[Frank Harper 01.0] A Field of Red

by Greg Enslen

  From up the street, someone was shouting.

  Barnes looked up and saw Chief King and the father of the kidnapping victim. They were both running down the sidewalk in front of the toy shop, pointing.

  “He’s got the bag!” Chief King was yelling. “He’s got the bag!”

  Peters and Barnes turned. They saw a young man running up Main Street away from them, away from the trash bin.

  He had the bag.

  The young man was in his twenties, scraggly hair, and wearing a camouflage jacket. He sprinted across the street, catty-corner away from the cops and the woman on the ground, and ran up onto the sidewalk on the O’Shaughnessy’s side of the street, heading east. He ran past the Clean Soap store and ducked into the new antique store just past it.

  The cops bolted after him. Deputy Peters could hear King shouting into his radio for Sergeant Burwell and the other police at the eastern roadblock to leave their positions to assist.

  In moments, Barnes and Peters chased the young man into the new antique store, though the young man had gotten a good head-start. Two years ago, this had been a small video game store known as the Big Robot Game Café. Deputy Peters had been in here on a few occasions. It had been a unique, play-by-the-hour video game store where kids paid to play video games on big screen TVs. They had occasionally held overnight events and costume parties for the youth that showed up to play, but it hadn’t taken off. Peters had dropped in once in a while to chat with the owner, who had gone on to be a writer for the local paper. The business had closed in 2010, and the space was now occupied by a new store, Elise’s Antiques.

  He and Barnes burst in the door, looking around. There was no one there.

  “A kid just come in here?” Barnes shouted into the store, his gun out. “Hello?”

  Peters looked around. He could see the large sales floor in front of them, covered with antiques. To the left was a hallway that ran back to other rooms, and a staircase that ran upward. To the right a storeroom. Two displays of merchandise were knocked over, and a table that had been upended, its contents strewn across the carpet.

  “Up the stairs!” Barnes said to Peters, pointing. Peters turned and sprinted up the wooden stairs that led to a loft area, piled high with old furniture. In one corner stood an old jukebox, and an older gentlemen stooped over it, repairing the front.

  “Excuse me--did anyone come up here?” Peters asked.

  The old man turned and shook his head, surprised by the interruption.

  “Nope, been slow all day. Why?”

  “We’re pursuing a suspect,” Peters said quickly. “He came in here and disappeared.”

  The old man nodded. “I heard something downstairs, but I thought it was the wind. You might check out back.”

  Peters was confused. “There’s a back door?”

  “Off the storeroom,” the old man said slowly. “There’s a curtain.”

  Peters shook his head and ran back downstairs. He saw Barnes coming back up a short hallway that led to two rooms and a bathroom in the back.

  “Nothing,” Barnes said. “Storeroom and three other rooms that branch off the hallway but nothing else. You?”

  Peters shook his head and pointed. “The owner says there’s a back door, off the storeroom.”

  Barnes shook his head. “No, I looked in there.”

  Together, they bolted behind the sales counter and into a small storeroom. The room was piled high with boxes and furniture. One corner was free of boxes. The wall was draped by a floor-to-ceiling curtain.

  Barnes walked over and pulled it aside. Behind the curtain was a door to the outside. Peters could see light coming in through a security peephole in the door.

  “Oh, Jesus. I didn’t see it there.”

  Barnes yanked the door open.

  Behind the antique store was a large, unkempt lot. The last time Peters had seen it, the lot had been filled with scrub brush and gravel, but the new occupants of the shop had converted half of it to an outdoor shopping area. Old doors leaned up against the adjoining buildings, and vintage bathtubs and shutters, marked for sale, hunkered in the short grass. A low fence ringed the merchandise. It was broken only by a hinged gate that stood open, leading to the other half of the back lot, nearest the alley, used for employee parking.

  Across the alley, which ran east to west, was the large parking lot for the new A Cut Above Hair Studios. He remembered the parking lot, which had caused quite a bit of controversy related to its previous owner, a small grocery store. Across Dow Street from the parking lot, another alley ran south away from downtown.

  In the alley, Peters saw a car, racing away. It looked like an old Mustang.

  “Barnes, look,” Peters said, pointing.

  Detective Barnes cursed under this breath and tabbed the radio at his shoulder. “Dispatch, suspect escaped--he ran out the back of the old Big Robot. He must’ve had a car waiting here by the alley. He’s in an orange Mustang, ‘70s or ‘80s, headed south in the alley between First and Second streets.”

  Chief King came on the radio.

  “Roger that, Barnes. Burwell, other units head south to Broadway to intercept. He’s probably heading for Canal Road and points south and east.”

  Peters nodded. It was just about the only way out of town heading south on that side of the tracks.

  “Meet you out front,” Barnes answered into the radio, shaking his head.

  They walked back inside, thanking the proprietor, who was picking up merchandise that had been knocked over. They apologized for the excitement, then walked out to the front steps and saw Chief King, who looked at them.

  “How did you lose him?”

  “There was a back door I didn’t know was there,” Barnes said. “The space has several small rooms, which we cleared first. He must’ve had a car waiting in the lot behind the store.”

