed."

  "I'm just doing my job, sir."

  "Maybe," O'Connell said, "but you're doing it a whole lot sooner than you expected. You walked into a bad situation and took it over. Do you always react so well under pressure, Detective?"

  Keough smiled. He thought, at that moment, that he still had not found a place to fly his kites. If he didn't soon, then there'd be pressure.

  "Yes, sir," he said, "every time."

  9

  Later that day Keough sat at his desk staring at a brown leather phone book in a plastic evidence bag.

  Once he had made sure that the boy, Brady, was in the proper hands with social services, he'd gone back to the Sanders house to see how the lab was doing. After they'd finished up and promised him results by the next day he'd gone through the house again. He found two things of interest. One was a safe deposit key in a small red envelope, and the other was the Sanderses' phone book. He'd picked each up with a bag on his hand, then bagged both by turning the bags inside out and took them back to the station with him. Instead of putting them in a property room, though, he kept them at his desk for a while.

  The detective's squad room was in the basement along with a captain's office shared by two captains, a turnout room for the patrol officers, a booking room and two two-man cells. At the moment there were three desks in the squad room. They were going to bring in three more, at some point, which would make the room pretty crowded, but at the moment there was plenty of room. Bilcheck, the sergeant, had an office on the first floor, next to the assistant chief. The chief's office was on the second floor, with the mayor's and some other dignitaries.

  Detective Haywood had gone out on a burglary call when the responding car had called for a detective. Keough was nearing the end of his shift and took the phone book and safe deposit key out of his desk drawer.

  He opened the bag and took the book out. He'd leafed through it earlier, but now he went slowly, taking a better look at each page.

  He didn't want to have to phone everyone in the book. He was hoping that he'd be able to separate friends from acquaintances, family members from professional contacts. He still didn't know what Mr. Sanders' business was. He'd gotten their last name from the neighbor, but finding some of their mail in the house had enabled him to find out their first names. He was William. The neighbor, Mrs. Arnette, had been wrong about the woman. Her name wasn't Margaret or Margo, it was Marian.

  In addition to the phone book Keough had removed the Sanderses' most recent phone bill from the house. He had tucked it inside the book, and took it out now.

  He spent a few minutes leafing through the book, but the Sanders did not differentiate in any way the business numbers from their friends or families. Neither was Keough able to find any other Sanders listed in the book. If he had known Marian Sanders' maiden name, that might have helped him find a family member in the book, but he didn't.

  He took the phone bill out of the envelope and spread out the pages. There were eleven. Apparently, the Sanderses made a lot of long distance calls, as well as calling card calls. Local calls were not listed, but Keough began to make a note of the most frequently called numbers on a yellow lined pad, especially if the duration of the calls exceeded ten or fifteen minutes. Calls of that length usually indicated family or friends.

  When he was done he had ten phone numbers. He set the phone bill aside and looked around the room for the Yellow Pages. When he couldn't locate them he picked up the Sanderses' phone book again and looked inside. In the front of the book was a page with a map of the country and a listing of all the area codes. Using that he wrote down on the pad, next to the numbers, the state each call was made to.

  The ten numbers reflected calls to six different states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, Colorado, and California. It was pretty evenly divided between the East Coast, the Midwest, and the West Coast.

  When that was done he looked at his watch. He was about ten minutes from the end of his shift. If he started making phone calls now he'd have to put in for overtime. He didn't think that would be wise, not on his first day. He was debating whether or not to take the book home when Det. Tony Haywood came walking back in.

  "Thought I'd be late," Haywood said. "The boss doesn't like unnecessary overtime."

  "I'm glad you said that," Keough said. "I was just wondering what to do. How'd the burglary go?"

  Haywood made a face.

  "They didn't really need us there," he said. "The people insisted on seeing someone, though, and I had to explain the futility of taking fingerprints at the scene of a burglary, especially when the people had four kids, like these did. We would have had to fingerprint the kids, as well as the parents, and the woman got all upset about that. Seems she thought anyone who gets fingerprinted has a criminal record."

  "What did you tell them?"

  "I told them we'd do the best we could," Haywood said with a shrug.

  "Sounds like you handled it just right."

  At that point two men entered the office and Haywood introduced them to Keough. They were Detectives Lou Merchant and Frank Leslie. Keough stood to meet them, tucking the phone book into his pocket as an afterthought.

  "We've been looking forward to meeting you," Merchant said. He was the oldest man in the room, about fifty. He was gray-haired and thickly built through the middle. It was obvious somebody needed to give him tips on what "plain" clothes meant. He w^s wearing a lime green sports jacket over a purple silk shirt.

  "I hope we get a chance to work together," Frank Leslie said, shaking Keough's hand. Leslie was in his late twenties, the youngest man in the squad. He had gone the opposite way of his partner, and was wearing different shades of brown. Keough decided to wait and see if the men made a habit of dressing this way before he said anything.

  "I'm sure we will," Keough said.

  It was time to go home and call it a day. His first day as a Richmond Heights police detective had been, to say the least, eventful.

  10

  Keough had been living in the house in the West End for only a week. The house stood on the corner of Pershing and Euclid, Euclid being the main street that cut right through the West End.

  The Central West End was where St. Louisans did their shopping until stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Montaldo's moved away in the seventies. Since then the area had been built up again and now sported all sorts of shops, cafes, and restaurants.

  What impressed Keough about the West End were the choices available to him, and he was only too glad to house-sit the house on Pershing for as long as the owners wanted to be away.

  He arrived home in the evening, when it was no longer necessary to put coins in the parking meters. He had developed the habit of parking on Euclid, instead of driving through the gates onto the private street. Somehow, he didn't quite feel entitled to that, yet.

  He parked and got out of his car, a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme he had purchased when he first arrived in St. Louis. He admired the huge, ornate streetlights which belonged to another era as he walked to the gateway that led into Pershing Place. The wrought iron was moored on each side to big concrete pillars, and to either side of each pillar was a small entryway. Once through there he mounted the steps to the house and let himself in.

  There was no two ways about it, the house was a mansion. It had three floors, with two stairways, one which led to the kitchen and the other to the large ent
ry foyer.

  The living room was to the right and the dining room was on the left. The dining room, however, was one of the rooms closed off, the furniture covered with sheets. When he ate in the house he did so in the kitchen, which was large enough to have a good-sized table in the middle of it. He used the living room and kitchen on the first floor, and the bedroom and den on the second. He never used any part of the third floor. The den was actually one of the five bedrooms which had been converted into a den and office. He'd only been there a week and still had boxes in the living room, den and bedroom to be unpacked. He probably should have worked harder at getting settled during that week, because it was going to be slow going now that he was on the job. Truth be told, though, it had been too long since he'd been on the job, and he was anxious to get back to it. Of course, he didn't know that he'd be back in it five minutes after walking into the building.

  As he entered the house, he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He pulled out a beer, a Pete's Wicked Ale, which he had discovered since moving here. One beer at home, he thought, and then he'd wander down the block for some dinner.

  He popped the top off the beer and sat down at the kitchen table to drink it. He became aware of the phone book in his jacket pocket and pulled it out. The yellow lined sheet of paper he'd written the most often called phone numbers on was folded up inside.

  He had not been able to locate any members of Mr. or Mrs. Sanders' families. Tomorrow he'd ask the boy, Brady, what he knew, but he didn't really expect to get much out of a three-year-old.

  When he'd returned to the station the first time the boy had still been there, dressed now in new pajamas. Keough still didn't know the name of the officer he'd sent for the pajamas, but it was obvious the man knew nothing about kids because he'd brought back a pink pair. Joyce had removed the bloody ones and given them to Detective Haywood to bag, and then had dressed Brady in the new pair.

  The second time Keough returned to the station the boy was gone. Tomorrow he'd go down to wherever they were holding him and try to question him further.

  Meanwhile, he sipped his beer and leafed through the phone book, looking for some hint of whom to call. He wasn't about to start making long distance phone calls from the phone bill on his own phone. He'd do that from the station.

  By the time he finished his beer, his stomach was growling. He decided to take the phone book with him to Dressel's, where he'd have a few more beers with dinner.

  ***

  Dressel's was small, dark, and comfortable. They served food downstairs, while the upstairs was reserved strictly for drinking and, when they had it, entertainment.

  The walls downstairs were covered with framed sketches and drawings of literary and theatrical figures, and there were similar sketches on the front of the yellow menu. Classical music played constantly, and a collection of cassette tapes was clearly visible behind the bar.

  It was an oval bar and it dominated the place, stuck right in the center of the room, with tables all around it. He grabbed a table toward the front and ordered a Newcastle Brown Ale from the waitress, whose name was Dawn. She was one of the reasons he liked the place. She was mature, attractive, and greeted him warmly the second time he had been there. This was now his fourth visit and

  she greeted him again like a long-lost friend-or, at least, a regular customer.

  "How are you getting along in St. Louis?" she asked, when she brought him his beer.

  "Just great."

  "Finding your way around?"

  "Well," he said, "I can get to work, and I can find my way back here to the West End."

  "That' not bad for, what, two weeks?"

  "Starting my third. In fact, today was my first day of work."

  "How did that go?"

  He looked up at her. She was slender, and he knew she kept herself in shape with exercise from conversation he'd heard during his other visits. Although they'd talked a little each time he came in, she still did not know that he was a policeman.

  "You don't want to know."

  "That bad, huh? Maybe a good meal will fix that."

  He ordered some of Dressel's' homemade potato chips, and the contents of the crock pot, which changed every day.