  Peters spoke up. “When it was the Big Robot place, I used to come in here all the time. Never knew there was a back door. I always thought it was just storage.”

  King nodded.

  “Let’s see,” Chief King said, starting into the store.

  “I’m gonna help the girl,” Peters said.

  King stopped and looked.

  “What girl?”

  Deputy Peters turned and looked. The sidewalk in front of O’Shaughnessy’s was empty.

  “There was the girl that fell,” Barnes said, looking up the street in both directions. “She tripped and tore her skirt, and...oh crap.”

  King shook his head.

  “I saw her, too. She was attractive, I’ll give you that. But I can’t write this off as coincidence. She was gone when we got here, so either she recovered remarkably quickly--”

  “Or she was in on it,” Barnes said.

  King nodded. At their feet, several of the young woman’s playing cards skittered through the gutter to join the carpet of fallen leaves.

  Chapter 17

  The car raced away from downtown Cooper’s Mill, heading south, weaving through the tight alleyway before coming out in a parking lot that fronted Broadway. George knew the town of Cooper’s Mill very well. He took Broadway to Second, turned left, then right on German and came out on Third. He turned left again, following Third until the road abruptly swerved to the right, turning up and over the train tracks behind Maple Hill Nurseries.

  This had been one iffy part of the plan--if a train had been passing through town, George might have been trapped on this side of the tracks until the train was gone. Bad idea, with a big bag of money sitting next to you and the cops behind you. Fortunately, the boss had double-checked the train schedule. It had accounted for the odd time required from the ransom drop. They needed to time it so there were no trains.

  Across the tracks, the road became Maple Hill and wound between several large greenhouses and warehouses behind the retail Maple Hill Nurseries operations. Maple Hill Nurseries took up dozens of acres of land on the south side of town, but nobody ever came back here, unless they worked at Maple Hill
. The whole area was taken up with greenhouses and loading docks and employee parking lots. The rarely-used road continued south, away from the greenhouses, and crossed a tiny, one-lane bridge, screened by an overgrowth of trees. Half of the people in town probably didn’t even know this bridge was there. Passing through a large stand of trees and over a thin, dark creek, the road emerged back into the sunlight, coming out on the northern edge of Maple Hill Cemetery.

  The car snaked through the headstones and stopped near the exit to Hyatt Street, well south of the downtown area and the roadblocks the police officers had set up. George stopped under a large tree and idled quietly.

  While he waited, he glanced over at the leather satchel. He’d been told what to do with the contents.

  First, he carefully opened the bag. Even though he’d been assured against it, there was a chance there would be an explosive dye pack inside. George had been told about dye packs, which are used in nearly 75% of bank robberies in the U.S. and usually consisted of a hollowed-out stack of real bills that would explode on a timer, staining nearby money and the thief with a red dye.

  George opened the bag carefully, but nothing happened. He took out one pack of money at a time, flipping slowly through it, looking for anything odd. He found a thin, metal device hidden inside one stack of money and pulled it out--it was a tiny GPS device--and tossed the money into the back. He continued through the stacks, finding several more metal devices while he waited.

  After a minute, he heard the low buzzing rumble of a small, gasoline-powered scooter coming down Hyatt Street toward the cemetery. He looked up and saw the scooter with a young woman driving. The vehicle was nothing more than a push scooter but, with the attached engine, it puttered along Hyatt, moving quickly in front of St. Jude’s Catholic Church. George got out and opened the trunk. When the scooter reached the entrance to the cemetery, the woman directed it off the pavement and over to the car. She climbed off.

  “Everything go OK?”

  “Yup,” Chastity nodded. “But I tore my skirt.”

  Indeed, her tiny white skirt was torn, showing off a stripe of purple beneath. He folded the scooter in half, lifting it up into the trunk. She straightened her skirt and climbed into the passenger seat.

  The young man in the camouflage coat slammed the trunk lid and got back into the car. He put the Mustang in gear and smiled at her, then pulled the car out onto Hyatt and turned south, driving out of town.

  He took Evanston and then a series of back roads, heading in the general direction of the airport.

  “Don’t worry,” George said, handing her a bottle of water and nodding at the large leather bag between them. “When we get to San Francisco, I’ll buy you another one. Heck, I’ll buy you twenty. Really excellent ones. Here, I got about half of the money checked.”

  She smiled and opened the bag, searching for more trackers. As she found them, she tossed the packets of money into the back. She finished searching all the money and put the trackers--they had found almost a dozen of them--back into the black satchel. She twisted the lid off of the bottle of water and dumped the contents into the bag, keeping the bottle. He drove on for another quarter mile and then, at the next corner, he slowed. She tossed the bag into the ditch next to the road.

  “That will work?” she asked.

  George nodded and turned the car, heading to the airport. “The boss said the GPS trackers will lead to here, water will kill the bugs and anything sewn into the lining of the bag. By the time they find the bag, we’ll be long gone.”

  She smiled and climbed over the back. He couldn’t help but steal another peek at her panties as she wiggled over the seat. Chastity grabbed another bag, a green duffel, and started stuffing the money inside, checking each stack carefully, again, for trackers they might have missed.

  They were to leave the money inside the Mustang in the long-term parking at Dayton International Airport, taking the waiting Corolla home. Someone else would retrieve the cash and probably just leave the car at the airport. It was great place to ditch a car. So many people came and went. And the boss had said that any surveillance footage of the parking lots would take weeks or months to process.

  “You know,” she said from the backseat. “Once we know this money is clean, we should just keep driving, Puddin’. We’ve got the money, and this car, and...”

  George shook his head.

  “Nah, the boss would find us,” George said. “Even out in California. And this car is stolen anyway. No, let’s do the deal and wait for our cut, then we can leave together.”

  He glanced in the mirror at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. Chastity was staring out the window, deep in thought.

  Chapter 18

  “What a god-awful mess.”

  Chief King was not happy. A million dollars, and their best leads, gone.

  He and the other police officers and investigators sat around the police station conference room table. The disaster known as the ransom drop was hours ago, and they had met to try and figure out what had gone wrong.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” King said, looking at the others around the table. “I can’t believe we’ve got nothing. Even after they got away, I assumed we’d pick up the trackers, or get a sighting, or something. How did they get away?”

  No one answered him.

  “First of all, we didn’t cordon off the right streets,” King said. “Agent Shale? Graves? You guys set up the roadblocks.”

  Everyone turned to look at FBI Agent Shale and Sergeant Graves, waiting for an answer. Graves glanced at Shale, who didn’t answer.

  “We blocked the major roads in all directions, as you know,” Graves finally said, looking at notes on a piece of paper in front of him. “But the driver used the narrow alleys. He had a car hidden behind one of the downtown shops. The young man, described as early 20s with a camouflage jacket and short brown hair, grabbed the money from the trash receptacle outside of the Old Hotel and crossed the street while our plainclothes were distracted by the female. Presumably, she was working with him. He ducked inside the shop, as everyone saw, and went through to the waiting car.”

  “Had to be a local,” Deputy Peters said. “And those alleys are hard to navigate. How fast were they going?”

  “Not sure,” Graves answered. “Pretty fast. By the time we figured out, they were at least two miles south of town.”

  The Chief shook his head. “Sixty miles an hour down those narrow alleys? That’s impossible.”

  “That’s what happened, as far as we can tell,” Graves said. “I thought we had them boxed in, between the river and the tracks, but they went south out of town, crossing near Maple Hill Nurseries and coming out by the cemetery.

  The Chief nodded. He knew that back road well; it was popular with teenagers trying to get a little privacy. He’d shooed plenty of cars off that little stretch of road. He turned and looked at Agent Shale.

  “No one was stationed on Canal Road?”

  Shale looked at the Chief but didn’t answer. Chief King was starting to get the feeling he was lecturing a surly teenager for not doing their homework.

  Finally, Graves spoke up again. “Yes, but further south. We couldn’t know they would take the alleys and skirt the roadblock. It was a lucky guess, on their part, to go west. If they had gone east, we would have caught them at Kyle Park, at the roadblock on Canal road. They just got lucky, sir.”

  The room went quiet.

  Chief King didn’t know what else to say. They were back to square one. He shook his head, livid, and looked around.

  “Where did Nick go?” he asked.

  “I took Mr. Martin home, sir,” Deputy Peters said. “He was pretty shaken up when they got away.”

  King was so agitated, he couldn’t sit still. He stood and started pacing in a circle around the table.

  “Well, that’s it,” King barked, furious. “Our best, and really only lead, gone.

  Deputy Peters leaned forward. “Well, we do have good descriptio
ns on both of them. If they’re local, someone will recognize them, especially the girl.”

  King nodded. It was something, at least.

  “Okay,” he said. “We need to get sketches made. Get the artist in here tonight and get the sketches out to all local precincts, especially those to the south, where the car went,” King said. “And let’s do another round of interviews--see if anyone knows these two.”

  “We should polygraph everyone again,” Agent Shale volunteered. “See if anyone--”

  Chief King put his hand up.

  “I think we’ve done enough of that,” King said, shutting him down. “And putting you on point on this isn’t working. You had the ‘blocks in all the wrong places.”

  The young agent looked up at the Chief, and King could tell the kid was trying to decide whether to argue or not.

  “I was going by the book--”

  “Field experience,” the Chief said, sitting back down. It came out louder than he thought it would, but he didn’t care. “You should get some. Especially before coming in here and telling people what to do. Experience tells you when to follow the book and when to ignore it.”

  Agent Shale looked down at the table. King looked around at the rest.

  “Anyone else?”

  There were no takers.

  “Okay, then get to work.”

  The rest of the police department stood and filed away, talking quietly among themselves. No one approached King or tried to talk to him. He knew that meant they were all out of ideas.

  Agent Shale looked at King for a long time, like he was trying to decide what to say. King thought he might be trying to apologize but wasn’t sure how. After a time, Shale simply stood up, nodded at King, and walked away.