  Dawn brought the basket of chips and Keough worked on them and the Newcastle while going through the phone book again. He turned over the piece of paper on which he had written the long distance calls and wrote down three local numbers. One of them was for a Dr. White, another was for Jenny Rasmus, and a third was for a YWCA. The phone book was apparently Marian Sanders', not her husband's. If he was a businessman, it

  was likely he had a phone book at work, or even carried it with him.

  Thinking of business Keough went through the book yet again, looking for a number that might be Mr. Sanders' work number. There were two in the book that looked likely, and he wrote them down just as Dawn brought his dinner. He tucked the book away in his pocket, ordered a second Newcastle, and devoted all of his attention to dinner.

  ***

  Keough left Dressel's after dinner, saying good-bye to Dawn. He was well fed, but in the mood for coffee. He thought about crossing the street and going to the Tuscany Cafe but instead decided to stop at Left Bank Books, the Central West End-and one of St. Louis'-oldest bookstore. There were two entrances to the place, one which led directly into the store, and the other into their coffee shop, which appeared to be a new addition. He decided to browse a bit, and bought a mystery novel called Lukewarm by a local writer. The book featured a private detective who lived and worked in Florida. Keough had never read this writer before, but the book sounded interesting.

  He read a couple of chapters over a cup of coffee and then left the store and walked home.

  When he got home he took a shower and went into the den. He was greeted by the sight of boxes stacked against one wall, small and medium in size. He decided to ignore them for now.

  There was a leather armchair there, which he had begun to use for reading. He briefly considered leafing through the phone book again, but decided to leave that for the next day, when he was at work. Tonight he'd do some reading for pleasure, before turning on the television to watch CNN or ESPN, or maybe even both.

  He could do some unpacking tomorrow, after work.

  11

  At nine-thirty the next morning Keough was sitting at his desk with the phone book and the numbers he'd written on the yellow lined pad in front of him. He knew he shared the desk with one of the detectives who was working the later shift, but he didn't know which one. The squad was working only two shifts, so that the midnight-to-eight shift was without a detective. If one was needed, each member of the squad would take turns being on call. It was the detective sergeant, however, who would be awakened first, and who would make the choice of whom to call.

  Whichever man he was sharing the desk with had left crumbs on the top of it, probably from his dinner. Keough had to go to the men's room for a damp paper towel to clean it off before he sat down. He was going to have to have a talk with his deskmate.

  Once the desk was cleaned he got down to business, trying to find Mr. Sanders' place of business.

  The first number he called was a place called Kaufman, Coolly & Fine, Attorneys-at-Law. They did not, the receptionist told him, have a man named Sanders working for them. Was he an attorney? Keough hung up without identifying himself, and without telling her that he didn't know. He had found nothing in the house that reflected Sanders' profession.

  The second number was for a place called First Choice Realty. He called and asked the woman who answered if a man named William Sanders worked there. The answer was yes.

  "Is his wife named Marian?"

  The woman hesitated, then said, "Why, y-yes, it is-"

  "And do they have a little boy?"

  "Y-yes, Brady-what is this about, please?"

  "What is your name, ma'am?" Keough asked, preparing to write it down.

  "I'm Miss… Miss Bonny," the woman said, star
ting to sound nervous. "Is-is something wrong? H-has something happened? Who is this?"

  "My name is Detective Joseph Keough, ma'am, I'm with the Richmond Heights Police-"

  There was a sharp intake of breath and then the woman said, "Police!" letting the breath out at the same time.

  "Yes, ma'am. Is there a manager I can speak to, please?"

  "H-has something happen to Bill-uh, Mr. Sanders?"

  "I'd rather talk to a manager, if you don't mind, Miss Bonny."

  "Of course. I'll connect you to Mr. Riverside."

  He waited through a series of clicks and then a man came on the phone.

  "Hello, is-is this a policeman?" The voice was timid, quavering slightly. Keough wondered if this was normal, or the result of talking with a cop.

  "Yes, sir, my name is Detective Keough, I'm with the Richmond Heights Police."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "Well, I'd like to come and talk to you about William Sanders, Mr. Riverside."

  "Has something happened to Bill?"

  "He seems to have disappeared."

  "Disappeared? That's terrible. Did Marian report-she must be frantic."

  "Well, Mr. Riverside, Mrs. Sanders seems to have disappeared, as well."

  "What? Look, I don't understand. What about the boy? What about Brady?"

  "We have the boy, sir."

  "Look," Riverside said again, "I don't understand." His voice had become much firmer, now, as if he was taking control of himself.

  "Mr. Riverside, may I come to your office to talk to you?"

  "Well… of course, if it's about-I mean, I want to help, but I don't know what I can-"

  "I'd just like to talk to someone who knows the Sander-ses, sir. The neighbors don't seem to be able to help me."

  "That's because they're very private people."

  "I see. Do you know them well, sir?"